An interesting survey !

I found this a few days ago in 'The Standard' newspaper.   Its an interesting picture of (probably) city life in Kenya.

Wife beating seems to be quite OK !  Even for the women concerned ..... 

"Despite the tough economic times, the poorest people in Kenya (73 per cent) are living happier lives than the richest (72 per cent).     


(Do these figures work out ?   I'm hopeless at maths/statistics !)



One in six Kenyans — 16.7 per cent — think it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife, while nine in 10 citizens have a problem with homosexuals and would mind if they lived next to them, a new survey shows.   11 per cent of women do not have a problem being battered by their husbands, saying it is justifiable. This figure is just half the number of men (20 per cent) who think it is not wrong to beat their wives, a punishable offence according to the law, which is believed to be on the decline due to increasing education levels in the population. 

The survey further indicates that while a minority of Kenyans would have a problem living next to unmarried couples, supporters of a different political party or people living with HIV, 87 per cent would have a problem living next door to drug addicts.

 And if you love the bottle, please note that “seven in 10 Kenyans (70 per cent) would not be happy living next door to heavy drinkers of alcohol,” notes the survey. Out of the close to 40 million Kenyans, 1.2 per cent of adults are considered binge drinkers according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), meaning there could be some 39 million unhappy neighbours in the country. 

But in what could be an encouragement in the fight against HIV/Aids, the survey found that only 16 per cent of Kenyans would have a problem neighbouring those who live positively. Stigma has been one of the greatest impediments in the fight against the virus and while 16 per cent is still high, the same survey notes that this is lower than the African average which stands at 23 per cent. 

Interestingly, more Kenyans trust their neighbours more than their friends and just eight per cent think it is okay to give or receive a bribe despite the choking corruption levels. 

Three in 10 (31 per cent) have complete trust in people of another religion, while two in 10 (22 per cent) have complete trust in people of another tribe. "

A delicate matter ....

I read today that girls in Kenyan schools are to be supplied by the government with free sanitary pads !    About time too .... teenage girls miss on average a week of school every month as they have no money to buy pads, so stay at home.   

This obviously puts girls at an educational disadvantage, which is an Africa-wide problem.   Half of the population earn less than $2 a day, IF they have a job, so buying pads is not a choice.

Perhaps it might be better to encourage and demonstrate the method to make re-useable, washable pads ?   Why not supply the girls with kits to make their own pads ?   

http://sewinpeace.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/feminine-cloth-pad-tutorial.html

Update on Kuki Gallmann

I weep when I read something like this ...

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/jun/18/who-shot-kuki-gallmann-the-story-of-a-kenyan-conservationist-heroine

A beautiful land, being destroyed by a combination of its own people, the climate and politics.

Only in Africa (2)

Is it polite to talk about what in Wales we call the 'Ty Bach' ?    (The small house .... the tiniest room ... in Swahili, the choo).  

The first house we lived in, in Ng'iya about 40 miles west of Kisumu, was a very old dilapidated house in a school compound, probably built about 1930.   There was water laid on to a cold tap in the kitchen, and another in the bathroom, but no loo.  The head teacher of that school knew we were coming, so had hurriedly organised that a loo should be built for us ... outside, in the garden. 

It was the usual long-drop, pit latrine, hole in the ground type, in a 'mud-hut' kind of building, with thatch roof and a creaky, roughly made door, with cracks between each plank. The door was about 5ft tall, to allow light to shine in at the top.  The door handles were wooden cotton reels; there was a loop of string and a nail to secure the door on the inside.  When the head inspected it, she said we had to have a 'sit-down' seat, so the school fundi (carpenter) was shown a European loo in one of the modern houses, and instructed to construct a similar one for us, in wood.  He did; he made a cube like box, about two feet tall, with a small, hard square hole cut in the top ... and there it was, a throne fit for white bottoms .... made of rough wood, still with bark on, and the hole jagged and full of splinters !

This edifice functioned perfectly well during the day, (after we had requested some sand-paper) but we hadn't forseen the problems of night useage.  It gets dark very suddenly on the Equator, at about 6.30 p.m.   At first, we had only one paraffin hurricane lamp, and a night trip to the loo necessitated leaving one person in darkness in the house while the other went outside.   

