Yes, the countdown to the big climb of Mount Kenya is almost here! David is enroute. At this moment he’s on a layover in NYC eating some salteñas with the big bro. In a few hours he continues the journey, arriving in Nairobi tomorrow night (ehem, with all his check bags, hopefully…our climbing gear!).  Then the adventure begins!

So two weekends ago, when I spent a couple days on the mountain, the weather was perfectly clear. Tonight I spent a couple of hours at the Mountain Club of Kenya (MCK…we meet every Tuesday night at the clubhouse at Wilson Airport) to glean any more information. Wellllll…some people were up on the mountain last weekend…snowed into a hut for four days! Yeah! So we will definitely be bringing our rock AND ice gear. This is gonna be great! While at the clubhouse tonight, I also got the key to one of the huts on the mountain that belongs to the MCK, in case we have to do some alternate routing.

For those familiar with the mountain, our game plan is to enter via the Sirimon route from the north. Day 3 will hopefully find us topping out on Point Lenana (the 3rd highest peak). From there, depending upon the weather, we will attempt the technical route up Nelion (2nd highest peak). Depending on the time and how we are feeling (the top of Nelion is 5,188m/17,016ft) we will spend the night directly below the summit of Nelion. Then we will traverse the icy Gate of the Mists, to summit the highest peak, Batian (5,199m/17,052ft).

If the mountain does not allow us an ascent of the twin peaks, there are a myriad of other choices for climbing and trekking, including the lakes, glaciers and other faces to climb. I’m planning to track this entire trip on my gps, which will provide a very interesting visual when we come back out.

The mountain beckons!

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I had a great weekend up on Mount Kenya. I left Nairobi before 6am and arrived at the trailhead by 9:30am. I experienced a mild setback because of a Mount Kenya park regulation that does not allow anyone to enter the park alone. It is a wise regulation based on common sense, but I came alone, so I had spent another 60-90 minutes looking for someone to accompany me on the mountain.

In a small town on the lower slopes of Mount Kenya I met a rastaman working at his bike shop. I figured he might be a good source of information. Njiru was his name, and as it turned out, he was actually a licensed porter (so at least I knew he had been on the mountain before). After explaining that I would be carrying my own pack, that I had my own food, that I would be doing my own cooking, that all I needed was for him to hike with me…and that we needed to start ASAP, he wholeheartedly joined me. However, this ordeal delayed my original plan, so I was unable to hike as far as I had wanted.

I was still able to spend two days on the mountain and gathered some good information for David’s and my upcoming expedition. I only made it to about 4,000m/13,000ft, but was still able to get a decent workout…and I realized that the pair of boots that I had planned to use for our trek gave me horrible blisters. So now I’ll be using a different pair of boots, and I’m hoping that my blisters will heal in the next eight days!

I took a few pictures, and you can see them in my fotoGallery. Unfortunately, throughout the entire weekend there was a smudge on my camera lens, and didn’t realize it until I was back in town…so nearly all of the pictures are a bit blurry in the lower center area.

In this photo: Batian and Nelion, the double-peak of Mt Kenya on the right in the clouds, just poking out above. Up there is where we’ll be next week!

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As zero headway seems to have been made with the Kenyan political situation, life in Nairobi attempts to go on. Businesses are open, traffic has once again filled the streets, but very little is necessary to trigger the tensions that still exist.

With our Kenya program office open again, I have backed away from direct involvement with our relief response, and have been trying to get back on top of the other facets of my job.

I’m looking forward to getting some rest over the weekend…or should I say change. I’m planning to leave Nairobi before dawn tomorrow morning and spend the next couple of days on Mount Kenya. David is still scheduled to arrive here in less than two weeks now, and then the real expedition will begin. But in the meantime, this weekend particularly, I want to spend time doing some high altitude training and scope out our route a little bit. I’m excited to shoulder my pack and be in cool mountain air.

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Yesterday went well. I was actually able to make two trips and ended up distributing over 9 metric tons of food to five different slum areas in Nairobi. We were able to reach 2,286 families. Thankfully WFP had their food stocks arrive in Nairobi today, and have already begun targeting the slum areas. They will be in much better position to fill this food security niche in Nairobi.

