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April 30, 2004
April 30, 2004
It is really hot today. I can barely move. When the sun was out it made one want to melt just to step outside. Now the clouds have come but the humidity is going up and the air is heavy. I hope that means rain. If it does rain, I will go running out into it and leap for joy. We wanted to go to the river up the mountain today but no vehicle and I didn’t envy the thought of carrying my four-year old for 45 minutes up hill in the heat. So we watched a movie instead in the somewhat cooler house. Though life is relative. Cooler than outside still means about 90 degrees. Tonight or tomorrow, Reuben should be back with the car and we can go up to the steam and cool off. Unless the rain comes, of course. Then I will be splashing in the puddles with the kids!
It’s raining! I’m off to play!
April 28, 2004
April 28, 2004
A bit behind again on writing the events of life. Busy. Tuesday evening the 20th last week, Sarah and I suddenly decided to make a road trip to Marsabit. Reuben had sent a message he would be coming back late as he had gone to Maralal for some work. We were waiting for a truck load of materials to build on my shop and resource room and to bring the right size pipes for Namare that I hoped Reuben would be able to get from Maralal. With every day having no truck show up, I started to get frustrated with waiting and thought of going to Maralal. But that is a 7 hour drive and the car I had here in Ngurunit isn’t so reliable. So we decided Marsabit, which is 3 hours away and has phones, was a good alternative to find out the news. Besides, Sarah hadn’t been there yet and I thought it would be good to show her around.
So Wednesday morning, I packed Sarah, Samwel and the kids into the car and off we went. We had one problem in that I was afraid to take the car I had all the way to Marsabit for various reasons. So we decided to head to Korr in a slight detour to find Jaco with my other car and trade. It was quite the adventure getting to Korr and asking for Jaco and then following him out into the bush where we heard he was interviewing some people. We finally found him driving across a plain. He was very surprised to see us there in the middle of nowhere. We switched cars and then we headed off to Marsabit. We arrived with no problems 8 hours after we had left Ngurunit in the morning! After some trouble figuring out where to stay, Sarah, the kids and I ended up at the lodge in the wildlife park. We hoped to find elephants but no luck the whole trip. Sarah saw some cape buffaloes grazing in the middle of the night outside our window, but the rest of us were asleep. Actually she saw the shadows of large animals grazing and assumed they were buffalo but was wary to shine her flashlight on them thinking they might decide to crash into the room through the plate glass window!
Coming back from Marsabit Friday, the truck had finally come from Maralal with our stuff for construction but no pipes. Only the joints for the pipes that are too small. The next day Samwel and I went to Namare to see if there was any way we could make the pipes fit. Lots of problems. In the end, we have decided we still need to try to get the right size pipes so Samwel has gone off to Maralal today to see what he can do. Reuben showed up a couple days ago to arrange our niece’s wedding for this weekend and has gone back today to Maralal for some work. He will return with Samwel on Saturday in time for the wedding. Hopefully they will bring some good news on the pipes for Namare so we can finish the project. Lebendera is finished for the most part and the tank is filling. At least one water project going well. But I have confidence the Namare one will also soon be worked out.
After Reuben left, I went off to a women’s group meeting this morning. We are working on filling out some final forms for trying to get funding for them to be included in the camel projects I have been doing with HPI (Heifer Project International). Yesterday Samwel and I had gone to some nearby towns to fill out papers with 4 other groups there and I had done one other group in Ngurunit the day before. If these groups can be funded, it will be a big boost for the improvement of many women’s lives and the children that depend on them. I can only hope and keep pushing for the projects to be funded.
April 18, 2004
April 18, 2004
Back to the pools and waterfall today with Sarah and the kids. Lovely. Relaxing. Cool. Fun. Life can’t get better than this!
April 17, 2004
April 17, 2004
I had a lot of fun today. Samwel and I went to Lebendera to fix the break pressure box so it doesn’t leak and assess what has to be done on the upper intake box. I worked with the women helping them to bring sand from the river to the project site. We laughed and sang while we worked. They are such wonderful women. They have to work so hard just to survive yet they live in the joy of the moment. I can learn a lot from them.
Samwel and I also went to look at the place the community has identified to use the balance of the project materials to build another rock rainwater catchment tank. There is a lot of blocks and cement left and the community have committed to looking for their own way to get the other needed materials and the money for the mason. They are a really motivated community. I love working with them.