Now, bright lights in the tropics attract moths, bats and beetles.   And there was the problem; how to prevent every creature from yards around from entering the loo and fluttering around the head of the person seated in contemplation ?   One needed the light to check there were no snakes being disturbed in the small house, yet one didn't need to be invaded by hundreds of moths and beetles.  What to do ?

Well, every question has an answer .... so the solution was to put the lamp down on the ground about ten yards away from the choo after checking for snakes, and then leave the door open !    (And hope no student or anyone else was walking past and could observe the sight of a brightly illuminated mzungu sitting on a box with pants around the ankles !)  

Another update on Sylvanus

I have today sent approximately 11,400 Kenya shillings to pay for more treatment for Sylvanus; this is about £86 which I have collected from very kind friends.   I have sent this money to a trusted friend in Manchester who will be back in Kisumu at the end of the month.

By coincidence, I heard yesterday from Kenya that Sylvanus is improving; he apparently had two tropical ulcers on his leg, one of which is completely healed now, and the other is improving.   He has had/is going to have further tests at the local government hospital (which have to be paid for) to see what other treatment he may need.  

Compared to private medicine  in the U.K., £86 seems like a very small amount, but treatment at the Pandipieri clinic is good, although small amounts have to be paid towards the cost of drugs and dressings.

My heartfelt thanks to my friends who have donated to the care of this elderly man they will never meet, but who is overwhelmed with gratitude to his unknown English friends.

Nyasaye ber !!  

Old Africa magazine for June/July 2017

My favourite magazine has arrived - it comes air mail from Kenya.   This edition is special - it contains an old photograph I persuaded a friend of mine to submit !   

(Some of my wax print patchwork squares under it !)

Here is the photo from my friend .... I know EXACTLY where the building is, having walked past it dozens of times in the past, but it would hardly be fair to enter the competition, now would it ?

But seeing the success my friend has had in having his photo printed, I'm very tempted to enter one or more of my old photos, or maybe for the pages of contributors anecdotes - my story about the liver flukes !

We'll see .........

Only in Africa (1)

I bought a small piece of liver today for supper, with some bacon.  I don't like liver that much, but its supposed to be 'good for me' !   When I lived near Kisumu, I used to occasionally buy cows liver and make pate, which I do like, and cooking my liver and bacon for my meal I was reminded of the first time I bought Kenyan liver.

One day I cycled the three or four miles to the nearest market, on a Friday, when they killed that weeks cow, right there, in the market butchery.  I had an arrangement with the butcher to keep the fillet steak for me, as this was the least tough beef.   Sometimes it was necessary to go elsewhere in the market and buy the cabbage and bananas first, if they hadn't finished killing the cow !   (It doesn't do to be too squeamish in Africa).

On that particular day I saw the butcher had some liver on his stall (open air, flies included) so I bought half a kilo as well as the fillet.   I made some more purchases and then cycled back to our house, to get the meat into the (paraffin powered) fridge before it started to walk back home by itself !  Because of poor refridgeration we had to eat any fresh meat that day or the next.

Early next morning I went to make the pate, and in cutting up the liver, and removing the big tubes, I noticed some white things inside the tubes .... being married then to a biologist, I recognized the 'things' as liver flukes !   What to do ?   I wasn't going to waste the chance to make some pate, and there would be no more fresh meat for a week .... so I cut the liver up small, and ran a thumb nail along each tube to eject the flukes !   I think there were something like 20 or 30 of them by the time I was happy there were no more.   I dumped them on the cement path outside and stamped on them to kill them .... and got on with making the pate, which was delicious !

It doesn't do to be too squeamish in Africa .... 

My secret addiction !

Wax prints !    I have been addicted to these colourful and so typically African materials for fifty years, and have been buying and collecting scraps of them for most of that time.  When I lived in Kenya in the 1960's and 70's I bought lengths of kitenge material to make dresses, blouses and skirts for myself, and little dresses for the children, and mens shirts also.   (And the trousers I'm wearing at the top of my blog). 