We are now re-assessing how we can best respond. The large opposition rally that was planned for tomorrow has now been canceled. That’s a very good thing. Hopefully tensions will continue to diffuse. As the political situation is sorted out, stability should continue to return. However, in terms of the humanitarian situation and how much loss has occurred, it will still take months to recover from what has happened. And of course there are even much longer-term consequences that this country will have to face in the realms of the economy, with the international community, etc.

In many ways I think the media went overboard, but regardless of the actualities here on the ground, the damage is done. I have had a few friends return to Kenya over the last few days, and each of their flights were near to empty; most passengers were not tourists (tourism is a huge source of income for this country).

Anyway, I won’t rant and rave too much. I simply wanted to let you know that yesterday went very well, and I’ll try to continue updating you as we try to get back to normal life here. Our office will remain closed tomorrow, despite the rally being called off.

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A non-stop day!

The sunrise was beautiful.

I arrived at our “surprise” distribution site on the northwest edge of Kibera by 6:15am. Because multiple agencies were involved, there was less control, and not everything happened as planned, but it still went remarkably well. I had to do a quick training for the volunteers to make sure that we had an orderly and accountable system (I forgot how nice it is to have a team that already knows what to do!). Fortunately the police arrived and were very helpful in maintaining order, too. All said and done, we were able to get food and supplies to nearly 400 vulnerable mothers; including children that came to 1,850 individuals.

I then went straight over to the UN office and was in meetings for several hours…that’s one of the frustrating necessities: meetings. I made some very important contacts, though, that will pave the way for the next 48-72hours, before WFP, et al, are able to get their pipelines up and running.

Bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be loading and taking a truck with food and supplies to reach about 5,000 individuals who are deep in some of the insecure areas of the Nairobi slums. They have been without food for days, some having lost shelter, too. I’ll only be able to take it a certain distance before having to hand it over to another group who has quite an extensive and efficient network in these areas. Then, throughout the day they will be doing a stagger distribution, to minimize visibility and any consequent repercussions. Depending upon the security on my route, I may be able to get two runs in tomorrow, but that is an unknown at this point.

I’m off to get some sleep…

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Hey all…just a quick update. As I’m sure that any of you who actually read this, also read the news, I’ll spare this entry from too many details of the current mess here in Kenya.

We have well over 100,000 people currently displaced in the country; the death toll now exceeds 300 by some reports. I (and the organization I’m working for) am targeting some of the overwhelming needs within Nairobi with a consortium of other relief agencies.
One of the main inhibitors to accessing the people without shelter, food or water is the insecurity, primarily in the huge slum areas in this city. Just in the Kibera slum alone, there may be upwards of 700,000 people. That’s the scale we’re talking about. And with such disparity, in times like these, many serious issues come to bare that may often be less apparent or are even dismissed. Violence is a very, very real issue. Mobs and riots, and all that goes with them, are widespread.

I’ll be leading a multi-agency distribution early tomorrow to about 1,800 people. This is small compared to the scale of need, however, we are using it as a test to see how it runs. We are keeping our strategy quiet, and aim to do this very quickly, to avoid any insecurity that can quickly occur when hungry, scared crowds think they might miss out on food for their children. If this goes off without a hitch, we will then begin to ramp up our operations with this distribution style to more of the vulnerable families during these hard times in Kenya.

Will keep you posted as I’m able. Paz.

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!ndia. I have just finished spending a wonderful holiday here…from motor-biking through the Western Ghat mountains of Tamil Nadu, to auto-rickshaw-ing through the bustling bazaars of Bangalore, from tasting so many fascinating flavors of South India’s menu to just hanging out with my parents and their friends, it has all been a great experience.

2007 was a year full of change. I believe 2008 will also be. A year ago, I celebrated the new year in snowy Lebanon. I never would have guessed it would come to a close while playing Rummikub with my folks in India! The twists and turns of time!

Since I left Kenya on 22 December, some major events have happened. National elections were held on the 27th, and they went awry. The country has now been caught up in chaos and violence. It seems the national media in Kenya has since been banned. Many services have been shut down and food and fuel shortages have become a reality. The death toll has topped 100 already. I have heard that my Kenya mobile phone service provider may be shutting down its service by midnight tonight. If my flights happen on schedule, I’ll be landing in Nairobi around noon tomorrow. Hopefully things will have cooled down a bit by then, but I guess, at this point, there’s no telling. Apparently, the opposition presidential candidate is planning a protest rally on Thursday and one million people are expected to come. This unstable situation could be present for awhile.

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