Time flies here. I can’t believe I’ve been in Africa nearly
a month already. The most obvious sign of time passing is the build-up of dust.
While it was beautiful and lush and green when we first arrived, it hasn’t
rained here in weeks and everything now has a thick layer of dust obscuring the
original colours. Even us!
We’ve
settled into a routine very well by now, with minor interruptions and
alterations every day. Generally, we leave the house around 8 and pick up our
guide who takes us to farms on our list. Vincent always makes us a delicious
breakfast (all his meals are delicious, but I have to say, his chapattis are my
favourite!) that holds us over till we find time to eat our lunch between
farms. Since the second week we’ve been very careful to stow our sandwiches
under the bench, because they mysteriously disappeared one day and we went 12
hours with only a cup of tea from one of the farms! Fortunately the farmers are
very generous, so we usually don’t go hungry whether we bring lunch or not.
By about 5 pm, we’ve usually
visited 6 farms and we’ve been bounced around in the back of the gypsy enough
to make our heads spin, so we call it a day and head for home. Vincent usually
has tea ready and waiting but we all feel (and, undoubtedly, look) too filthy
to want to put anything in our mouths right away, so we go out for a walk
before it gets too dark. Well, Dennis and I walk, the other 2 jog to keep up!
Then we spend our evening eating wonderful local meals cooked by our wonderful
chef, doing data entry, separating blood samples, and playing cards. Crazy 8s
is the current favourite, although Go Fish is a close second.
This week we’ve had several unexpected, but entertaining, deviations from
our routine.
1. The gypsy, which we have
dubbed Goliath, has been steadily deteriorating in health ever since John left.
First the restraining chain on the door broke so it swings wildly whenever it’s
opened. That’s not such a big deal except that we’re worried it might snap the
whole door off if we’re not very very careful. We also can’t open the passenger
side door from the inside anymore, which isn’t such a big deal since the window
doesn’t close anyway. As well, the back door no longer closes properly, so
we’ve jury rigged a system that consists of a piece of cord tied around the leg
of the back seat, and we tie the door shut with a quick release knot around the
door handle. And finally, yesterday the battery died. I know that doesn’t sound
like that big of a deal, we do have jumper cables after all, but the real
problem was that we couldn’t figure out how to open the hood. It took 6 of us
over an hour to do it… We even tried pushing the car down the hill to try and
start it that way, but once we found the button in the glove compartment we got
everything sorted out in no time! And besides, it’s cars like Goliath that make
driving memorable!
2. In a totally unrelated change of routine, yesterday (Friday) we quit
work early to go to Meru Gakoromone Market with Geoffrey, the chairman of Naari
Dairy. It was incredible in so many ways! First of all, the volume of traffic
was unbelievable, people everywhere, but everyone knew what they were doing and
even though to an outsider it looked like total chaos, nobody got in anyone
else’s way and everything ran very smoothly. And the fruit!!! Geoffrey took us
to the fruit section I guess, because every square inch of ground was covered
in piles of exotic fruit! There were literally mountains of watermelons,
papayas, mangoes, oranges, nectarines, bananas, cassava, avocado, arrow root…
Jaw dropping. We filled the back of Geoffrey’s car with our purchases, and as
if having all of that available wasn’t good enough, we got it for about $10. I
was in heaven!
3. Geoffrey
came over for dinner last night as well. It was very nice to have company for a
change, and he’s a very entertaining man so we had a good time. He calls me
Kendi now, because Joan and Dennis decided that was my Kenyan name and they
told him. He seemed to enjoy the idea of giving me and Krista new names. J He also found out that
we’d seen camels in the Naari market the other day, so he took us to the Meru
Agricultural show today. It was very interesting. There were booths and tents
representing all sorts of schools, agencies, businesses, etc. There was even a
pavilion from a prison that was filled with beautiful woodworking and
paintings. And of course there were camels. We even got to ride one! It was an
interesting feeling, much much higher than I would’ve expected, and not nearly
as ungainly feeling as camels look! But of course, if people hadn’t been
looking at us while we were walking around, they were all watching us 10 feet
in the air! Not only that, several people thought it was worthy of pictures and
videos! It was totally worth it though just to say I’ve ridden a camel!
Tomorrow, being Sunday, we’ve agreed to go to church with Solomon, the vicechair of the dairy. And after that, Geoffrey’s meeting us to take us to a football game that is somehow related to our project. I think maybe John donated the jerseys or something. All in all, it should be a good end to another great week!
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