Looking through and sorting old photos, I am surprised by how many of them have people in them wearing these prints.  

     

               

Most of these fabrics are now printed in East Africa, or Zimbabwe, or Ghana; some in Java, some still in England, but they have spread all over Africa, and are made in various qualities, with China now coming into this lucrative market, but with a poorer quality (and therefore cheaper) cotton material.   It does mean there is something for everyone.   Many of the designs have been around for over 50 years, in various colour-wise, and modern fabrics often have up to date political messages.   Obama was popular on some pieces of cloths !  

The bag in which I carry my stuff to the office each day is made of wax prints squares, and I have recently bought a book about the origins of wax prints.   I even use the scraps I have collected from a friend in Kenya for patchwork pictures, and have recently started on an African patchwork quilt !   I am addicted !

  My work bag which I bought a few years ago in Kisumu.

Magie Relph has produced this book; her shop in Yorkshire sells African prints that she buys in bulk every year on trips to Mali, Zimbabwe, Ghana and so on.     http://www.africanfabric.co.uk/ 

  

And finally, one of those accidental photos showing African print at its best ...

Did she purposely pick red flowers to match her dress ?

Thought for the day.

I was throwing out various papers, and found this I had written on the back of a bank counterfoil.   
"In the past, Africa was islands of people in a continent of wildlife.   Now this is reversed ...."

Sad.

(It might be a quote from some book, or something someone said to me ....)

The Lunatic Line

.... just a quickie about something I spotted today ....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4559154/Kenya-FINALLY-replaces-Lunatic-Line-built-British.html

The old railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, and then from Nairobi to the lake, which terminated in Kisumu, was great fun to travel on.    In the 1960's, the dining cars still had linen table cloths, and REAL hall-marked silver cutlery, and an air of colonial elegance .... but the trains soon deteriorated and the cutlery disappeared ... as eventually did the railway to Kisumu.   

Pendeza Weaving

On many occasions I noticed this sign by the road as I went by tuk-tuk from Nyamasaria back to Kisumu, and occasionally wondered what it was, but the trees by the road were tall and somewhat overgrown, and I couldn't see anything, so stupidly I assumed it was just one of the defunct signs we see everywhere in Africa.

Now, with the aid of Google, I've found this   http://www.pendezaweaving.com/management-and-founders    and have discovered that this weaving workshop started in Nyalenda catholic centre in the early 1980's !   I now WISH I had called in to see what was going on, and to see their weaving.      They spin and weave the cotton grown in Nyanza, and have expanded to another workshop nearer the lake at Bondo,   It would have been good to go and buy some of their products to bring back to Monmouth, for sale through our office and at the market stalls we have each month in town.

They make cotton/wool shawls (as above), cotton baby blankets, floor rugs, various items of clothing, and are now starting to use water hyacinth fibres.

Watch the youtube video !    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW7gs13odGk

I've got it working !

My scanner ... and here is one of the first pictures I scanned.

This is Ahmed, reputedly one of the oldest elephants with the biggest tusks, in Kenya ... somewhere I have photos of the animal when it was alive, up at Marsabit, a mountain in what we used to call the NFD ... the northern frontier district !   (A very pre-independence, colonial name).  When he died in the 1970's, his skeleton was put in the National Museum in Nairobi.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               And here he is, in the flesh, so to speak !   He was protected under a special Presidential decree by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and had armed guards near him, day and night, as those tusks would have been worth a bit.   There were two other slightly younger elephants always near him, sort of companions.   It was interesting very slowly approaching him through the bush, but as I say, the askari's were there to protect us as well as the elephants.       

It wasn't until I saw his skeleton in the museum on my 1996 trip with S. and T., that I realised just how large he was.                                                                  

Kenya, 1996 .... my diary of that visit !

Nice !!

I've been spending 'rest times' (doc recommended I had a rest each day to try and recover quicker from a bug I picked up on my last visit .... but that's another story) .... so I've been using the time to sort through and label old  Africa photos, some from 1968 !   

