And all the Waters Gone…

29 01 2009

Day 9 of the school strike, which is lucky as we woke this morning in the town of Saikeri and would have been very late if school was in fact on! We decided not to stick around in Saikeri for too long, so after some breakfast and the morning chai tea we once again hit the dusty road for home.

The end of our time is coming so close now, and became apparent to us when we started talking about our next steps in our journey on the walk home. We both agreed that we could stay longer, but due to the school strike both feel slightly relieved to leave on Sunday as our jobs and aims at school are nearly complete. That said we returned home before lunch dripping in sweat from the hot Kenyan sun, but held off from having a shower until we had finished our jobs at school. This included making more desks, office work and a good general tidy up.

Before heading home we ducked off to our rock to relax, before returning home to our home, with our family of overactive kids! Finally it was time for a shower! But there was one problem…we had no water left in the tank. We were forced to use the rain water we had collected from the dirty tanks in the field, and upon putting this water in our clear water container found it already green and full of dirt! Its not a nice feeling but with no other choice we washed ourselves in the hopes of becoming slightly clean. Our thoughts wander, and we wonder what water Nini is using to cook our meals with, and after finding out its the same water, decide not to think about it again this evening!

That night we have a visitor in Wife Number 2′s house, so once again are forced to have 2 dinners! Two servings of Cha Pati is hard to get down! Even though its our favourite African meal, you do begin to get slightly sick of it with two helpings a night!





We Have Light!

28 01 2009

Wednesday – and still no school. The kids are becoming more and more desperate for school books now – but we are unable to issue these without a teacher present.

We stayed in the office most of this morning, and continued the work we had begun over the last couple of days – before we retreated up to our ‘secret’ rock overlooking the valley with a book! Time ticked by well to fast today.

This afternoon we had planned to go and visit some friends in the town of Saikeri for the night. This was about an hour walk away in the heat. The walk was the same – hot and dusty with frequent visitors on the way and many water breaks! Being the only white people in the town means you are easily recognised, and we hear our Masai names, Nitokisa and Sonita (said De-coy-sa and Soy-n-da) called all the time.

That evening was fantastic, with some great food and the most exciting thing we have seen for a long time…power! The owner of the house, Maggie, decided to treat us all and started up her fuel powered generator for the evening! This lit up the house one light bulb, the TV and a 4 plug adaptor which we all charged our phones on! For the first time in ages, we also ate in the light! We usually eat in our mud hut kitchen which even in during the day is pitch black, so seeing what we were eating was amazing, and much cleaner on the clothes than a dark kitchen!

That night we watched the news, ate, talked and drank the night away until we all went to bed for the evening, which again was different as we didn’t have to use a torch…we do really miss having power every now and then!








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