Tuesday 25th March 2008

We did the 250km drive back to Nairobi yesterday in only 4½ hours (the roads are shocking) and stayed at the Anglican Guest House. Pastor Daniel took us to his office at the Nairobi Baptist Centre on the way. We requested a 6am wakeup call which came at 5.30! So we headed off to the airport bound for Uganda. The 40 min drive from Entebbe to the capital of Kampala is beautiful and green, it’s hard to believe this was once Idi Amin’s killing fields. We checked in to the Nami Rembi guest house and caught up on some emailing. Tomorrow we’re off to visit a village that the Wototo children’s project is involved in. Should be good.

Pastor Daniel & Mama Muenge

Friday 12th- Monday 24th March 2008
Ye ha ! We have just landed back in Nairobi. Had a great shower, washed my dreaddies and am here to fill you in on all the goodies. Where to begin? There is so much to say, trying to capture the feel of the last 10 days. Let’s just say the kids didn’t want to leave and there was a quiet tear shed. I might put things in note form for more info.- It feels like from morning till night you are either picking vegies, cutting vegies, washing vegies or cooking them. All this was being done on the floor of the outside kitchen with their little tabby curled up by the fire and a few chooks picking at the plates from the last meal with cows mooing at the door and poppy the dog dozing in the red dirt.

- Cooking can be fiddly .The potatoes and garlic are so small that trying to peel them with a blunt knife can be quite a chore (Mental note: buy potato peeler, broom, sharp knives, containers, lanterns, candles.... hang the candles, let’s get the house wired! So 3 electricians, 1 carpenter, solar panel, battery, wires and bla bla bla, the famous quote from a faithful friend of mine ‘let there be light’, became a reality... and there was much rejoicing in a very subdued Kenyan way.- One of Pete’s visits into town to organise the lights (you know how focused he can get when he’s on a mission) found him tearing down the drive way calling “quick kids the cow’s giving birth” so maths books went flying and we bolted to the neighbour’s paddock to see pastor Daniel “the midwife” just delivering the calf. We all let out a cheer and sat excitedly awaiting her first steps.
- Now with the boys off to town I never realised that Mama Muenge was under strict instructions from pastor Daniel to kill the rooster ready for dinner. Now as rural as she is she didn’t want to kill the rooster, the kids didn’t want to eat a friend, and the neighbour didn’t want to kill it. But she said she must obey her husband, something I assured her I fully understood. I too am a woman under authority. I told her I could gut it and cut it but not kill it. SO... we paid the equivalent of $1.20 to John the shepherd boy to kill it and the rest is history. Elijah forgot about his companion and just hoed into the neck like he bought it from Woolies and we all enjoyed a chewy rooster stew... Next morning was quieter. Mahalia noticed the other rooster had taken pole position and was enjoying the harem with no other male competition...
- Maddi and I took on the job of sorting through the rice for any foreign objects. We sat in the sun with an amazing view of the surrounding mountains and did our ritual rice sorting.
- Besides the constant smell of urine on our shoes I’d say the whole pit toilet thing was a breeze (Pete’s balance is definitely improving).- Wood was chopped and water heated every morning for a bucket wash splashed on by hand. It was a treat and a great way to start the day.- One last thing before I hand over to Pete. The Kenyan people sure no how to greet each other. The women shake hands like arm wrestlers and the men show no partiality, they greet you with big smiles. Pastor Daniel had the only car in the village of 1000 so everyone stopped for a chat and a shake wishing us a ‘good safari’.. Kaz

Pete here. The past 10 days in the village of Kariki (it’s really more of a community of small farms than a village) have been very cool. I was wondering how the kids would go with no running water and no electricity. They also had to share a hard single bed and their diet was somewhat different from the buffets they’ve become accustomed to. Well I’m very proud to report they were FANTASTIC! Didn’t miss a beat. They slipped into the “simple life” like they’d been doing it all their lives. As Kaz mentioned they didn’t want to leave.

