Facebook society

Like almost every day, Fred­dy yes­ter­day vis­it­ed an agri­cul­tur­al entre­pre­neur for an inter­view. He was accom­pa­nied by J., his unof­fi­cial super­vi­sor who bought the motor bike togeth­er with us, the one that is now stolen. When J. got a call about the motor dur­ing the inter­view, the farmer sud­den­ly rec­og­nized the sto­ry: Hey you’re that …

Crime and Punishment

This month, the Kenyan par­lia­ment accept­ed a motion to with­draw from the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC). 15 years ago, a con­fer­ence of 160 states adopt­ed the “Rome Statute of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court”. This treaty was the basis for the ICC; a court that pros­e­cutes crimes of con­cern to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as a whole: …

The future is gray

After an ele­phan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence today, a blog with flop­py ears. Some time ago we saw Ahmed the ele­phant, who lived from 1919–1974 in the north of Kenya. Because he seemed to have enor­mous tuskers, con­ser­va­tion­ists were afraid he would be an attrac­tive tar­get for poach­ers. So he got pres­i­den­tial pro­tec­tion of Keny­at­ta (father of the …

Wild life

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 …

In the shadow of the mountain

The city where we live, Nanyu­ki, is close to Mount Kenya. This is the sec­ond tallest moun­tain of Africa. We can even see it from our house. That is to say, we can see the clouds that are always block­ing the view. Dur­ing our first few days here, it would be the first thing in …

The ninth month

As soon as the cres­cent of the new moon, announc­ing the ninth month, can be seen, the month Ramadan starts; the time of fast­ing for Mus­lims. These weeks, a small table has appeared in the news­pa­per, with sun posi­tions for the may­or cities in Kenya. Accord­ing to tra­di­tion, in this month the Quran was first …