• Tank team 2 group shot (60k): New roll of film. Since the silly point and shoot which I had didn't have an accurate flim-o-meter on it, I found myself taking at least three pictures to start out the roll -- click, wind, click, wind, click, wind, etc. This would zero the film-o-meter on 1. So I have two more pictures of this scene. Clearly they are all looking at other cameras while I was doing this. :)
• Can Corwin come over to play? (57k): Poor Corwin. He was often more than a little intimidated by all of the kids there who wanted to play with him. They all wanted to touch his skin (because it was white and therefore cooler in the sun than theirs) and play with his hair because it was so straight.
• Pharoh pharoh! (51k): Jenny Pintsch plays the guitar, as Bianti Curry, Dave Bosscher, and Joel Mekkes do the body gestures for "Pharoh Pharoh!"
• Reverse angle! (41k): Joel Mekkes, Dave Bosscher, Bianti Curry, Jenny Pintsch, Carolyn Larson, and Dan Vandenberge do the gestures for "Pharoh Pharoh!", while Rebecca Stone, (being held by) Summer Conklin, Andy Kress, and Hilary and Dyson Webster look on. (Side note: typing "pharoh pharoh" is a real "finger twister"... it's hard to type fast, and easy to misspell.)
• Somebody's tired (47k): Mike Kolassa stands on the dam holding Timothy Stone while an Mzee looks on. ("Mzee" (mm-zay) is a swahili term of respect given to older men.) Take a look at Mike's shoes. I was shocked beyond words when I was visiting a friend in Alabama three months after I got back to the states and she had shoes that looked... well, not just like that, but close enough. After a few seconds, I looked down and pointed at the shoes sitting innocently enough next to the front door. "Shoes?" I said. (Not one of my more eloquent moments.) "Yeah, they're my gardening shoes," she replied with a puzzled look on her face. "They're red," I said. "Yeah, um, they get like that because of the dirt." she said, with not a little bit of sarcasm and amusement. I bounded to the window and started looking outside for red dirt. Sure enough, red dirt. Then I explained why I was shocked and she started having slightly fewer doubts about my sanity. Anyway. If you have a big enough monitor, you can check out a bigger version of this picture.
• Mekkes and Therkildsen (35k): Joel Mekkes marvels at the brush, while Eric Therkildsen contentedly contemplates beating the snot out of him. Just kidding! Okay, maybe I'm not kidding.
• The finished dam (52k): A side view of the completed dam. Someday (yeah right) I'll put up individual pages for each work project, and I'll post pics from the CD Jon Stone sent out, so you all can see progress of the various projects. In the meantime, you can look at this picture, which has Dave Bosscher (in the distance with the camera bag) and Isaac Stone (going down the ramp -- you can barely see the crutches, and you can certainly see how he isn't using them. Since he walked on it so much before it was done healing, he had to get an extra cast when he came back to the states -- which he wasn't particularly happy about.) Also, I think that's Jon, Steven's brother on the right, pointing out in the distance.
• Another angle (59k): A different shot of the completed dam -- this one gives a better feel for how wide the dam is. Keep in mind that it was built in five weeks entirely by hand with no power anything. Hand tools, hand lifting. Um, I have no idea how many people worked on it each day -- fifty or so? Anyone on the dam team want to e-mail me a rough estimate?
• Stupid finger in the lens. (37k): I was almost hyperventilating while taking this shot (because it was so beautiful, see), and my finger got in the way so bad that I can't fix it. Oh well. Here's a close up of Isaac at any rate.
• Playing in the rain (47k): The lighting in this picture is so bizarre, I can't figure it out. It looks like I turned the flash on, but I really don't think I did. Anyway, this is Nigel Webster playing during one of the rainstorms we got during the last week while we were there. No, it's not spot-raining on him, that's the water coming off the roof. (Here's a close up of just Nigel, if you're interested.)
• Park sign (62k): Then I looked the other way out the window and saw this. Those skulls are exactly the kind of thing that you're not allowed to touch or take out of the park. (Like, if you find a dead cape buffalo, I mean. If you actually kill a cape buffalo and try to take its skull... let's put it this way: It's not the 1800's anymore when it comes to hunting in Africa folks. The guns the Kenyan Wildlife Service carry around are probably just as much to discourage poaching as for protection from a stray rampaging cape buffalo.)
• Fog rolling in at Marsabit Lodge (40k): Did I mention that it was foggy and raining and cold the last week we were there? Well, it was. Also, that building only looks just slightly crooked, it's actually an optical illusion. Trust me, I spent about five or ten minutes composing that shot and thinking about it, until I finally said "Oh, to heck with it," because it looks straight when you're standing there but then when you look through the camera, it doesn't look straight. Also, something else you can't tell from the picture is that the fog was spilling in over the edge of the crater when I was taking this picture. It was pretty cool; my picture of it is just an approximation of cool.
• Lake Paradise. (68k): This is a composite of two shots of Lake Paradise (because 14 dollar 35mm cameras don't have wide angle lenses). To the right, you can see the desert stretching off into the distance. To the left, you can see a herd of cape buffalo swimming. Well, wading. And by "see", I mean, "can barely discern a bunch of black specks in the water on the far left shore, which might be be rocks, or even dust on the lens, but it's not. Really!" Here is a close-up of the buffalo in case you don't believe me. I found another picture of Lake Paradise on the internet, so check it out for yourself!

