• The Guys Room, shortly after moving in (68k): This is what the guys room looked like early on. (Of course, you don't see the mess, because all of *my* stuff was immediately behind me when I took this picture. :) You can see one of the squatty potties off in the back. . .
• Sit-down toilet, take one (35k): Eric Therkildsen's attempt at making a sit down toilet. First off, that's a lot sturdier than it looks. It probably wouldn't withstand too much *impact* force, but if one were to ease down on it, it'd hold. Jarret Gill actually field tested this design; I later asked him what he thought of it, and he said: "Well, it worked for me. I thought it was comfortable." *pause* "Is this for your web page?" "Yes," I replied. "You have a picture of it?" he asked. "Yes," I replied. He saw the picture, started laughing, and said in a disbelieving tone of voice, "I actually sat on that thing," and walked away shaking his head laughing. One other thing which is vitally important for you all to understand: the floor underneath the toilet did not look that bad when we were actually in Africa. "Oh, whatever, you're boys, you would think that." I hear you say, but no no no you're wrong. Almost first thing I did when I got back is I got these Africa pictures developed, and I took one look at that floor and was speechless for a full five minutes. I think the flash put way way more light than we ever normally got in there, and that's reflected in the picture. And. . . this was like, what it looked like in the first week. I cannot believe . . . oh man. Next picture!
• Is "Galoro" Swahili for Shaft? (34k): That's the question we were all asking ourselves whenever we rode in the blue Land Rover with Gregory Galoro driving. I think he kinda looks like Samuel L. Jackson, anyway (and the red velvet interior, well. . . that just adds to the effect.) (Here's another edit of the same picture, with more of the land rover in view. (50k))
• Checking out the second tank site (41k): Jon Doane, Cliff Burch, Dan VandenBerge and Carolyn Larson talk amongst themselves. (Although, Carolyn may be morphing into some sort of bird again (11k). We think that everyone who is from Delaware has super secret animal morphing powers which they just don't tell us about. (Second picture is from Chapter Camp from, like, 2 or 3 years ago. Poor Carolyn. I think she was mighty sick of the Delaware jokes, like, 2 years ago.))
• Fred asks about the work to be done (42k): Fred Everson talking with Nyamu (left) and 3 other guys whose names I don't remember (or possibly never knew -- help me out here guys -- I'm open to any suggestions.)
• Does this wrap match my shirt? (46k): You know that's what's going through Josh's mind right now. Heh. Anyway, this is Lindsay Bussell, Josh Bilhorn, Jill Kare, Cori White, Carolyn Larson, and Sarah Bonsall showing off their new wraps they got at the market. (No, I don't understand why Carolyn and Lindsay get mistaken for sisters all the time either.)
• Oooohhh, very nice! (33k): Dave Bosscher sashays around with Carolyn Larson's wrap, while Dan VandenBerge and Cori White critically assess whether or not it does, in fact, match the rest of his outfit. (sashay: v. To strut or move about in an ostentatious or conspicuous manner, which pretty much sums it up, I think.)
• No, don't take a picture of me! (20k): Either Tim or Isaac Stone is sitting on Jon Stone's shoulders, hiding behind his hat, while Sarah Bonsall laughs at Tim (or Isaac's) antics. Jenny and Becca look really cute, so here is a close up of the two of them, Jon Doane sheepishly holds his hat while Summer Conklin and Jill Kare look on. Dan Panik is sitting in the background, while Corwin Webster is off to the far right in the white shirt.
• We'll take care of this, you guys dig the hole (38k): (Me and Bill Schoonover chop down the eucalyptus tree with our Leatherman thingies, while Nyamu laughs at us and Brian Tracy laughs at who knows what.) On the first day, when we got to the worksite, we had to chop down this tree because it was in the way a bit, and we had to dig a shallow foundation for the water tank. Bill and I decided we'd have fun and start chopping down the tree with our Leatherman / multi-tool things. So we took this picture, and everyone was laughing at us. We asked Nyamu what they were saying and they said "You guys don't know the first thing about chopping down a tree." Well, being Americans, how do you chop a tree down? You chop it off a few feet above the ground, back up your Ford Excessive (tm) to the stump, attach a chain and pull out the stump. In northern Kenya, it's usually cheaper to chop it down by hand than to actually get a truck out to where you're chopping down the tree. But how do you get the stump out?
