After lunch Joel (yes, that’s his name, pretty cool huh?) took me around the MIDI project. He is a neighbor to John and Grace in Kimuga but he works with the MIDI project in Ilkiloret. The have bees, a hay storage facility, water harvesting hole in the ground, a tree nursery, a demonstration farm, and they are the people who drilled the well. Good stuff lots of good pix. Will post them soon.
The trek – I got home just in time to gear up for another walk, this time to James’ home compound. After walking for about a half hour I venture to ask… how far is it? “Oh, about two kilometers.” It wasn’t a bad walk. I got to see the house Rebecca and James are building and the “church” James has planted. By church I mean two big trees and some stones laid out to form a square. At the moment we are passing by, the church has other guests, mainly a family of goats.
We stop in the eldest brothers home and rest for a bit. That’s when I ask Rebecca about the note she had given me the night before… I didn’t understand it but her nephew Silas is with us and he wrote it so I ask him to explain. He says that Rebecca wants a market to sell her jewelry. Since Give Us Wings doesn’t come anymore and they have taken down the stalls where they used to sell their jewelry in Karen, they are without a market. I said I would do my best but I didn’t have any immediate answers for them.
However, on FB just a few days later a friend in Maine emailed me and asked for some Maasai collars. Wahlah! It’s a start! I will be posting photos of Maasai jewelry on FB if anyone’s interested let me know.
The Rain – The storm we watched go around us the night before, found us on Thursday night. I had washed my sandals after the trek and left them on the roof of the manyatta that serves as a kitchen… and forgotten until about 10 minutes into the storm – so the next day I wore my toe socks and flip-flops home on the motorcycle… I told you toe socks come in handy!
Hitching – Getting home however proved problematic. I had hoped to catch the public vehicle that goes to town once a day in the morning around 8 a.m. Rebecca brought me to the road at 7 a.m. We waited for awhile and then a neighbor, Pastor Johnson, came to the stage, also on his way to Ngong and said we might have missed the vehicle. He had heard it had gone early to take a cow to market … he went off to find network for his cell phone so he could confirm the rumor. He came back out 15 minutes later and said that we had missed the vehicle – he would try to call a motorcycle. Rebecca and I went back to the house to wait, about 10 minutes later a cattle truck rumbled up to the stage and honked its horn. I took off running for the road. Sure enough Pastor Johnson was in the cattle truck. He got out of the front seat and climbed into the front. “This vehicle is going to Saikeri, but we can pick another vehicle from there,” he said, as he motioned me to get into the front seat that he was vacating that was already occupied by two Maasai men. I crowded into the front seat. The next stop was to pick up a goat at the neighbors place. Then we headed for Saikeri, along the way we took a detour to the driver’s house and were basically force fed tea. At this point my hour ride home had already taken almost two and a half hours and we weren’t even to Saikeri, which is still 45 minutes from home!
Breakfast – Its market day in Saikeri so the normally deserted hamlet is filling with people from the surrounding barren landscape. We call Njenga on Pastor’s phone because mine is dead. We watch a goat being butchered for a few minutes and then find a place to wait for Njenga. The New Blue Hotel is a small restaurant with an uneven dirt floor and benches with slates that wide enough to fall through so that you have to balance to sit on them. Pastor Johnson has a kiosk a few doors down where he charges cell phones and cuts hair…turns out he’s a barber too! Helen is cooking in the kitchen of The New Blue Hotel. I ask her if I can take a picture of her kitchen, she says yes, if I bring her a copy of the photo. I then have a chapati that she has just made fresh. The New Blue would not pass any health inspections in the states but I’ve see worse!
Home – after making a quick stop at the farm Njenga and I head for home. I’m exhausted and so filthy! I finally reach home around 12:30.
I’ve decided from now on to leave Ilkiloret on Thursday afternoons on the back of Njenga’s pikipiki – hitching is an adventure I don’t need to experience twice!
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