Leopard Relaxing at Reception



Stunning leopard photos taken by a guest at the reception rock on Tuesday night @ The Sanctuary at Ol Lentille



Currently this male leopard and a female are active every night at the Lodge, in addition guests are managing to get daytime sightings as they cross below the houses.  Though the male will soon go back to being solitary and the female will move back down to the campsite territory which has been her domain for sometime. The male   likes to take his carcases up a tree at the bottom of the road to reception. Their sawing cough can be heard during the night as they mark their territory.

Batting AIDs out of Kenya with Cricket Without Boundaries....

Huge thanks  to "Cricket Without Boundaries” .. what a great job they are doing with their cricket coaching in Kenya.  In two days with us they will have taught cricket to over 500 kids in four schools.. in addition to training up a batch of over 20 very keen Maasai men and women. 

The energy and enthusiasm and great organisational skills  of their team has meant that the riotous fun of Pancake Day that started the week at Kimanjo Primary has just  continued to the week -end.

In addition to learning  a new sport the schools have been expertly, and highly imaginatively , taught about HIV/AIDS infection... the first time any educators have come with boxers and knickers for all teachers and older students  (boys and girls) .. boldly entitled  ‘Spread the Word Not the Infection.....‘   The girls were so amused there were tears of laughter. The ABC message was very clearly and creatively made. So how on earth does ‘C  is for Condom’ transfer to a cricket game? Ooh yes ... Condom = Protection =  protect your wicket- Inspired teaching!

Kids here are so quick to learn any new sport being fit, well coordinated and highly enthusiastic that it wouldn’t take long to get them playing a match. Cricket also allows the girls much more equality over the ubiquitous football that tends to dominate the school ‘field’ every break time. The trainee  coaches have enjoyed their sessions so much and the coaching has been so good that I am sure we will be able to get  some cricket clubs into operation this year.

                Both students and teachers are being motivated by the wonderful success of the local Maasai Cricket Warriors at Il Polei- due in no small part to Aliya Bauer their dedicated South African coach and coordinator. These ‘Warriors’ are currently having fun in Mombasa on cricket tour, as a prelude to  a tour to S Africa for The Last Man Stands  tournament. The Maasai Cricket Warriors’ also promote health messages against FGM and HIV and act as role models for their community: their own AIDS Awareness slogan is  "A BALL is my SPEAR and a BAT is my SHIELD in the FIGHT against A I D S"

                Sport is such a wonderful way to break down cultural divides and to act as a learning tool for other messages, and there are many great sporting initiatives throughout Africa. But without doubt Cricket Without Boundaries deserves to have all the recognition it can get, not just from dedicated cricketers, for the work they are doing in East and Southern Africa in schools and orphanages opening up a new sport, giving bat-loads of fun,  and an excellent  AIDS awareness message. Another  “Good news Africa” story then? We seem to have many of those this year.  After all- it is the energy and enthusiasm in the face of extreme adversity,  and the sense of community-that is the main reason for us choosing to be mzungus in Kenya ... and good sportsmen everywhere know a good deal about these qualities. 

                On tour with Cricket Without Boundaries is plenty of hard work in some fairly basic conditions... but this team  are at least able to enjoy a little bit of luxury and a chance to recharge their batteries at The Sanctuary at Ol lentille for a couple of nights.  Richly deserved!

Pancake Day Maasai style- Making friends across the world!

Give a child (or adult) of any age one pan, one pancake, and tell them to get tossing.... and defy them not to have riotous fun....

We certainly had an afternoon to remember at Kimanjo Primary School to celebrate Pancake Day. Our noble chefs Rebecca, Chris, Paulina and Rose cooked 620 pancakes.. enough for all children and staff with quite a few left over for the tossing competition... 

Enormous thanks to all our friends at Leamore Primary School in Birmingham who raised the money for all students here  to be able to have a very good   lunch... ...followed by pancakes for all. Leamore raised the money through their ‘pancake  and chapatti cafe’, which  gave all Leamore pupils a good deal of fun too... and thanks also to their own noble cooks...

Leamore are part of our Become a Friend network of schools who partner with Primary and nursery schools here.. always looking for creative and fun ways to make links. Food of course is near to everyone’s heart  and this was a great idea from Leamore to make an educational, fun sharing experience. Pupils here all know about Lent from their Religious Education lessons, but the idea of Pancakes and Mardi Gras was a new one. In addition Leamore pupils learnt how to make Kenyan chapattis.