The crocodile above is one from a visit to Kenya when I took my two youngest children; daughter S. was about 15 or 16 and son T. was 14.   Daughter had been born in Kenya, but left at the age of six months; son was born in the UK, so really, neither of them had the African experience the two oldest daughters had, and as I had inherited some money, I decided to spend it on taking them to Africa !

My diary is stuffed full of all sorts of things; bills and receipts, seed pods, thorns, pressed flowers, etc. etc.   This diary must have started a habit for all my future travel diaries are the same, full of bits and pieces, as well as words !

                                                                                                                                                                    

 

Joseph Adhiambo (whose photo is in the right hand side bar) had originally worked for us as a 'house-boy', and we had sent him to school, and he got a good job in Nairobi, in a tourist shop inside the Norfolk Hotel, and as I had kept in contact, he generously took three weeks leave from his job, to be our driver, guide, guard, companion and friend during our stay.   It was so very kind of him.  

According to the diary, we flew out on Air Madagascar, which I had forgotten.   I have also forgotten (and I quote) .... "The plane touched down on Kenya soil (tarmac) and I burst into tears !   S and T must have thought I was crazy, but I was overcome with emotion at my first sight of Kenya through the plane window after 17 and a half years ..."

"Right at the front of the crowd in arrivals, with a face splitting grin, was Joseph, dapper in a smart business suit which was a bit different to his rags when we first met him in 1968.   Hand shakes, greetings, hugs, laughter .... Joseph then went to get his friend Tony 'and some children' ..."    (Tony owned a mini-bus)   The children turned out to be seven of various ages !   Some were Josephs, the rest I never did identify.     We piled into Tony's mini-bus, and I record that our luggage included a doll's house (again I'd forgotten this !) which we were giving to a school.   

"Within minutes we had seen giraffe and zebra as the road borders the national park .... but at the junction of Uhuru and Kenyatta avenues, the mini-bus broke down !   Tony and Joseph pushed the bus onto the edge of Uhuru Park, and Joseph walked to where he had left his car ...."     Welcome back to Africa !

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

 
I have masses of photos from this trip with the youngsters, but it was pre-digital cameras and so I had what is now an old-fashioned SLR camera and a telephoto lens, to take photos.   I got them all printed when I returned.    I must get my scanner working, and convert them into digital images.    Watch this space !

A quick bit of patchwork

The vicar at the church I attend in Tintern is retiring in a month or so, and many of the congregation are contributing small panels to a wall hanging for her as a farewell gift.  As many of the people there provided baby clothes, bra's (!) and money for me to take out to Africa, to Pandipieri, I thought my panel could show Africa and the 'Nyasaye Ber' motto (God is Good) from outside the community .... and of course, I had to use some of my African wax print patchwork pieces to make it !  

And here is my panel; I've left the edges to be trimmed to size by the lady who is sewing them altogether.  

It was a bit of a rush job; the panels have to be delivered tomorrow, and as I only got the backing material and instructions this morning .... 

Severe drought .... then this. (Report from Reuters)

Raging floods, which have killed 26 people and forced almost 25,000 from their homes in Kenya this month, will exacerbate hunger and poverty among herders who have already lost livestock to the worst drought in five years, charities warned.

Flood waters have swept away almost 9,000 cattle in northern and coastal Kenya, areas dominated by pastoralists who were hard hit by drought last year and in 2017.

Refugees in north-eastern Kenya's Dadaab camp have been up to their knees in floodwaters which have swept away thousands of homes and food supplies, the United Nations refugee agency said on its website, with the rains set to continue until late May.

"Fewer animals means less income, less food and increased poverty," says Piers Simpkin, a livestock expert with the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization.  "If you lose 50 percent of your sheep and goat flock it takes at least 3 years to recover. If 50 percent of the cattle are lost, it can take 10 years to recover."

The flooding came after some livestock herding communities lost their entire herds to a prolonged drought, which the Kenyan government declared a national disaster in February.

Eastern and southern Africa were hard hit in 2016 by drought exacerbated by El Nino - a warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean - that wilted crops, slowed economic growth and drove food prices higher.

