A drive in the Rift Valley

Hello Everyone,

I believe it's a good idea to report on one's adventures and experience. It's easier and more fun to capture the most beautiful images of your life on daily basis, so that it will remain as historical records in the future which may enrich your memories.


Today, I travelled through some parts of The Great Rift Valley of Kenya for the first time. These places really attracted me so much and I liked both its natural habitat and climate. It's such a fascinating place to be with lots of things to see and learn. I took some pictures of the things I saw but not everything. The green land, the waterfalls, the lakes, the zigzag roads that were slithering like a snake and everything else that i find worth sharing. The photos may not be that much good because I took it with my Sumsung phone, apologies.

 A sign board advertising Coca Cola, I am not sure if people here had the appetite or the means to consume it. There is the zigzag road at the background, use high resolution lenses for better view..:)

 On the way to Kabarnet, we passed through these mountains using this scary roads as we moved to a lower altitude. Rift Valleys are the lowlands between highlands or mountain ranges. The Great Rift Valley, with its associated escarpments and mountains, is a major feature. It runs the length of the country from Lake Turkana in the north to Lake Natron on the southern border with Tanzania.

The  road was actually zigzag and sometimes dangerous, Near Kerio Valley National Park.

We drove through the scenic Tugen Hills for about 38 Kilometres before we get to Kabarnet. That was our destination. I think we did some pretty good job there.

 The place was covered with stones that probably fell from the mountains. The most scary part of the journey was when a man working for the government told us that there are actually big stones that fall from the mountains and risk the lives of the villagers living under it. I could imagine how dangerous that was.

Our driver

 I didn't notice it in the first time, but our driver was really scared driving through these mountainous and dangerous terrain. I think you can tell that from his posture, hahahahah..:)

                                        One of the few 'shops' we saw in the area. 


The most funny part of this trip was when i saw a small single room house that was destroyed, probably by fierce wind, it had no roof nor windows. I believe no human being lived there, but it, surprisingly, had a name written on it which read "FRED AND SONS COMPLEX". lol. I couldn't take a photo of it.

Part of their simple homes. a 'complex'..:)

Beautiful scene, hundreds probably thousands of meters below the water level.

The above two photos are taken below the mountains. you can see the waterfalls at the background.

 We saw two waterfalls, both originating from  the mountains. One of them had muddy water that are caused by the rains while the other was a permanent clean waterfall that continues throughout the year. They both provide drinking water  as well as irrigation for the locals.

A clear waterfall in the background

The Sun bidding goodbye until 2morow so that people can have a calm night..:) The beautiful colors are just a reflection.

Some of the locals wondering why we were there. They were hospitable, though.

The village's mosque, Iten.

 On our way back to Eldoret, we came across this mosque at Asr prayer time. There were people praying there. men, women and children. There was also a Quranic school in the upper part of the Mosque. It was really cold there.

The weather in fury.

The SUNSET

The Swamps. Electricity poles.

When we were leaving Eldoret, the weather was clear. Fantastiiik..!!

But it turned rough few minutes into the trip, you wont like it.

The mission was successful though it still remains classified, but the good news is that we came back safely. Tomorrow, I will be travelling to another part of this beautiful country. I expect the climate to be rainy and the weather will probably be cold.


Kabarnet's location is in close proximity to various attractive scenes, which include Lake Bogoria, Baringo and the Tugen hills.


See you again in another post..:)


Salaaams

We need an Educational Revolution

I believe fundamentally that we make very poor use of our talents. Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. There are people who don't think they're really good at anything and others who don't enjoy what they do. They simply go through their lives getting on with it. They get no great pleasure from what they do. They endure it rather than enjoy it and wait for the weekend. But there are also people who love what they do and couldn't imagine doing anything else. In fact, on the contrary, I think it's still true of a minority of people.

I think there are many possible explanations for it. And high among them is education, because education, in a way, dislocates very many people from their natural talents. And human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.

 Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment and it's not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving a broken model. What we need is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.

One of the real challenges is to innovate fundamentally in education. Innovation is hard because it means doing something that people don't find very easy, for the most part. It means challenging what we take for granted, things that we think are obvious. The great problem for reform or transformation is the tyranny of common sense; things that people think, "Well, it can't be done any other way because that's the way it's done."

I came across a great quote recently from Abraham Lincoln, in December 1862 to the second annual meeting of Congress, he said, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion, as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Many of our ideas have been formed, not to meet the circumstances of this century, but to cope with the circumstances of previous centuries. But our minds are still hypnotized by them, and we have to disenthrall ourselves of some of them. Now, doing this is easier said than done.

But there are things we're enthralled to in education. Let me give you a couple of examples. One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. Life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us. But we have become obsessed with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college. I think we are obsessed with getting people to college. Certain sorts of college. I don't mean you shouldn't go to college, but not everybody needs to go and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.

To me, human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability. And at the heart of our challenges is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence.

I think we have to recognize a couple of things here. One is that human talent is tremendously diverse. People have very different aptitudes. But it's not only about that. It's about passion, and what excites our spirit and our energy. The reason so many people are opting out of education is because it doesn't feed their spirit, it doesn't feed their energy or their passion.

I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.

When we look at reforming education and transforming it, it isn't like cloning a system. It's about customizing to your circumstances and personalizing education to the people you're actually teaching. And doing that, I think, is the answer to the future because it's not about scaling a new solution; it's about creating a movement in education in which people develop their own solutions, but with external support based on a personalized curriculum.

I believe the extraordinary technological resources we have, combined with the extraordinary talents of teachers, provide an opportunity to revolutionize education. But we have to change from the industrial model to an agricultural model, where each school can be flourishing tomorrow. That's where children experience life, Real life.