Malewa River and Lake Nakuru

On Friday Mr. Arensen took me to see some property he has just bought. He and a few other missionaries went in together to buy 56 acres of beautifully untouched real estate along the Malewa River. It'll be perfect for the Arensens because once they build a house they'll be within a three hour drive of every single church they are ministering to, instead of several hours longer like they are now by living in Kijabe. He also hopes to develop a retreat centre on the land so that pastors can have a place to come and fellowship together.
The one drawback of land being beautifully undeveloped is that, well, it is undeveloped. No electricity, no water, nothing but a dirt two-track leading down to the river. Oh, and there is a half dug well, done by an expatriate who was going to buy they land then backed out.
So Mr. Arensen and I spent a few hours talking about his hopes and dreams for the property, checking the fence (only to find that sections as long as 50m had been stolen), but mostly walking the lay of the land to begin thinking of what would be required to pump water from the bore hole to the top of the property to provide clean water for the houses soon to be built.
I have no idea when it comes to water systems, and since it was quite literally just a walk around, all the numbers I am working with are sheer estimates. But it has been fun trying to teach myself a little about water as I mull over questions like, "How much horsepower will they need to pump water 120 vertically and 700 horizontally in a 3 inch pipe at a rate of 90 gallons per minute?" {ROB, JANINE: If you read this and also want to think about it, I can give you more "accurate" estimates --like the slope of the hillside, etc.}
I discovered a gem of a website called engineeringtoolbox.com which has been a wonderous help as I go through this. I just love learning! Especially when it has real-life application. I hate the textbook examples and hypothetical situations, but I absolutely love walking around under the African sun, wrestling over engineering problems, coming back to a computer and spending a few hours gathering information, then setting up the next problem to tackle!
Okay, I can tell you are bored. Moving on!
After spending time at the Malewa property, we went in to the Naivasha Sports Club and played a short nine-hole golf course. Then again, if "golf course" means beautiful green fairways, putting greens, water traps, etc. then this definitely wasn't a "golf course". There was no fairway. There was no green. And when they say "the rough" they mean, "get out your machete and spend a few hours making a trail!" Oh, and about there being no greens? They call them "browns". No joke. They are quite literally nothing more than packed dirt that is swept daily. But we had fun; its not like either one of us is any good at golf! I loved the two days I got to bum around with him, even if they didn't include drinking goat's blood.

On Saturday, after writing my extremely long post about Eburru and thinking over the water system some, I decided to hunt down a movie to watch to help kill the time. On the way up to one of the staff member's houses, I was stopped by Steve Taylor, the band teacher. After a few minutes of small talk he invited me to go with him and a few other staffies to Lake Nakuru Game Park for Sunday and Monday. Unfortunately, game parks in Kenya have gotten extremely expensive (Yes, Erin, even compared to Yosemite!), but it was a great escape from what I thought would be an excruciatingly boring two days. I just downloaded 225 pictures I took of animals on our three game drives, and we saw pretty much everything but cat. Which, ironically, was the whole reason the guys organized this trip: to get some good pictures of leopard. See, once you've lived here more than a year you've seen so many of the "lesser" animals that the only thing you really want more pictures of is rhino, lion, leopard, or cheetah. Well, we took lots of pictures anyways and even some of rhino, but still no cat.
We did see some cool things though: like a hippo chasing a flock of pelicans, or a hyena eating a flamingo. That was cool. Once I get back to the states and pare down the pictures to a manageable amount, I'll load them on Facebook so everyone can see!
Nothing too exciting happened on the trip though. There was a minor lorrey collision which backed up traffic a ways on the way in; a cape buffalo (Africa's most unpredictable animal, and one of the most feared) almost decided to charge our car to the point where it lowered its horns and took a few steps towards the car, it rained really heavily on Sunday, making all the roads into rivers which made for a good amount of four-wheel-driving-fun!
But, thank God, we were all safe and well rested after a great two days in the thick of God's beautiful creation!