Fifty years ago today, Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface .... and spoke those words. We were in Kenya at the time, and heard the landing and those now famous words on the Voice of America radio; people in the UK (like my mother) were glued to their TV's to watch the event, and it think it had less of an impact to us in Kenya, in a bush school which didn't have electricity, let alone TV ! I see in a letter I wrote to my mother on 28th July (presumably in reply to one she wrote to me about it) ... "Lucky you, seeing all of the moon shot on TV ... we heard it on VoA on the Hicks radio, and because we are nine hours different to America, we listened until about half past midnight; the moon walk would have been 4.30 a.m. Kenya time, so we didn't hear that, though the Hicks recorded it on tape, and we heard it the next day."
Later that year (or the next) a lump of moon rock went on tour to all the museums and government centres in Kenya. I have to say, it was interesting, but somewhat under-whelming. It looked like any lump of rock from one of the arid areas of Kenya !
Searching for something about Kisumu on FaceBook, I found a site by Hans brother, Eugenie Burgman. He posts things about KUAP (Pandipieri) in Kisumu, and I found some news of Hans, and photos !
Preaching or giving a talk in Holland
A happy, gracious man.
At a party in the retirement home for Mill Hill Missionaries where he now lives in Holland.
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Hans is writing a short homily every month, which his brother Eugenie is posting online for him. The Luo people of Kisumu have always considered Hans to be an honorary Luo; indeed, he was made a 'chief' in a ceremony at Pandipieri, and given the regalia of a Luo Chief. So when poor Hans had to have some teeth out recently before being fitted with a denture, the gap in his lower front teeth gave him the exact appearance of a Luo elder, and people said he was now a white Luo !
Young Luo boys (no idea why not the girls) used to have six of their front teeth removed as teenagers, in case they got lockjaw later in life, and would be able to eat. My dear Luo 'son' Joseph had his six lower front teeth missing, but because of the gap, the top teeth tend to grow a little longer, so the space doesn't show in a smile.
A woman with symptoms "similar to those exhibited by Ebola patients" is being treated in an isolation ward in a hospital in the west of Kenya, a statement from Kericho county government says.
The staff took all necessary precautions and made sure that "there was minimal contact between the patient and other persons" at Kericho County Referral Hospital, the statement adds.
Blood samples have been taken and results are expect within the next 24 hours.
The authorities have been swift in reassuring the public that all steps are being taken to ensure their safety and they emphasise that Ebola-like symptoms can be a feature of several other conditions.
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed more than 1,400 people. Two people died of the disease in Uganda last week, which neighbours both DR Congo and Kenya.
Health officials in Kericho county say the patient had travelled from Malaba, which is on the border with Uganda, reports the BBC's Anne Soy.
There have not been any reported cases near Malaba, close to eastern Uganda. The outbreak in Uganda has been in the west of the country."
I haven't seen any more news today (17th) in the Kenya newspapers ...
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Another update late on 17th June :-
No Ebola in Kenya
Anne Soy
BBC Africa, Nairobi
The Ministry of Health in Kenya has confirmed that there is no Ebola in the country.
Laboratory results from the blood samples of a 36-year-old patient who was taken into isolation on Sunday were negative for Ebola.
Her husband and two other contacts had also been quarantined.
Health workers in the south-western town of Kericho said they acted out of caution in isolating the patient.
She had a fever, headache, sore throat and was vomiting – symptoms that would indicate the presence of a number of infections, including Ebola.
The news sent the town into panic and most businesses and offices closed early as people left the town out of fear.
I've been getting several emails, asking me what's happened to the blog ? So some people DO read it ! May has been gardening month, and I've just about tamed the jungle at the back of the house, and have new deep beds full of veggies, (the old wooden edges to my beds had rotted) and a greenhouse full of tomato plants, strawberries (in hanging baskets so the slugs can't get to them) and one cucumber. I will be eating the first of the sugar snap peas for lunch today ! The ebola outbreak I mentioned some time ago, in the DRC, is getting worse, and there are now cases over the border in western Uganda. Recent reports from The Guardian and the BBC:- From The Guardian in early May, on the ebola outbreak, treatment hampered by the on-going civil war and massacres in the DRC:-
An Ebola epidemic in a conflict-riven region of Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control and could become as serious as the outbreak that devastated three countries in west Africabetween 2013 and 2016, experts and aid chiefs have warned.
New cases over the past month have increased at the fastest rate since the outbreak began last year, as aid agencies struggle to enact a public health response in areas that have suffered decades of neglect and conflict, with incredibly fragile health systems and regular outbreaks of deadly violence involving armed groups.
“I’m very concerned – as concerned as one can be,” said Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, who called for a ceasefire to allow health teams to reach the sick and protect others in the community.
