My first blog from Kenya ...ignore the automatic dates.

31st January, 2011

Here we are in Kisumu ! It is hot and humid, but WONDERFUL to be back !


We have been warmly greeted by Paul and Lucy and their family; Paul being the carpenter who has started off the PALUOC project to build this workshop and train teenagers to be carpenters. We had expected some rough living for a month, and had been warned that there was no electricity or water in the house, but when we arrived, we were brought to a second floor apartment, WITH electricity and water ! One of Pauls friends is sharing it with us. There are two hi-type loo's, two showers, a small kitchen, two bedrooms and a sitting room, all with barred windows to keep out possible intruders. There were several ladies in the kitchen cooking a welcoming meal for us, and Paul and Lucy, and some of their African friends also came to meet us. The little Luo I can offer them impressed no end ! We have a Maasai night watchman to look after us while we sleep … the Maasai are very obvious in Kisumu nowadays, but they weren't when I lived here. Many of them have jobs as watchmen … and few would argue with a Maasai ! They have given up (at least here) wearing the red blankets; royal blue and purple seem to be in fashion now.


Yesterday was a Sunday, so Paul invited me to go to church; the others on the team declined. Paul is Roman Catholic and so he came to collect me to take me there to his church. Big shock … but fun … he arrived on a Yamaha motor bike and with a helmet for me. I had seen out of our window several ladies going to church, in their finery, so I'd put on a full length Kenyan kitenge dress I'd brought with me, and I think I was very under-dressed ! On the motor bike, I had to hitch it up round my lily white thighs in order to get on the back of the bike. I wasn't sure if it was OK to clasp him round his waist, but hey ! nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I did !


The service was in English, led by a Dutch priest … but nothing like mass in England ! A procession with dancers, drumming, music, singing … and a lady with what at first looked like a ceramic hippo on her head, belching out smoke ! It turned out that she was the one who carried in the fire for the incense … on her head … in a ceramic hippo !! The words of the service were very familiar, except for all the hand clapping and dancing, oo-loolating, and drumming … The offertery (money) goes into baskets in the central aisle, and is carried to the altar by several women. I exchanged the peace with dozens who all stretched forward to grasp my hand and said 'Welcome' … and at that point I suddenly realised that many of the people present had HIV/AIDS, for they were thin, with grey gaunt faces … but lovely smiles and laughter. What is the name of my blog … but Luo Laughter. I can hear as I type this a group of men chatting outside and laughing and laughing, and slapping each others hands ! What was so good at the service was that I was able to take communion there … me, an Anglican, welcomed by the Catholic church with the bread ! (They don't use wine).


Then to Kibuye market, which is the largest in Kenya. What can I say ? Dirty, full of dust and rubbish, heaving with women with vegetables and fruit to sell; old clothes; children running around bare foot in all the muck along narrow alley-ways between the buildings and stalls; people shouting 'Wazungu' as we passed (white men !) … and the smells … sewage; sweet; spicey; human bodies … rotting fruit and cabbage leaves on the ground … I can't think what a quagmire Kibuye must become in the rains. We bought a pineapple, a paw-paw, bananas and some lemons … for under £1, and some flip-flops for me.


Back to the flat after, for lunch and then after a rest, we went on a tuk-tuk to see the work site, which is a smaller plot than I had thought, but a bigger half finished building than I thought. Our anticipated brick laying to build the second floor probably isn't going to happen by us … instead we will be installing windows and doors, and plastering, and clearing the site. This makes sense, for the building once lockable, can be used by teenagers to start learning their trade. So, dear people who sponsored me, I hope cement plaster and iron grids on the windows, plus shutters, will be a suitable substitute.


Then after the site visit, we walked to Paul and Lucy's house to meet her family and have yet another enormous supper, with bean stew, chappati's, mixed vegetables … and home made passion fruit juice. Lucy was ecstatic over the laptop; she wanted to use it straight away, and we showed her how to do some things on it.


Then back to the apartment on a tuk-tuk, and so to bed.

~~~~~~~~


This morning, the muzzein at the nearby mosque started at 4.30, reciting long passages from the Koran … the mosque is quite near. We hear the call to prayer several times a day.



We walked up to the main road this morning to meet a tuk-tuk who was going to take us to the site each day, driven by Morris ! We have decided because of the extreme heat and the high humidity, to use tuk-tuk's rather than walking each day and reaching the site unable to work while we recover ! It costs 100 K shillings, about 80 pence, to go 3 kilometres, and for the four of us, very little really. And in a tuk-tuk, you can see the people along the way without them seeing you !



Once on site, we started clearing the building of the tumbled heap of scaffold poles and shuttering so that it was clean for the plasterers who are coming on Wednesday. Scaffold poles in Kenya are wooden poles, not metal, but six hours of getting the poles up onto the roof for storage was back breaking work in the heat. We took it in turns to be on the roof, stacking, or on the ground lifting poles up to the person on the roof. The tuk-tuk back to the apartment was a welcome site.

~~~~~~~~~

More to come when I can get access to the internet again at the cyber cafe !

I'll see if I can add pictures next time ...


(WHAT ?? Daughter #1 has added a comment ... click on Comment for the previous post to read it !)