22nd November 2007

I woke up at 2am and it was raining. It didn’t stop until 8am. The place is absolutely flooded, both in the house and out. (That’s the problem with having a wide open house!). There are rivulets of rain water flowing into the main river all over the place, including just below the house.

At about 7.30am, the Mtito River came down in flood – the first time it has flowed this year – cutting away its banks and causing great chunks of sand to splash noisily into the water. At the mouth of the Mtito, where it flows into the Athi, its appearance changed by the minute as more and more of its banks fell in, and bushes along its edge were washed away in the torrent.

We went up to the “dam” on the top end of our property. It’s not really a dam, per se – more like a weir that we built across the Mtito River with boulders. It doesn’t stop the flow, but allows some deeper water to build up behind it, which we thought would be nice for the hippos and the crocodiles. Unfortunately, our idea did not really work all that well, for the weir fills up with silt very quickly – we need to add a couple of sluice gates, so that we can flush the silt out every now and then. Nonetheless it’s a lush pretty area during the rains, with lots of yellow-barked acacia trees, tall doum palms, and great long tufts of grass. The river cut several channels along its course, and really, if one did not know better, looking at the photos one could think you were in a high rainfall area.

The Egyptian Geese have taken over a Hammerkop’s nest there (the bees took it over at one stage too) – this is where “our” gosling family hatched out – the difference being that, when they hatched out, there was no water in the river, so they had to fall from a great height onto dry land, and then walk the kilometre or so to the main Athi River. Imagine that journey, for a tiny gosling just a few centimetres tall. Their nest having been taken over, the Hammerkops have built another nest in the same doum palm – a great big shaggy looking thing.

We went and had a look at the Athi River further upstream from our property too – walking through beds of new white flowers which are springing up everywhere. The aftermath of last week’s flood was quite unbelievable – huge piles of debris, taller than I am, piled up on the river’s edge. If nothing else, this brings home the power of a big river in flood.

A Genet Cat was sitting on top of one of the bee hives hanging in the acacia tortilis on the top road – we think maybe it had been sleeping in one of the hives and had been flooded out. As we drove past, it jumped off the hive, but I managed to get a couple of shots of it in the undergrowth – a bit fuzzy because it was behind a lot of twigs but you can clearly see its face. At this time of year, it will have a stomach full of flying ants (termites) – and a thousand other kinds of insects.

The Striped Swallows are back in the kitchen again, intent on taking up residence on our ceiling fan. You would think they would get tired of being startled every time someone walks into the kitchen. Sitting in the sun on the driveway outside the kitchen window, their feathers were bright, glossy blue.

I added Wattled Starlings to my bird list – they’re following the rain.

I desperately need to get away from here, to a place where I cannot take any photos, for I am getting so behind with my uploading. Because we don't have electricity 24/7 and I can only work on my journal after work hours, it's impossible to keep up, especially at this time of year where everything is changing so fast with the rain. Please bear with me - eventually the photos will come...