 We began this learning experience two weeks ago with a  cooking session for the teachers and  senior pupils.. we made chapattis (Kenyan style )and sent the recipe and videos  to our Leamore friends, see   and pancakes (English style) following the Leamore recipe ...as an added bonus Leamore school got to see us taking photos and videos on their ‘old’ Leamore video cameras.. and we have been able to   display these on the  ‘old’ Leamore laptops for the Kimanjo pupils and teachers to view. 

 Become a Friend aims to  expose children to different cultures whilst focusing our learning on healthcare and conservation messages: but always remembering  that learning can be made as fun as possible.

Neglected Tropical Diseases on Aljazeera

Following on from our blog on NTDs last week, this is the broadcast from the Al Jazeera news channel publicising and explaining the partnership between Pharmaceutical companies, governments and the public. What are your thoughts, readers? Positive or negative?

How to give sanitation sex appeal??

It’s hardly surprising that the building of pit latrines in the poorest countries is one of the least funded and most overlooked areas of health development. A vast amount more sex appeal will be found in other highly worthy public healthcare needs- malaria bed nights, for instance, undoubtedly save thousands of babies lives and are easy to distribute... in addition to lending themselves to great marketing opportunities to photo peaceful sleeping babies.  Yet 2.6 billion people  do not have access to a safe  latrine and this includes half of people in sub Saharan Africa. 

4,000 children die daily from preventable water related diseases- more than die from malaria, HIV and measles combined. Diarrhoea is the second biggest killer of children under 5.

Improved sanitation could prevent 1.5 million deaths from diarrhoeal diseases per year. The environmental rewards would also be enormous as currently 200 million tonnes of human waste go uncollected and untreated each year. It is estimated that every dollar spent on sanitation would save nine dollars in days lost from work plus the cost to the local health services. As much as  5% of African GDP is lost to illness and deaths caused by dirty water and lack of basic sanitation.

One of the Millenium development Goals is to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. Currently sub Saharan Africa will be at least fifty years late with this MDG unless the health agenda rapidly decided to focus money and effort here.

The added improvement to quality of life is probably larger than any other public health intervention. Whilst a good immunisation campaign will save millions of lives...it does nothing to improve the daily life of its recipients. Yet it doesn’t take much imagination to see that if you offer an adolescent girl an opportunity to use a safe,  private latrine  you have improved her life beyond measure. Certainly give girls access to education and books... but how many campaigns focus on giving her access to a childhood and adolescence where she can enjoy the basic human  right to personal privacy.

Of all the public health interventions we have undertaken this is the most universally popular one with the community.  Whilst it is very hard to evaluate whether families using pit latrines are accessing health care less, it is at least  easy to assess how much they are used : in every case the take up in use of the latrine amongst school age children and adults is virtually universal: if a latrine is there it is used by all but the youngest children and a few of the very old and infirm. In addition we have not yet come across a manyatta across the group ranches who have turned down the opportunity to have a latrine. 

But it is an expensive intervention. After we complete this year’s agreed building programme we will be working  with the micro finance project to see if they can help us with low interest development loans for pit latrines and looking to ways of cost sharing with families. But still it will remain expensive ..... and of course it is the poorest families who probably need the latrines most as their family numbers are generally higher and their health education is generally lowest. It is good to see some NGOs also focusing on latrines in Isiolo district- but here the problems remain the same; most NGOs will fund only basic materials, building and adding materials has to be added by families and consequently  they are out of the reach of the poorer families. In addition, not unnaturally it is the village ‘centres’ and schools which are generally targeted , where the need is highest, but again the poorest of the poor will miss out.

Hummingbirds in kenya.....?

I was sure that I had seen a hummingbird on the lavender bush outside the office.... 

Since that would not only be the wrong country, but also the wrong continent, (humming birds are only found in the Americas) .... I had to go out with the camera to look closer.

This Humming-Bird Hawk Moth (macroglossum stellatarum-  a species of Sphingidae) is an amazing insect, and I doubt I’m the only one who has mistaken it for a humming bird...

It beasts its wings so fast that they are just a blur- hard to capture on camera and it can feed while hovering,  like a hummingbird, by uncoiling its very long proboscis.  The speed of the wings even make the humming  sound .

 Unusually for a moth it flies during bright sunshine, as well as at dawn and dusk. Obviously its a fan of lavender!