The Calm Before and After the Storm

The happy recipients of brand new Brooks running shoes

I finally found the time to write again, unfortunately only because I caught some sort of cold or flu yesterday and am forcing myself to rest today.  People keep trying to tell me that it might be malaria, but I don’t believe them.  Those of you who know me know how stubborn I am when it comes to taking medicine, so in that manner I am going to wait this one out and let my body identify and fix the problem on its own.  I have to keep telling people, “Mimi si mgonjwa (I am not a sick person).”  As soon as I send the message to my body that it is sick, then it will require medication and a trip to the clinic, so I am instead just sending the message that I am being nice and giving it a day to relax.  I think it is receiving the message well so far.  I may just have caught something small in the whirlwind that has been since I last updated you, as seems to be the trend so far this trip.  I don’t anticipate that trend changing any time soon with everything that we have coming up, which is just fine with me.  This Saturday is the big celebration that we have been planning and preparing for since about this time last month.  We are anticipating over 100 guests, including many local and national government officials and forest officers, large-scale farmers, churches and NGO’s, and friends from the community, each of whom will receive a tree seedling to take home and plant on their farm in remembrance of this day and our tree nursery.  We are still waiting for the team from the drilling company to come and install the pipes and pump, which seems to be somewhat crucial in showcasing the new access to water we have.  I am told they have arrived in town this evening and will be on the compound very early tomorrow morning to complete the one-day job.  We have decided that we will hire some people from the community to dig the trench for the piping from the borehole to the holding tank and from the holding tank to the taps that will be used for irrigation.  We have tried to include the surrounding community in this project as much as possible, both as an effort to support those in our own backyard and to create as much goodwill as possible with this blessing of water.  I still wish I could put into words just how humbling it is to be involved in a project with this magnitude of effect on an entire community.  My heart is so completely full of joy everyday by playing a role in seeing this vision become a reality, getting and giving updates on its progress, making decisions that affect its completion and application, and just sharing in the bliss of it all.

The kids hard at work preparing and planting the shamba for the upcoming growing season.

 After this weekend, the real work will begin.  We have already prepared a lot of the land for the tree nurseries, standardized and planted most of the seeds for the garden, and made almost solid plans for the fruit tree orchards, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions and uncompleted work.  I put together a document with all of the questions we need answered before we can make accurate projections and appropriate plans for each program, which will be handed out to the managers to divvy out to staff.  Once all of these questions are answered, I told them they can either wait for me to get back from Sudan and help them put it all together, or they can do it themselves and get moving.  My preference is the latter, though I want them to make the decision.  What I am trying to accomplish, as I mentioned last post, is to slowly let go of the leadership role I have assumed in this and pass it off to the managers of the programs themselves.  I know they are very capable, and I think they do too, but I am seeing how easily they concede to me, and really any westerner, as someone who must be more of an expert than themselves.  I have told them that they are the experts here and the only ones who can actually pull this all off, but I am seeing that they may not really believe me until I tell them I am no longer in the lead and am just here to be a part of the team.  This seems to be the next step in the realization process for me that this is their project and they must own it for it to really succeed.  No matter how badly I want it to flourish, I can actually prevent its success by not letting go and letting them be the ones driving it forward in whichever direction they choose with their own ideas and initiative.  I have now told them all of this very directly and stepped back, and, wouldn’t you know it, have seen more initiative and creativity out of them.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Standing on the edge of the escarpment in Kapkokwon, Chereger's home.

Some other pretty major events have happened since I last wrote, including the birth of my very first nephew and my acceptance to the other two master’s programs I applied to.  I was away two years ago for the birth of my niece and now am away as my nephew is coming into the world.  Needless to say I feel like a really awful uncle, a sentiment my sister says she doesn’t agree with, though she certainly hasn’t disagreed, bless her heart.  She only told me very sternly that if there is another niece or nephew of mine arriving in the future, I must be there.  My response to that was to tell her to hurry up and make it happen in the next two years while I am in grad school, as to ensure my presence in the country.   Where exactly in the country I will be for the next two years is still a bit up in the air, though I am leaning toward being in Seattle.  I was accepted to the MPA program at UW, the MBA program at Brandeis in Boston, and the MA in Social Enterprise program at American in DC, all of which are great programs that would definitely help me get where I think I am going.  There are obviously many factors in the decision for me, finances being one of the main ones, so I am going to keep praying and thinking through it until the end of the weekend before I make my decision.  I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers in my decision, as well, and hopefully I will be able to let you know where I will be by my next posting.  

The wonderful family that hosted me in Kapkokwon.

