Newsletter

Winter 2000: Notes from Africa

A Spectacular and Challenging Part of Creation: Kenya, East Africa
By Dr. Gil Blankespoor

This past summer Au Sable - Africa completed its second program of field courses in Kenya, East Africa. The four-week long Africa program is a joint venture between Au Sable and the African Institute for Scientific Research and Development (AISRED). The center of operations for the program is the Olooseos Community Centre, located some 15 miles southwest of the city of Nairobi, in Maasai "country." The Centre is beautifully situated on top of a small hill surrounded by rolling Acacia savannah.

The student body consisted of fifteen students from North America and four African students from Daystar University in Kenya and each student enrolled in one of three courses: Birds of the African Tropics, Development and Ecological Sustainability in Africa, and Mammals of East Africa. Course instructors were Dr. Gil Blankespoor, Augustana College, Mr. Jeff Davis, A Rocha Kenya, and Dr. Jesse Njoka, University of Nairobi. Additional staff members were Dr. George Kinoti, Founder and Director of AISRED and Benjamin Van Ee and Jan Blankespoor.

Students spent much of their time in the field. The mammals of East Africa are spectacular, the birds highly diverse and colorful, and questions of development and ecological sustainability considerable and challenging. When not in the field, students and instructors did classroom work at the Olooseos Centre complex. The highlight of the program was a five-day safari to the Masai Mara Game Reserve, one of the premier wildlife conservation areas in East Africa.

God blessed us with a good and profitable time. We learned and experienced a great deal. We had wonderful times of Christian fellowship and worship. We did some important things that were not related to courses. One of these involved building a small dam on the Olooseos Center property. In addition, we ministered to some HIV children in Nairobi and worked for part of a day at a place where orphan animals are housed and cared for.

We met and dealt with some challenges in our day-to-day living. Kenya is undergoing a long and severe drought and it was necessary for us to purchase all of the water we needed. Related to the drought was an unpredictable supply of electrical energy. Despite these annoyances, we ate well and as a group we experienced only minor and short-term illnesses. We are thankful to God for all this and, especially, for the opportunity to study and learn more about that part of his Creation that exists in Kenya, East Africa.

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