  (Ah, I found another... scroll to the bottom of the page. Of course, the area in dispute is obscured by vegetation. That page is actually pretty neat -- it's about a team of a few people from a Canadian church that went and stayed at the St. Stephen's Training Center (Centre!), in Marsabit (they were there right after we were: "Aug 29 - Sept 10, 2001," the webpage says.) Their descriptions of everything tend to be a little more breathless and excited than mine are -- but then, they were only there for a couple weeks, so they had less time to get used to it, and no time for culture shock. I hope they enjoyed the mosquito nets.)

• Yet more baboons (41k): As we came down the hill and around on the way to Lake Paradise, there was a whole bunch of baboons sitting there on the outer edge of the final curve before the road double-backs.
• This is not a posed shot. (41k): I'm not kidding. I turned around after looking at the lake and this is what I saw. It took me a good 30 - 45 seconds to get my camera out, and the whole time I was afraid that they would move or something, but they didn't. And I didn't want to say anything because I knew that they would stop looking natural and start faking it or start being self-conscious. Heh. Someday, when I'm 90, I'll publish a little pamphlet on the art of ninja photography -- of taking natural, unposed pictures of people which reveal who they really are without being invasive or distracting. (Of course, sometimes I'm invasive *and* distracting when I'm taking pictures. Even ninjas get time off.)
• Huh. (23k): We stopped at the gate on our way out of the park. While Tim was talking with the guards, I looked out the right window.
  
  "Hey, Serenity," I asked, "are those solar panels on that authentic thatched roof?"
  "Um, yup, that's what it looks like," she replied, laughing a little.
  "Huh."
  
  You can't see it from this picture, but the "thatch" was covered in chicken wire, to keep it from blowing away in a rainstorm, you see. Also, there are several layers of plastic under it. So it's... not really authentic at all. Heh.
• Me and Galoro (43k): Galoro and I pose for a picture in front of the Blue Defender. And no, in fact, I can't always think of something funny or interesting to say about each picture that I took.
• On the way to the airstrip (58k): There were many last minute "snafus" with the computer network, and that was really my fault. I should have concentrated on getting the computer network done first, and then started working on some of the construction projects, instead of the other way around. Alas. One of the problems was with the main FHI reports computer -- the one they used to send their monthly district report in to the central office. It suddenly stopped working, and I couldn't get it started again. This happened about an hour before the plane was going to arrive. Well, I tried, but I had been up all night, and that damn computer was being really stubborn about booting (picture a proprietary motherboard desktop Gateway pentium 90). The plane was literally flying overhead when they said "Um, we have to leave NOW." I looked up, and said "I'm sorry. I cannot fix this." "Nevermind, just go." So I ran out and hopped in the back of this pickup truck with the luggage (and snapped this one last picture.) I still agonize over the computer problems and the state their important reports computer was in when I left. I think it was the power switch that failed, actually, and I've since thought of a couple of ways around the problem. But that's not very much help now. (Not everything about the computers was bad, we fixed up their printing situation and the network infrastructure and the like is in place.) Anyway, that's Nyamu on the right. I don't remember who that is on the left, but Galoro was driving the blue rover behind us. This is the last picture on the six rolls of film that I brought with me. (The next two rolls in the series I got from Jon Stone in Nairobi.)

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