The torrential seasonal rains have caused landslides and floods in coastal and western Kenya, as well as flooding in Somalia, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The United Nations estimated almost three million of Kenya's 46 million people now need humanitarian aid, along with almost eight million people in Ethiopia and seven million in Somalia.

Some more 'just found' old photos (apologies for poor quality due to aging and dust)

You know I like most animals, large and small .... ants particularly are fascinating, as are beetles and most creepy crawlies.   So I was always on the look-out for chameleons !

My two oldest daughters, 1975, Lake Baringo.  

They were aged 4 and a half, and 2 and a half.

A different chameleon species from near L. Victoria, December 1969

High altitude chameleons, Cherangany,  August, 1969.   

The African holding this pair was very brave; 

chameleons are feared by most local people in Kenya.

Ebola in the DRC .........

Ebola has broken out in a remote region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-39899406

But it is in an isolated part of the country, so hopefully should be contained.   AND  there is now a trial vaccine ...

What did we do wrong ?

About seventy years is all the time the European was 'owning' East Africa; we took medicine, religion, education …. and also I think, avarice. The first white men to venture into Eastern Africa were the explorers, but they were soon followed by expanding trade from the coast. It was obvious that easier and safer access was necessary, and a railway was planned …. the so called 'Lunatic Line' from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, to Port Florence, which became Kisumu. It took six years to build, with many deaths along the way of imported Indian workers (whose children and grandchildren formed the core of traders all over Kenya and Uganda). But it opened up the highlands to would be settlers and farmers, the rich 'Happy Valley' set of philanderers and wife swappers, the remittance men, missionaries, doctors, teachers ….

Was that the right thing to do ? European medicine meant that African families who had previously had ten or twelve children, of which perhaps two survived to become adults, now could raise most of them - and created problems for their parents to feed and educate. Education taught children about the world so that they had ambition and eventually wanted jobs that didn't exist. Religion … both Christianity and Islam …. replaced animism and traditional beliefs. And avarice and greed of the wazungu meant the countries natural resources were plundered for the benefit of people in other countries. Now avarice and greed …. and corruption …. is the way of the educated minority in many African countries. Was that what we meant to teach ?

When I first went to Kenya in the 1960's, just after independence, even back then I realised that teaching boys (and later girls) to become 'white collar' workers in Nairobi government offices and businesses wasn't going to work. A young man of perhaps 25 was going to be filling that office job until he was 60 …. thus preventing his younger brothers from taking that job. Training for careers as artisans would have been MUCH more useful for 90% of the students, but the only working white people on view to the newly liberated Africans were doing 'white collar' jobs, so that is what they aspired to.

The draw to the city meant the growth of slums like Kibera outside Nairobi, Nyalenda outside Kisumu and so on, with street children and beggars on every street, pollution, and the easy spread of diseases …. like HIV. And of course, the pull to the cities meant the rural areas were being depleted, leaving the family 'homes' to be looked after and the shamba's dug by the women and the elderly …. or abandoned (although people who die elsewhere are usually taken back to be buried traditionally in the 'home' with their ancestors so there is still a link). When I went to the talk last year in September by Harry Hook, he kept emphasising the fact that urbanisation is taking over much of Africa …. but not to its benefit. Here in UK, the 'country cottage' is the desire of many retiring city workers who have had more than enough of city life !

Perhaps it will take many generations for the people of Africa to realise that not everything 'European' is good. In the time of my great grand-parents, who were born and lived and worked in rural Dorset in the 1800's, around 1900 there was the move, for work, to the south Wales mines. Now, 100 years later, half of my family are back living in the country !  I had a long discussion with Paul at the workshop about the need for his children to know about their roots and traditions. He has taken up my suggestion of writing down his family history for future generations.   There is no need to ape the white man; doing things the African way in Africa must be best, surely ?

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

An almost invisible cicada (another of my recently found old photos.)

  

Soft, gentle beauty

I've been sorting more old photos .... and isn't this just sheer beauty ??

From todays (Kenya) Standard newspaper ... and going to church.

