Day 24: Nothing much to report today we spent the morning in the office checking emails and doing a little bit of work. We had to go to the office because the people we were “stealing” the internet from got smart and put a password to log in. In the afternoon the others went to the mall while I stayed in catching up with things! In the vening we went to a club in the Westland one of the better areas of Nairobi. Naomi, one of the Kenyan students, drove use there. I was not much fun because I think I was starting to develop a cold and I felt very sleepy!

Day 23: Today we visited a proper ranch called Lloldiga. The ranch in 40000 acres and has approximately 5000 cattle as well as camels and other wild life such as elephant, giraffe, rhino, lions, zebras, cheetahs and gazelles. Lance, the manager of the ranch, was a perfect host he showed us around and shared with us all the tricks of the trade or at least the most basic ones. He showed us the ranch dairy operation as well as some specimen of the cows that the ranch hosts. He also showed us his camel dairy operations. While visiting the camel milking process we were lucky enough to meet a German guy who has start a camel dairy business, apparently camel milk is much better the than cow milk and there is high demand in Kenya.
After touring the ranch all morning we were invited for lunch at the ranch guest house, which used to be the residence of the manager. The lodge is rented out to friends of the owners, the view from the ranch is magnificent and the lodge has a very colonial style. Apparently the Canadian high commissioner goes there for holiday. The place is perfect and it only costs 10000 Ksh per (150 $US) for 7 people sharing! While at the ranch, one can enjoying mountain biking, hiking and safaris with the added bonus of total solitude since there no tourists allowed at the ranch.Lance also gave us a brief history of land ownership in the region. Most of the land was giving as payment to British soldier during the Victorian time; subsequently this land was sold to local Kenyan who then sold it to international wealthy people. Therefore the common belief that the land is owned by colonialist is just a legend, but I guess there is so much hatreds towards white people that is very easy to blame current land owners for Kenya misfortune even though the current land owners have no fault.

Day 22: Today we went to the Laikipia district, north of Nairobi near Mount Kenya. We visited the ranch that LIME has partnered with in order provide a better value added product to the market. The ranch is situated near Nyeri, and we stay at the Sportsman’s Harm in Nanyuki town. The hotel was very nice and we had a beautiful view of Mount Kenya (see picture).
The ranch was also situated in beautiful spot. The landscape looks slightly greener than in Garissa, this part of the region is high up on the mountains and even though it does not rain a lot it certainly does not look as arid as the North Eastern Province. CARE partnered with this farm, CARE provided the capital on a loan basis for this farm to develop the facilities to host 600 cattle and to grow enough forage to feed the animals. Having a ranch or leasing the facility it is the only way for a cattle trader such as LIME to add value to the cattle. These animals sell very cheap at Garissa because as they are have very little market value especially cattle blow 250 kg. So it is essential for LIME to have a finishing facility. Unfortunately the Boran cow fattens better if left to graze on green pastures. LIME will use feed lot which will only provide less than half of the output that grazing would provide 0.8 kg/day instead of 1.8. LIME will have a difficult job trying to compete with ranches that provide 100% grazing. LIME is already playing in a niche market by buying cattle on a “forward contract” basis, by using feed lot instead of grazing LIME is definitely challenging the way the livestock industry has been operating in Kenya for the last 20 years. The good news is that the view from the ranch that LIME is leasing is beautiful! Mere consolation I guess! While visiting the ranch we were taken to see the fields were the owner was plating maze, bally and grass to be used as forage. We arrived exactly when the worker were finishing for the day so we stopped at the village and had chat with them. While at the village we decided to have our packed lunch, but I could not bring myself to eat my lunch because there were kids looking at us and I felt really bad since I was having a lavish sandwich prepared by one of the best hotels in Nairobi. So I ended up giving my lunch to the kids. I am not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing but seeing the kids smiling certainly gave me more pleasure than the sandwich. Thinking about it was probably a selfish thing to do on my part but at the end of the day it was a “win win” situation since both me and the kids got some pleasure out of it!

