Safari Notes

Lifestraw LifeStraw is a portable water filter, manufactured by a Swiss company: Vestergaard Frandsen - that removes all bacteria and parasites responsible for causing diseases, especially diarrhea. Many people in Africa have to boil water to kill harmful parasites and bacteria in the water. Which means burning charcoal or firewood; which means the cutting down of trees. A few months ago, Vestergaard Frandsen launched a project called Carbon for Water - to provide hundreds of thousands of their water filter to Western Kenya. Nearly 900,000 LifeStraw® Family water filters will be installed in almost all households in the Western Province of Kenya beginning on 26 April. The province-wide, door-to-door, free distribution program will last almost six weeks and reach about 90 percent of all homes without access to safe municipal water sources. It will provide point-of-use water filtration for Kenyan residents for at least 10 years and do so without any cost to local residents, gov...

IMF forecast According to the IMF, there is now fast economic growth in East Africa . All countries in East Africa are reportedly doing very well. In reality, are East African countries truly doing well? Are lives improving? All East African countries are indeed growing; they are all projected to grow by about 5% this year and the coming few years. But then, look at the region's GDP based on PPP per capita; considering how fast the population is growing in the region, the economic growths are not that impressive: in 2016 - Kenya's GDP will reach about $2,500 while Burundi's, the poorest country in East Africa, will hover at about $500. Compare that to (in 2009): South Africa's or Botswana's - both at about $10,000; or Seychelles, with about $30,000; or the richest country in the world - Qatar, which has about $74,000. Gapminder: HIV trends Ever heard of Gapminder ? It is an amazing, superb tool that provides you with such a variety of statistics, cha...

Do you, unlike I, love social-networking? Do you like Facebook or Twitter? Millions of people are now using social-networking services; especially the young - and most of them waste much precious time while on such platforms and many fail exams due to these services. Still, the rage is on. And Google is not being left behind. For long, Google has tried repeatedly to enter in to social media; and repeatedly they have failed:  Orkut , Buzz , Wave and Friend Connect have all been tried by the search giant but without much success. And now, they have come up with:  Google Plus .  For those wanting to sign-up to the much talked about and the very fast expanding Google+, it is now very easy to get an 'invite'. Click here or here and easily get the 'invite' and sign-up to Google Plus.

African Gray Parrot With the Ugandan Wildlife Authority last week releasing over 200 African gray parrots back into the wild after being confiscated from poachers near Kasese, many animal lovers in Uganda and around the world were and are still celebrating. Just six months ago, a woman trying to smuggle over 130 parrots was arrested by Ugandan authorities.  African grey parrots are so prized and so highly valued by 'pet lovers', especially in the West, that, these birds are in danger of being wiped out completely from the wild. The African gray parrots are considered among the most intelligent of birds. Several sub-species of this very loveable birds have been identified, but it is only the Congo African Grey Parrot or CAG ( Psittacus erithacus erithacus ) and the smaller Timneh African Grey Parrot or TAG ( Psittacus erithacus timneh ) that are universally recognized as Gray Parrots . Grey parrots habitat, range from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Angola all the way to Ivo...

Kenya Renewable Energy Of developing regions, Africa has had the highest percentage rise in investments in renewable energy; in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is leading the way. With electric power being unreliable and power bills rising, many Kenyans - of whom 25% use electricity - are turning to solar panels; both in urban and rural areas. Solar power is clean, very convenient and in the long run, cheaper to use. Many hotels, furnished apartments for rental and households around Nairobi, are opting for solar panels to heat up water; in rural areas, where most use the uneconomical and the very unhealthy kerosene lanterns, many are now turning to solar power; one Kenyan company - Solantern - is very much assisting in that. Kenya is already a leader of renewable energy with three quarters of the country's energy coming from hydro-power and a further 11percent coming from geothermal sources . When the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant is completed, it will be the largest of its kind i...

On a scale not seen on the continent in nearly 60 years, famine is once again stalking Africa. Caused mainly by the severest droughts in years; and also by the effects of climate change , floods, mismanagement of land and food supplies, political instability, and regional conflicts. Nearly 11 million people are now affected and starving, mainly in Somalia; and also in: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and even in Uganda - the land of plenty . BLOATED bellies with stick arms and legs; huge eyes staring out of skeletal heads; gaunt mothers trying to suckle babies on withered breasts. The world thought it might never see such scenes again. Famine in Africa, absent for many years, appeared to have gone the way of diseases for which we now have cures or vaccines. Yet, after the worst drought in 60 years, more than 10m people in the Horn of Africa need emergency food aid. Livestock have been annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming into refugee camps in search of help. Malnutri...

Snow Leopard Great, wonderful news this week: first - a good number of the very elusive, endangered snow leopard has been discovered, thriving, in, of all places: Afghanistan. The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study. The discovery gives hope to the world’s most elusive big cat, which calls home to some of the world’s tallest mountains. Between 4,500 and 7,500 snow leopards remain in the wild scattered across a dozen countries in Central Asia . Read more here . The discovery was made using camera traps high up in the remote Afghan north-east mountains. As with most wild animals, the leopard's greatest danger is from man: mainly poachers. Long-legged Borneo Rainbow Toad Then, another more elating, wonderful news : a toad that was thought to be extinct and was last seen 87 years ago - and never photographe...