Coffee, wax and dyed fingers

If you were planning on sending some mail, now is the time to use my address in Kenya since I will be leaving glorious Tanzania in two weeks (commence the sad goodbye tears)


Brigitta Rongstad
Center for Wildlife Management Studies 
P.O. Box 27743 (Nyayo Stadium)
00506 – NAIROBI, KENYA
East Africa 


On our last non scheduled program day, about half of our group decided to travel to Gibb’s farm, a coffee plantation and beautiful lodge, for our first real cup of coffee in Africa. Let’s just say that it’s been so long since I’ve had caffeine, that I reacted very similarly to how I react when I drink red bull and jaeger (that joke is for you Dad). I swear I only had two cups, but it was the most heavenly two cups of coffee I have ever had in my life. The views of this place were also incredible. My jaw pretty much dropped when I sat down in a giant wooden chair with my steaming cup of joe and looked over the ridge into the valley. 

 Beautiful view with my coffee

 One of the lodge's beautiful cabins

We also got a tour of the small farm adjacent to the lodge where they grow some of the coffee and also vegetables. We saw where the shelled the ripe coffee beans and also where the shelled beans were laid out to dry.

 Nature shot, lily style

 Drying coffee beans

 Coffee beans not yet harvested

View looking up Gibb's Farm

After Gibb’s farm, our group had an amazing opportunity to make our batik, a “painting” on a cotton cloth created through the use wax and paint layers. The basic process first requires outlining the image you wish to create (which was done for all of us incapable artists- naturally I picked the giraffe one). The second step was to decide whether or not you wanted white in you picture. I did not, since I was aiming for ultimate simplicity, but if you did you covered the places on the cloth you wished to be white with a layer of wax. Next you moved on to the dyeing station. Here you chose what “light” colors you wished to start with. I chose yellow, orange and a light red, which I applied over my entire cloth. After drying the paint, I moved to the waxing station where I then covered the background of my design (i.e. not the giraffes I had outlined on the cloth) with wax so to preserve the beautiful sunset colors I had just painted. I then moved back to the painting station to paint my giraffes black. And yes, I’m aware giraffes are not black, but I dig rocks not paintings. We left our final creations with the wonderful teacher so that he could iron the wax off, and I will know tomorrow how poorly it went. My fingers are still dyed black, but it's okay since I'm constantly covered in dirt here anyways.