One thing adding urgency is that I need to be solid in that decision prior to leaving for Sudan next week.  I am not sure of what my internet access will be while I am there, so I don’t want to be passive and let the deadlines pass.  In addition to that, I really don’t want to have to be thinking about all of that while I am there, as I am sure the new setting will offer plenty for me to think about.  We are set to leave one week from today on the night bus, through western Kenya and into Kampala, Uganda.  I will stay there with a friend for four or five days while the others go ahead to get things set up in our new temporary home.  I am really looking forward to spending some more time with my friend in Kampala, whom I haven’t seen in just about two years now.  This is the same friend you may remember I visited during my first stay here in Kenya, who took me camping at Lake Albert and Murchison Falls, and took me for a floating safari on the Nile on Easter Sunday.  I don’t think any of that will be happening this time, but I am looking forward to catching up with him and learning more about what is going on with the UN programs in Uganda now.  Last time I met with some really great and experienced people there who shared a lot of their wisdom and understanding with me, and even connected me to some of their small NGO partners that are running programs focused on sports.  I would love to check back in with those organizations and also get to know some others this time round.  My only hope is that the bus ride from Kampala to Juba on my own doesn’t get too tricky, like the one from Eldoret to Kampala did two years ago.  I recently met the Kenyan ambassador to Sudan, who was really nice and encouraged me that Juba is a great place to be right now.  I just hope I can handle the heat, which I found out is an average high of 36 degrees Celsius (about 97 Fahrenheit) this time of year.  I told the kids here that when I return from Sudan, all of my freckles will have joined together and I will be blacker than they are.  About half of them thought I was serious.

 

Just hanging out with the kids of the village before church on Sunday morning.

As a little warm up for the heat, we took a trip down to the valley over the weekend to stay with the family of Chereger, the tree nursery manager here.  His home is about a 3-hour drive from here, with plenty of stunning viewpoints along the way.  We arrived around dinner time on Friday and were very warmly welcomed by about 25 people from his village; apparently this is one of those places that has never hosted white people, so it is a big deal when we came rolling into town.  We met everyone and, of course, each gave a speech telling about ourselves and giving thanks for the welcome.  During my speech, which I am sure was riveting for everyone who could barely understand my broken Kiswahili, Chereger’s mother, a woman of somewhere around 90 years (no one actually knows her age since they didn’t keep birth records back then), emerged from the mud hut to my right, bent over at almost 90 degrees and leaning on a stick in each hand to support her.  Everyone stopped and looked at her, then, much to my surprise, she tossed aside the sticks and joyfully shouted a Kalenjin greeting in my direction.  She stared at me in the eyes with a huge smile on her ripened face as she crossed her hands to give me a double handshake.  It is not often that I am caught off guard to the point of being paralyzed in word and action, but she just about got me to that point.  I stammered some version of a Kiswahili greeting and then stood silent in a near staring contest with her as she prolonged the double handshake for what felt like five minutes.  Needless to say the ice was now broken and we soon all enjoyed a wonderful dinner together before retreating to our respective sleeping quarters.  The next day was full of activities from the time we woke up.  After chai we took a short walk to the edge of the escarpment to take in the view and see the baboons.  We then walked some more to the home of the chairman of the village farmer’s group.  After touring his amazing shamba and taking chai with fresh-from-the-tree mangoes and bananas, we walked to the primary school to meet with three different groups for an information and motivation session.  This was a great meeting, but was different for me because it was with people who had already formed groups, rather than with a community full of disorganized individuals.  My main message to them was to now use the group they were a part of as a source of strength, letting each member’s creativity and ambition drive the group forward, but not to allow any single member to try to rise above the group.  I told them I have met with communities and groups in many different places around the world, and the one thing that will always ruin a group is when one person starts to put their own interests ahead of the group’s.  I drew on my experiences in team sports for the same message, and encouraged them to all hold each other accountable and never let anyone stray.  I even grabbed a couple people and locked arms with them to demonstrate how strong and difficult to knock over we were when we were together, versus when I was standing on my own, briefly comparing it to the game Red Rover before realizing the culture and language gaps probably wouldn’t allow appropriate communication on my end or understanding on theirs.

The AIC church we had service at on Sunday morning.  We had three churches come for the service so they could see and listen to the Wazungu.  It was a really great service, but I don't think any of the kids heard a single word because they were so preoccupied with the presence of white skin.

