Rain, gardens and baskets!

Rain, lovely rain.  We are getting lots of rain.  In Maralal.  In Ngurunit.  Plenty of rain, finally, after so long without.  I have been in Maralal since coming back from Ngurunit a couple weeks ago.  I get news from people there that it is raining well and that our cattle have been able to leave our compound and go back to their normal life of following the pasture and being kept in grazing camps where ever the grass and fodder is.  After over 4 months of feeding them hay and supplements at our Ngurunit home to keep them alive, it is wonderful to hear that the conditions have improved.  I will get my veranda back to myself now instead of having to share it with a bunch of cows!!  Yay!!

Here in Maralal I have been busy getting my yard and garden back in shape.  We have been letting our chickens run free range around the compound and I have gotten sick of them leaving a mess everywhere, especially in the house and on the front veranda.  Stepping on chicken poop while barefoot is a horrible squishy feeling.  Yuck!  So I made the decision to break down their old collapsing pen that we have had them in for over 10 years and expand the newer back pen so that I can keep them locked in, yet still give them lots of room and a grassy area to be in.  The old pen, I have put a fence around for making a secure, very fertile garden space.  It was high time to start growing vegetables again.  With the abundant rain, I have some motivation to give it a try even though in the past I have had some huge garden failures.  Cows eating the corn.  Poultry digging out the potatoes.  Greens getting full of bugs.  Everything dying from lack of water.  Dogs digging things up.  So many disasters.   But a few successes too, so I am determined to make a good show of it this time.  I have started with a secure fence – around two spaces, actually.  The old chicken pen will be for mostly vegetables and the other space I am making into an herbal garden.  Then I also plan to plant pest control flower varieties in both gardens.  I am working on setting up composting piles and separating my kitchen waste again.  I know all the right steps to make a garden, but I am mainly a livestock person.  I usually lose interest with the garden so easily.  I try to give responsibility to others for doing what needs to be done, like watering, weeding or keeping up with composting, but this breaks down quickly and it all falls apart.  This time I will persevere, do most of the work myself and harvest the fruits (veggies) of my labor!  Though first I am still struggling to get the needed seeds.  In Maralal, I can only get the basics, and almost no herbs.  So some of the more interesting things will have to wait until my Nairobi trip the end of this week.  I had potatoes starting to sprout so I planted those.  Then I managed to get head lettuce seed in town here, but leaf lettuce varieties and other salad additives are not available.  Definitely need those.  I planted onions, mostly for pest control and red beets, as I love those.  I want cherry tomatoes, but can only get the seed for the regular large tomatoes.  Those tomatoes I can buy so easily in the market, I don’t need to grow my own.  That is the main aim of my garden, to grow the things I can’t buy in town from people who are so much better gardeners than I am.  Herbs are definitely in the category of not able to get in Maralal.  The only seeds I could get in town was coriander, called dania here.  I don’t really like this herb though Kenyans love it.  Used in a lot of Indian food too.  So I bought a packet and planted today.  What I will be looking for in Nairobi are seeds for basil, oregano, sage, mint and rosemary.  Those, especially when fresh, are amazing in my food.  Yum!  I’ve had all of them growing in my garden before, but due to the many challenges mentioned above, nothing is surviving.  Mainly, the latest drought saw the end of my remaining rosemary bush!  Time for another try!!

Anyway, enough about my garden.  Today I also received a lot of baskets from Ngurunit to fill our latest order from Swahilli Imports in Eugene, Oregon.  I got them all registered today.  Tomorrow packing up in boxes and Thursday down to Nairobi to drop at the shippers.  Managed to talk to the Ngurunit Basket Weavers manager today and give out another order from The Basket Room, which supplies into Britain.  It is so good when the women can be earning from their weaving.  I must make more efforts on marketing and am trying to figure out how to get the Nomadic Baskets website updated and effective.  I have spent too much time in the bush over the years and am actually quite clueless about all this worldwide connectivity.  I am learning.  Though, anyone out there who could help, feel free to contact me!  Any assistance totally welcome!!  Must end here now.  Still have more work to do on the basket shipment before I can call it a day.  Might start a fire in the fireplace too.  The rains do bring on a chill! A lovely chill.  Let rain let it rain let it rain!!  Yay!       

Ramblings

I am in Maralal these past couple days now but wanted to post my Ngurunit thoughts of the last week I was there.  One note to add about traveling there on the 25^th October 2017.  It was my birthday that day and we were traveling late.  About half way through the last 18 kilometers between Ngurunit and Illaut it was around 8 pm and dark.  The Universe gave me a wonderful birthday present in the form of seeing a beautiful leopard cross the road just in front of my car.  I was able to follow it with the headlights and shine on it as it disappearing into the trees on the side of the road.  So Amazing!!!  A leopard!! So rare.  Anyway, here are some random, rambling thoughts from  a couple days during that week in Ngurunit…

27 October 2017 ---  I’m sitting in Ngurunit on a sort coolish yet hot night.  Humid really.  It has finally been raining here.  The cows are still living in our compound to be given supplemental feeding.  Even some sheep and goats are living here at the moment also.  But with the rains and hopes of good pasture growth, eventually herding life will go back to normal and the livestock will all go back to their normal living camps in the pasture areas.   Currently, every morning and evening are quite busy here at the house with different family members coming to milk, feed and take the cows out in the morning or bring them back in the evening from grazing.  The calves stay here all day long, walking around and getting into trouble trying to drink water out the tap or get into the feed storeroom.  Every couple of days they are taken to the river to drink.  It is interesting to have them around.

