Stator, The GSR travelling mascot.

[tatu]

Stator Arrives In Kenya

We've been here a week and its always a bit hectic first few days. Anyway we were invited to a local restaurant for Christmas day lunch and it turned a bit boozy but its great being with old friends. This place sticks out into the water on stilts like a jetty.



Today we went to pick up some fruit from the market and I snapped these, local pics, I will get more a bit later but I always feel awkward pulling a camera out in any place even though I live here, this from the town side of the creek showing Stator on his perch on my Pikki pikki, Swahilli, translates meaning scooter but covers motorbikes as well...



Then we stopped to admire the view looking towards India albeit very far away, the mouth of the creek and some of the best snorkelling along the coast here, I know all the good spots along there from years of messing about on the reefs. I once hooked into a huge shark on the left side here as a young fella when all I had was a tiny inflatable luckily it didn't take the hook properly, It frightened me and I try not to do such foolish things like that any more




Then back on my side of the creek up our road to my place, I chose this one because there is a small Baobab tree in the background we have many in our area, they live very long, the biggest and fattest ones are said to go back to the time of Christ. The Africans believe them to be haunted and if you should ever cut one down then the spirits come and live in your house, I think they live for so long because they aren't woody but pithy trunks and of no use for anything. I will go to a place I know that has a great view and get some more later.


More to follow....

[sinkankan]

How old is Stator?

[Charlie G]

That water sure looks inviting! I know what you mean about being self conscious about pulling out a camera and taking pictures of Stator. Look forward to more pictures of Kenya.

cg

[tatu]

How old is Stator?

I think two and a half years old but in bear years more.....

[bccap]

What area of Kenya is that Tatu ? Mombasa ? { trying to follow along on Google maps }

[tatu]

The bike has been getting to be a bit of a pig to start and usually its fuel quality here so a clean of the carb and tappet reset for fun and all was ok except the PO had busted one'v the float posts but seemed to be working fine with only one proper fixing so it went back like that.

We went for a spin round to a couple'v places of interest that even many of the locals I know don't know about, I live on the edge of a fairly large Sisal plantation so access is easy, Sisal isn't the industry it used to be, it used to be a busy place here not so much now.

Stator in a Sisal plant, we used to have these planted instead of a fence round our place to keep baddies out as it can really spoil your day if you get those spikes poke you but my dad got rid of ours because the rain water sits for long in the leaf stems, mozzies and snakes like them and malaria is a right pig round here, just to say here that we now have a super strain of parasite that is pretty immune to known treatments of the disease because of bad half treatment in the past, same story as over used antibiotics, anyway on...



They harvest the lower leaves and the plant keeps growing up and shooting new leaves for the next harvest, I have no idea how long it is though..



There are thousands of acres of the stuff for miles and miles.....
Some harvested leaves, I can remember during harvest time they used to throw down narrow gauge railway tracks to transport the harvest out but I haven't seen that in years, as an aside, a friend of mine in Tanzania was telling me he was approached by some Americans trying to buy his track stock as it was made of old undiluted, unrecycled, uncontaminated, unradioactive steel that they used in special builds for engine blocks and some such, I know it must be true because whenever they need quality steel uncontaminated stuff for surgical instruments and Geiger counters they cut lumps off the German battle ships scuttled at Scappa during the first world war. Anyway on...


All the sharp pointy pits cut off.



It doesn't look much but that is some hill all soft sand and my bike struggled to get up that lot.



And down the other side towards the sea.... Those rocks there are fossilized coral and must be a hundred feet higher than the present sea level and the heat is something else on this track.



On the way we passed by a coral block cutting operation that wasn't there the last time I came this way, they use circular saws to cut building blocks out of the ground, ruins the ground for years but there are projects that get earth made and planting trees, in our garden we have about two feet of earth then its all coral, I don't know how far but when they dug the well there was forty five meters of the stuff before they got to sand, the deeper it is the more dense the coral, the harder it is to cut till it gets like granite and those blocks are really heavy, there are odd holes in the ground round here going back hundreds of years where they used to hew them out by hand, back breaking work and I once asked the guys how many they could do in a day and the answer was around twenty five. Life is tough, they couldn't cut more than they could sell in the day because the unsold cut blocks would be stolen in the night. Its different now.

So we get to place I was aiming at and we're right next to the sea... This coral is still razor sharp, must be millions of years old Stator could hardly bear it.

[tatu]

Actually over the sea on an outcrop of coral and looking North, beyond that headland is a place where the Arab slaver Dhows used to run in pick up the slaves and hide from the Royal Navy, there is still a story told today that the RN was patrolling outside this place and the tide came in and drowned all the slaves that were being hidden under the overhang of rock, down South in Shimoni there are bell shaped holes that they used to drop the captives into to await pick up to smuggle off to the middle East. Back in the sixties an old African came to our house in Mombasa (which was built as a mission hospital a hundred years before) he had been there as a young boy and he showed my brother and I his scars from the manacles on his ankles. Anyway.....