“Whether it gets to the absolute scale of west Africa or not, none of us know, but this is massive in comparison with any other outbreak in the history of Ebola and it is still expanding. It’s remarkable it hasn’t spread more geographically but the numbers are frightening and the fact that they are going up is terrifying.”
A six- to nine-month ceasefire, brokered by the UN, the Red Cross or similar bodies, is vital to stopping the spread, he said. “There was violence in west Africa, in Freetown and Monrovia, but this is on a different scale and it is coming from multiple sources.”
More than 1,600 people have been infected with the Ebola virus in the North Kivu region of DRC and more than 1,000 have died so far – the great majority women and children. At least 10 months since the outbreak began, the numbers are rising steadily and the fatality rate is higher than in previous outbreaks, at about 67%.
Returning from a visit to his teams in the region, David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, called for a “reset” in the response. “The situation is far more dangerous than the statistic of 1,000 deaths, itself the second largest in history, suggests and the suspension of key services threatens to create a lethal inflection point in the trajectory of the disease,” he said. “The danger is that the number of cases spirals out of control, despite a proven vaccine and treatment.”
IRC teams, who have had three triage units in health centres burned down, have warned that the situation in North Kivu is increasingly volatile and is making progress against the disease impossible. Last week, fighters from the armed Mai-Mai rebel group attacked a treatment centre in Butembo, one of the towns at the centre of the crisis. This week, two patients were killed during an assault on a treatment centre in Katwa, the second such incident in the town this month.
The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has also voiced profound disquiet. In March, Dr Tedros said the Ebola outbreak was contracting and would be over in six months. After a visit at the end of April with the regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, he said he was deeply worried about the situation. “Cases are increasing because of violent acts that set us back each time,” he said.
The pair went to Butembo, where a WHO epidemiologist, Dr Richard Mouzoko, was killed by armed men while he and colleagues were working on the Ebola response.
“We are entering a phase where we will need major shifts in the response,” said Dr Tedros. “WHO and partners cannot tackle these challenges without the international community stepping in to fill the sizeable funding gap.” Only half of the currently requested funds have been received, which could lead to WHO and partners rolling back some activities when they are most needed.
Those on the frontline in North Kivu fear no end is in sight. Whitney Elmer, a country director for Mercy Corps, one of the humanitarian NGOs working on preventing the spread, said there had been “a drastic change in the security situation”, which was causing a big rise in the number of cases.
Elmer said there had been about 400 cases over the past month – the highest figure for that time period since the outbreak began – and the number of new cases was increasing at a much higher rate than seen previously.
“We are very concerned,” she said, adding that there was real potential for the outbreak to spread to neighbouring Rwanda or Uganda.
Frontline workers say there has not been enough community involvement and that bringing in armed police and especially cancelling elections in the region have provoked hostility and suspicion. “The overall strategy has been to go full force to do things as quickly as possible,” said Elmer. She added that it was vital that local people and organisations were included in decision-making.
“We are very concerned and the signs around the outbreak response are not good right now,” said Kate White, one of its emergency managers.
New cases should be picked up by routine surveillance and testing the contacts of people who fall ill. “But what we see right now is that the majority of confirmed cases are coming through community deaths. It’s a very worrying sign,” she said. “It means communities are not aware or not active participants in the response. People die in their communities and they have the ability to transmit the virus to as many people as possible.”
She said agencies needed to have the local people actively working against Ebola. “Anything else is a band-aid solution.”
WHO recently announced an expansion of the vaccination guidelines and the introduction of a second vaccine to try to protect people. Experimental drugs have also been given to 700 people, although nobody yet knows how successful they have been. But unless it is possible to reach affected communities with vaccines and drugs, the new technologies are useless.
“The tragedy is that we have the technical means to stop Ebola, but until all parties halt attacks on the response, it will be very difficult to end this outbreak,” Dr Tedros tweeted.
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A report yesterday on the BBC World news service:-
A 50-year-old woman infected with Ebola has died in western Uganda, a day after her five-year-old grandson died.
They are the first cases reported there since the virus spread over the border from Democratic Republic of Congo, where nearly 1,400 people have died.
Three suspected Ebola patients have also run away from an isolation centre in south-western Uganda.
The head of a major medical charity has called the latest outbreak of Ebola in central Africa "truly frightening".
He said the spread was "tragic but unfortunately not surprising". He warned that more cases were expected, and a "full" national and international response would be needed to protect lives.
The grandmother had lived in DR Congo, where her husband recently died of Ebola. Her daughter had travelled from Uganda, where she lives with her Ugandan husband, to the Congolese town of Beni with her children to help care for him. After the grandfather died they all travelled on Sunday to Uganda's Kasese district, where the five-year-old son and his grandmother then subsequently became sick and later died.