I paid the basket weavers for their October order that I sent off to Swahilli Imports in Eugene Oregon at the beginning of the month.  They are working on the second half of the order which is due in mid-November.  It is so nice to see people happy with their income.  I need to try harder to sell as many baskets as possible in order to increase the amount of money each woman can make in a month.  It is such a challenge though.  How to do it is a bit beyond me, but I keep up the struggle. 

30 October 2017 --- continuing on my thoughts of life in Ngurunit.  It is Monday and the day we were supposed to go back to Maralal, but as usual, the only firm plans I make are that plans will change.  So our plan changed and we decided to spend one more night here.  We are giving the outcome of last Thursday’s election exercise one more day to materialize in some form before we head back to ‘civilization’ to see what is happening.  It is nice to remain in the peace of unknowing for a bit longer.  We of course hear bits and pieces of what is going on.  It is not yet very encouraging.  What will happen to Kenya in terms of democratic future is a mystery still. 

It is raining here today in Ngurunit.  Such a lovely sound on the roof.  Though at times when it is a heavy downpour, like at this moment, quite deafening.  I am actually trying to watch a movie but hard to hear when the pounding of rain on the roof gets too much.  So, thought I would babble on ‘paper’ during the heavy showers.  This rain has been long awaited and everyone is happy, including the birds.  It is so fun to watch them be so active and sing so loud.  They are reveling in the time of plenty.  Plenty of water.  Plenty of food.  The birds also suffer a lot during drought.  Whenever I was here in the past dry months, I would put out pans of water for the birds.  Oh, how they enjoyed drinking and bathing in them.  The bees also were always looking for water.  I often put out pans of water for them too or I would come into the kitchen and find a swarm of them in the sink getting drinks.  Not a happy situation for me when trying to cook or wash up, so I would put water outside the door to entice them out. 

Rain cleared up for a bit.  Maybe more in the evening.  I finished watching my movie.  Kong: Skull Island.  The epitome of the human way; if you don’t understand it and it scares you, try to kill it, if you can.  If one can’t actually kill it or eradicate it in the bodily way, then ‘kill it’ by censoring it, locking it up, banning it, barring it from participating in normal society, preaching against it, trying to convert it or simply ignore it and hopes it goes away.  That is what humanity has done to everything thing since the beginning of existence to most everything it encounters that doesn’t exclusively benefit their specific unit of understanding.  All levels of existence included; environment, animals and even other humans. 

I am jumping from one thought to another, aren’t I.  Random thinking.  That’s okay.  Sometimes one just lets the mind wander and then wonders at what appears in it and what weird associations are made.  It’s just that sort of day.  I think I’ll go do some random activity now.  I have a beaded hippo to finish.  Signing off till another less random day!!   

Time and a rainy day in Maralal

A good three months and finally, here I am again.  A blank word doc opened before me as I sit down to write a blog post.  Wow. I sort of dropped the ball for a few months here.  My rule of trying to put down my thoughts for public consumption at least once a month seems to have gotten stretched out a bit.  I suppose I could start a recounting of where I have been, what I have been doing and why no blog posts in all this time.  But I don’t think I will do that.  At least not in such a straight forward step by step manner.  I have realized that one reason I don’t do so well on regular, routine daily, weekly or monthly posts is that time is not that straight forward for me.  Not linear at all with a progression of minutes, hours, days and so forth.  It is more spiral like.  Twisting back on itself and jumping forward.  I think to myself I will do something just now, and suddenly several weeks have passed.  Or I feel like I have done something a few days ago, but then realize that I have actually only thought so much about doing it that in time reality, not done yet.  And then the spiral effect.  I keep finding myself doing something over and over again, though from a different perspective, higher or lower, which shows me I am actually doing something different, just very similar, to before.  Not just in the normal idea of routine, like eating, sleeping and so forth, which is a normal part of life, but in more profound ways, such as finding myself doing the same overall physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual patterns of life in an endless series of activities, projects and aspirations.  In many ways the same, but in practical details quite different.  Sometimes it is easier from insights gained before.  Sometimes it is harder having to deal with the same frustrations and challenges as before. 

Right now, at this very moment, I am in the midst of house renovations on a personal level, trying to catch up on an overload of paperwork on a professional level and working hard to get a Rotary project up and running on a community service level.  So much that is the same as past experiences, yet so much newness too.  On the construction front, we are having a new roof put on.  After months of drought here in Samburu, our re-roofing work comes in the middle of a week of massive downpours of rain.  Imagine that.  Some sort of Murphey’s law or something like that.  The workers have been trying their hardest to take off parts of the old roof and get the new iron sheets on in between rain storms, but not always successful.  I came home from a quick trip to town earlier, during which there was a cloud burst, to a lake in my living room.  I had to walk through ankle deep water to get into the dining area and kitchen.  Lovely.  Fortunately, my living room is currently empty so no big issue having a lake in it.  But a bit inconveniencing, to say the least.  The lake was swept out the door and there has been a lull in the rain all afternoon.  As I am writing this, the rain is coming down again and the workers are frantically trying to cover the gaps with the remaining roof sheets.  Quite amusing actually.  Though I will be so relieved when this work is done.  Note to self.  In future renovation projects, do not put on a new roof during the rainy season. 

