ASSETS

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 26 2009 | By: assets

It is Thursday morning and every one is up and ready to join hands together in building our nation. At A Rocha Kenya where I am on attachment we up for another day of conservation; particularly creating a better environment. Being a student of Tourism Management, my duty is mostly helping issue tickets at one of the ASSETS Eco-Tourism facilities; the tree platform at Gede Ruins. Thus I commence my day as usual and head to my place of work.

A phone call from the ASSETS Co-ordinator informs me that today I am supposed to join a group of community members planting mangroves at Sita, a village along the Mida creek; an activity that turns out to be the climax of my three weeks stay at A Rocha. It was fun!

It was here that I was to learn that mangroves are actually trees belonging to totally different families of plants and that traditionally they have medicinal value. The mangrove forest also creates a healthy fish and crustacean habitat. We planted approximately one thousand seedlings which took us less than one hour since we had a group of 15 people. The team effort exercised was fun! I however had quite some scary experiences; 1st walking on the soft, muddy ground with millions of tickling miniature shells. Some huge hermit crabs carrying shells twice their size was also quite breath-taking.

After the mangrove planting we visited a snake project which has been put up by the Sita community. Here we saw a number of different kinds of snakes including the African rock python, Puff adders, a spitting cobra and green mamba among others. The objective of this initiative is create awareness to the communities about the poisonous snakes and the harmless ones. It was indeed a fascinating, scary, fun and a very useful experience!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 11 2009 | By: assets

“therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” Goodness! this may sound really foolish to most of you, but what do you do if you cannot even find fair solutions for today? This is one of the most quoted verses by christian religious counsellors that I am not sure whether they really mean it or they are using it as a booksellig metaphor.

Today I found myself murmuring these words to myself even though I am not a counsellor. We went to Bogamachuko,one of the communities to the west of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest that benefits from the ASSETS programme. Accompanied by Frossy Nelly a student on attachment from Coast Institude of Technology, we had gone to assess potential beneficiaries to receive bursaries from ASSETS this year. At the home of Patience Ngole, one of the applicants, we found three old ladies, one of whom was Patience’s mother and two young girls. All the five were gathered together preparing mchunga (a wild vegetable) that hadly had any leaves due to the very dry conditions of the place. This was meant to be the lunch for the ladies who explained that all the men had gone to towns looking for employment. We stared our interview and established that Patience’s dad who lives and works in Kilifi has not been supporting the family at all and the mother had to do it all by herself. As the interview goes on, Kanze, Patience’s sister who is deaf and dumb appears. At 15 years of age Kanze has not been taken to school yet. Sitting next to her mother she keeps on smiling as she follows on our conversation by lip reading. “I wish I went to school,” Patience mother says. “Then I would have known that there are schools for deaf and dumb as well” Thanks to the area civic leader who has secured a sponsor and a place for her at Kibarani school for the deaf.

It’s 2.15 p.m. and we have to move to the other applicants. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” I murmer as we head back to the car.

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