Habari za siku nyingi?

Habari za siku nyingi?

How have things been these many days? Today is the beginning of the ninth week since John and I arrived in Kenya on January 4th, my 61st birthday! I’m writing from our Kenyan home-away-from-home, the little house on the grounds of the Michinda Boys Primary Boarding School in Elburgon. It has been home for 4 months out of the past year, and although very basic, it lacks nothing. Clean, running water (most of the time) comes from a bore hole behind the house (the pump has been a bit capricious but we’ve learned to fill every spare water jug and pot while it IS running and so have enough water for coffee, drinking, cooking and bathing when we want...laundry has to wait). The water was out this morning when I woke, but just now I can hear it bubbling back into the tank...we’ll be able to do laundry today.


We have electricity which has been very dependable, except for the night before last when it cut out after dark...and it WAS dark! The window shutters and doors on the house are heavy wood...there are no screens, so when they’re closed after dark, the house is pitch black. Our headlamps provided adequate light for the regular evening game of Scrabble, but candles are now on the shopping list!

The school uses our back yard for garden space, and although the last crop of cabbage, spinach and kale has been harvested, there are enough volunteers plants that we have tender spinach and kale with almost every meal.

Our purchases from town include eggs, fruit, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, cereal, coffee, tea, peanut butter, jam, sugar, olive oil, salt, bread, peanuts, rice and toilet paper, bath soap and laundry detergent. With these ingredients, we’re able to make simple meals that keep body and soul together and taste great! We cook in a round pot (sufuria) on a propane tank that sits on the floor...all meals are one pot meals, which cuts down on dishes. Daniel, the young man who cares for the school’s cows, brings us fresh milk in a large kettle every morning...probably half a gallon...and we consume it all in our cups of tea and coffee each day. The milk is warm when it arrives, and we boil it before we use it. Without refrigeration, which we don’t have, it lasts easily for a day, sometimes more.

Doing laundry is one of my favorite tasks here. On a daily basis, clothing doesn’t really get dirty so much as it becomes impregnated with dust. Dust is everywhere! Unless one cleans everyday, dust accumulates in a steadily thickening film on tables, window sills, counters, floors, furniture, dishes, towels, and in hair and clothing. You may not be able to see it in the clothing, but you know it’s there. The proof comes at laundry time. After filling a bucket with water from the outside tap, pouring in a little OMO detergent and swishing the clothes around a bit in the suds, the water is almost black! After washing my fleece jacket the other day, there was / mud/ in the bottom of the bucket. I used to think it was dye from the fabric...the clothes just couldn’t have been that dirty! But since I’ve been washing the same 3 or so pairs of pants and 3 shirts I’ve been wearing now for 2 months, I’ve realized that it can’t be dye...it’s dust! You can imagine how satisfying it is to know you’ve removed all of that dust you didn’t know was there and then hang the clean laundry in the sun to dry. On a clear day, the sun is hot by 8 am and the clothes dry quickly. After hanging the various articles on the line in the backyard, I find myself at the clothesline, checking each piece like I would a dish on the stove...feeling, turning, readjusting so that the towels are behind the shirts and not blocking the sun’s rays, turning the pants upside down to expose the fabric at the waist to the heat, gathering up the dry articles and folding them...only to realize that anything I wear today will be back in the bucket tomorrow, even if I’ve only sat in the office or ridden around in the van during the day...even if I can’t see the dust, it will be there.

I don’t like doing laundry at home, so discovering that I love doing laundry here in Kenya has been a revelation. How can this be? I think it’s several things. Here, everything one does seems to take a lot more time. Cooking, bathing, laundry, shopping...each activity requires preparation time...boiling the milk for coffee, heating the water for a bath, shopping for food at the general store, the fruit stand, the vegetable stand, the butchery for meat, and maybe picking greens from the garden for the next meal. You don’t hurry the process. While one is bathing, doing laundry, or boiling milk, there’s no multi-tasking, no anxiety about what happens next, what one is/ not /doing at the moment, or what one /could /or /should/ be doing instead. There’s time to just "be", to focus on the activity at hand and enjoy it as it happens.