As for my Rotary project that I see I was talking about 3 months ago with high hopes to get the proposal in and start the work very quickly, time definitely has a way of getting away from one.  I’ve spent the last two or three days working hard with our partner to finalize the application for submission.  As of yesterday, I finally have high hopes that the proposal will get in soon.  By Monday latest??  Anyway, from that time, it could be up to 6 weeks again to hear about its success or if we need adjustments.  So, in this case time is stretching out amazingly.  Still pushing to drill before year’s end.  Fingers crossed. 

I plan on doing flashback reviews of some amazing things that I have seen, experienced, felt, attempted and what not in the last three ‘missing’ months, but for now I will end for a bit.  Kenya is facing a repeat of elections again on October 26^th, a quickly approaching day.  I will be going to Ngurunit next week to spend the event there in the peace and quiet of the Ndoto mountains, my place of magic.  We will see what emerges while I am there, and I will get back to you all in the world again soon.  Peace.   

I just found a start of a blog that I started writing a couple weeks ago while in Ngurunit.  Sitting here in Maralal it evokes in me a bit of the peace I feel while I am there. 

7 July 2017  Ngurunit by moonlight.

It is one of those beautiful bright moon nights that I love in Ngurunit.  It was a night like this here in Ngurunit almost 20 years ago that my Mom, visiting us in Northern Kenya for the first time, was so excited to realize that the line “the moon was bright enough to read by” wasn’t just out of books, but could actually be true.  She grabbed a book and ran outside to test it in the Ngurunit moonlight.  Sure enough, she could read quite well by the light of the moon.  It is that bright here.  Tonight it is just a day from full moon, or maybe two.  Hard to tell sometimes it is already so round and bright.  By this amazing light, I can see well the mountains all around.  It is a night that the warriors will sing.   That is magic.  I heard them last night too, as I drifted off to sleep after a long tiring drive here from Maralal.,,,

Back to 20^th July in Maralal – at that point I got distracted and before I could continue writing on that day, the computer power ran out.  Then shortly thereafter, as usual, life got really busy.  I had gone to Ngurunit to pick up the balance of the latest basket order to ship to the USA that was due at the shippers July 11^th for container stuffing.  So, on the 10^th, I packed up the car and started my Nairobi dash trip.  4 ½ hour drive to Nanyuki.  Put the car in for service and repair while I spent the afternoon finding boxes and packing up the shipment.  Got the car out on the 11^th, drove 3 hours to Nairobi to drop the products at the shippers.  That afternoon / evening was spent picking up supplies and spending time with my friend Candace who is done with her work in Kenya and leaving for other parts of the world next week.  Bummer.  So many people I meet and become friends with are transient to some extent and after a few months or years, off they go.  Even some people who have lived in Kenya for decades have left in the last few years.  But at least I get to keep connected with them through all the social technology of the modern world.  Talking face to face on video phone calls still amazes me.  Like the Jetsons, a cartoon I used to watch as a kid.  Science fiction becoming reality.  Anyway, I digress.  On the 12^th July, back 3 hours drive to Nanyuki for more supplies and to pick up stock for our veterinary shop in Ngurunit.  I stayed the night, having dinner with old and new friends.  The talk of the table was about how they had to face down a charging rhino on a narrow track with nowhere to go as the rhino came straight at their car.  With a bit of engine revving and sheer luck, the rhino veered off into the bush just a few feet before smashing into them.  I’ve had that experience with elephant and buffalo in the past.  Talk about heart in the stomach.  Definitely bigger and scarier than the white tail deer of my native Wisconsin!!!   The next morning of the 13^th, I headed North to Kalama Conservancy for meeting some wonderful people from The Samburu Project, our new partners for our Rotary wells digging project.  Linda and Kiki from L.A. California with Eric and Mercy, their Samburu colleagues based out of Samburu East, traveled with me up to Ngurunit to meet the community and see one of the sites we plan to drill and construct a community water well with the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills.  It was an amazing night with them in Ngurunit.  We had the good fortune to arrive in the afternoon to find a Samburu wedding going on.  So along with a well site tour, we spent a few hours dancing with the warriors and getting some amazing pictures and community celebration time.  I am so happy as a Rotarian and the manager of PEAR Innovations to have connected to The Samburu Project for partnering on these water source development activities in Samburu North.  I am anticipating a beneficial partnership for so many of the communities in which we all work.  These visitors left to head South again the next morning on 14^th July leaving me to rest in the peace of Ngurunit and recover from my mad 1100 km dash to Nairobi and back in 4 days.  The moon was past full by this time which gave me a chance to enjoy the stars too.  Last Sunday, Loiweti, Mouse and I traveled back to Maralal and I have been spending the week pursuing all the paperwork issues we need to deal with for our projects.  Step by step, we are working towards 2 new wells with our Rotary Global Grant hopes and 2 more directly with Samburu Project partnership.  That will be a huge boost to the communities as water is always one of the biggest challenges for community development and education in this semi-arid and arid land.  Tomorrow, another trip, this time South to Nakuru and more work on Rotary activities and sourcing well drillers.  But for tonight, I will read again about the full moon in Ngurunit and remember the peace and beauty of that lovely place…..