April 14, 2004
April 14, 2004
Beautiful day. Raining and raining. We are in Ngurunit now. The rains started in a big way on the evening of Easter. We were watching the Wizard of Oz with the kids as the end of the days holiday activities. With a tin roof, the rain was so loud, we basically just had to watch the pictures without hearing the sound very well. Kids still loved it. We have been swimming a lot the last few days since the river started flowing well about Thursday last week. Lots of fun. Sunday after our Easter meal, Sarah, Jaco, our current student from Germany (though he is South African) studying camels, the kids and I went up the mountain a bit to the natural rock slides and waterfalls. Great time sliding in the water and teaching the kids to swim in the bigger pools. A moment of paradise. Felt my cares sort of slide off into the water and wash away down the stream.
I’ve been out to the Lebendera project since arriving in Ngurunit last week on Tuesday. It was almost done. I left my field assistant, Samwel, fixing in the last remaining pipes. He came back Monday with the news that one of the boxes is leaking. Then, a man from Lebendera just stopped by today to say the upper source tank is also leaking. Not good. But fixable. Hopefully all these little details will be taken care of soon. The Namare project has an even bigger problem we discovered. The pipes turned out to be just a bit smaller than the joints provided. The joints are the correct size so that means the pipes are wrong. Now I am trying to get the hardware supplier to exchange 25 pipes. He is willing to make the change but the problem is that the project and the supplier are 200 Km apart from each other over unpassable roads for trucks due to the rains. And it is those exact rains that we need the pipes in place for in order to fill the tank. Impossible. All the water just running away. I can get so riled up thinking about it. Why didn’t we catch the problem earlier? Do we change the joint size or the pipe size? How to get through the roads? How to communicate? It can all be so frustrating. But then I just have to take some deep breaths and think peaceful thoughts and know that it will all work out in the end if I just work at it one calm step at a time. That is life.
I have been happy to find Sarah enjoying herself and keeping busy building various things in town. The people of Ngurunit have really accepted her and she is having fun. Despite a language barrier they can all really communicate with each other. She has also discovered the joy of walking around the beautiful mountains and visiting the stream with its rock poles and waterfalls. This place is a real balm for the soul. I have enjoyed it these past 9 ½ years and I love to share it with all who will make the effort to come to this out of the way place in the world.
April 04, 2004
April 4, 2004
It is good to be home in Maralal! The end of the week in Nairobi was crazy. But a lot of good things were accomplished. I had taken my two dogs with me to be spayed. I don’t want to deal with a lot of puppies in the future. So that is dealt with now. The dogs are used to long rides in the car between Maralal and Ngurunit when I take them with me during the holidays. So after the long ride to Nairobi, they were expecting to arrive in Ngurunit, which they enjoy with all the birds and goats to chase. Instead, we arrive in a city with lots of cars and a kennel where they are forced to stay without me anywhere nearby. Poor dogs. They weren’t sure they liked that situation. Every time I went to visit, they tried to get back in the car so I could take them home. The day I did put them in the car to take them to the vet for the operation, they were so exited thinking we were going home. Instead I drop them at a different kennel and they are ‘attacked’ by strangers who give them shots and such. They made it through okay and were very happy to arrive back in Maralal with me yesterday, finally.
The dogs were only a side issue alongside all of my other work in Nairobi. I was able to get the solar refrigerator!! Also found the money for the needed solar panel and extra batteries. Now I just need to get it to Ngurunit to install it in the dairy and hope it works well.
I also had to struggle looking for a window for the car that had been damaged in the accident caused by the driver of the people who had rented our vehicle the middle of March. Everything else had been fixed just in time for my trip to Nairobi but I still had a piece of plywood over the rear side window. Not a good situation. I finally sorted that out but it took up more time than I had wanted to spend on it.
In fact, finding the window and waiting for the fridge to be fixed caused me to get back to Maralal two days later than planned. That means that we are late in going to Ngurunit for the school holiday. The kids’ schools closed this last week and we had planned to go Saturday or Sunday to Ngurunit for the month of April. Well, as today is Sunday and I just arrived yesterday, we have postponed our trip to Ngurunit until Tuesday. I know people are waiting for us. But with no communication from here to there, they will just have to wait and wonder where we are. I’m looking forward to seeing how my friend Sarah is doing. Ngurunit is really different from the USA. But I suspect she is enjoying herself. Ngurunit is so beautiful and the people so friendly and accepting that I don’t think she can do anything else but have fun.
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