I find myself wondering..."what is it that keeps me so busy at home, running from one thing to the next, stressing about all the things I haven’t done and still need to do? If I’m not doing all these things (at home) while I’m in Kenya, if they’re simply not happening because I’m not there, are they really all that important? What /are/ these things that take up so much time anyway? And, as the Kenyans are fond of saying, "at the end of the day", is my life, or anyone else’s, better for all the busy-ness I’ve engaged in?" Really? Interesting questions. I haven’t yet been able to reproduce in Oregon the equanimity and "slowness" I enjoy so much here. But I keep trying.

During the month of January, John and I were joined by four friends from Oregon for the inauguration of Terra Made African Safaris, our new collaborative effort with our partners in Molo from the Network for EcoFarming in Africa (NECOFA). Terra Madre refers to the international Slow Food www.slowfood.org meeting which takes place in Torino, Italy every two years. In 2004, at the first Terra Madre meeting, John and I met Samuel Muhunyu, the coordinator of NECOFA and of the Slow Food Central Rift Valley group. In 2006, we reconnected in Torino at the second Terra Madre and agreed to visit Samuel in Molo on our next trip. Out of these fortuitous meetings grew our partnership. Samuel and his staff now coordinate and manage our projects in Kenya in our absence and provide us with guidance and support in all of our activities.

The new Terra Madre African Safaris provide an opportunity for people to come to Kenya, to visit our projects in Molo and other parts of Kenya, and to have a wonderful time while doing it! On this inaugural safari, we spent several days visiting the groups and projects supported by FKSW and NECOFA in the Molo area and at Lake Baringo. We spent four spectacular days in the Masai Mara, the game park in southern Kenya that constitutes the northern portion of the Serengeti National Park. We also had an enjoyable day at Lake Nakuru National Park, a morning at Lake Bogoria where the baby flamingos come to eat and grow, and then in the last week, flew to the coast to spend some days at Lamu, the oldest Arab town in East Africa. Then we enjoyed several beautiful days in Kilifi, a a small town south of Lamu, also on the coast.

Our visitors returned home at the end of January and John left for Oregon on Feb. 8 after attending a week long strategic planning workshop led by the NECOFA team. We learned a lot and were able to use our new knowledge to organize our work and plans for future projects. I’ll be here in Molo until March 31st working with NECOFA and continuing with FKSW projects. This month’s schedule is already full.

Just before John left, Jordan Roney, a young man from Eugene joined us. He is here for 2 months to work with Samuel and NECOFA on various projects and also to experience Africa. He’s having a great time and it’s wonderful to have his help. Currently, he’s working on a "program" for other people, young and older, who want to come for a longer period of time than the typical safari and have an experience like his. His work will provide a before-trip orientation for participants and give them a better idea of what the experience will be like. We’re also working on a similar packet for the Terra Madre Safaris.

In the next "Kitu Kidogo Kutoka Kenya", I’ll write more about some of the highlights of the past 2 months: projects that have been completed or are currently underway, including a medical camp that we held for a day in the community on Kokwa Island (Lake Baringo), our 10 day trip to Rwanda in mid-February, the 4 day silk cocoon processing workshop I attended with women from the Karunga women’s group, which makes the great knitted animals we’ve been selling.

I’m working at home today on reports...on the strategic planning workshop we had in February and on the medical camp at Kokwa. I’ll spend the next two days with the Karunga Women’s Group and members of the Molo Wool Project, then one day with the Utugi Women’s Group, who are also spinning wool for making baskets. Friday and Saturday will be back in the office...everyone works on Saturday...to finish our strategic plan for Friends of Kenya Schools and Wildlife. But now, it’s time to heat water for a bath. Later, we’ll make a shopping list and walk down to Elburgon village for eggs, pineapple, bananas, onions and... candles!

Kwaheri ya kuoandika tena,

Gwen