I am in a different world completely from when I woke up yesterday morning.  Yesterday morning I woke up to the singing of birds.  The sun was rising over the Ndoto mountains.  I could here the goats and camels at the neighbors.  I packed up the car, climbed in and drove South.  The first part was through desert on dirt roads.  I saw only a couple other vehicles and lots of grazing animals.  Then I got to tarmac and the world started changing fast.  I reached Nanyuki for lunch with a group of people on tour from Colorado.  One is Karen, who I met in January.  It was really good to see her again and meet her friends.  She also had ordered a box of baskets so I was able to deliver that and get a good lunch at my favorite restaurant in Nanyuki, Le Rustique.  Delicious food and they let my dog, Mouse, join me at the table and run about in the garden.  My hotel and restaurant rating always includes how friendly and accepting they are about me having my dog with me!!  After a long lunch and meeting another friend, I continued on my journey.  About 12 hours after I left Ngurunit, I arrived in Nairobi last evening.  Long drive.  Now, I am in a completely different world.  Spent almost an hour stuck in traffic trying to get to the mall.  I'm sitting at a coffee shop working on my computer and having instant internet access.  I have basically one day to do so many things and my first meeting has been delayed by almost an hour as the guy I'm meeting has been stuck in traffic.  So I am taking the time to catch up on connecting to the world of internet!!  So many layers of worlds in my life.  Mind boggling sometimes!!  At least it keeps life interesting.  My latest challenge was running out of power on my computer last evening and discovering that I had forgotten my power cord somewhere in the North!! Oops.  A quick call for help to Nairobi friends and contacts procured me the loan of a cord that fits this morning.  So now all is well and I will accomplish my goals this short Nairobi trip.  I have half an order of baskets with me that needs boxing up and dropping at the shipper.  Need to record them all first for which my computer is essential.  Tomorrow I pick up my daughter, Naiboku, from her school for a mid-term break.  Then meeting up with my new partner for a big Rotary project we are working on getting started.  She is arriving tonight from USA and tomorrow we hash out a few things on the application.  Then Naiboku and I head north to Maralal.  Crazy life sometimes.  But again I say, I never get bored what with all the travel and challenges keeping me on my toes.   I will sit and watch the busy life swirling about me for a bit.  No birds, goats and camels here, but lots of interesting people from all corners of life.  The person I'm meeting is almost shook free of the traffic and will be here soon.  On with the day in this different world....

Another Ngurunit time post...

16 June 2017

I just finished cooking dinner to the accompanying music of U2.  Songs of Innocence album.  I went to the concert for that in Chicago in 2015 with my friend Janice.  It was amazing.  Beyond words.  This year U2 is in the midst of a 30 year anniversary tour of Joshua Tree.  I went to the concert 30 years ago, again in Chicago, when I was in University at UW Madison.  When this latest tour was announced, I so tried to sort out how to go to it.  I simply could not get the dates and places to meld with my summer schedule of having Loiweti home and my fall schedule of taking both kids to Wisconsin for school starting up again in September.  I resigned myself to missing this U2 event.  Last week the universe moved and suddenly I was made aware of a new set of concert dates added for the Midwest.  One of these dates was September 8^th in Minneapolis!  Wow.  I will be in New Richmond at the time, a short distance away from the venue, so now I have tickets to the Joshua Tree 30^th anniversary tour!  Crazy and fun world. 

A world away from USA in Northern Kenya, at the moment I am sitting out under the amazing stars of Ngurunit.  I am gazing at the constellation of Scorpio as it is appearing over the horizon.  I had never known this constellation before coming to Kenya.  It is my star sign but in the Northern Hemisphere of Wisconsin, it is basically too close to the horizon the wrong time of year in order to see it.  Here it rises high and visible in the early evening between May and September.  It is so distinctive and really does look exactly like a scorpion, unlike so many other constellations which are harder to correlate the stars into the picture of what it is supposed to be.  I certainly have been reminded the last few days of what a scorpion looks like and what it can do.  The first day we arrived, Bruin dog was stung by one chasing another dog in the scrub brush by the fence.  We didn’t actually see it but the symptoms were clear.  Poor dog was in extreme pain.  We could see the sting on the top of the left front foot and he wouldn’t let us touch it at all.  I instantly gave him an antihistamine and pain killer.  He didn’t want me to leave him.  If I did, he would come hopping after me on three legs.  So I sat with him on his bed for a couple hours.  The medicine seemed to do its work and he slept through the night.  In the morning, he was walking fine.  I was so relieved.  A few years ago little Mouse got stung and she almost died.  I hadn’t a clue then what medicine to give so only had hope and prayers.  She spent the night retching and retching.  I was so worried.  But she pulled through to my great relief and recovered with a little help in the morning from hydrocortisone shot from the local clinic which I learned helps a lot.  Scorpions are many here in Ngurunit and lots of people get stung.  I have been lucky so far.  Especially last night.  I had put my exercise mat outside and after a bit of stretching, was lying on my back watching the stars with a dog curled up on each side of me.  They both suddenly jumped up and went running off into the dark chasing something.  I turned on my flashlight to see where they had run off to and to my great horror, there was a scorpion on the mat right next to where my bare feet had been a moment before.  Amazing none of us were stung!  I jumped up, grabbed the dogs, locked them in the house to keep them safe as I grabbed a heavy shoe and went to take out the scorpion that was still sitting on the mat where I had left it!  Yikes!  My son had been oblivious through all the excitement as he was listening to music on his noise canceling earphones on a cot across the yard a bit.  I will definitely be using a cot from now on too.  He hadn’t heard all my shouting for help so was surprised when I showed him the dead scorpion as I took it to throw in a place where the stinger, even dead, could cause no harm.  Not sure if it could, but always better to be safe than sorry….