• I guess all those years working on the railroad really paid off! (34k): This is how. You dig a few feet down all around the tree, chopping off supporting lateral roots, and then the weight of the tree will bring it down, level with the bottom of the hole you're digging. (I suppose that it helps when the tree is already leaning in the general direction of where you want it to fall.) I'm not kidding about the railroad thing either -- Tim Webster used to work for the railroad, doing much the same thing as you see him doing in this picture. Also appearing in this picture is Karissa Bultman, Brian Tracy, Bill Schoonover (probably), and Cori White. (I remember *names* of some of the Kenyans in this picture, but I don't remember which faces go with which names. Anyone in my family group, can you help me out?)
• Bill Schoonover plays with the kids at Marsabit Full Primary (38k): Cori White steps back to assess the work situation, while Karissa Bultman watches Bill Schoonover play with the kids at Marsabit Full Primary. 1,500 primary age children go to this school. They all pay to go to school, and there are many who cannot afford to go at all. You know those 20 dollar a month child sponsorships in Third World countries? That's what the 20 dollars a month pays for -- school uniforms and supplies and education and sometimes food and things like shoes. (A pair of shoes made out of tire rubber cost us mzungus 150 shillings each. That's like, 2 bucks, and there are people who can't scrape together money to buy shoes.)
• I wish I had a better camera! (16k): This picture is actually a full size section of the above picture. When I got the above picture back, this is the part which visually grabbed me (and made me wish I had a better camera!) It's amazing to me how often I'll take a picture of something normal or mundane, and the coolest things will show up off to the sides of the main subject.
• Hey, is that OSHA approved footwear? (50k): Cori White, Karissa Bultman, Dan Panik, Bill Schoonover and Tim Webster take a break, while Brian Tracy throws a shovel full of dirt into a waiting wheelbarrow. The man hacking at the tree roots is Garo, and he didn't speak a word of English, and I don't think he knew any Swahili either. But while he's currently using a pick kind of thing, he did most of the hacking with his machete (which he sharpened very carefully before he got to the work site), which earned him the name "Man who chops down trees with Machete." Also, I've been getting a lot of comments from folks who see these pictures and say things like "Hey, didn't you guys ever do anything? We just see you guys sitting around while the Kenyans do all of the work!" Well, duh. It's kinda hard to take a picture while you're the one doing the shoveling. We'd all rotate in and out of working and resting sometimes, because sometimes there would only be, like, 4 tools to get some job done and so we'd take ten minutes shoveling, pass it off to someone else, etc. I understand that the situation was different for the check dam team (they had a lot of repetative work, whereas the tank team people changed tasks every few days), but I wasn't on the check dam team, so naturally, none of my pictures are of people working on that site.
• If a tree falls in Marsabit, and mzungus are there, will they all take a picture? (20k): Nyamu watches as the tree falls. Everyone in my family group took a picture of this tree, I think.
• Everyone pauses to look at the fallen tree (41k): Cori White, looking pensive, stares into the distance, as Karissa Bultman and Bill Schoonover take pictures (Bill is actually checking out the picture he took on the digital camera to make sure it came out right.) Joseph Nyamu (in case I haven't mentioned it, he's the chief water engineer on our project) thinks about what to do next, and Tim Webster, well, he's just standing there, probably like you'd be standing there too if you were there. (I can't be interesting in my comments for these pictures all of the time!) (Stylistic note: Sometimes, I make these pictures smaller than the original because of size, or because of uninteresting detail, or because the original is kinda blurry and if you make the picture smaller, it's not as noticeable. (I mean, I really have to do something about the size of these things, period, they're around 400-700k each!) But sometimes, there is an visual impact with the original which would get wrecked if I made the picture smaller. This is one of those (150k). (I guess it only really works if you have a 19 inch monitor so you can see it all at once, tho. I did crop quite a bit of the uninteresting detail from this picture, but otherwise, this is about how big these pictures are when I get them on the photo CD.) With this larger picture, you can see the mist clearly on Marsabit Mountain, and you can see that Kenya is on Mars, for what the soil looks like and everything.)
