After 10 full days in The Nether­lands, I am back in Nanyu­ki. I came with a lot of greet­ings, meet­ings, hugs from Ivan and liquorice sup­plies. In the mean­time, Fred­dy has car­ried out sev­er­al field trips so he has been every­thing but bored. 

Some­one else who is going to vis­it The Nether­lands is the pres­i­dent of Kenya, Keny­at­ta. Not for a nice rea­son like a wed­ding, but because he is pros­e­cut­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court in The Hague. He is charged for respon­si­bil­i­ty for crimes against human­i­ty dur­ing the vio­lence after the 2007 elec­tions. The deputy pres­i­dent, Ruto, is also charged with this. “Geen chef die echt de baas is” in the song above, means “There is no chef who is real­ly the boss” (It is a song from 1996 that describes Hol­land). It seems like this is not only true for Holland.

By now we have seen Moun­ty Kenya a few times, still misty, but still. Our house is at an alti­tude of about 2000 meter and the moun­tain reach­es 5000 meter. Yes­ter­day we went with the motor up the moun­tain, into the for­est. We were in the part that is not in the Nation­al Park, so you can just enter. Still there are a lot of ani­mals. At the riv­er we saw tracks of ele­phants: paw prints and huge heaps of manure. We also met with a fam­i­ly of baboons. Talk­ing about chefs — we did keep a respect­ful dis­tance when this Alpha male (in the pic­ture at the cen­ter) jumped on the road. And then we returned home, to our lunch and Bones dvd-box, anoth­er nice sou­venir from The Netherlands.

P.S: The turn­ing water at the equa­tor is relat­ed to the Cori­o­lis effect: When an object moves in a straight line, but is observed from a rotat­ing frame of ref­er­ence, it is seen as fol­low­ing a curved path. This effect is the rea­son why winds and ocean cur­rents are deflect­ed, clock­wise in the north­ern hemi­sphere and counter-clock­wise in the south­ern hemi­sphere. But on the much small­er scale of cups of water, the Cori­o­lis effect is nul­li­fied by oth­er influ­ences, like the rota­tion of the water when it hits the cup, and the shape of the cup. Dis­claimer: This wis­dom comes straight from Wikipedia.