After a very long meeting, even by Kenyan standards, we walked back to Chereger’s home for a late lunch and a little relaxing before evening hunting.  I had no expectations that I would actually be able to handle the local bow and arrow, but I surprised myself during the pre-hunting practice session and hit the tree target 3 times out of maybe 15 shots.  Now maybe that doesn’t sound impressive, but even the locals, who use this weapon on a very regular basis, didn’t hit it more than 10 times, so I felt pretty good about my efforts.  As a result of this, I was given a position as one of four sharp shooters, much to my delight.  So off we went into the surrounding bush, four sharp shooters and a chase team of about half a dozen, in search of antelope, guinea fowl, and rabbits.  I was hoping we would just come across hoards of wild animals and I would have plenty of opportunities to calm my nerves and make a kill, coming home a hero with meat for the whole village.  I pictured myself sprinting alongside an antelope and making a slow motion rolling dive, Mission Impossible-like shot.  I have been known to let my imagination run wild at times, and in this case it definitely set me up for failure.  Even as we set out, I didn’t really understand the concept of our team strategy, but it quickly became clear that the four of us with weapons would be crouched in hiding, stretched out in a straight line at one edge of the bush, about 20 meters apart.  At the other end of the section of bush we designated, the chase team would spread out and walk toward us, throwing stones and just making as much noise as possible, in order to scare the animals toward us.  The scheme is pretty brilliant if you ask me.  The first section turned up animal-less, save a few small birds, so we quickly planned our next area and set up.  Within a couple minutes, I heard the excited shrieks of the chase team, which is when I realized I had no idea what I was looking for or what I was supposed to do.  I almost instantly stood up and started toward the yelling, but then crouched back down and tried to play it cool as I noticed the other sharp shooters calmly waiting with bows drawn.  At that instant, a rabbit came scurrying out of the bush right at the sharp shooter on the far end, who shall remain nameless for reasons you will soon understand, about 40 meters from me.  It was hard to tell who was the hunter and who was the hunted, as they both froze and stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity before the unnamed hunter finally launched a nervous arrow from his bow.  The arrow dove into the rocky ground in front of the rabbit, which then darted in my direction, directly at the second sharp shooter, who had his bow drawn but was unable to fire because it would have been in the direction of his fellow hunter.  The rabbit froze again and then quickly turned and ran back in the direction he came, past the hunter it first encountered, who was holding his bow in the air at this point, as if to swipe at the animal like he was holding a fly swatter.  Not surprisingly, this tactic was unsuccessful and the rabbit dashed past him down the path, being chased now by myself and the second sharp shooter.  We gave good chase for about 400 meters, nearly falling myself many times as my ankles rolled with each step on the unsteady and shifting rocks.  We finally conceded to the rabbit’s superior quickness and knowledge of the area, and headed back to reconvene with the rest of the group.  You can imagine that the first sharp shooter got a lot of heat from all of us for how he handled the encounter with the smallest animal we were hunting, but after all the dust settled and I caught my breath I realized just how funny the whole situation had been.  We tried another three sections but didn’t find a single animal, so we had a mock celebration and honoring ceremony, hunkered in a circle in traditional Kalenjin fashion.  We returned home with nothing more than a good story and an increased ambition redeem ourselves, but I had an absolute blast in my first hunting trip.  This is the only way I can see myself approving of hunting, as it seems fair that I have to work just as hard as the animal in the struggle.  The plan is to return to the same village in May for a full weekend of hunting in a different area along a ravine, which I am told is full of large antelope. 

Three members of the sharp shooter team with two great hunting dogs.  On the left is Chereger and on the right is Patrick.  Some goofy white guy is in the middle.

There really isn’t much more to tell you, but I hope to be back to share more about all the happenings of the rest of the week and the coming weekend before I head out of the country.  In the meantime, I am going to try to kick whatever this sickness is and get back to being outside working with the staff and playing games with the kids.  I love hearing from home, so send me an email any time just to let me know how you are doing.  Otherwise, be good to yourselves and those around you.

Simple Times

The fiercest basketball team you have ever come across.  This is usually how all of our games end up, with more goofing around and laughing than actually playing the game.

There really is nothing like an equatorial rain, so warm and rhythmic and soothing.  You can almost see the trees and vegetables gaining strength as they drink it up, and the dusty brown grass greening before your eyes, after a long, hot dry season.  Being born and raised in the great Pacific Northwest and a Seattleite for the past four years, after a five year hiatus in Southern California, I never thought I would really enjoy the rain, let alone look forward to it.  But, as the saying goes, “When in Africa…”  Wait, is that how it goes?  Anyway, I am in Africa, so I am sharing in the excitement of the rainy season that has arrived right on time this year.  Typically, I am told, the first rains come on March 15^th, which lasts only a few days, giving way to another 2-3 weeks of hot sunny days, followed by more constant rain through August.  As you may remember, the 2009 rainy season really never got going here in Kenya, leading to one of the worst droughts in decades and causing widespread hunger and panic.  2009 was my first trip here, and that nonexistent rainy season is what initiated the entire bore hole project, which is the reason for me being here 2 years later.  While I can’t say that I am completely overjoyed to wake up to gray, overcast skies and put on long pants and a jacket just to go greet the children before school, at least it gives me a good opportunity to explain the weather back home to the people here.  When I tell them that this is how my home is for a good chunk of each year, their eyes light up and they tell me how lucky I am and how much they think they would really like my home.  That sentiment lasts only until I tell them that the average temperature during that time is between 0 and 10 degrees, at which point their faces express concern for my well-being and understanding for why I have hair on my legs and arms.  So they remain happy to be in their home and are now looking forward to planting their crops in the next couple weeks.  I am excited to see the appearance of the landscape change dramatically, as the grass moves from brown and trampled to green and sturdy, the roads from only moderately rough and incredibly dusty to mostly impassable and swampy, and the fields from vast brown emptiness to seemingly vaster green fullness.  Planting season is always exciting, regardless of where you are, but there is another element and another level to that excitement when the entire population has been waiting months and sees those precious drops of water falling from the clouds above as their lifeline.

Sitting with the girls, waiting for the water yield to be announced.  Don't ask me why we decided to make this face; don't ask me why we do anything we do.