• Garo, International Man of Mystery (44k): Garo was the one guy who worked with us that I really wanted to get to know (I guess he reminded me of my Dad for some reason -- probably his ability to do just about anything on the work site. My Dad is like that on a construction site too.) But I didn't know Boran, which was the main language in the region. Here you see him displaying his fashionable OSHA approved footwear. (<----- here I am being sarcastic.)
• Ow. (28k): It's all fun and games until someone falls off the water tank and breaks his leg. Isaac Stone was our first casualty -- he broke his leg in two spots (he broke both the tibula and fibula, for those who know what those leg bones are). Broke his leg. In Africa! It's still crazy when you think about it. This was taken at dinner that night. The next morning, Jon Stone flew with him down to a hospital in Nairobi where they patched up his leg. He was on crutches the rest of the trip (parents, imagine what that was like) but he's totally fine now. Bright side is, it gives him something to say in those games where you have to think of something you've done which no one else has ever done. (Also appearing in this picture is Eric Therkildsen, and a very tired looking Jon Stone. That's a temporary cast on isaac's leg, by the way.)
• Coming back after a hard day of work (41k): The Check Dam team got a little help from Tank Team 2 (I don't remember why -- either the tank team was stalled on something, or the dam team really needed the help that day) on the day I took this picture. Back row: Carolyn Larson, Dan VandenBerge, Eric Therkildsen. Middle row: Josh Bilhorn, Joel Mekkes, Dave Bosscher, Jarret Gill. Front row: Kim Schouten (I'm probably spelling that wrong), Bianti Curry, Jenny Pintsch. What I was trying to capture with this photo is how dirty everyone was. Kim's face was absolutely filthy, as she was hauling away wheelbarrows of dirt downwind of where everyone was shoveling and kicking up dust. "Every shovelful that went in the wheel barrow, *foom*, half of it turned into dust and got on my face." she said. But in the picture, Kim and Jenny Pintsch just wind up looking like they've got a really good tan, and the dirt doesn't really show up on anyone else but Joel Mekkes.
• Typical lunch time photograph: (40k): At first I thought that this was the Fourth of July dinner, but then I looked again and that looks suspiciously like goat stew and fried cabbage on those plates. But everyone is wearing the same clothes as they are in the Fourth of July pictures, so I now think this is lunch. You will just have to trust me when I say that these people are who they are; it's not that terribly clear from this image, but it's easier to tell with the actual photograph. Anyway, I'm counting tables from the left and going clockwise, and I'm counting people from the most easily recognized person and going clockwise from them. Here goes:
  
  Table 1: Bill Schoonover, Karissa Bultman, Brian Tracy, Dave Bosscher, Jarret Gill, Erin Karner, Josh Bilhorn.
  
  Table 2: Lindsay Bussell, Fred Everson, Jason "Borde" Bordewyk, Cliff Burch, Dan Panik, someone I cant identify, and then probably Joel Mekkes.
  
  Table 3: Serenity Schoonover, Summer Conklin, Jon Doane, probably Lee Paulsen, Bianti Curry, Song Yang, Carolyn Larson.
  
  Table 4: Cori White, Kim Schouten, Chrissy Pomroy, Sarah Bonsall, some of the Webster family (only in the part of the picture which I had to cut out because my finger was in the way), Corwin Webster.