Then on the way home along a goat track short cut...



The tree in front is a Kapok and the white seeds are on the ground in front, the stuff they used to make life jackets from.



Behind this new wall is the house that was built and lived in by Denys Finch-Hatton a famous hunter and partner of Karen Blixen of Out Of Africa fame.



Stator never said what he saw.. I have seen the house from the sea side and it is built right in the very edge of the rock channel of the inlet, if you jumped out of the window you would drop to the water below, it is very spectacular. It belongs to a lawyer from Mombasa now.



On the way we passed an old ruined house that I haven't seen before and rode right to the edge and enjoyed the view, it is very peaceful here...



We stopped at the Plantation and was looking at the factory, here are the drying racks where the Sisal is hung out after being through the decorticator



Stator relaxing on the soft finished product ready for market, the decorticator is in the background...

More to follow........

[Flyboy]

Hey, that is awesome Tatu, pretty part of the world you have a piece of there.
I have a feeling that Africa has stolen his heart, as it does everyone's who has set foot on her soil, he surely needs to make it down to Cape Town, I have a spare room and lots of beer for him, dead sure Andre would love to have him for a while too. A return trip would be on the cards methinks
, will arrange with Dale to organise him passage next year.... eh Doc?

[tatu]

What area of Kenya is that Tatu ? Mombasa ? { trying to follow along on Google maps }

Sorry Garth I only just saw this now very bad internet hereabouts.
Mombasa? Too hot, too many people, nobody goes there any more.
We are just South of Kilifi town halfway between Mombasa and Malindi. There was a map going but it seems to'v petered out, it would be great t have that running as it only really tells a part of the story without map logging but it needs everybody to impart information and keep it current.

[tomo]

Thanks for posting those pics Tatu and for all the information too, very interesting. Like Flyboy said, looks like a lovely part of the world, especially like that photo of the headland and the wild sea. Stator is one lucky bear, seeing so much of the world and so many different places. But great for the rest of us that don`t get to travel much seeing the photos of his travels !.

[Redman]

tatu,

Thanks for showing us these places and things.

You sure got right up and close to a ... ah.... ah.... a decorticator.
Ah, so those plants are grown for the fibers. I was thinking maybe for the oils in them.

Do show us more about and around there.

.

[sinkankan]

I can verify the malaria statement, got it in Ghana and ended up in hospital in Perth with it. Total body shutdown, sweats and shakes, sheets were soaking wet. So sensitive to light, touch and even the smells were making me sick again. I had a tropical diseases doctor visiting from Sydney taking blood every six hours for samples, and felt like a guniea pig.
apparently they sent us over with the wrong pills, and now they use a deriative of quinine again.

[tatu]

tatu,

Thanks for showing us these places and things.

You sure got right up and close to a ... ah.... ah.... a decorticator.
Ah, so those plants are grown for the fibers. I was thinking maybe for the oils in them.

Do show us more about and around there.

.

Interesting you should say that, when the industry was in full swing and was a major source of export there was a waste by product that used to be pumped directly into the sea which made it foam, it turned out that this contained something that was necessary for the then pharmaceutical industry, and was worth more than the fibres but all that was long ago....
Back in the sixties, as small kids I had some friends and we used to mess about in the old town port of Mombasa and used to play in the bales of Sisal waiting to be loaded onto the freighter Dhows going back North waiting the Kusi monsoon, because of their Lateen type rig they are very difficult to tack, so coming South they used to carry cargo from the Persian Gulf Southwards including fabrics and the most beautiful Persian carpets, and Sisal, Ivory and Spices Northwards on the Kaskazi, so these big ocean going vessels were simply blown along. I still have in my loft a couple of Persian rugs that my Mum bought on 'tick' that must be fifty years or more old from those traders. My wife is currently undergoing some re education about these rugs as I want them in use, she doesn't, "Oh they make the room look dark" I'm losing.

[tatu]

I can verify the malaria statement, got it in Ghana and ended up in hospital in Perth with it. Total body shutdown, sweats and shakes, sheets were soaking wet. So sensitive to light, touch and even the smells were making me sick again. I had a tropical diseases doctor visiting from Sydney taking blood every six hours for samples, and felt like a guniea pig.
apparently they sent us over with the wrong pills, and now they use a deriative of quinine again.

Yes Malaria is really bad, but medicine had moved on, the Chinese have a drug called 'Cotexin' it is powerful stuff but you must take the whole course if not, and this is now the case the parasite has become resilient to known antidotes, this is now the super malaria that is killing so many. I've had Malaria three times now and it can work really fast, one time after a hangover type head ache and being tested to driving back to my place thirty miles, making it back into the then apartment my then girlfriend came home for lunch found my pick up still running door open, front door open and me collapsed unconscious on the bed all in a couple'v hours, she got the medicine in me and twenty four hours was back to work. Now all that is changing with the new super strain parasite.

[azr]

Really appreciate the tour guide with all the pictures 'tatu' , really adds to the whole Stator adventure. You know, it's really amazing where this little bear has been......