I wish there was more to update you all on in the past week, but there really has been a lull in the action.  I can’t say I am too upset about this, as the amount of pressure I have felt since I arrived has been fairly high.  We are still waiting for the team to arrive and install and connect the pump and piping for the bore hole, but at least now I rest assured that they have enough water (the yield of the bore hole was measured at 1.2 cubic liters, meaning they can reliably pump 1,200 liters of water per hour for as long as they need or wish to).  I have also left behind a lot of things from home that had been unhealthy and hindering my adjustment, which has allowed me to settle in a lot better and more completely in recent days.  I even went to town and bought some comfort snacks (peanuts, snap peas, and a dark chocolate bar) and have been consistently doing my yoga routine and very modified CrossFit workouts.  Those of you from the gym would laugh at my attempts at working out in my room, with my only piece of equipment being a blue band, and more so, I’m sure, at my overall physical condition.  Mock all you would like, but I see doing my routines consistently as a victory in itself, and I am feeling better physically as a result.  You see, I have realized during my few trips to different parts of the world, intending to experience and understand what we call “poverty”, that I have only so much room in my life for intensity.  As I mentioned, the beginning of this trip was very emotionally and psychologically intense for me, so I was finding that many times I simply could not get myself to engage in anything that even remotely resembled physical intensity.  The fact that I recently have been able to do just ten to thirty minutes of exercise that makes me sweat and breathe hard each day is a very good sign that I am getting a better handle on all that internal intensity, even letting much of it evaporate.  And if exercise doesn’t work, at least I now have my chocolate.

Emmanuel and Joshua entertained themselves for hours one afternoon by jumping across this stream left over from the drilling.  Their favorite was when I held them upside down by their ankles, with their faces dangling inches from the water.

This is not all to say that I have just been working out and eating chocolate all week, though that sounds like my ideal existence.  Many meetings have been held with the managers of each program so I can get all the information I need to finally complete the business outline and expenses and projections.  This is not a strong suit of mine, and actually wears me out a great deal more than it should, but at least I am very nearly finished with everything on that front.  In the next couple weeks, leading up to my departure for Sudan, I plan to slowly hand everything over to the staff here and make the transition from vision to start-up to operation as smooth as possible.  I can see the excitement on the faces of everyone as we discuss the specifics of each program, and I know they are all capable with the right resources available to them, so I am sharing in their excitement and looking forward to being around to see everything get started, helping where I can, and then just coming back to check in and witness their success.  We are going to run all around the district tomorrow to drop off invitations for the opening ceremony to as many friends and big wigs as possible.  A lot of work still needs to be done on the compound to prepare for this day, but we are slowly getting there and all looking forward very much to that day.  It is continually amazing to me how something seemingly so small can create such a positive buzz in the communities here.  I was really struck by this at the first Watoto Marathon, and I think I have been desensitized gradually since then, but it is just so delightful to be a part of a community that always seems to have, or seeks out something to be smiling about and grateful for.  I think it is such wonderful way to live, and one that I am happily adopting.

Making Chapati with the girls one afternoon.  The iron skillet was way too hot for me and I kept getting distracted and  forgetting to spin my chapati, so I am sure I just made more work for everyone else.

Looking forward from here, I am still very excited about going to Uganda and Sudan in a few weeks.  That excitement has been present and growing since I learned about the prospect of it months ago, and it has begun to feel like one of those things that you talk about so much that it will never actually happen.  But this one will, and the date is now set for April 6^th, so there will only be a few days of preparation between hosting the opening ceremony and setting off on an 18-hour bus ride on rough and now muddy roads.  During those few days we will have to make a quick trip to Nairobi to get our visas for Sudan, which I am told is a much easier process than it sounds like.  We are going to try to get a one-year visa on the basis of being volunteers involved in environmental initiatives, as to not have to go through this process and pay again in a couple months when we head back.  I am also going on a trip down to the valley next week with a member of the staff who has a home there, which he has been inviting me to for years.  I am really excited to finally go see his home and meet his family, and he has even arranged a group of men from his community to accompany us on a hunting trip in the bush.  I have never been hunting in my entire life, and my only experience with a bow and arrow was at a YMCA summer camp in elementary school, and I remember quickly dropping the weapon and racing toward the river as soon as I learned we could get in a canoe and catch salamanders.  So, needless to say, my archery skills are less than polished, especially with the local bow and arrow, which appear to be no more than a small branch off a tree with a frayed string tied to both ends.  Determined to not make a bigger fool of myself than I already do on a daily basis here, and to have at least some moderate success, I have scheduled a practice session with one of the night watchmen on the compound.  He carries a local bow each night with him, so I figure he must know how to use it somewhat decently.  If people have been successfully hunting with this type of weapon for centuries, how hard could it be, right?  All I was told is that we will only be hunting gazelle and antelope and some large birds, since hunting any big game is seen as a curse now by many groups.  I volunteered myself to be part of the chase crew, which apparently hides in the bush and then jumps out to chase the animals to the group of sharp shooters waiting ahead.  They have been joking with me that I should be careful because I could end up being hunted myself when some of the hunters see my white skin and mistake me for an animal.  At least they have assured me that we won’t be using the poison arrows on this trip, which I suppose is encouraging.

