I first wrote briefly about this ancient site about 8 or 9 years ago ... and now here it is, on a stamp !
The last Mill Hill Missionary that I knew in Kenya has died. I received this yesterday from Father Fons Eppink, who edits and produces a daily Mill Hill newsletter.
Mill Hill Missionary May he rest in peace
Gerry (Gerardus) Mooij was born in Heerhugowaard on November 26, 1939, the youngest son in the family of Piet Mooij and Ursula Oudeman, a family of 9 sons and two daughters. At the age of 13 he registered at the mission house in Hoorn, where he studied from 1952 to 1956, followed by two years in Haelen. He concluded his minor seminary training in Tilburg in July 1959. He studied philosophy in Roosendaal (1957-1959) and then continued on to Mill Hill (1961-1965), where he was ordained as a missionary priest by Cardinal Heenan on July 10, 1965, after he had taken the perpetual oath of the congregation of Mill Hill on May 1, 1964.
Immediately after his ordination he was appointed to the Mill Hill mission in Kenya and worked mainly in Nyilima Lwak, Sega and Kisumu. He devoted himself completely to the people who lived by the side of lake Victoria. There he found his place, there he was a sign of peace for people who often lived in particularly trying circumstances. In 1983 he attended a course at the Ggaba Pastoral Institute in Eldoret and in 1998 at St. Bueno’s. He was then able to return to Kenya and devote himself fully to pastoral work again, in recent years also in the parish at Milimani, Kisumu, where he got along well with the other fellow Mill Hillers.
In
2015 he celebrated his golden jubilee. He knew then that he would
have to return to the Netherlands and live in St. Jozefhuis. With his
own insights and humour, he took as the first reading at that
celebration words from the prophet Amos: ‘Seer, you must get
away!’
His health gradually deteriorated. In quiet moments he
could say that his life was complete and that people no longer had to
go to extremes to keep him alive. A game of cards was always welcome.
The walks became shorter.
After a stay at the hospital in 2023, he returned to his own environment, De Zilverheuvel. He has slowly passed away from us over the past few months, a life completed indeed. May he rest in peace.
On March 13, 2024 we will say goodbye to Gerry in a Eucharistic celebration out of gratitude. This celebration starts at 11 a.m. in St. Jozefhuis, Johannahoeve 4 Oosterbeek, followed by burial in our own cemetery.
A fertility breakthrough has offered hope for saving the northern white rhino from extinction - there are only two of the animals left on the planet.
Scientists have achieved the world's first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.
The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites.
The next step is to repeat this with northern white embryos.
"To achieve the first successful embryo transfer in a rhino is a huge step," said Susanne Holtze, a scientist at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, which is part of the Biorescue project, an international consortium trying to save this species.
"But now I think with this achievement, we are very confident that we will be able to create northern white rhinos in the same manner and that we will be able to save the species."
Northern white rhinos were once found across central Africa, but illegal poaching, fuelled by the demand for rhino horn, wiped out the wild population.
Now only two rhinos remain: two females, Najin and her daughter Fatu. Both of the former zoo animals are kept under tight security at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.
Unable to reproduce, the species is technically extinct. But now the Biorescue team has turned to radical fertility science to bring these animals back from the brink.
They started their work using southern white rhinos. This close cousin of the northern whites has a population of thousands - and is considered a conservation success story although it's still threatened by illegal hunting.
The project has taken years and has had to overcome many challenges: from working out how to collect eggs from the two-tonne animals, to creating the first-ever rhino embryos in a lab and trying to establish how - and when - to implant them.
It took 13 attempts to achieve the first viable IVF pregnancy using southern white rhinos.
"It's very challenging in such a big animal, in terms of placing an embryo inside the reproductive tract, which is almost 2m inside the animal," Susanne Holtze told BBC News.
The embryo, which was made using an egg from a female southern white from a zoo in Belgium and fertilized with sperm from a male in Austria, was transferred into a southern white surrogate female in Kenya, who became pregnant.
However, the success was followed by tragedy. Seventy days into the pregnancy, the surrogate mother died after becoming infected with Clostridia - a bacteria found in the soil that can be deadly to animals.
The death dealt a blow to the team - a post-mortem revealed that the 6.5cm male foetus was developing well and had a 95% chance of being born alive.
But it showed that the technique had worked and that a viable pregnancy through rhino IVF was possible. Now the next step is to try this using northern white rhino embryos.
There are only 30 of these precious embryos in existence, stored in liquid nitrogen in Germany and Italy.
They were created using eggs harvested from Fatu, the younger female in Kenya, and sperm collected from two male northern white rhinos before they died.
However, the birth of a northern white calf will require another scientific first.