Reasons why Kenya is slowly headed to being a lawless society

What happened to the civic habit and duty of living by the law? Everywhere one looks it is clear that Kenya is sliding into a rather toxic form of lawlessness.

Take our conduct on the road. Minibus drivers, private motorists and ‘boda boda’ cyclists are outdoing one another in their rush to take a shortcut to the next life. Overlapping, overtaking on the left and on blind corners is now the norm rather the exception. Unnecessary shrill hooting is driving other drivers up the wall. And in all this, traffic police officers are concerned almost entirely on collecting ‘levies’ to the exclusion of everything else.

Then there is the noise and the disgusting din and frustration that go with it. From bars, to schools, to public transport, to (God forbid!) the church, it is one continuous blast of high decibel ear-drum bursting, chest-crushing excruciating din 24/7. The National Environmental Management Agency (NEMA) has stringent legislation governing the use of sound generating devices and equipment with the aim of protecting citizens from harmful noise nuisance. Neither the public nor NEMA seem to be interested in conducting themselves in accordance with the said legislations. 

I find it shocking that the church breaks NEMA rules with abandon. Christian leaders and stewards are, by definition, supposed to be on the forefront in keeping the law. Apostle Paul in Romans 13:1 writes “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God”  NEMA is particularly strict on noise-making at night, requiring that a sound producing device must not disturb or bring discomfort to person 30 metres away.

It is not uncommon to have ‘keshas’ (overnight prayers) where prayers and praises are conducted with the help of high powered amplifiers and speakers that keep everyone within a radius of 3 km awake for the duration of the prayers!  Since the time of Jesus to as recently as 15 years ago church worship services have been conducted very effectively without all the gizmos available to today’s clergy. When, for example, the Psalmist (Ps 33:3) says “Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy”, I don’t think he had a 1200 watt box speaker in mind!

Our clergy can learn from churches run by Europeans and Americans (in whose countries it is routine to obey the law) so much about effective use of sound equipment for maximum audibility and minimum noise by balancing sound decibel output and ambient acoustics.

One reason noise infringement thrives in Kenya is that planning and zoning has been thrown out of the window. You will find a church, a kindergarten, disco and petrol station sharing the same space with residential quarters. Surely it is common sense that a church  or mosque should be isolated so that worshippers can rejoice as loudly as they wish without robbing anyone of sleep.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

I can vouch for the noise from various 'churches' and was often woken soon after 4 a.m. by the call to prayer at a nearby mosque.   What we might call 'clappy happy' churches are proliferating in small tin shacks all along the Kisumu Ring Road, opposite Pandipieri and Nyalenda, and the noise is out of all proportion to the size of the buildings, which are about the size of a typical British garage next to a persons house.

The CITAM (Christ Is The Answer Ministries) (Pentecostal) church is the largest church in Kisumu ... its enormous, and I know it has huge congregations, but the noise IS contained.

When I'm in Kisumu, I either attend the services in the Mill Hill chapel, or go to St Josephs (R.C.) church, in Milimani, at which the congregation is around 500 for each of three services every Sunday morning.   They have a Dholuo service at 8 a.m., then an English language one at 10, followed by a Kiswahili service at noon.

The services at St Josephs can be up to two hours long, but at the Anglican church, they are even longer, and there is a limit to what one can take !    Sermons are typically over an hour in length.  Besides, the day I went to the Anglican church, the service went on so long, I was at risk of missing lunch back at the guest-house, so I tip-toed out, watched by the congregation of 500 .... being the only white lady present made it embarrasingly obvious.

Sylvanus update, and some Stapelia !

I just today heard that Sylvanus is still attending the Pandipieri clinic three times a week for his ulcer treatment, which is excellent.   I had feared he might default, but I should have had more faith !   Unfortunately, I wasn't told how his leg is progressing, but will try and find out more.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 

Its amazing the old photos I am finding this week; this plant was growing in one of our Kenya gardens.   Its a variety of Stapelia, probably gigantea, and the flowers stink like rotting meat, so attracting flies which act as pollinators.  