I wish there was more to tell you, but it really has been pretty low key here since water erupted from the hole last week.  Again, I am definitely not complaining about that, and even am thankful for it.  I have been continuing my Kiswahili lessons and am told I am almost ready for my first exam.  One thing is for sure – it is really hard to get back into doing homework.  But I better get used to it, as I am starting grad school in a few months.  I heard back from the school I applied to in Boston with good news.  I was accepted and given a pretty decent scholarship offer.  UW still remains in the mix, but I haven’t heard back from either them or the school I applied to in DC.  In order to accept and secure the acceptance offer from the school in Boston, I will need to reply and send a deposit before I leave for Sudan, so I am hoping to hear from all the schools by then and be able to make a final decision.  For now, the time I am spending with the children and the staff here is more than enough to fill my time and make me feel happy and fulfilled.  I will never tire of playing one-on-14 half-court basketball, learning countless other games I am convinced the kids make up on the spot, answering pop quiz questions, being corrected for speaking Kiswahili incorrectly, and just sharing great conversations over chai with the parents and staff here.  I will try to be back after next weekend with a more exciting entry, including hopefully a successful report of my bush hunting trip.  For now, be good to yourself and those around you.  

Making it Rain

We have water!  I wish it were just that simple, but the short story is that there is indeed water sitting in a big hole waiting to be pumped up for our daily use.  We don’t know exactly how much yet, but we do know that it will be somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 liters per hour, which is less than we expected and hoped for, but, as I found out recently, a fairly high yield for this area.  As I write this, they are installing the casing down to the bottom of the 133m deep hole.  We expected to strike water at around 80m and reach a maximum depth of 110-120m, but we didn’t strike good water until around 124m.  You can imagine the roller coaster of emotions I was riding as each day seemed to provide news that was cause for both optimism of more water than we could handle and nail-biting concern that the hole would turn up essentially dry.  When they went beyond about 96m, they hit an unexpected extra soft layer that lasted until about 130m.  Being a complete novice, I didn’t understand any of the information that was being passed on to me almost hourly, so my only response to every report was, “iko maji (is there water)?”  I kept thinking about all the people who gave so much to support this project, all the planning that had gone into the programs it would support, all the people who would benefit from those programs, and all the days I had presumably cut off my life by stressing over its overall success.  If it had turned up dry, I don’t know what I would have done, besides crying at the opening of the hole and hoping that somehow my falling tears would cause a never-ending spring of fresh water to rush forth.  I know; I am so dramatic.  But, really, I was preparing myself for that possibility, and trying to figure out how I could break the news to all the people who donated to make this project possible.  The head driller and the owner of the drilling company we hired, who both have decades of experience, were both laughing and telling me they could tell I was a beginner because of how much I worried about every small detail.  They both tell me that, based on all the information they have received from the rock samples and water levels, they expect the actual water availability to be in the upper half of the estimate I mentioned above.  So, the roller coaster isn’t over and I won’t rest easy until sometime next week, when the job is finished and we are reliably pumping enough water.  I don’t want you to worry about all of this because I am sure there is actually no cause for real concern, but I just wanted to pass on this information.  Even if it is at the lower end of that estimate, we will have enough water for our needs, so just leave the worrying to me for now, and know that in the midst of my worrying I am feeling more joy and success than I have felt in a long time, maybe ever.  We have water!

This is what it looks like when you strike water in the highlands of Western Kenya.  We only hope that the water we start pumping into our holding tanks and piping system is just a bit cleaner than this.

Since there is nothing I can really do to contribute to the actual drilling, I have kept myself busy in many other ways.  This helps to not only keep all the other programs on track, but also to keep my mind busy so I don’t go crazy thinking about the water.  One day over the weekend, however, I planted myself on the ground next to the humming drill from right after lunch to right before dinner, sure I would witness the coming gusher.  We did find water that day, though it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I had hoped and planned; nothing ever is, I suppose.  Chereger (the nursery germination site manager) and I sowed about 25,000 seeds in our brand new seed bed, which will give us a good start and plenty to do.  We will soon be bringing in literally tons of dried cow manure that will be mixed with the plowed soil we will be removing from the tree nurseries. This will provide fertile soil for up to 100,000 seedlings (I am only hoping that this mountain of manure is dry enough that it won’t permeate the compound with the same smell I remember from when my parents hired a dump truck to heap mushroom compost in the driveway every spring.  Not only did it stink, but it encroached on my basketball court.  I digress).  We are also getting ready for rainy season here, which has the community buzzing with excitement.  As I drive through the dirt roads on my way to town, I see nearly every plot’s deep brown/red soil plowed and ready for planting.  There really is nothing like the collective excitement of rainy season approaching in Africa (except maybe March Madness in America, which I just realized I am missing again).  With the coming rains, we are preparing the children’s home garden to be planted.  This means completing the standardization of the beds, finalizing the rotation and succession plan that will lead to fresh vegetables for the children, and buying and germinating a wide variety of vegetable seeds that will support this program.  The really exciting part of this rainy season is that it will conceivably never end, due to the newly accessed groundwater, and will provide all of these benefits for this community year-round.  Outside of the tasks to get these programs ready, we will be very busy making sure the compound is organized and immaculate, as to welcome potentially hundreds of people, including many high-level government officials, for our grand opening celebration on April 2^nd.  I am now feeling what my mom must have been feeling in the days leading up to hosting a party or family gathering.  I could never understand why she stressed herself out so much by making sure the house and yard were spotless for our guests, but now I do, and, Mom, I apologize for giving you a hard time and never contributing in any meaningful way to your task.  We want to send the message to government offices, businesses, NGO’s, farmers, and community members that we are serious about our mission of providing over 1,000,000 high-quality seedlings in the next 5 years to help with reforesting the country, and improving the nutrition of the children through organic gardening, all while providing reliable and sustainable income for the programs of ELI.  This is no small undertaking, and will require the assistance and partnership of many other bodies, but I know that these people are very capable of it, so we will send that message in a strong way to all attendees on the day of the ceremony.

