Ni Ni, Ltd.

One of the biggest exports in Kenya, next to tea and coffee, is the flower. Flowers are shipped all over Europe, including Amsterdam and London.

This is a huge industry, especially in Lake Naivasha, providing thousands of jobs, bringing in a lot of money, but also having an effect on the Lake...after all, you have to water flowers and where does the water come from and where does the runoff go?
Now, depending on who you talk to and which flower farm you look at, you will find very radical differences. Driving down the main road that goes around the lake, we saw one of the bigger flower farms and we were not impressed. The runoff from watering the flowers (chemicals and all) were flowing back to the street where cattle were drinking from it and we can only assume that it was flowing into the lake as well.

Now do a complete 180 and drive down the road a bit and you will find Sarah and Mike's flower farm called Ni Ni, Ltd. (I think that literally translated means, 'what, what, ltd')

They have 46 greenhouses of roses, one of the smaller flower farms in the area. They have 600 workers who get picked up for work in the morning and dropped off after work, fed meals, get to take home all the treated water they want, and have a health clinic on site that is free for the employees and their families.

Ruth, who runs the place took us around and showed us the different varieties of roses, some really beautiful ones and explained the process from growing to shipping and everything in between, including how they water the roses. They use a computer that tells them when they need watering, use hydroponic watering, recycle the water and use it again, the computer telling them what chemicals to add or take away and then the water is treated to take out the chemicals and finally it goes through a wetland before being released into the lake, it all seems like a very lake friendly way to grow roses.

(The photos above show a variety called VIVA, the employees working and cutting the roses at just the right time, they put them into the buckets to be prepped for shipping)

As a side story: the white rose with the red flakes in it is one of the newest varieties, called Entertain. It went to auction and Ni Ni, Ltd decided to try to do some good by giving a portion of the money from that day to a worthy cause (I can't remember where the money went...an orphanage maybe? Help me out Sarah) and it got the highest price of a new flower at auction, yea!!)

With all the controversy and all the flower farms in the area, it will be interesting to see if any restrictions are enforced in the near future.

(Photos below are of the roses ready to be cut and the pile of roses are the ones that didn't make the cut...will be given away or tossed - I volunteered to take them :), then they are all packaged up and ready to head to the airport, they are in cold storage so they won't open or die)


Another side note: On MY way to the airport to leave Kenya (sad), my flight left around midnight, I passed a big truck that said Ni Ni, Ltd. on the side, it was also on the road to the airport, do you think we were in the same plane??


The photos below are in my favorite room of all, where I offered to work, check it out! They have to make sure that they roses last for a certain number of days and open up in order to guarantee them to the stores, now wouldn't this be THE job?! Its a tough one, but someone's gotta do it!

After talking to people living around the lake, I think that the increase in people coming to the lake to live (the population has expanded dramatically in the last ten years) is having a dramatic affect on the lake, not only the flower farms. You can see people washing their clothes right next to the lake, bathing in the lake, pumping water out of the lake and spraying their cattle near the lake. Not good ways to keep the lake healthy. There are regulations in place to prevent this I think, but there is no enforcement taking place.

Historically, the lake has dried up completely a few times, the level of the water fluctuates quite dramatically, so its tough to determine the future of the lake with all the added stresses (people). If the lake has completely dried up, then you may wonder, where did the fish come from? Yes, fish have been introduced - carp, bass, tilapia as well as crayfish. Without all these introductions, we'd never have all the eagles living here, about 150 of them on the lake as well as over 400 species of birds... so people aren't all bad :)

Lake Naivasha Pictures

Greetings! I thought I would post some pictures of a few of the amazing creatures I was fortunate enough to see at Lake Naivasha, on a daily basis...

Lake Naivasha

My last couple days in Naivasha were great…lots of walks in the riparian and at the lakefront, I saw all the great mammals, including a group of giraffe that had three very small giraffe, they couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 feet tall, really young and so fun to watch. They could completely disappear behind some of the acacia trees and then reappear moments later to look for leaves on a new tree. They would wonder away from the others and then run to get back to the rest of the crew. And what was even more incredible was how close we all were to each other and they didn’t even seem to notice I was around, have I become just another grazer on the land?

At the lake, I was seeing and hearing many fish eagles and in the morning, I saw four eagles on these large rocks right at the shoreline, they were all in a row, what were they waiting for? Three marabou storks were at the edge of the water as well, then wandered into the grass and sat down right in front of me. Hundreds of cormorants fly overhead each morning and the kingfishers are fishing right in front of me.

My last night involved camping on the other side of the lake so we could go out on the boat to track the eagles that have transmitters on, we found two of the three. The water was really choppy, so taking pictures required some creativity. Believe it or not taking pictures is also key (I know, its awesome, isn’t it?). If we can get a photo of them eagles legs, then we can see if there is a band and what the letters are, making them easy to identify.

That night, I could have sworn the hippos were nearly in our tents…they were on the other side of a short electrical fence (would that really stop a hippo from crossing?) and they were definitely living it up! There was lots of snorting and dining on the lush green grass ALL night long (or it seemed so), it was awesome, but I didn’t dare look out.

We were back out on the boat before the sun rose and I’m surprised that we didn’t encounter any hippos on our way to the boat dock, we did make it onto the boat without incident. We saw lots of eagles, a great sunrise and even some other great birds (and hippos on the water). Herons, kingfishers, pelicans, night herons, the highlight was a black egret looking for fish right in front of us!

I spent the afternoon with Munir and Sarah and their lovely boys (who are going to Disney World this week!) before traveling to the airport, such a fun family! Too bad I wasn’t ready to leave Kenya.