The below written in Ngurunit a few days ago:

15 June 2017

Countless.  The flow of people through my house this morning is countless.  I am in Ngurunit.  Loiweti and I arrived with dogs Bruin and Mouse last evening after a long trip from Maralal.  We had to make several stops along the way to drop boxes of Rotary project books off at Primary schools so it made the travel time a bit longer than usual.  Since this morning, I have had countless visits from various local family and community members bringing milk, eggs, baskets for sale or nothing at all.  Everyone with their hands out looking for a bit of cash to help buy food for their households.  This is a common practice within the Samburu Culture and even has a specific word for it: mparin (approximate spelling as I hear the word that I can barely pronounce correctly).  It is a social networking practice more than simple begging, which many outsiders take it to be.  In the past, mparin was a way to help those who were having difficulties survive through it.  People would help by giving out a goat, a cow or whatever they had.  Then, if disaster struck them, they would be able to have their past favor returned when they went on mparin.    It was a great form of welfare for everyone and bonded communities together.  It is still there within the culture but the way of implementing has greatly changed since the advent of education, formal jobs and a cash economy.  It tends to be skewed towards everyone without a job coming to those with jobs and asking for money.  It is rarely turned around as a favor given and a favor returned later.  It can become a big burden on those who have the jobs.  When one starts working, it is not just for your own family, but the whole community.  We have had to deal with this issue always.  It can be a huge problem if no boundaries are set.  We have dealt with it in several ways.  One is by me letting all the members of the groups I work with know that my home is off bounds for mparin.  I am working with them on income generation projects and to have them come ask straight out for money would be very hard on me as I work with over 500 women.  If everyone came regularly, I would never be able to help myself, much less them.  By and large everyone respects that.  Sometimes a desperate case of illness or other family emergency comes up.  For these, we can do a case by case assistance.  School fees requests are referred to the PEAR Innovations school bursary program.  Then there are the regular old people we affectionately call our pensioners.  A select group of very old mamas, and a few men, who really have no support from anywhere else are given a bit every month to help them survive.  There are no old people homes here so the community social structure must watch out for them.  We do our part with a bit of cash or food now and then.  Others help them build houses and generally take care of them within the homestead structures.  They live and survive the best they can on peoples’ kindness.  All of this works very well for us, except lately there has been a drought and everyone is hurting.  That is one of the main causes of my constant stream of mparin seekers this morning.  We have had some rain, but not enough really and livestock is still recovering so not producing much for people to live on.  Market prices for livestock are still low with animals also still too thin really to fetch a good price.   One good thing I have seen this morning is that milk is starting to flow.  I had several people bring milk with them so it was more an exchange of gifts than one way cash from me to them.  I now have a pot of camel milk and a pot of cow milk.  I have been getting camel milk all through the drought as camels can produce throughout, but this is the first cow milk I have seen for over a year.  So happy to see it.  But not sure how long it will be available if it doesn’t rain some more.  Everything is green, but only on the surface.  We still need a lot more rain to soak deep and keep things green for longer.  Mperiyon, my sister-in-law, was saying yesterday that grass is still scarce and the cows are surviving more on leaves that the owners cut from the trees with back breaking work.  She warned that the cows are fat now, but most of the leaves are gone now too, so unless we get more rain, the cattle will start to grow thin and die.  One of the jobs we have for Loiweti on his home visit is to collect together all the marketable bulls and go sell them before they start to lose condition.  One can never depend on the rains these days with climate change very, very evident in our part of the world.  No predictability any more on seasons.  I want to sell all the goats we can too.  Better to have the money in the bank than on the hoof.  Less likely to lose it that way.  Though to do that, we have to argue with the family as in the pastoralist life, they feel more sure about their wealth when they can see it grazing around them.  In good seasons, the increase is faster too in the form of calves, kids and lambs, but in bad seasons (drought), this ‘interest’, as well as the principal, can disappear fast.  So this time, we hope to convert as much as possible into a more secure form!

I am in Maralal since Monday afternoon when I traveled back from spending over a week in Ngurunit.  It was a wonderful time, with a few hard times here and there, but mostly peace and creative work.  I came back with a new puppy.  I've named her Acacia.  She is one of Foxy's latest batch of puppies.  Foxy is a neighbor dog which I feed whenever I am in Ngurunit as she has a normally very hard life.  She had 3 female pups of about 7 weeks old or so.  I decided to give one of them a chance at a better life than her mother has had.  She is settling in fast to the pack and already has my big dog Bruin letting her sleep with him.  Anyway, while I was in Ngurunit, I wrote a number of journal type entries.  3 of them to be exact.  So I will post them all here together with the dates.  I'm off to Nairobi tomorrow so next communication will probably be from there.   Here are a few moments of my time in Ngurunit.