The preschool classes from Samro School took a field trip to check out the drilling.

Within a few days of the completion of the ceremony, I will be heading to Juba, Sudan, by way of Kampala, Uganda.  Juba, or at least Southern Sudan, is where I will spend approximately half of my remaining 4 months in Africa.  Exactly what I will be doing in Sudan remains to be seen, though there is a community on the south end of Juba that Mr. Teimuge, the director of ELI Kenya and my mentor and partner for these six months, has gotten connected with, which has opened up the door for many development possibilities.  We will be leasing a small piece of land along River Nile to develop a large garden and potentially some sort of agricultural and environmental training center.  Again, exactly what this will look like remains to be seen, but since the community is bordered on one side by the mighty river, it is safe to assume that with a little creativity, access to water will not be a major issue.  Southern Sudan will be the world’s newest sovereign country as of July 9^th of this year, offering a huge opportunity to outsiders like us to help in the rebuilding process.  I have only read reports and memoirs of what has happened there in the past few decades, and, though I know I can never even begin to understand what these people have been through, I plan to share all the love and joy I have in me with the new friends I will make there.  I am confident they will do the same for me, and together we can see their land reawakened and providing the foundation for their peaceful redevelopment.  The group and I will be taking the bus from Eldoret to Juba, which I think will take more than a day, so we will stop in Kampala to visit some friends I have there.  If you remember the borderline frightening adventure I had last time I took the bus from Eldoret to Kampala by myself through the middle of the night, you will understand my thankfulness that I have some local companions this time.  I will also spend a few days prior to departing for Sudan down in the Kerio Valley and in Simit (a piece of land known as the hanging valley, situated approximately 4,000 feet below the escarpment and over 3,000 feet above the valley floor, leaving it fairly isolated).  Simit and the valley are areas that we plan to get involved in land restoration by planting vetiver grass and seedlings from our nursery on the suffering hillsides.  I was down there a couple weeks ago on my way to the now nonexistent Lake Kamnarok, and was really astounded by the amount and severity of soil erosion I saw, so I know these erosion control and soil conservation programs will have a huge impact when we get each community as a whole to buy into it.  I will be spending a good amount of time in these areas in between trips to Southern Sudan, so it is important to develop deeper understanding and relationships as soon as possible.

It is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

You can see that there is a lot going on that I am trying to keep organized, along with the staff here.  I am so excited about everything we have going on here and wouldn’t trade it for anything, though I have to admit that it is just plain wearing me out recently.  I know that once everything is settled with the bore hole and associated programs, I will be able to take a much deeper breath and really relax, but I am also attempting to afford myself that luxury in the midst of it all.  I am resting in the knowledge that everything will work out as it best can.  I have had no experience in my life thus far to make me think otherwise.  Sure, I have been involved in plenty of things that I felt were pretty significant and required a good amount of attention, and they rarely, if ever, went the way I thought was best at the outset.  But I would certainly not be arrogant enough to think that their outcomes in any way came remotely close to crumbling the world as we know it, or even any single person involved.  I am not going to hide from the fact that I am dealing with a lot with these projects that I have invested a lot of myself into with a lot of other people, and also with waiting to hear from graduate schools and make plans on where my life will pick up when I get back to the states, working through some hurtful relational issues, missing home, and trying to learn an entirely new language so I can more effectively and comfortably live in an entirely different culture.  Collectively, that is exhausting, but, honestly, who isn’t dealing with their own version of this very situation?  This is life, and I love it.  I am going to keep enjoying every moment and living to see smiles grace the beautiful faces and souls of others.   I am more blessed than I can put into words, and I am thankful for this opportunity to learn, grow, and make an impact in ways many people never have the chance to.  I am filled with gratitude that I can even begin to observe my being busy, tired, and challenged in these ways.  Also, I recognize and fully accept that this situation is so, so much bigger than me.  This situation is so big that people I am here with now have the free, local, clean water they deserve.  How beautiful and humbling that is.

The mighty Kerio Valley, the thumb on the hand of the Great Rift Valley.

