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.