We knew this day was coming, and its always impossible to fully prepare for the tears, the warm handshakes and hugs and the "please return soon." There is so much joy in our hearts tonight as we sit around the dinner table reminiscing about the past two weeks, the amazing people of Kenya, the project, the eyeglasses, grateful hearts on both sides. We attended the tank construction site for the last time, had tea and were promised pictures of the completed tank. We then walked down the dusty road, which has grown so familiar to us over the past few weeks, seeing the adults on the side of the road greeting us with the national language of Kenya, Jambo or the mother tongue of people here, "wi-mwega" which means "are you well?" in Kikuyu. The reply is "kwega muno" which means "I am well."
The celebration was held at Nderitu's home and many members of the community attended, including the committee that took so very good care of us.We each thanked the community for going out of their way to be so hospitable, and as I mentioned earlier, many tears were shed. We danced, we sang, we ate the most delicious meal and we drank copious amounts of chai tea. The time soon came that we had to leave and return to our accommodations, and after final goodbyes, we walked past so many people along the road that were there to wait for the ballot box to arrive from Naru Maru, because today is election day, the primaries in Kenya.
Tomorrow we begin our journey south to the Rift Valley for our safari.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2012
Friday, January 18, 2013
January 17: Our trek to see the water source
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2012
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
January 16: Rains tested the water tank..and it works well!
It rained hard yesterday evening so the walk up to the site today had mud puddles here and there. We passed the daily herd of cows and sheep on the way.
The tank had two rounds of stones and a pool of water from the heavy rains. It was good to know it works and holds water :-) The stone rounds will proceed beyond our departure on Saturday.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
The tank had two rounds of stones and a pool of water from the heavy rains. It was good to know it works and holds water :-) The stone rounds will proceed beyond our departure on Saturday.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
January 15: Water tank is coming along...
The base of the water tank has cured. We could only watch the technical process of brushing bitumen and wiring rebar where the mortar and rock blocks are placed. The blocks are then precisely set into mortar.
We went to Margaret's birth-home nearby and watched her mother "shosho" pounding maize kernels into flour, while a large calderon of milk is being boiled for chai which will be served to all of the volunteers working on the water tank.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
January 14: Eye testing and glasses for the community!
It was a long but productive day eye-testing and providing eyeglasses to 180+ community members.We also trained the Kenyan team that will carry on doing this when we leave. Each person learned all tasks. DWC Participant, Cathy Graven showed everyone the eye interview technique. We split into teams and some worked with eye charts while others adjusted frames. The "eyejusters" were oil-filled and as the knob was turned the chart became clearer and clearer for each client. When the adjustment was as good as they could make it, the syringe was clamped then removed, and the adjustment became permanent.
We also handed out sunglasses to the community so they can protect their eyes from the high ultraviolet of the Kenyan sun at this 6000ft altitude.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moro, January 2013
We also handed out sunglasses to the community so they can protect their eyes from the high ultraviolet of the Kenyan sun at this 6000ft altitude.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moro, January 2013
January 13: Free day
Today we drove to the equator and witnessed the Coriolanus effect, bought school supplies and a new DWC cellular, then spent a few hours around a hotel pool relaxing. It cost $500 kenya shilling to swim (approx 5.50CDN)
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
January 11: Feeling right at home
Today was another full day. The base layer had already set and we spent the better part of the morning wiring rebar into a grid. The rest of the time the community volunteers mixed concrete and poured it into the rebar grid.