The three-year-old son is now confirmed to have Ebola. He, his parents and two of his siblings have been repatriated at their request to DR Congo, Uganda's health ministry says.
The people who fled from a hospital isolation unit had been found to have high temperatures when they crossed the border from DR Congo to the Ugandan district of Kanungu, which is about 150km (93 miles) south of Kasese. Medical workers did not get a chance to take samples of their blood to send for testing before their escape.
How prepared is Uganda? Analysis by Patricia Oyella, BBC Africa, Kampala
This isn't the first time the virus has struck the country. Outbreaks in 2012, 2007 and 2000 have prompted the health ministry to build capacity, says Director of Clinical Services Dr Charles Olaro.
Public health information campaigns broadcast to at-risk areas have been key in preventing the spread since the first case of Ebola was reported over the border in DR Congo last August. Mass gatherings, including market days and prayers, have been cancelled. Market days in the town of Kasese attract an estimated 20,000 people at the border area.
Uganda's health ministry and the WHO said a rapid response team had been dispatched to identify others at risk. The country has already vaccinated about 4,700 health workers against the disease, according to a joint statement by WHO and Ugandan health officials. Ebola screening centres are in operation along the border with DR Congo as well as other major entry and exit points.
Authorities have identified 22 high-risk districts - places that are close to the border and have high levels of movement - and deployed medical monitors to spot and manage any cases they find.
A database of experts is on hand to deal with different scenarios, the health ministry says, and Uganda also benefits from the expertise of health workers it deployed to contain previous outbreaks in West Africa.
What's the situation in DR Congo?
Nearly 1,400 people have died over the last 10 months - around 70% of all those infected. The outbreak is the second-largest in the history of the disease, with a significant spike in new cases in recent weeks.
Only once before has an outbreak continued to grow more than eight months after it began - that was the epidemic in West Africa between 2013-16, which killed 11,310 people.
Some have predicted it could take up to two more years to bring to an end. The WHO has twice ruled that this Ebola outbreak is not yet a global emergency. I
I'm a sucker for novels, biographies, histories .... any and all books about Africa. An author called Samantha Ford has written, I think, three novels based on East and South Africa, and this one ...
... is the third one of hers I'm reading. Goodness me, but the first page got to me .... "A beautiful mistress, relentless, ruthless, unforgiving. A lover you can never have or own ... a lover who will take everything from you. You heart, your thoughts, your mind and your soul. When its all over and you leave her, she will stay with you; tormenting you with the memories of what you can never have again, no matter how you try to forget and replace." Its SO hard to move on from that 'lover' .... "The glimpse of something on television - the haunting cry of the fish eagle, the sounds of Africans singing, with no music other than their own clear voices .... will bring you to your knees with longing for the love, and place, you have left. The sound of her, the scent of her, the one thing you want more than anything in your life, to have again. You gave her everything, wanting to possess her. She promised you nothing, gave you nothing, only her breath-taking beauty. When you left, she had already forgotten you, for you were just one of many dazzled by her. She broke your heart with her beauty, and with her pain. She is unforgettable.
She is called Africa."
I know its extremely unlikely I will ever see, hear, smell Africa again .... but she is always in my thoughts and I dream often of Africa at night.
I keep telling myself "Get a grip ! Move on ...."
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Every day, I receive a 'Google Alert' re Kenya, with news; I also read (online) the Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper, and also Reuters news. Mill Hill Missionaries send an almost daily bulletin, which often includes interesting items about Kenya. And I have many friends in and connected to Kenya who email me regularly ... so I'm still 'connected'. Which makes it hard to 'let go' .... and actually, I don't think I want to !
Simba-kubwa kutoka-afrika = lion-big-coming from-Africa ! A recent discovery of a fossil of a massive extinct lion has been discovered in a long unopened drawer in the Nairobi Museum. I remember on several visits to the museum all the specimens in store in the depths of the museum ... I even opened a few drawers back then, but as my interest was birds, I never saw any hidden away fossils !
(Artists impression)
This report comes from Ohio University:
Paleontologists at Ohio University have discovered a new species of meat-eating mammal larger than any big cat stalking the world today. Larger than a polar bear, with a skull as large as that of a rhinoceros and enormous piercing canine teeth, this massive carnivore would have been an intimidating part of the eastern African ecosystems occupied by early apes and monkeys.
In a new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the researchers name Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, a gigantic carnivore known from most of its jaw, portions of its skull, and parts of its skeleton. The 22-million-year-old fossils were unearthed in Kenya decades ago as researchers canvassed the region searching for evidence of ancient apes. Specimens were placed in a drawer at the National Museums of Kenya and not given a great deal of attention until Ohio University researchers Dr. Nancy Stevens and Dr. Matthew Borths rediscovered them, recognizing their significance.
