Mau Escarpment

Monday 18th June 2007 Gavin & Sebrena Mouritzen Mau Escarpment
Left the wonderful pressure cooker with the steam emerging out the ground straight up into the cool, still morning air and made our way towards Nakuru. The road took us through the middle of fields of commercial sisal plantations with the workers cutting the branches from the bottom. Brian did a spectacular jump off a ledge diagonally into a mud puddle and squashed his… exhaustpipe a bit.
In Nakuru we topped up our fuel and bought DRC and Rwandan flag stickers from a vendor who really went out of his way to find them for us. Dave and Beryl didn’t want to go to Masai Mara so they and Willy and Ingrid headed for the coast while Brian, Maureen and we headed south west to the 3000m high Mau Escarpment to find Gavin Mauritzen who went to school with Brandon. The road was good, tar until the last 10Km and the rain had made the well-cambered road slippery, and fun. The escarpment was a mixture of commercial and subsistence farms. Commercial is all wheat and the farms are enough to make us drool. The fertile gently sloping deep soiled lands are magnificent. Gavin manages 2500Ha of undulating wheat for a politician. Had quite a bit of rain lately and the planting is a bit late. They soil doesn’t change colour for two meters deep, but they do lime at 2tonnes a Ha every couple of years, do have to fertilize similar to us, and can achieve 6tonnes of wheat with no irrigation. They get R2500 a tonne with wheat import levy protection of 35%.
Sebrena made us a magnificent meal and they welcomed us with open arms. Their little 2 year old daughter Ella had her party yesterday. Louise and Dave Rose also entertained us and advised us where is Kenya to visit. The temp dropped to 4.3 deg, (and they do get frost) but we were snug in our tent. Brandon, Gavin says you must come up here and go trout fishing with him in the streams and rivers!!!

Sunday 17th June 2007 Lake Bogorio, Kerio Valley
We left early and made our way further south along the Kerio Valley and the erosion was horrific. The deep red soils were devoid of groundcover, and had been eroded so the trees’s roots were exposed and they were perched on islets of soil. The big G word: Goats, were responsible for the devastation. A forest reserve indicated what the vegetation should have been, lush forest and deep red fertile soils. We arrived at Lake Borgorio and were shocked to have to pay R520 to get in. Well worth it, yet again because we are, in effect, sitting on a pressure cooker. There are geysers everywhere, small steam spouts coming out of the ground at over 100 degrees. Luckily the weather is cool, because I think it could be really hot here. It is so amazing to think we are right in the middle of geologically young ground where the earth is being pulled asunder and the steam from deep down in the earth is being slowly released. Some spouts are shooting high up into the air. Our prop shaft universal had to be changed and Dave’s radiator is leaking again.


Saturday 16th June 2007 Catholic Church on the hill, Kerio Valley
We wound our way up from 1000m to 2400m through mist-covered hills North from Kitale through Marich Pass up towards Sigor. From sub tropical through arid acacia bushvelt which had just had rain so looked green and lush. Evidence of goat and cattle overgrazing was evident throughout. The tiny indigenous (boran-type) cattle are so small that a cows weighs about 200Kg and in-calf heifers about 150Kg. They are very narrow, and look like toys, like dexters but narrow, and obviously very hardy. The people (Pokot) are short, about 1.4m and many look very San-like (bushman). We went along a main road which had not been maintained since its inception and 90% of the bridges and culverts were not functional and higher than the roads. We had to ford the rivers and streams, some of which were deeper than the Landrover. We did some pulling and towing to get the vehicles through. At the top of the mountain we turned southwards and skited the Ceorangani Mountains traveled along the Kerio Valley, and the vegetation changed to higher rainfall. We ran out of time again and had to find a safe sleeping place.
Willy found a catholic church perched high upon the side of the hills with the most magnificent panoramic view of the Kerio Valley and we camped there for the night. I tried to explain to a local old woman what we wanted to do, and my smattering of Swahili with the aid of a dictionary did the trick. Till a whole hoard of people arrived and they could speak English, so Brian entertained them for a while, and then they wouldn’t leave. I gave them an old loaf of bread and said to them “Kwaheri” and waved both arms in the air in a gesture indicating they were dismissed in a nice way, and they turned around and left!! We paid a guard to keep the cattle, goats, donkeys and people away and had a peaceful night. The people were friendly and sone greeted Nev as Osama Bin Laden because of his beard hehehe.