Margaret invited all of us to view her beautiful farm, then into her home, and after grace, served us a delicious lunch (the main meal for Kenyans) of mokimo, maize kernels, boiled potatoes, and the boiled leaves of calandra, which is the leaf of a squash vine. The meal included a fragrant meat and vegetable stew and shredded cabbage with wonderful spices. Finally, to finish it off we all had chai either sweetened or unsweetened.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moro, January 2013
Margaret invited all of us to view her beautiful farm, then into her home, and after grace, served us a delicious lunch (the main meal for Kenyans) of mokimo, maize kernels, boiled potatoes, and the boiled leaves of calandra, which is the leaf of a squash vine. The meal included a fragrant meat and vegetable stew and shredded cabbage with wonderful spices. Finally, to finish it off we all had chai either sweetened or unsweetened.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moro, January 2013
January 10: Digging and moving gravel
Today was a relatively easy day digging a short drainage ditch while the community volunteers broke the larger rocks in the water tank base into smaller pieces. We had to move some of crushed gravel aside so that the drainage trench could be lengthened.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
January 9: Very welcoming volunteers, leaders and community!
I didn't have much time to post earlier today, so here is a little more, posted from our hotel bar. There is a TV presently broadcasting a world traveler being interviewed on his sailing boat. Laurel is comfortable in a chair talking to Marcia, while Don and Dave ask the bartender why Kenyans don't wear sunglasses. His reply, "they don't like the dust getting in their eyes when the sunglasses are on"....interesting.
Margaret is the leader of the volunteer teams that arrive to help us each day. Each volunteer is coordinated to work two days of the two weeks we are at the project. It is a lot of fun, but it has a serious side; if a volunteer arrives late, they are sent home and fined! Our small group of volunteers have it a little easier; we have breakfast at 7:30 and meet one of the reforestation project Team Members, Julius, Bernice, Lucy (Nderitu’s sister) or Margaret, who accompany us on our 30 minute walk to the project site. Nderitu, for those of you who don’t know him, is DWC host partner contact and was born in this community and coordinates the projects. He lives in Colorado, and he and his Brother David are the principle operators of Wilderness Kenyan Safaris based here as well. The team members do not accompany us because they are concerned about security, they do it out of respect for our efforts, which Margaret says they admire because we came so far to their little community, and we could have gone anywhere else in the world, but we chose her community, so she says they are so thankful!
The Kenyan countryside is lush and painted with shafts of golden sun in the morning light. Mt Kenya rises majestically before us as we walk the first part of the road. People have already staked their sheep beside the sweet grass on the roadside and children are walking to school. School is both public and private and usually located close to each other. School for the older students starts at 7:30am and ends at 5:00pm, with a 45 minute lunch break; for Kenyans, education is the key to helping the community. There are children walking on both sides of the road, dressed in various types of uniforms, some with close-fitting toques and sweaters; it is cool here at 6000 ft altitude, with daily temperatures in the mid-twenties and nighttime temperatures around 15-16 degrees Celsius.
People feel very safe here, the children walk along the roadside throughout the day, as young as four years old; people old and young site by the roadside and say ‘jambo’ as we pass by them, roosters are crowing and children scurry out of their farms to watch us, often saying ‘jambo’ and waving. Margaret says everyone in the community knows the names of everyone else, in the neighborhood of 10,000 individuals. On the days when Bernice accompanies us, for example, Margaret walks down the road from her farm, a milk jug from her cow, nearby, to shake each of our hands and welcome us to another day of work. Margaret is also a leader, “like my Father and Grandfather before me,” she told us.
Today we moved tons of broken rock into the pit, ran out of rock and waited another hour before a dump truck delivered more crushed rock. We quickly resumed our teamwork, moving rock hand by hand to the edges of the pit so that the engineer and lead hand could coordinate the placement of the rocks. It was a very full day.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Margaret is the leader of the volunteer teams that arrive to help us each day. Each volunteer is coordinated to work two days of the two weeks we are at the project. It is a lot of fun, but it has a serious side; if a volunteer arrives late, they are sent home and fined! Our small group of volunteers have it a little easier; we have breakfast at 7:30 and meet one of the reforestation project Team Members, Julius, Bernice, Lucy (Nderitu’s sister) or Margaret, who accompany us on our 30 minute walk to the project site. Nderitu, for those of you who don’t know him, is DWC host partner contact and was born in this community and coordinates the projects. He lives in Colorado, and he and his Brother David are the principle operators of Wilderness Kenyan Safaris based here as well. The team members do not accompany us because they are concerned about security, they do it out of respect for our efforts, which Margaret says they admire because we came so far to their little community, and we could have gone anywhere else in the world, but we chose her community, so she says they are so thankful!