Neither of the last two surviving northern whites can carry a pregnancy because of a combination of age and health problems. So instead the embryo will be implanted into the womb of a surrogate southern white rhino.
IVF across a sub species has never been tried before, but the team is confident it will work.
Prof Thomas Hildebrandt, the director of Liebniz IZW and project head for the Biorescue Consortium, said: "I think the situation for the northern white rhino is quite privileged for the embryo transfer because we have a closely related recipient - so their internal map is nearly the same."
The Biorescue team hopes to implant the embryos in the coming months. They want the calf to be born while some northern white rhinos are still alive.
"We want to preserve the social communication, the social heritage of the northern white rhino by putting the first calf on the ground so they can learn the language from the last two rhinos, they can learn how to behave from them," explained Prof Hildebrandt.
The researchers are aware that adding some more animals through IVF will not save this species - there wouldn't be enough genetic diversity to create a viable population.
So they are simultaneously working on an even more experimental technique, attempting to create rhino sperm and eggs from stem cells, to go on to produce embryos.
Again, this will take time and there will be many scientific challenges to overcome.
Some wildlife experts also argue that pouring more money and resources into a species that's as good as lost could be better used in saving more viable species.
However, Jan Stejskal, the BioRescue project coordinator from Safari Park Dvur Kralove in the Czech Republic where Najin and Fatu were originally from, said: "One thing that we have to understand is that behind the extinction of the northern white rhino is man. It's not because of some evolutionary pressure, it was greed, it was the consumption of a rhino horn.
"So, in a way, we are responsible and if we actually have a technique that can assist us to save them, then I think we have a responsibility to use it and to try to save them."
Samuel Mutisya, head of research and species conservation at Ol Pejeta, added that the northern whites were a critical party of the ecosystem and the team was "committed to do all that is humanly possible to nurture, protect and recover the species".
(from: Rebecca Morelle and Alison Francis
I was surprised and delighted to see that today's 'Google Doodle' is all about Ahmed !
He was thought to be the Kenya elephant with the largest tusks (probably because he lived in the forest on Mount Marsabit in the northern Kenya desert) .... on the route to Lake Rudolf/Turkana. We safari-ed to Marsabit several times, usually camping at Lake Paradise (or Gof Bongoli) which is a crater lake in an extinct volcano cone. It is surrounded by forest and it is very spooky camping there at night, with the sounds of unseen animals and birds of the night !
One day, the askari's couldn't see Ahmed or his two companion elephants, and searched in the forest until they found his body, still protected by his 'companions'; he had just died of old age, not killed by poachers.
His body was taken and preserved at the National Museum in Nairobi, where I took Suzie and Tim to see him in 1996; I emailed daughter Liz today to tell her about the 'doodle' and asked if she remembers seeing him .... she must have been about 2 and a half when she saw him .... we had taken two friends up to Marsabit to show them the desert and the mountain just a few dayas before Christmas, which meant we travelled back to Nairobi on Boxing Day, having missed Christmas, but for the benefit of the children, we adjusted the calendar a little, and celebrated Christmas on the 27th December !
Ahmeds tusks were about 150 lbs in weight each, probably the largest ever recorded.
I saw on the news a few days ago that Kenyan children and workers are having a public holiday, in order to plant thousands of trees.
The last but one time I went to the carpentry workshop project for HATW, we each planted a small tree on the boundary. When I returned a year later, the trees were growing strongly and taller than me !
King Charles and Queen Camilla have ended a state visit to Kenya by posing in a tuk-tuk used by commuters on the streets of Mombasa. Sat in the three-wheeled vehicle, the King quipped to reporters: "Maybe we can use this to get to the airport."
Tuk-tuks are used widely across Kenya as an affordable form of transport.
The visit was the King's first to a former British colony since he came to the throne last year. He focused on the two countries' cooperation on economic development, climate change and security issues. He also expressed his "deepest regret" for the violence endured during Kenya's struggle for independence from the UK.
However, King Charles did not offer the apology that many victims and their descendants had called for.
Ahead of Charles' trip, protests took place along Mau Mau road, which was named after the group that fought against the colonial rule. Activists and former freedom fighters held signs bearing statements like "King Charles not welcomed by the Kenyan people" and "decolonise Kenya".
Queen Camilla bottle fed a baby elephant when she visited an orphanage in Kenya for elephants who had lost their parents to poachers.
On the second day of the royal state visit to Kenya, the Queen helped with feeding time at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage. She and King Charles heard about the work of rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned elephants.As well as poaching, elephants face the threat of deforestation and drought.
If royal state visits have plenty of photo opportunities, few could have such a high cuteness factor as a visit to an elephant and rhino orphanage !