16 May 2017

I’m sitting on my couch in Ngurunit.  The great enjoyment of the moment is watching the bats feed on the mass of bugs flying around my solar lights.  In the evening, I keep the doors open to catch whatever breeze may be going by.  This means the bugs and the bats have easy access to my living room.  Bats are incredible.  So quick.  One of our games is to pick out a certain bug and make guesses as to how long it survives.  Then we watch it closely.  The bats are so fast that one is watching the selected bug and suddenly there is a flash and a blur as the bat streaks by almost too fast for human eyes to see and then the bug is gone.  It is a simple life lived close to nature here in Ngurunit. 

Some light showers of rain just started pattering down on the roof as I write this.  It seems that the rains are not over with only the heavy showers of the beginning of the month.  That is good as the river is not flowing yet which is an indication that a lot more rain is still needed.  But the rains so far have made the area so green.  I even have grass growing in my compound.  Delicate, tiny blades pushing up through the sandy soil, especially in patches under the trees where more moisture is held in under the shade.  Both of my rain water storage tanks are full.  Lots of bugs for the bats to feast on.  It is like a different world from my visit last month.  The rain has gotten a bit heavier so my dogs have joined me inside now.  They were out lying in the sand before enjoying the night air.  I was out there for a while too gazing at the stars and watching them get covered one by one as the clouds built up.  When I got here to Ngurunit a few days ago, my sister-in-law, Mperiyon, was gushing on and on about how wonderful it was now that it had rained and all was turning green again.  She exclaimed several times that if it hadn’t rained when it did, none of the livestock would have made it for much longer in the drought and even people would have started to perish.  Hope has returned to Ngurunit.

17^th May, 2017

It’s a balance day today.  In the Kenyan way of writing the date it is 17/5/17.  Every month I have a habit of taking note of the balance day.  A fun little thing I sometimes point out to people as I go through the day and write the date on various documents.  Though today, in the bush of Ngurunit, not much need for any document writing.  Though I thought I would write another post entry and that is when I discovered it is a balance day date.  Of course, I am far from any network which with I can connect to internet to actually post this entry, so by the time this is up and out into the world, the balance day will be a memory.  There is always next month’s balance day!!  And in November we will have a backwards forwards day!  7/11/17.  Flip it over and move lines and it reads the same – forwards or backwards!  Those are fun days.  Then there are backwards forwards upside down days.  These are few in time.  16-6-1991 is one of those days.  I met one of my good friends in the world on that day.  I was living in Nepal then.  She came up to me, a total stranger, and said, “My name is Chloe. Did you know it is a backwards forwards upside down date today?”  She wrote down the date, I looked suitably impressed, we started talking and a wonderful friendship was started.  It has been many years since we actually last met in Scotland in 2003.  She is in New Zealand now and one day, I will visit her!!  For sure!

I am totally getting off the subject I had meant to write about at first.  The date got me off on a tangent.  I am using the after lunch so hot you can melt time of the day here in Ngurunit to relax a bit before evening activities.  I have been working to get Loiweti’s room ready for his time at home after finishing his first year away in the USA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  We are so excited to be having him back soon for a couple of months.  Though I had basically turned his room into a construction materials store room after he left, so working to reclaim it as a bedroom.  Also making a few improvements.  Yesterday I finished fixing the door with a real locking handle set so it closes nicely now.  And stays closed without having to throw the deadbolt shut.  This morning I worked on building some shutters as July is the cold season here in Kenya and last year, Loiweti was finding the constant wind through his wire windows a bit chilly.  Finished one this morning.  One more window to go.  Not the most beautiful shutters in existence but functional.  That is the main need.  I do enjoy doing these little projects around the house.  Incredibly challenging as my tool selection and raw materials are usual not quite adequate.  So I have to be innovative and work with what I have.  I can’t just run to the hardware or supply shops to pick things up as the nearest one is 200 km away.  If I haven’t remembered to bring something I need, I improvise or simply do without.  Much the same with cooking.  I baked banana bread this morning and upon getting to the step of greasing the pans, realized I had no baking fat.  Batter was ready so had to use something.  Found some bit of margarine from my last trip here so used that.  The bread came out fine and very delicious.  Last trip with Naiboku, we were in the middle of making scalloped potatoes and discovered we had no flour at all for the sauce.  So we used corn meal.  Gave the potatoes an amazing taste.  I might even choose to use that substitution in the future.  One can invent wonderful new things “by accident” just by doing the best you can with what is at hand.  That is what I love about this life where I am.  The challenges keep my mind thinking and innovative all the time.  Speaking of innovation, it is cooling off a bit so best be about my creative activities of the afternoon.  More baking to do.  Another shutter set to finish. 

18 May 2017

I spent today dealing with the realities associated with the lack of adequate, quality medical facilities nearby.  By nearby, I mean the closest really reliable clinic, which offers basic testing facilities and usually has a well-stocked supply of medicine, is more than 100 km away.  There is a clinic here in Ngurunit, but for some reason it never offers very good treatment.  The needed medicines are have always run out. Or the clinical officer is away.  What happened today has actually been building up for the last several days and part of it is really sad.  The first thing is that the oldest child of our camp watchman was very sick, taken to the Ngurunit clinic, given medicine, but still passed away a short while later.  While all this was being dealt with, my nephew came from school yesterday quite sick.  He had been given medicine last week from the same Ngurunit clinic which helped him feel better for a bit, but then from Monday he relapsed.  So I received a note from the school headmaster that Polisan had permission to seek medical attention from another better hospital.  So, I gave him what medicine I had to help him feel better.  He rested all day yesterday with the plan to catch a bus to Marsabit, 156 km away, to go to a county hospital.  Expensive alternative, but what else to do? 