The Kenyan countryside is lush and painted with shafts of golden sun in the morning light. Mt Kenya rises majestically before us as we walk the first part of the road. People have already staked their sheep beside the sweet grass on the roadside and children are walking to school. School is both public and private and usually located close to each other. School for the older students starts at 7:30am and ends at 5:00pm, with a 45 minute lunch break; for Kenyans, education is the key to helping the community. There are children walking on both sides of the road, dressed in various types of uniforms, some with close-fitting toques and sweaters; it is cool here at 6000 ft altitude, with daily temperatures in the mid-twenties and nighttime temperatures around 15-16 degrees Celsius.
People feel very safe here, the children walk along the roadside throughout the day, as young as four years old; people old and young site by the roadside and say ‘jambo’ as we pass by them, roosters are crowing and children scurry out of their farms to watch us, often saying ‘jambo’ and waving. Margaret says everyone in the community knows the names of everyone else, in the neighborhood of 10,000 individuals. On the days when Bernice accompanies us, for example, Margaret walks down the road from her farm, a milk jug from her cow, nearby, to shake each of our hands and welcome us to another day of work. Margaret is also a leader, “like my Father and Grandfather before me,” she told us.
Today we moved tons of broken rock into the pit, ran out of rock and waited another hour before a dump truck delivered more crushed rock. We quickly resumed our teamwork, moving rock hand by hand to the edges of the pit so that the engineer and lead hand could coordinate the placement of the rocks. It was a very full day.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
January 9: Completed the base of the water tank
We completed digging the base for the water tank today with the
help of community volunteers. It was all overseen by an engineer so that the
tank will be built perfectly.We also pitched rock into the pit so that it can be tamped into place tomorrow. Everyone is doing well, some stomach upsets and fatigued muscles are normal for this work. The food at the Mt.Kenya Leisure Lodge is great and the 40 minute walk uphill then downhill each day is really getting us into shape. All along the way, people from the community wave and say "jambo" which is "welcome and hello."
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
January 8: Water is a precious commodity
We all arrived in Naro Moru safe and sound. Internet access has been poor, so I am finally "in" and posting a summary.
In Nairobi, were met by our driver David in the airport with our huge bags of glasses (1000+), soccer jerseys and soccer balls. You would think we are distributing these items as our main focus, but actually we are going to Naro Maru to help the community build a 50 cubic metre water storage tank so that the community doesn't to depend on government restrictions (1 hour of water per day) during the dry season, and for the rest of the year. Water is a precious commodity, especially this water, which they have brought by irrigation pipe from a source far away on the slopes of Mt. Kenya, so it is their potable water. They have had to walk several kilometers to a river and bring all their water home by pail in the past, so a water tank is a huge progressive step.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
In Nairobi, were met by our driver David in the airport with our huge bags of glasses (1000+), soccer jerseys and soccer balls. You would think we are distributing these items as our main focus, but actually we are going to Naro Maru to help the community build a 50 cubic metre water storage tank so that the community doesn't to depend on government restrictions (1 hour of water per day) during the dry season, and for the rest of the year. Water is a precious commodity, especially this water, which they have brought by irrigation pipe from a source far away on the slopes of Mt. Kenya, so it is their potable water. They have had to walk several kilometers to a river and bring all their water home by pail in the past, so a water tank is a huge progressive step.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Naro Moru, January 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
January 3rd: Kenya dig it?
The title is a tacky play on words (I know), but we are headed to Nairobi, Kenya tomorrow to work in a small community called Naro Maru at the base of Mt. Kenya where we will be helping build a water tank and install underground water lines for the community.
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Kenya, January 2012
Cam Grant
DWC Team Leader
Kenya, January 2012
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