• How many hours have we been awake?: The flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg South Africa alone took somewhere around 15 hours. That's an incredibly long time. In this picture we have: First row: Dave Bosscher (standing), Jason Bordewyk, Chrissy Pomroy, Sarah Bonsall. Second row: A couple of people not in our group, Bianti Curry, Summer Conklin, Lindsay Bussell. Third Row: Dan Panik, Jon Doane, Mike Kolassa, Jon Stone, Timothy Stone. Fourth Row: Andy Kress, Serenity Schoonover, Bill Schoonover. Fifth Row: Hillary Webster and Tim Webster. (Funny anecdote: On the way there, several people's tickets got screwed up, mine included. So I got relocated to the top floor of the 747 (which is still economy class in a South African Airways flight). I got a window seat, with this little shelf to put all my crap, and an extra seat next to me, and everything. And so of course, I would go down and tease everyone else for sitting in the "steerage" class. Heh. I don't know, they may have had more fun in the sense that they could all play card games and talk and all that. But at the time I *really* needed all that extra space because I was feeling so introverted. I just curled up with my stuffed animal and read Richard Feynman's Biography and tried to sleep but couldn't.)
• Africa at last!: After such a long trip, we got a chance to stretch our legs (mainly because we didn't exit right to a terminal in South Africa -- we had to walk to the terminal building. Or ride a buss or something like that.) Jon Doane admires the plane, while Sarah Bonsall takes pictures and Serenity Schoonover stands around amazed that we're all finally here.
• The most illegal picture of Jon Doane ever: Some background information: In Kenya, it's against the law to take pictures of any government installation. This includes the government owned airport. They'll confiscate your film, and, if you take pictures of a military installation, they'll confiscate your camera. I was talking to Jon Doane about the idea of Ninja Photography, that is, of taking pictures of people and things when they aren't expecting it. I said something like, "For example, I could just be waving my camera around and then press the button, and as long as it's not up against my face, take a picture and no one would know that I took one." Of course, I pressed the button on the camera at some point while I was saying that; hence the amused look on his face. But anyway, here we are, at the airport, with the following people in the picture: In the far background are two taxi drivers, then there's Erin Karner (back to the camera), a couple of unidetifyable people, next to Erin is Jane (a lady who works for FHI who was helping us get to the Methodist Guest House), right behind Jane is Bianti Curry, and Dave Bosscher (with the cowboy hat), Sarah Bonsall (visor), Lee Paulsen, Dan Panik, Chrissy Pomroy, Brian Tracy (who is wondering "How the heck are they going to fit all of us *and* all our luggage on that tiny bus?" (we wound up taking two busses), Jill Hare, Jon Doane, and then Karissa Bultman talking to someone standing behind Jon Doane.
• On the Bus: Jon Doane, Lee Paulsen, probably Dave Bosscher (although it could be Dan Panik wearing Dave's hat), Jenny Pintsch (background), and Bianti Curry and Mike Kolasa (foreground) ride the bus to the Methodist Guest House.
• First International Bank of Stone: We had (comparatively) a lot of money to convert into shillings. And when converting dollars to shillings, you get a much better exchange rate when you exchange a lot. So Jon took all of our money and took it down to the bank and got it all changed over at once. Jon Stone is behind the table, Tim Webster is in the background picking up a camera, Chrissy Pomroy is double counting her money, and someone has a palm pilot and is calculating something or other. That's probably Andy Kress in the extreme foreground.
• How many shillings am I holding up?: We all felt obscenely rich after exchanging our dollars into shillings. (And once we got to Marsabit, comparatively, we were rich, although not *obscenely* so.) It was hard to do the conversions at first and not feel like we were playing with Monopoly money (I never quite got over that feeling, but then, I'm so notoriously bad with money I feel like I'm playing with Monopoly money here in the US half the time.) This is Brian Tracy holding up 100 USD worth of Kenyan shillings (I think that worked out to 8000 shillings. 5 shillings will buy you a bulb of garlic, and 60 shillings a bottle of water.)
• Is it poisonous?: This is some sort of lizard which was on a tree at the Methodist Guest House (where we stayed in Nairobi before we went to Marsabit).
• At the Bomas: The Kenyan Government has created a place to preserve some of their tribal and cultural heritage, called The Bomas of Kenya. There are over 40 tribes in Kenya, all with their own tribal dances, customs, and traditions. At the Bomas they have several different examples of tribal architecture on the grounds. They also hire professional dancers and musicians to learn the various tribal dances (the original plan was to have a team of dancers from every tribe; this wound up costing too much) and perform them for tourists (like us) and school children (there were an amazing number of schoolkids there when we went.) So, one afternoon, we went. The picture linked above is an example of a tribal dance (I don't remember which -- the guidebook was a few years old and so the order of the dances they did didn't match up with the order they were printed in the guide book). Fred Everson explains something to Lee while Joel Mekkes looks on, Bianti Curry smiles for the camera (Jenny Pintsch and Cliff Burch (far background, with the hat) are also in this picture), and Jarret Gill also smiles for the camera.