So that brings us to very early this morning when I had someone knocking on my window before 6 am.  It turned out to be my friend who is the mother-in-law of our camp watchman.  Their second born son had been sick all night and after losing a child just a few short days ago, they were very very worried.  They asked if I could give them a ride to another clinic in Illaut, about 18 km away.  I know the Illaut clinic is really no better than the Ngurunit clinic, so I made the quick decision to take everyone, including my nephew, to the Merille clinic on the main highway about 100 km away.  Best solution for all and I did not want to risk the child.  So after a quick breakfast, I piled everyone in the car.  The watchman, his wife, their two kids (both were actually ill – the older very ill with diarrhea, vomiting and fever while the young baby had a chest wheeze), the grandpa, the best man of the watchman for moral support and my nephew.  I opted to leave the dogs with my friend for the day as Merille can be very hot and uncomfortable for people, much less beings with fur.  Not to forget that the car was also packed.

With the good wind power road, we made good time and reached Merille about 1 ½ hours later.  My friend Sammy is the clinical officer there and all the lab facilities with a good lab technician is available.  One by one everyone got tested and results started coming in.  A major delay though was that the little boy had cleaned himself out so it took a long while to get the stool sample.  Thus, it took till midafternoon to get everyone treated and feeling better.  I was thankful that neither of the small children were dangerously ill.  They just needed access to the testing and a good supply of medicine.  Even in Merille, Sammy was out of a the basic paracetamol syrup (fever reducer for kids) so on the way home, we passed through another bush hospital where Sammy knew they had a supply.   So, after a bumpier ride home, we finally made it back to Ngurunit just before dark (7:00 pm) and got Polisan back to school and the kids back home, all feeling better and happier.  The day left me feeling exhausted and frustrated that it is so hard to find effective and easy treatment in almost the whole of Samburu North.  So many of the facilities are overstretched, understaffed and no basic lab services.  One child is gone because of that.  But at least, with some effort, a couple more have a better chance at getting healthy and strong. 

10 May 2017 Flashes of Memory from the last Month

It has been a month since I’ve managed to sit down in front of my computer to write about life and work in Northern Kenya.  A whirlwind of a month.  All parts of my life wrapping up together, spinning me around and flinging me out the other side.  A little worse for wear, but alive and happy having accomplished a few steps forward on many of my current goals, hopes and visions.  As time has a way of getting away from me, I need to take this chance for a moment of reflection on all that has gone on since last I posted.   To write a straight forward step by step narrative of this month would take pages and pages and probably be incredibly boring.  So, as it feels like I’ve gone through the eye of a storm, I’ll write about it in flashes of memory, like lightening bursting into the darkness. 

*Ngurunit Peace:  Easter with family in Ngurunit was lovely.  Nothing more exciting than rambles along the riverbeds with Naiboku and the dogs, cooking lovely meals, reading books, gazing at the mountains and the stars, meeting with friends and generally decompressing.  Turned out to be the calm before the storm of the rest of the month. 

*Traveling, traveling, traveling:  I’ve traveled over 3000 km in the last month.  To Ngurunit and back for Easter.  To Kisumu and back for Rotary District Conference.  Back to Ngurunit via other community visits for Rotary work then down to Nairobi to drop Naiboku to school and then return to Maralal this last Saturday.  Some of this traveling done while very ill (food poisoning in Kisumu) and some with car issues (faulty brakes for 40 km heading into Baragoi on one trip) that meant delays here or there and being stranded in Nairobi for 2 extra days.  My Pajero engine was threatening to fall out so I thought I should get that taken care of.  But as always, I use the troubles, trials and delays to seek out other benefits and advantages.  Visiting friends.  Working on other tasks.  Networking.   Reading books.  Resting and recovering from exhaustion and illness for the next push onwards and upwards. 

*Rotary Activities:  It has been a month for amazing strides forward on Rotary networking and activities.  The Rotary District Conference in Kisumu was an amazing 3 days, despite the struggles with food poisoning given to many at the event by the conference venue folks.  Oh well.  Such is life.  Doesn’t happen only here.  My cousin from USA just told me about her food poisoning experience in Florida last month which made her miss Easter at home in Wisconsin.  Anyway, I am digressing.  Rotary.  I met up with some good friends and made some wonderful new connections at the conference, as did the other four Maralal Rotarians who were with me in Kisumu.  Then the next week, we connected with our Samburu Project partner in Maralal and went for community assessment meetings together in four communities around Samburu County in preparation for the water well project we are working on.  It went so well.  We are going forward on preparing the application.   Another big rotary activity that is exciting me is about school books for primary schools.  Oxford Press donated thousands of books to Rotary to hand out to the schools.  We are doing this with Rotary club of Karen so I picked up 13 boxes of books while I was in Nairobi and have brought them back to Maralal.  We are now going through them to prepare delivery notes and by tomorrow plan to start taking them to the selected schools.  It is great to be a part of that. 