"Opening a museum drawer, we saw a row of gigantic meat-eating teeth, clearly belonging to a species new to science," says study lead author Borths. Borths was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Stevens in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Ohio University when the research was conducted, and is now Curator of the Division of Fossil Primates at the Duke Lemur Center at Duke University.
Simbakubwa is Swahili for "big lion" because the animal was likely at the top of the food chain in Africa, as lions are in modern African ecosystems. Yet Simbakubwa was not closely related to big cats or any other mammalian carnivore alive today. Instead, the creature belonged to an extinct group of mammals called hyaenodonts.
Hyaenodonts were the first mammalian carnivores in Africa. For about 45 million years after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, hyaenodonts were the apex predators in Africa. Then, after millions of years of near-isolation, tectonic movements of the Earth's plates connected Africa with the northern continents, allowing floral and faunal exchange between landmasses. Around the time of Simbakubwa, the relatives of cats, hyenas, and dogs began to arrive in Africa from Eurasia.
As the relatives of cats and dogs were going south, the relatives of Simbakubwa were going north. "It's a fascinating time in biological history," Borths says. "Lineages that had never encountered each other begin to appear together in the fossil record."
The species name, kutokaafrika, is Swahili for "coming from Africa" because Simbakubwa is the oldest of the gigantic hyaenodonts, suggesting this lineage of giant carnivores likely originated on the African continent and moved northward to flourish for millions of years.
Ultimately, hyaenodonts worldwide went extinct. Global ecosystems were changing between 18 and 15 million years ago as grasslands replaced forests and new mammalian lineages diversified. "We don't know exactly what drove hyaenodonts to extinction, but ecosystems were changing quickly as the global climate became drier. The gigantic relatives of Simbakubwa were among the last hyaenodonts on the planet," remarks Borths.
"This is a pivotal fossil, demonstrating the significance of museum collections for understanding evolutionary history," notes Stevens, Professor in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University and co-author of the study. "Simbakubwa is a window into a bygone era. As ecosystems shifted, a key predator disappeared, heralding Cenozoic faunal transitions that eventually led to the evolution of the modern African fauna."
What an amazing animal - bigger than a modern polar bear !
I get daily news from the Mill Hill Missionaries ... and today there is more news about the ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:-
NORTH KIVU, MARCH 26, 2019 (CISA) -A fresh Ebola outbreak has claimed over 600 lives, with reported cases approaching 1,000 in the eastern parts Democratic Republic of Congo.
“As the Ebola outbreak in DRC approaches 1000 cases amid increased violence, WHO re-affirms its commitment both to ending the outbreak and working with the government and communities to build resilient health systems…there have been 993 confirmed and probable cases and 621 deaths in North Kivu and Ituri provinces,” WHO said in a March 23 statement.
“As we mourn the lives lost, we must also recognize that thousands of people have been protected from this terrifying disease,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
He expressed confidence that the health workers are better prepared to handle this latest outbreak compared to previous outbreaks.
“We are working in exceptionally challenging circumstances, but thanks to support from donors and the efforts of the Ministry of Health, WHO and partners, we have saved thousands of lives,” he said.
New technologies like a trial vaccine, experimental treatments and futuristic cube-shaped mobile units for treating patients have helped curb the spread of the virus.
“More than 96 000 people have been vaccinated against Ebola in DRC, along with health workers in Uganda and South Sudan. As of 21 March, 38 of 130 affected health areas have active transmission. More than 44 million border screenings have helped to slow the spread of Ebola in this highly mobile population. No cases have spread beyond North Kivu and Ituri provinces, and no cases have crossed international borders,” said a March 23 report by WHO.
Cases of insecurity in parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where Ebola has struck are however complicating the response."
Uganda and South Sudan border the eastern DRC, and cross border trade, legal or otherwise, must surely present a risk of the disease spreading.
Medicines Sans Frontiers are one of my favourite charities, and my Lent giving will be to them.
What extraordinary photographs of an ancient 'super-tusker' matriach.
The photographer Will Burrard-Lucas took these amazing pictures of what must surely have been a 60 or 70 year old elephant in Kenya's Tsavo National Park. She died of natural causes ... probably old age or perhaps starvation as her remaining teeth may have gradually fallen out or been worn away. At least she survived poachers who would have made a fortune from killing her and selling her tusks on the illegal ivory market.
We had a meeting of the whole group as a sort of follow up, and one of the participants took along an album of her fathers old postcards of Jerusalem where he was posted in WW1 .... I took the liberty of copying a few .... So here are some 'then' compared to my 'now' pictures ...
The Jaffa Gate pre Allenby's entry into Jerusalem in December 1917 ... and my photo of the same place, in 2018.
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And then a postcard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with a troop of Ottoman police in their blue uniforms outside .... so almost certainly pre-1914.