• I thought these were extinct!: Eric Therkildsen does his infamous raptor impression. Looking on are Lee Paulsen, Mike Kolasa, Andy Kress, and Jon Doane. Here's a closeup of Eric.
• Awww, aren't they cute?: I don't remember the joke now, but someone cracked some joke about Summer Conklin and Jon Doane getting married. I think Summer went into a state of shock for about 2 or three minutes, because she let me take this picture of her, instead of shoving the camera in my face like she normally does. (Okay, so she doesn't *literally* shove the camera in my face.)
• The Lorry . . . OF DEATH!: It took four plane trips from Nairobi to Marsabit to get all of us up there, but even so we didn't have enough room for all of the stuff we brought (everyone packed one bag of luggage, but all of the tools, supplies, computer parts, mosquito nets, etc, had to go too (each of us had a "second bag" which had some of those things in it.) So, we had to only take what was absolutely necessary on the planes and we put the rest on the lorry. Everything was covered in dust when we got it because of that. Kim Schouten inspects a duct tape on the zipper job (to keep the dust out), as Joel Mekkes (yellow shirt) prepares to heave a bag up on the lorry. Bill Schoonover (Michigan Football sweatshirt) supervises Tim Webster and (I think) Cori White who are double checking the bags. Brian Tracy (blue shirt, foreground) is having *way* too much fun and Karissa Bultman looks on with amusement. (Some of the people who went up on the first plane ride didn't understand how in the world everything got so dusty. Well, now you know -- it was an open air truck, and bouncing around for several days in the desert (about 300 miles -- the road is really bad) will cover everything you have in dust.
• How not to be seen: Corwin Webster tries very hard not to be seen as he sleeps on the MAF plane on the way to Marsabit.
• Me and the MAF plane: This is one of the planes we rode up on to Marsabit. MAF is Mission Aviation Fellowship -- they have a bunch of planes and volunteer pilots who take missionaries and supplies to and from where they have to go. I never noticed it before, but that's Tim Webster getting into the plane in the back.
• The Butterfly Tree: In the parts of Kenya that aren't desert, there are these little white butterflies everywhere, alighting on plants and taking off again, almost as if the plants were continually spraying up confetti. This is my attempt at taking a picture of that, which failed horribly because of my 14 dollar Wal-mart camera. You can see a couple white spots but that's it. This is the tree which was in the center of the courtyard at the St. Stephen's Training Center (where we stayed while we were in Marsabit.) I think that's Josh Bilhorn and Bill Schoonover in the background.
• Fixing the Pump, part I: Josh Bilhorn, Jon Stone, and Jason "Borde" Bordewyk try to get the water pump fixed. The way this works is, there are large water tanks on the roof, one above where the girls were staying, and one above where the guys were staying. The water tanks are for the showers and toilets -- the guys' tank also supplies water for the kitchen. (There is no "hot" water -- the water that comes out of the tap is at whatever temperature it is in the roof tank.) Now, this little pump is important, because it pumps water from the much larger storage tank in the ground up into the roof storage tanks. Let's see if we can find out how many Engineers it takes to fix this thing.
• Fixing the Pump, part II: Here we have Dave Bosscher (Mechanical Engineering), Eric Therkildsen (Electrical Engineering), Dan Panik (Mechanical Engineering), Mike Kolasa (holding the red bucket -- he now goes to Wheaton and I don't know what his major is), Joel Mekkes (Mechanical Engineer), Jason Bordewyk (Mechanical Engineer), Jarret Gill (Computer Science), Jon Stone (don't know), Josh Bilhorn (don't know) and finally, Stephen who is one of the water project engineers for FHI, discussing possibilities for how we can get the pump to start pumping.
• Fred is amused: Fred Everson is amused at how many engineers it takes to fix a water pump.
• Fixing the Pump, part III: Dave Bosscher, Dan Panik and Jarett Gill supervise Borde and Jon Stone as they fix the pump while Mike Kolasa takes time to think about the problem. Joel Mekkes and Josh Bilhorn discuss the problem, while Stephen watches from a short distance.
• Fixing the pump, part IV: Dave Bosscher, Jarret Gill, Dan Panik, Joel Mekkes, Mike Kolasa, Josh Bilhorn, Jason Bordewyk and Jon Stone stop fixing the pump for a bit and listen to Stephen and Paul. Paul was another FHI water engineer.

So, how many engineers does it take to fix a pump? One sufficently clever one. Dan Panik came up with the idea on how to get it working (it involved a clever way of getting the pipe which led to the pump filled with water, so it didn't have to do so much lifing of the water.) Although, to be fair to everyone else, they all had ideas which were pretty good too (and which probably would have worked with other, differently broken water pumps.) I hope it's clear from the pictures as to how much fun we had with this. :)

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