• Fourth of July 1 (58k): Spending the Fourth of July in Africa was an interesting experience. We couldn't have any fireworks (I don't think anyone brought any, but I wouldn't have put it past Mike Kolassa or Jon Doane) because, as Jon Stone put it, "If we tried to light off fireworks, half the town would go running away from us in fear, and the other half of the town would come running toward us, with guns." (There was a military base type thing, and a Kenyan Wildlife Service base type thing in Marsabit. They had guns, and, uh, we didn't.) So instead we made fireworks and an American flag out of playdough. In this picture, we have Jon Doane and Lindsay Bussell rolling out playdough snakes for fireworks, Josh Bilhorn sitting on the edge of the table, probably Dan Panik's shoulder in the corner, Lee Paulsen watching Mike Kolassa, who is, in all likely hood, attempting to make Kim's head explode (a favorite pasttime of Mike and Jon Doane and, heck, all the guys from Tech, especially the ones who lived in the Ghetto), Chrissy Pomroy (who won the "most unfortunate expression in a group picture" lottery), Sarah Bonsall looking worried about whatever Mike is saying, Jenny Pintsch, getting ready to help Jason Bordewyk (who was in charge of the flag), Erin Karner and Karissa Bultman looking over at Mike and Kim (The more I look at this picture, the more convinced I am that Mike is telling one of his ridiculous stories again (what's ridiculous about them is that he really doesn't exaggerate that much!)), and Song Yang working on making tiny playdough stars for the flag. I think everyone tried making tiny playdough stars for the flag, because everyone thought to themselves, "Hey! I can make tiny stars for the flag! That's easy!" And then everyone discovered that their fingers got much bigger than the last time they were when they played with playdough. You should go try to make tiny playdough stars, it's very instructive.
• Fourth of July 2 (36k): Everyone steps back and takes a look at the finished result: Jon Doane plays with an imaginary ball in his lap, Joel Mekkes sits in the background, thinking "Stinkin' playdough", even though his mom's an artist, Lindsay Bussell and Cliff Burch admire their handiwork, while Brian Tracy (behind Cliff) is most likely grinning from ear to ear (the Kenyans on our worksite nicknamed him "Happy man"), Dan Panik edges around to see what's in front of Josh, who won the lottery for "most unfortunate seductive pose in a group picture" (by unfortunate, I mean, gee, poor Josh), Lee Paulsen is watching Mike Kolassa play with individual playdough atoms, while Jill Kare peeks above Lee's shoulder and tries to see what's going on, and finally, Chrissy Pomroy smiles at whatever Jason Bordewyk is expounding upon.
• Old Glory (10k): This looks like it's taken at a funny angle. Well, it was to begin with, and then I have this really cool image editing software which twisted it around to make it look like it was level, but it skewed the perspective quite a bit. This picture makes my head go sideways every time I look at it.
• A classic picture of Jon Doane (6k): That's all that needs to be said, really.
• Love and PEACE! (11k): Mike poses with his Matrix-stylin' sunglasses, while giving out a double dose of love and peace. (That's only going to be really funny to a very small minority of people who ever see this web page.)
• Wow, it's really windy! (23k): That weekend, Tim Webster organized a trip up to the top of the hill by Marsabit Full Primary to see the giant windmill (which is broken -- I'll save that story for some other time.) Anyway, we got there, and Tim (I think it was Tim, it might have been someone else) says "See, I bet we could crawl under that fence and walk right up to the windmill," and is crouching down to do just that when the rest of us see the security guard walking up. The security guard was nice enough and actually let us in to see the windmill (probably because we were mzungus, also, I think he went to one of the local churches and knew what we were doing in the area -- Eric, you talked to him more than I did -- am I remembering that right?) Anyway, this is Dave Bosscher and Tim Webster standing on top of the hill, and it's windy windy windy.
• Group picture with the windmill (18k): The inevitable group shot: The security guard, Eric Therkildsen, Tim Webster, Brian Tracy, Me, Dave Bosscher, and Dan Panik. The view from up here was incredible -- in one direction, the town and the lush green of Marsabit Mountain, and in the other, nothing but desert with lone barren hills as far as the eye can see. I wanted to take pictures, but was at the end of my roll of film.
• See! I am not holding Brian's hand! (30k): This is a closeup of just the people in the above picture, and it is abundantly clear that I'm not actually holding Brian's hand, as you can see both of our hands, and they are seperated by at least 4 to 6 inches! I like this edit of the picture better because you can see the smirk on Therkildsen's face, and you can see how Bosscher's is posing better.

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