Friday 15th June 2007 Delta Crescent Camp Site, Kitale.
We went for a ride on camels this morning. Nev rode on Captain, and I rode on Dash. We had to say “walk walk’ to get them going, and they had to be led by handlers. The ride was not as uncomfortable as we had been warned, because we just used our waists to go with the camel while our upper bodies remained static. Very like riding a horse, but just more relaxed legs. Nev’s camel started to kick out backwards because he was slipping off its tail. It only had one hump, (a dromedary), and then it lay down! Nev got off. Mine then started to buck which panicked the handler more than it panicked me because I just hung on to the rail and laughed with the handler shouting “hang on hang on!!” and tried to calm the camel down. They get down onto the ground in three stages, front, back then front again, and then you gracefully step off in a very ladylike manner.
Then we went for a short walk in an animal sanctuary where they have tame giraphs who eat out of your hand. They have such soft, long upper lips, and flat noses. Two tame white rhinos grazed safely on the other side of an electric fence, and four Somali ostriches were available for riding at a fee. These ostriches are bigger than my old ostrich, with much thicker legs and less colour on their faces.
Hey, Pat and Marion Long: We went to find Adrianne and Tony Mills, but found they had gone to Tanzania on holiday, and left Dan Shaw farm-sitting their seed-maize and dairy farm. Dan remembers Pat and Marion from Kitale, and I now have a photo of him. He very kindly and proudly spent the whole afternoon taking us all around the farm showing us the seed maize, which was really impressive in its height. The commercial maize was 4.2m high and the cobs are nearly 3m high, so they are going to have a problem reaping them. Everything, except the planting is done by hand. They have people protecting the maize from the blue and vervet monkeys which could devastate the crop. The rainfall is 2000ml per year and they deep soils which Nev would give his eye teeth for. Minimum wage is R10.60 per day and he gets R1.78/l for his milk. They milk 174 cows by hand, and have recently installed a 2000l bulk tank chiller which has increased the quality of the milk. The milk is still transported by cans, and all the records are hand written with each cow having a name. It brought back many happy memories of our early days milking at Mill Park. His neighbours are all African farmers who also have outstanding crops. It was a very enjoyable afternoon spent while the rest of our group cooled their heels in the camp.
We were rocked by an earth tremor in the night which lasted about ten seconds. I thought Nev was moving the Landy and he thought I was. Then we both thought someone was rocking it from outside, but there was nobody there, then we realized it was an earth tremor. Wow!!

Thursday 14th June 2007 Delta Crescent Farm Camp, Kitale
We went through highly scenic route around Mt Elgon. The road was excellent up to when the tar stopped, then we were very glad it was not raining because the road was red mud like the soil at our old farm, Mill Park except it was very deep.
The locals cutivate ll the steep slopes where there is soil and do agri-forestery where they plant pines and Cyprus quite far apart and then plant maize and beans in between, The new crop, yams is also grown. Once over the mountain we came to the best farmland we have seen for ages, with a gentle slope where they grow maize and wheat. In all the mountainous areas and the flat areas, the crops were excellent. We saw a man spraying his potatoes whith a knapsack sprayer. These people can surely teach John Armstrong a thing about planting spuds on 60 degree mountain slopes!! We passed a sign saying: High altitude training Camp at 2400m above sea level. We then came across the border from Uganda to Kenya which was the most dilapidated border post we have seen so far. It was a real backwater post, and the official took half an hour to find a new receipt book!! I don’t know why, but ‘madmen’ seem to gravitate to border posts, and Brian and Willy’s vehicles were interfered with by a man who kept taking off their valve caps and throwing them into the grass, wanting to be paid for their return. When he started to get aggressive the police intervened and we proceeded into Kenya along a much better road passing through amazingly fertile and gently sloping land kilometer after kilometer all growing lovely maize, and a flower farm which flies the flowers out for export (the road to the nearest international airport, Nairobi is too far and too bad.
We arrived at Delta Crescent Camp at the foot of mount Elgon intending to go for a walk, but then the rain came down and we settled in for the night.

Wednesday 13th June 2007 Sipi Falls, Twalight Family Camp site.
We headed north to Sipi Falls. Went through far flatter terrain and they grow more or less the same crops including yams. The beans we have been seeing all the while have been yams all this time, sorry, hehehe!! Saw two lots of beautiful falls. It was a spectacular walk after a solid hour of rain and the air was clear and everything was green. The footpath was slopey and narrow and we had to run past the safari ants to prevent getting bitten. I slipped and fell in the mud three times and our guide held my hand like a vice and reassured me that I wouldn’t fall again, as he was helping me, and he was strong. He was so sweet!! I did fall again, and nearly pulled him down the hill! I was really full of mud when we got back. It was great fun. The camp is run by a South African youngster. It is the first time we have been to showers which only had a hot tap. The temperature of the water was controlled by a man outside adding cold water to an open drum if the water got too hot.

Tuesday 12th June 2007 Jinja, Eden Rock Camp site.
Three months today we left home.
Set off for Jinja and on the way saw the Kampala Museum. We found a really funny headline out of a newspaper from Jan2007 saying that the mayor of Jinja advocated that the Jinja people took Chinese fertility drugs to make female’s breasts hard and males more virile so that the people can “breed like rabbits” so that Jinja’s population can increase to 500,000 to reach city status to get more investments. They are presently at 200,000. Man oh man, we aren’t the only country who has politicians saying funny things!!! Otherwise the museum was really third grade with nothing about the Amin era, which I wanted to learn about.

Monday 11th June 2007 Kampala
Another day of vehicle repairs. New cylinder head gasket and new bushes for suspension. Brian and we tightened bolts and service. Dave service and two new master cylinders for brakes and two new tyres. Brian fixed broken shock. Stocked up with food from a Shoprite. As usual the water went off, and the electicity went off, but luckily we had got our washing done.