Rain!!!:  Finally, after months of dryness and the pain of seeing animal carcasses everywhere as I travel up and down in the brown parched land, the rains have come.  Though, of course, the rains again bring other issues.  A few hours after leaving Ngurunit on the 30^th April having finished the rotary community assessments and heading to Nairobi with Naiboku through bone dry desert, the heavens opened.  We got out just in time.  The rains came in force and flooded out many places in Samburu County.  People in Ngurunit couldn’t move out for 3 days.  Maralal was inundated with water.  Roads washed out.  Houses flooded.  Animals died from the cold.  By the time I came back to Maralal this last Saturday 6^th May, things had settled down and dried out a bit.  Though still getting some showers every few days. Green has come back to the land as grass comes up to carpet the land and trees leaf out in earnest to take advantage of the moisture.  People are happy again and have hope for their livestock.  It will take more time for complete recovery, but at least there is a start.  I am thinking of what to plant in my garden now.  I have two days to work on it before another trip to Ngurunit.  I am looking forward to seeing the changes there from the advent of the rains arriving after our long wait.  I hear it is beautiful and green!

Baskets:  My two trips to Ngurunit this last month saw me collecting a number of samples and finished order baskets that had been commissioned in March during the basket group visitors trip.  These new baskets are amazing and beautiful!  I took pictures of the samples and sent them off to USA while in Nairobi.  Within two days, we received another order for 600 baskets (200 sets of 3), 450 of them being selected from the new designs and 150 of an older style.  Wow.  I was able to buy the needed beads in Nairobi.  I am headed to Ngurunit to make sure the women get a good start on the order.  It is due in 2 months so a lot of work ahead.   Another new design of baskets that I delivered to the Nairobi based buyer while I was there were very well received.  That line may have a lot of promise for the future.  It is exciting to see where all this might lead us on our path of increased income generation opportunities for the group members.   It is a lot to think about though.  Going forward step by step. 

So, enough of the flashing pictures of my life this last month.  I have a couple more days in Maralal catching up on office work and just gaining strength for the coming adventures.  To Ngurunit this weekend.  Then letting the rest of May work itself out as it comes.  I will try to not be away from my writing so long.  Hopefully see you in a week or so!!  Enjoy!

I'm taking the opportunity of finally having a working connection again to write a quick post before I disappear into the bush tomorrow (Tuesday) for Easter holiday.  A lot, and at the same time nothing, has been going on the last few weeks.  Not sure how to explain this.  Basically, I've been dealing with the routines of life mostly; eating, sleeping, doing the daily work tasks of running an organization, organizing the household, working in the garden, shopping, reading, watching TV, exercising, playing with the dogs, reading some more, meeting with friends, running errands in town and all the other stuff that goes into daily living.  And yet, everything is also getting exciting because of just a few connections being made and a few other interesting things happening.  First the connections.  As president of the Rotary Club of Maralal this 2016/17 year, I get requests from various international clubs to be host club for different projects they would like to do in Kenya.  A couple weeks ago, one such request came from Rotary Club of Beverly Hills to ask if we would like to be host club to some water well projects they wanted to do with an organization in Kenya called The Samburu Project.  This was an amazing request for me as I know the Samburu Project and they work they have done in Samburu East Sub-County.  I was connected with them way back in 2007 up to about 2014.  I had even visited their USA headquarters in Los Angeles in 2008!  Also, I had been trying to figure out how to connect to an International Rotary partner to work on a Global Grant together.  And here it was, a club out of the blue, asking us to partner on a Global Grant in the areas that we work and the issue that we work on so hard - Water source development!!! Wow.  So, the last few weeks have been spent getting to know the various new parties and starting to put together a project.  More news on this in the coming months as details start coming out and plans firm up!!  Watch this spot!!

As for the interesting things, a couple things have been going on.  I had a quick trip to Nairobi last week to pick up daughter Naiboku from school for her term break after finishing first term.  She has 3 weeks off before going back for second term of Form 3 (Junior year) beginning May.  I had an exciting tire burst on the new tarmac road on the way down to Nairobi while traveling alone.  I managed to get all the lug nuts loose, then some nice gentlemen stopped and helped me finish changing it.  I ended up having to buy a used tire to use as a spare till I could get things fixed well. Thus, we came back through Nanyuki so I could get the car serviced and buy some new tires for it.  We got the car all fixed up and drove home to Maralal on Sunday in convoy with Reuben in his work car coming back from a meeting.  We actually ran into rain on the way home!! Yeah!  Real mud!  Though we definitely need more.  All over the county!  Keep up the prayers.  Also while in Nairobi, I managed to figure out my internet connection problem by updating my SIM card in my phone.  Such an easy fix.  It had bothered me for months!  One reason no posts for a few weeks.  Anyway, back on-line.  We used it to register Naiboku for SAT and ACT tests in June.  She is a Junior now (Form 3 Kenya system).  Starting to look ahead for University.  Soon to join her brother in USA.  But not before he comes back to visit us in Kenya after finishing his first year of University in Wisconsin!  He will arrive end of May!  Looking forward to that.  Well, off to finish packing for our trip to Ngurunit tomorrow.  Peace, here I come!!!