Day 21: Today was a pretty eventful day and for the first time we felt the difference between Canada and Kenya. The day started pretty badly with me and Neal going to the golf course to tee off for 8 o’clock only to find out that the owner of the pro shop did not turn up for work that morning even though we had rang the day before to let him know that we would have been at the club for 8. We waited around for 45 minutes and then we decided to post pone our game till next week we were pretty disappointed because we can only play midweek in the morning since we don’t have an handicap and we had to re arrange work schedules in order to accommodate the game in the morning only to find out that the pro shop was closed!
In the evening we went shopping for groceries and on the way back while in the taxi we were stopped by a police road block. The “kind” policeman asked for our ID and we supply him with the CARE IDs that the office had given us. Apparently the policeman was not happy because they were not official IDs TY bravely tried to tell him that we were assured by the office that those IDs were more than enough because they had our passport number, but the policemen pointed out that unfortunately they do not carry any immigration information. We were 2oo meters form our apartment we told the policeman if one of us could zip home to get the passports and obviously he refused. Then he instructed the taxi driver to “talk to us”. The driver said that we needed to bribe the guy and he suggested we gave him 500 bob. We agreed but we told the guy to carry out all the negotiations and to pay out of his own pocket so there would be no link to us … probably a very naïve approach! So the driver got out the car and gave the policeman the money. Next thing we know the policemen is asking us “…What are trying to say”, then the driver had another little chat with the guy and he drove off. We couldn’t make out what it was going on but after wards we realised that the silly driver didn’t give enough money to the policemen… like we would have mind paying 50 bucks to get out of that sticky situation because after all we were breaking the law by not carrying our passports. The driver did well to come out of that situation I think he told the policemen we had just been shopping and we had spent all our cash! This was the first “incident” we had with the Kenyan police but I guess it will not be the last. Karibu! We were a little worried for our action but talking to people we just followed the standard procedure … we dealt with issue the Kenyan way. By the way we now carry an authenticated copy of our passports with us but I am sure that the police will find a problem with that too.

Day 20: Today we met with Don Simpson at the International Livestock Research Institute where Don is carrying out a workshop. It was very fortunate because we needed some contacts at that institute for the LIME project and having Don introducing us made things very easy. In the Evening we met again with Don, Trevor Biju and the rest of the CARE team at the Fairview hotel were we discussed the two CARE projects we are curently working on. Towards the end of the Biju, Trevor’s wife (Who incidentally is related to Mo Kenyatta daughter of Jomo Kenyatta) explained the project that she is trying to launch in the slum of Nairobi. A friend of her has developed this very simple machine that makes briquettes out of dry leaves for burning in the stove used by the people of Kibera, the biggest slum of Africa. The problem is that they lack the business experience and venture capital to launch this project that might benefit women at the bottom the pyramid. She was basically testing the possibility of having CARE involved in this. I personally am very interested in this and would like to find out more because it could even be that we work on this feasibility study during our last month in Nairobi, that way we could even achieve our NVP since at the moment we are just working as “consultants”. I told Biju to drop me an email so we can meet properly and discuss the way forward. By the sound of it could be a very interesting project where the women make and sell this cheap source of fuel as an alternative to more expensive charcoal. This business would generate income to women who earn less that 2$ a day and would help the poor who generally pay high price for very inefficient source of energies.

Day 19: I do not have much to report today. The team and I stayed in the office surfing the net in order to collect more accurate data about Livestock trading in Kenya; we had few brainstorming sessions here and there. The main objective is to collect as much data as possible in order to form an idea on how the Livestock industry works and who are the players. We are also seeking technical information because none of us know a thing about cows and even more critical nobody knows how to price cattle. So the next couple of days will be spent researching and trying to firm up meetings with industry experts and other cattle traders. We are planning to visit one of the biggest ranches in Kenya to observe best practices, so we should be away from Nairobi Thursday and Friday.
I don’t have much else to add so I shall just point the reader to the picture posted today; it was taken while we were visiting the communities out in the field.

Day 18: Very uneventful day, TY and Neil went to the airport to pick up Rafal, the missing member of the team, who is travelling from Russia. Rafal got in around 1500 and we basically spent the whole afternoon exchanging stories about Kenya and Russia. We listened to all the crazy things that the LEADER people got up to in Russia; apparently the consumption of vodka in Russia went up 10% thanks to the Ivey students!In the evening we went to an Italian restaurant downtown called “Trattoria” the food was really good, and I have to say, that for the first time in a long time I found a restaurant that cooks decent real Italian food instead of Americanised Italian food. Unfortunately the bill was proportionate to the quality of the food. For comparison at the Ethiopian restaurant we spent 1500 Kshs for three people and ate exorbitant amount of food while at Trattoria we spent 6000 shilling for 4 people and ate half the amount eaten at Abesha!