Thank you
Tristen and Jared here, and we’ve
got quite a bit to say about our first day in Kolunje. Meanwhile, Ajay will
cover his travel tales from Nairobi. Today we got a much earlier start, waking
up at around 6. We walked outside and ran straight into Peter, one of our
hosts. He is the son of our main host, James, and is building his own home
close by. He gave us a tour of the
grounds, showing us and Sriram where they milk the cows in the morning and his
house that he is building, which is actually very nice. As we would learn later
in the day, it is a tradition in Kenya to leave the house when you are 19 and
begin to construct your own home because. As Tom, one of the community leaders
said, “At that age, you probably have girl problems.”
We soon were called in for
breakfast. We had toast, sausage, cereal - all of the usual things. The only
thing strange is that they serve cereal with hot milk, and none of us seems to
be a fan. Otherwise all of the food has always been delicious.
After breakfast the five of us
went and visited the schools, where we met all of the school officials. We
toured both of the schools, pointing out all of the problems to them. Next door
is the local hospital, so we also got to see their facilities. Everyone was
very impressed by the fact that they were promoting both polio vaccines and
family planning. They had a station to find free condoms, which was great!
Unfortunately, it was still quite a sad place to see… they didn’t even have a
doctor, and were having problems with their water supply systems. We came to
realize that there would be many people in the community that could use help
with their systems, but we only have the ability to help the schools. We had to
make that very clear to the community, as much as it pained us to see these
other community members struggling.
Going back to the school, we sat
and met with members of the Water and Sanitation Committee of Kolunje as well
as school officials. During the meeting we reviewed the problems with the
rainwater system and explained the 2D resistivity (2DR) system we are using to
locate water. It seemed like Sriram was the best at getting the officials
involved because he quizzed them on how much they remembered about the faults
of the gutter system and the project goals. He even gave the best simplified
explanation of the 2DR system. In his words, if you take a picture of someone’s
hand, you don’t know who it is, but if you take a picture of their whole body,
then you do. With this example, everyone was able to understand that the 2DR
system is a more accurate way of finding water than what they tried before. Simeon,
one of the WatSan members was able to set up a community meeting for next week
where we’ll be able to see how the entire community feels about the project. He
said everyone should be willing to help, he in particular is “retired but not
tired.” After the meeting they gave us
soft drinks. We all politely accepted, but Sriram couldn’t finish his so he
discretely poured it out on the ground. At least, he thought it was discrete until
we noticed some school children staring at us. But, thanks to the heat, the
evidence quickly evaporated.
After the lengthy meeting we were
able to relax over a nice lunch back at the house. Christine prepared some
delicious food for us once again including some beef liver. Julia was about to
try it but Christine’s description of the cow having been freshly slaughtered
and the liver being bloody that morning quickly set her back down the
vegetarian path. While we laughed over Julia’s renewed dietary restrictions we remembered
all of the admirers she had at the school. Either people just enjoy saying “Julia”
or she’s quickly gaining many new Kenyan boyfriends.
Later in the afternoon we drove
to Lunga. Out of everything we have seen so far, it seems to be the most
beautiful part of Kolunje. As we climbed up the mountains on the increasingly
sketchy dirt roads, a view opened up between the jagged mountains which amazed
us all. We could see all the way the Kisumu and Lake Victoria. Upon arrival at
the Lunga Primary school we were greeted by the headmaster, some friendly goats,
and a donkey. We picked out three possible sites to run the 2DR testing as the
headmaster and the WatSan chairman showed us around. At one point while Tristen
was attempting to get a high-five from a little boy, the boy’s sister took her
brother’s hand and gave Tristen a high-five for him. Continuing on to the
Polytechnic school in Lunga we found 2 sites and got a pretty nice group picture.
Magwar Market was our final stop
for the day. We encountered locals selling dried fish and Tristen managed to
get delayed in a tailor shop while trying to acquire some fabric. Apparently
the tailor was pretty interesting. Meanwhile Julia walked into the sheet metal
roof of a stall and it took us the rest of the day to convince her she wasn’t going
to get tetanus. From now on, Julia will be known as The Girl Who Lived. Sriram
had his own worries as whenever he tried to say hello to the people in the
market they laughed at his poor pronunciation of the local language, Luo. I
mean, the rest of us can’t exactly speak it well either, so we’re slowly
getting used to laughter.
We walked back from the market
with Simeon and got to practice our Luo phrases. It was during this walk that
we met Tom, who we mentioned at the beginning, and his wife, Millicent. One kid
in particular seemed to like saying hello to us because after the first time we
said hello he ran ahead of us so we could say hello to him again. He kept this
up until we reached the house. He didn’t tell us his name, so we just call him
the kid in the red shirt.
After a long day, ours and Ajay’s
stories merged as their van conveniently pulled up the road to the house as we
were walking along it. We caught up with Ajay and Tom and learned we were both
exhausted after a long day. Seeing as how we were falling asleep at dinner,
tonight is an early night to bed.
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