I, on the other hand, had a tough time getting used to “kune matata” (African time). It makes “Broome time” seem positively punctual. I was on a solar mission as Kaz put it, and knew that we needed certain supplies and had a very limited time to get them. For a start we needed money, but the ATMs have a daily limit of “chicken feed”, so we had to travel 1½ hours EACH WAY over the roughest of roads in a Toyota Corolla 4 days in a row to the nearest town with an ATM, Nyeri, just to pay for it! We tore a hole in the exhaust, broke the rear suspension leaf spring and cracked the cylinder head, and that was just in the 10 days we were here. Then we had to get home before the afternoon rains. You simply can’t drive on the last 9kms of dirt road if it’s even a little wet, it turns to mud that’s as slippery as ice. Now since I was unkeen to walk 9 kms in the rain and mud, I wanted to get moving, but noooo, We must “take breakfast” first, then heat the water for our wash, etc, etc. Getting the supplies was also a lesson in the 4th fruit of the Spirit, but we eventually got it all done... nearly. They haven’t quite finished the installation so the family is only hooked up to the battery at the moment. The panel that recharges the battery will hopefully be put up on Thursday. Having said that, I must admit the drive to and from Nyeri each day was always fascinating. They don’t buy fruit and veg from a store, they buy it from people along the side of the road when you enter a little village. You slow down and the many vendors rush up to your car yelling in the local Kikuyu dialect and thrusting their produce through your window, literally cms from your face, 6 bags of onions, 4 bags of garlic cloves, 5 bags of carrots and even the odd capsicum. You then negotiate the price and bob’s your uncle! You’ve got a bag of onions in your lap though you’re not sure which hand they came from and which one you gave the money to. Pastor Daniel also took me to meet the village committee responsible for their water project. They plan to pipe water from a river nearly 10kms away so that every house will have water on tap. At present, Daniel drives his little Corolla 8kms to the river every day and fills up 2x100 litre barrels (that’s 200kgs in the back) over a road that would cause even a 4 wheel drive to bottom out. Add to this 4 or 5 passengers hitching a lift on the way (no I’m not exaggerating) and it’s not hard to see why the car is constantly getting damaged. Mind you, he’s the only one with a car. The others have to walk or use a donkey. Actually, helping him collect the water with Elijah was a highlight. There is a family of Black & White Colobus monkeys at the river. They are spectacular, so beautiful in fact that their pelt is prized for Village Chiefs to wear as hats.

Local boys collecting the daily water

Any hoo, they took us to see where the big water tank was going to go, and while we were there, we saw a small herd of elephants. They have put up an electric fence to keep them out of the village (I’m not sure where the power comes from) but the farmers still graze their cows on the elephant’s side. Turns out the elephants don’t like sharing their pasture and 3 days ago they killed one of the cows by picking it up and throwing it, then trampling it! Apparently the current record is 12m for a cow throw.Another highlight of the last 10 days was sitting down and doing schoolwork with the kids. It was like little house on the prairie. What nice children I have! Watching them interact and play with the local kids who love to practice their English on them, seeing Elijah guide a flock of sheep through the gate for the night with a machete in hand, feeding chickens, attempting to milk the cows, cooking over a fire in a smoke filled little hut, it was awesome!

Church was pretty cool too. I preached on Palm Sunday in Kariki and travelled to Pastor Daniel’s home village, where he grew up, for Easter Sunday. They dance and sing for 1½ hours unaccompanied - very African and absolutely amazing!

Maddi: Wow! What an experience... To be honest living on a farm is pretty cool, 10 days just wasn’t enough! Cows, sheep and chickens (which sadly we ate one, as Mum mentioned earlier because for them it was an honour to kill a rooster and offer it to your guest... I tried talking them out of it!!!) ‘Norman’ the calf Mahalia named the first day we arrived, was the cutest calf, he had floppy ears and not to mention there was always a dag coming out the end of you know what. (Maddi: “Elijah, that looks painful for Norman, go pull it off” which to no-one’s surprise he actually went to do it, Mum: “NO!!! SHE WAS JOKING” of course I gave out a giggle! Thank goodness he didn’t actually do it!)

Ps. Daniel and Mama Muage’s grand daughter, Alice, lives with them and she is a gracious young girl who helps with cooking and house chores... She shared a room with Mahalia and myself. Alice and her friend, Janet, both were amazed at my long hair; they brushed plaited and did everything else with it that you could possibly imagine! (At their school if they don’t shave their head every week they get beaten!) They said when they leave school they want to grow it down their back. It was a great past 10 days, I definitely won’t forget... Maddi

Elijah: The last 10 day were magnificent. I did some jobs and the one I really enjoyed was a shepherd. I met a boy called John who was all by himself in the paddock so I went and helped him but I didn’t get to talk with him a lot because he didn’t know English which was a shame. I brought the cows in and when John milked the cow he let me have a go, and also I went with him to go and chop wood with a machete. When we had dinner we lit a candle every night for light. A year ago they bought an electric oven but they haven’t used it because they don’t have power, but they did have a solar panel. So we brought them some wires and lights so that they had power to run off the solar panel. I’m glad it helped them. The last 10 days on that farm were great! Elijah

Mahalia: well... there is not much more to say EXCEPT that, the morning after we ate one of their roosters we woke up to see three new baby chicks, a new baby calf next door and a relieved puppy that we let of his lead. Don’t worry aunty Donna we have been working, in fact, we’ve been learning from the books you gave Elijah... science (great inventions), earth (under the sea), history (ancient Egypt). We’ve also been doing maths, reading and I’ve been getting good at Sudoku. We have already given away 2 books, one to Alice who we are sharing a room with (Charlie and the Chocolate factory “Roald Dahl”) and one to another Alice who lives next door (James and the Giant peach “Roald Dahl”).(I highly recommend these Books to Uncle Wayne’s crew). J Mahalia!!!