Phew!  I don’t know where that came from.  Sorry you had to sit through it, but every now and then I have to give myself a little public pep talk.  It is now time for evening chai, so I better get going before my family gets worried.  On that note, enjoy the photos and video, and be good to yourself and those around you.    

Time Flies

This is what the children's home tree nursery looks like now.  There is still a lot of work to be done in harrowing and removing the soil, but you can see the kids hard at work in the distance.

First of all, welcome to my newly updated blog.  I finally found what I think will be an easy and reliable way to upload photos while here in Africa.  While I was at it, I thought I would give my blog a bit of a face lift, so I hope you enjoy it.  If time keeps moving at the same pace it has for the last few weeks, I will be back after what will feel like just a handful more blinks of my tired but energized eyes.  I suppose it is a good thing that time is moving so quickly, if the old adage holds true, but it sure does increase what was an already respectable sense of urgency I had upon arrival in the great continent of Africa.  We are making great strides on the projects, though we are still waiting for the truck to arrive and begin drilling, which I have been promised up and down will be today.  Since last entry, we have plowed both the children’s home and training center tree nurseries, and demolished and reshaped about half of the beds in the kitchen garden at the children’s home.  During two days off from school for half-term break, the children worked very hard each morning to get half of the children’s home tree nursery harrowed.  I had never heard this term before, showing the lack of farm-related manual labor in my days, but I asked around after pretending to know it’s meaning the first few times I heard it.  I found out it is a process used to break up the clumps of dirt that remain after plowing.  Our original plan was to remove all the dirt after plowing, but when I realized that the plowed soil amounted to hundreds of tons, we decided harrowing, removing all remnants of grass, adding dried manure, and then slowly using it to fill the tubes as we progressed was the best option, as it will save us a lot of time and money.  It seems like each day, many times though my own ignorance and stupid questions, we are finding ways to streamline our operation and save loads of money.  I am also always amazed how much these children enjoy this manual labor, and are thrilled to spend their time away from the classroom doing it.  It is a far cry from how I spent my days off from school growing up - sleeping in, spending more time complaining about the 10 minutes of chores I had been assigned than actually doing them, and then playing basketball and other sports all day with my friends, but I suppose the world I grew up in isn’t quite what they are dealing with here.  

Me with my three new buddies, Kiptoo, Kibet, and Chepchumba after narrowly escaping a monitor lizard, which was fleeing their attacking dog directly at us.  

Our plans for this week include a few things from last week, as I am learning on a daily basis that things here just take longer.  I am not exactly sure what the main culprit is for this, but I choose to point to a lack of access to reliable transportation and other resources, and just an overall slower-paced, more relaxed lifestyle.  As I explained to someone before I left, if there is trouble with a delivery of some materials or something small but necessary is forgotten on our end, we can’t just hop in our reliable vehicle, drive on reliable paved streets, park in a shuttle-necessitating parking lot at one of our many theme-park-sized local home improvement superstores, get expert advice as we are shown immediately to what we are looking for and more, breeze through the checkout line and jump back on the shuttle to our vehicle, and speed home, all in under an hour (maybe add 10 minutes if we decide to take advantage of the soda and hot dog deal on the way out).  We must strategically bunch together our trips to town for materials and supplies, so if something is needed to proceed with a project, it is usually at least a couple days before we will obtain it and proceed with that particular piece.  Add to that the uji and chai breaks each morning and afternoon, siestas after lunch, and the inevitable and constant social breaks, and you have yourself a project moving ahead surely, but most noticeably slowly.  At first my inclination was to try to really push everyone and give quick deadlines for task completion, but I quickly realized that was not productive, even counterproductive.  So I have now been shown that the best way is to give task lists to each manager and let them divvy out responsibilities to their team.  While I still am calling meetings and roaming around to check on progress and get involved when needed, I have much more appropriate expectations, and am seeing each person involved enjoying and taking ownership of their tasks.  That basically means waking up each morning and deciding over conversations at breakfast what I will be involved in that day.  This may seem like a really disorganized and unproductive way of approaching a project of this complexity, and I felt the same way at the beginning, but I am learning through this experience that it is not, and really the only way it can be done within the context of this place and culture.  An additional benefit of this slower pace is that it allows me to really pay attention to all the intricate details of such a project.  Ultimately these are their projects, and I am seeing how letting go of my own expectations of how they should work and progress is really allowing them to use their own creativity and ambition to not only own their respective projects, but to improve them.  I told them from the beginning that I am not the expert here in any of the specifics; they are the experts and I am just here to learn from them and keep everyone organized and moving forward together.  Though I thought that I had accepted this position for myself, I am now truly experiencing this statement of mine, which, though humbling, is extremely liberating and inspiring.

Two of the men from the Anti-Alcohol program putting the final touches on the brand new, 50-foot-long seed bed we have constructed.  This will be the temporary home of up to 40,000 seedlings per month.

