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!!