King Charles has acknowledged the "abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans" during their independence struggle.
On his state visit to Kenya, the King addressed the "wrongdoings" of Britain's colonial era. He told a state banquet in Nairobi of his "greatest sorrow and regret" and that there was "no excuse". But the King did not deliver a formal apology - which would have to be decided by government ministers.
In response, Kenya's President William Ruto praised the King's courage for addressing such "uncomfortable truths". The Kenyan head of state told the King that colonial rule had been "brutal and atrocious to African people" and that "much remains to be done in order to achieve full reparations".
Ahead of the King's state visit to Kenya, the first to a Commonwealth country since the start of his reign, there had been speculation about a symbolic royal apology. But if the King stopped short of an apology, his speech in Kenya's State House was a significant and strongly-worded recognition of the wrongs committed under colonialism.
As Kenya marks its 60th anniversary of independence, the King told his audience: "It matters greatly to me that I should deepen my own understanding of these wrongs, and that I meet some of those whose lives and communities were so grievously affected." In particular in Kenya there are memories of the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, in which thousands were killed and tortured in the 1950s before independence.
A decade ago the UK government voiced its "regrets that these abuses took place" and announced payments of almost £20m to more than 5,000 people, in what it called a "process of reconciliation".
Monarchs have to speak on the advice of ministers and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already rejected calls for an apology on the separate issue of slavery. The lack of an apology on this trip might have disappointed some Kenyans like David Ngasura of the Kenyan Talai clan. He has written letters to the Royal Family seeking an apology and reparations - and in response Buckingham Palace referred his request to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
If there are concerns an apology would be interpreted as an admission of liability and lead to legal claims, the Kenyan survivors of the colonial government's excesses argue it would help bring healing and closure.
King Charles, who delivered a strong acknowledgement of the "most painful times of our long and complex relationship", told his audience that the friendship between Britain and Kenya could be strengthened by "addressing our history with honesty and openness". His comments went further than a speech in Rwanda last year where he spoke of "the depths of his personal sorrow" at the suffering caused by the slave trade.
Part of the King's speech in Kenya was delivered in Swahili, as he toasted the connections between the countries and remembered the affection his late mother felt for the Kenyan people. On this first day of the state visit, King Charles had a meeting with President Ruto, visited an urban farm and met young Kenyan tech entrepreneurs.
The King also visited a museum dedicated to Kenya's history and its battle of independence.
The Royal Family, particularly on visits to Commonwealth countries, have increasingly faced questions about the legacies of colonialism and slavery, with calls for apologies and reparations. Earlier this year, Buckingham Palace said it was supporting independent historical research to examine royal connections to the slave trade.
But newly-published research has revealed a complex picture in royal attitudes towards slavery, with the royal family of the early 1800s divided over abolishing slavery. The future William IV was a strong pro-slavery advocate, while his cousin the Duke of Gloucester was a leading light of the campaign for abolition.
In the next few days, the state visit to Kenya will focus on ways in which Britain and Kenya are working together, including in tackling climate change and encouraging opportunities and employment for young people. There will also be a meeting with faith leaders who will talk about building links between communities.
I bought this book some years ago, and found it again on my Africa shelves .... and having seen a report on the BBC Africa news about spotless giraffes I was prompted to see what I could find about this amazing, tall and strange animal !
This is a newspaper cutting I found tucked into the book, about a giraffe with a broken neck !
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A giraffe conservation organisation has announced the sighting of a spotless giraffe calf in Namibia. The unique giraffe is thought to be one of the first of its kind to be spotted in its natural habitat. The giraffe calf was reportedly observed running alongside its mother.
Another spotless giraffe was born on 31 July this year at a zoo in Tennessee in the United States.
The public voted to name the baby giraffe “Kipekee”, a Swahili word for “unique”.
“Only weeks after the birth of a spotless giraffe in the USA, the first spotless giraffe has been spotted in the wild in Africa!” the conservation organisation Giraffe Conservation Foundation reported. According to the organisation, photographer Eckart Demasius photographed the spotless giraffe in the Namibian wild, near the Mount Etjo Safari Lodge.
(from BBC Africa news)
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And finally, this is a (poor) copy of a copy of a photo I took in 1996, at Langata Nature Education Centre ... my son Tim feeding a giraffe from the top of a tower, so that visitors are eye-level with the giraffes.
At Hands Around the World, we have supporters who don't go on projects, but who do like to knit, using any odd donated wool they can collect.
So I was delighted to see this three photos of new born babies in Zambia wearing some of the newly donated multi-coloured jumpers from our knitting ladies !
People have asked me, why WOOL jumpers in Africa ? Because the altitude means it gets very cold at night, and new-borns can be very vulnerable to the cold !