So what will we do this week?  I can’t tell you exactly, but I can tell you what the plan is.  We will bring in a lot of dried manure and mix it with the plowed soil, build the giant seed germination bed and plant thousands of seeds, dig out one section of the training center’s tree nursery and transfer 20,000 existing seedlings to their new temporary home, plan out and plant shade trees in the training center, and iron out the plans for the training center and children’s home fruit tree orchards.  I am sure at least one of these things will not be completed and many other small items will be, but I have learned to accept that and make constant adjustments.  I have been told by a friend and very successful project manager that this is the nature of his business, and his success relies entirely on his ability to perform in this capacity.  I also plan to lock myself in my room (not really) and complete the elusive business plan that I started weeks ago and have opened scarcely since.  It feels to me like this business plan is a research paper in college that has been assigned at the beginning of the semester, to be turned in as the final project in the last week of class.  While I know that it is important that I begin work on it early, I would much rather spend my time and energy on the smaller, fun assignments than any time at all on this big, undefined project.  Part of it is that I was never even trained on how to put together a business plan, so I have put together my own outline based on research online, brief conversations with a few people that are not afraid of this type of document, and my own, obviously questionable common sense.  

Spending the evening with Kiprotich, my 2-week-old brother.

Outside of all the time I spend doing things directly associated to the borehole project, I have been attending my now-private Kiswahili lessons daily and just spending time with the people here, sharing conversations over chai and uji, and playing countless games with the kids.  Learning Kiswahili has been very challenging, but I think I am starting to make some good progress.  The teachers agree with their own encouragement, in between laughing hysterically at my attempts to pronounce words and put sentences together.  If nothing else, I am at least providing some apparently sidesplitting entertainment for whoever happens to be in the teacher’s room during my lessons.  I also attended the opening of a cultural center in the Kerio Valley this weekend, which was very interesting.  A group in Baringo, a place I have been to a couple times before, has used some business training from a workshop here to develop a cultural center that has many different kinds of traditional homes of tribes in their area.  The group asked for ELI to be the guests of honor at the opening event, and they requested me to accompany them.  This could have something to do with the fact that I have requested that they allow me to join them whenever they “go somewhere interesting or do something fun.”  The trip was long and incredibly hot, but very educational and a good opportunity to connect with a beautiful new community (to me) that has so much potential but some major developmental issues, most noticeably the completely dry lake bed that used to supply the entire area with water and food.  It was quite an experience to walk directly through the middle of the scarily dry, 1-Kilometer wide lake bed.  When we got to the other side, we met a small group of young children who had walked for well over an hour with their cows in search of drinking water for both their cattle and themselves.  They were lovely and friendly little ones that were very eager to show us where the small remaining crocodile and elephant population could be found.  Along the way, one of their dogs attacked a monitor lizard, causing the 3-foot-long prehistoric creature to flee directly in the direction of our group.  I was oblivious to the danger and overly interested to get a close look at the action, until I turned around and saw Kiprop, the nearest Kenyan to me, fleeing for his life.  At this point I immediately flashed back to the Crocodile Hunter episode I had seen where he pestered a monitor lizard to the point of it chasing him up a tree and biting through his steel-toed boot.  Needless to say I joined in the collective fight or flight response, choosing flight without delay.  After the lizard escaped and jumped to the other side of the small river, we all reconvened and the others began to make fun of me for running away and not even opening my camera to take a photo, saying I had chosen to instead use it as a weapon.  I still hear these jokes on a daily basis.  All I can say is that it really is tough being a Mzungu and not knowing how to behave in the bush.  

The kids hard at work in the shamba on their morning off from school, demolishing and standardizing the beds  so each family will have exactly 15 in which to plant and provide food for the children year-round.

After we survived that encounter and had endured the relentlessly hot sun for nearly three hours in this impromptu walking safari, we returned back to the village center, exhausted and dehydrated.  We were fed brown ugali and roasted goat meat before the ceremony finally commenced about six hours after it was scheduled.  Everyone spoke during the 3-hour event, and my speech to them mostly congratulated them on establishing this center, while also encouraging them to come together as a community to find solutions to their water shortage and continue to build the center into the type of place that would attract visitors from near and far for the cultural experience and wildlife viewing.  Since I now have my hair braided in corn rows again, I had to explain to the giggling crowd that I was in fact a man and that I was growing my hair out to donate it to children who had lost their hair during treatment for certain diseases.  Once they believed my statement of gender and understood the purpose of this very bizarre hair project, they accepted me and applauded my efforts.  This phenomenon always cracks me up to no end, but never more so than everyone here.  I was even told last week by a young lady in town that I was beautiful while shopping in the supermarket.  I got embarrassed, instinctively said, “thank you,” and scurried away down the next isle, causing Kiprop, who was walking next to me, to laugh and repeat this interaction, if you can call it that, through the checkout line and the entire drive home.  Again, it is tough being a Mzungu.

Let me wrap this up before you become too bored or I give too many embarrassing stories.  I will do my best to post each week from here on out, though my ability to do that depends what extent of involvement the projects require of me.  Each week certainly offers enough content to write about, so hopefully it will also afford me the opportunity to share it with all of you.  I hope you are all doing well, appreciate your continued prayers and support, and would love to hear from you.  Be good to yourselves and those around you.