And another species of Stapelia, with flowers arranged in a sort of ball on top of the stem, rather than singly.    This one was growing in dry bush country, not our garden.   They seems to prefer dry, stony ground.

The 49th Year, explained .........

I first arrived in Kenya on 12th September, 1968 .... and for many years now I have had the intention or dream of returning for a 'final fling', so to speak, on the 50th anniversary next year, thus making this year, the 49th year !    I have returned to Africa on many occasions since 1979, when we left after a long period of teaching in various schools in western Kenya.    I took my youngest daughter (who was born in Kenya and left as a baby) and my son to Kenya in 1996, to give them a little taste of the experiences their older sisters had.   Then in 2002 I went on a desert trek to Namibia to raise money for charity, and in 2006 went to Egypt.  So together with a visit to Nigeria in 1973, I have seen something of north, south and west Africa, as well as my years in East Africa.  

Like so many people I know, Africa gets into your blood, and you cannot leave it alone, like a persistent itch.   I dream of Africa ... and am reminded of Karen Blixens musing:-  "If I know a song of Africa .... does Africa know a song of me?"  I do know that people in Kisumu remember me, even if I forget their names, for I am often greeted in the streets by people I have only met once, (and I myself met a beautiful Indian lady on a train in Canada I had last seen in her grocer fathers Kisumu shop when she was a child).   The most remarkable was an elderly Luo man I met a few years ago in the main street of Kisumu, who remembered me, (and the name of my first daughter) from when I lived at Maseno, more than 40 years previously.     

I have been searching through old pictures, mostly from re-scanned 35mm slides, to see what are the earliest pictures I have of Kenya .... the sunset was taken in September 1968 from the first house we lived in at a place called Ng'iya; we were there for about three months, and then moved to Maranda in December 1968 to the house in the second picture .... we had actually had to help in the building of this house !   Government officers (i.e. teachers) had to go where they were sent, so we lived in, I think, seven different houses in our time there.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

To change the subject completely, I have been thinking of the current troubles in Laikipia, with ranches and farms (many of which are owned by white Kenya citizens) being invaded by local nomadic tribesmen who burn buildings and shoot workers and the owners, so that they can drive their cattle onto the ranch land for water and grazing, during this dreadful on-going drought.   

Just as the population of Kenya has increased vastly (five times what it was in the 1970's) so have the numbers of cattle, sheep and goats.   The tourist camps, ranches and hotels rightly employ many of the local people, for example, the Maasai and Samburu men are employed as guides and safari drivers.   This brings money and improvements to the local community .... BUT much of this money is spent on increasing the size of herds, which puts more pressure on the grazing available.   

To many Africans, cattle are like money in the bank, and the goats are their larder.   You don't eat your bank balance !   In times of drought and famine, it would be good if there was some sort of government scheme to buy many of the cattle, for slaughter, and turning into meat products ... but who wants money ?   The nomadic pastoralist peoples love their cattle, even if the cattle are starving, and drive them into the reserves in an often futile attempt to keep them alive on stolen grazing until the rains come.

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I was given this 1938 book last week by a friend; its SO very of its time !   This is the sort of stuff that encouraged white settlers !!  

                                

Hans Burgman leaves Kisumu - for the last time ?

I found some pictures on FB of Fr. Hans last mass at Pandipieri ... he must by now be back in Holland.

               Consecrating the host ...                       ... with a large congregation.


                             ... and what looks like a farewell tree planting (below)

So much of what exists at Pandipieri centre, (and at Nyalenda centre - picture above) was initiated by Fr. Hans over the 40+ years he was there.   

His philosophy was summed up thus:-
1. When a community is in trouble, the solution should come from within the community.
2. If you want to be part of the solution, you must first become part of the community.
3. You must first of all use the assets of the community, especially the people.
4. The source of our inspiration is the simple Gospel. In the light of experience it is difficult to see what alternative there is.  

Leaving St Josephs, Milimani, after celebrating his last mass there ... 

I understand there was to be a massive party for him but can't find that on the internet ... yet.   Meanwhile, his jubilee video is still available online ....   https://vimeo.com/71999924