12.

My trip is reaching its close very quickly. I have about 10 days left in Chogoria and I will be sad to go. I feel like I have made some real strides in understanding things here, but there are still some areas that will remain unclear.

Thursday, we (Cara, Doreen Kageni, and myself) loaded the PCEA landrover with Macho (Henry) driving and headed out to Marimanti. Marimanti is the part of Tharaka that Millicent Garama works in. It is further out than Kajimpau where my sister congregation in. The main town is actually pretty decent in size and there is a tiny little hospital. This was a market day and the town was busy. The Tharaka South market by Kajimpau is filled with baskets, mats, shoes made out of old tires, and the standard electronic junk like flashlights. The market at Marimanti was mostly clothing and bananas. LOTS of bananas. On the 4 hour drive to get there we passed an irrigation project run by the Ministry of Agriculture. They were growing mostly bananas, but there were also papayas and maize. I have never seen such thick groves of bananas and the bunches were enormous! This really cemented in my mind the change that could take place with the introduction of an irrigation scheme for the Rural Development Project in Kajimpau. In talking to locals about it, I have heard that the best way to get a project like that going is really through the Ministry of Agriculture. They will send a representative to the area to hold meetings and explain the need and the benefits to the people. This helps to smooth out any bumps in the road on a local level as well as informs the government about development in the area and increases their awareness of the needs of those people. It sounds logical to me. Also, since they have started similar projects in the area, their guidance would probably not be amiss. I am sorry that I couldn’t get any pictures of the project that I saw it was incredible. I thought we would drive by it again on the way home, but we took a different route.

One of the things I was really interested in seeing in Marimanti, was a guesthouse that Millicent told me about last time we met. I did get pictures of it. Marimanti is closer to Kajimpau than Chogoria, and I thought that if in the future we were doing some work there it might be nice to have accommodation close by. The guesthouse was immaculate. Brand new, it can house up to 48 people comfortably with heated showers, nice beds, mosquito nets, and bathrooms with flush toilets. I was shocked. I guess they usually cater to small conventions, and there was a really nice meeting room immediately when you walk in to the building. I asked how much they charge and the rate was 1k in shillings per bed per night. This is a bit expensive, but by when you translate that into dollars it is about $15 per night and for such a nice place I think it would be worth it. There was also another place just down the road that wasn’t quite as good, but could serve the same purpose and would probably be a bit cheaper. Millicent called it “The Base” and many people that have worked for her NGO (PLAN International) have lived there for some time. This facility could also house a bunch of people.

My thoughts about Tharaka before this trip were that it was a place that definitely called to me, but I could never live there. This feeling was dramatically altered by Millicent. Not only could you live there, but you could probably live there comfortably. (I’d still be a bit nervous about malaria!)

We met a little girl at PLAN, and gave her a ride to the other part of town where she lives. She had just recently been fitted with a prosthetic leg as had gone in for a checkup at the little hospital. Millicent told us her story. Her mother was walking one day when she found a shiny metal thing in the sand. It was pretty so she took it home to show her family. While her daughter (in third grade) was looking at it and playing with it, it exploded. Apparently, unexploded grenades and bombs are often found in the forest and the desert where the military used to practice (British) as well as some are left by warring tribes and war lords from some time back. This was not the first time I had heard of this happening. The price for scrap metal is quite high, so when these items are discovered people take them to sell, or sometimes they just look interesting so they are brought home. It is really sad, and many adults and children have lost their limbs as well as their lives.

Millicent took us way out into Tharaka. Past the houses with tin roofs, past the huts with the thatched roofs, when there are no huts in sight but a few crumbling mud ones and you have crossed three rivers of sand there is tiny school. This school and the people that live near it needed water, clean drinking water. In Tharaka during the dry season the water from the boreholes is too salty to drink. In this area us was usually too salty to drink even during the rainy season and they had to walk very far to get there in the first place. PLAN, the only NGO in the area, saw the need and so they built a “Rock Catchment.” Millicent tried to explain this to me a few weeks ago but I just couldn’t envision it. It was well worth the 4 hour drive from Chogoria to get there! The natural resources of the area consist of enormous stones, sand, and more sand. How do you get water when this is all you have? I will tell you. Use the rocks and the sand. What they have done is scrubbed clean one o the huge rock faces and around the perimeter they have put cement channels. These channels collect any rainwater that touches the stone and siphons it into a huge tank at the bottom. The land around the stone is fenced off to keep animals from roaming through and contaminating the stone. There is not a lot of rain even during the rainy season, but the rock is so huge that their tank is insufficient to contain all of the water that could be collected. The water from the tank is only for drinking purposes, if you want to wash clothes you must collect water from somewhere else. This water project also raises a bit of money. If you want to use it you have to pay a small fee. People that use the water regularly pay a membership fee and then it is only a shilling to fill their water jug. If you are not a member, I believe I was told the fee is 10 shillings. This is extremely inexpensive when you consider that a small bottle of water in Chogoria is about 25 shillings. The poverty level of the community is taken into account and the small profits o to the maintenance of the system and the surplus is saved to build another tank someday. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I took more pictures of that rock than anything else so far this trip. We hiked up to the top of the rock so that we could really understand how it worked and see the surrounding area. I would have been content to stay up there all day, but they wanted to take us to the market as well. I would really like to go back to that area again and if any of you get the opportunity to go there on future trips to Kenya, please jump at the chance. It is a bit of a hike for sure, but well worth it.

Friday I went to the Kieganguru primary day school just outside of Chogoria town. We actually took a matatu, but we could have walked. Janice the chairlady of the Chogoria church’s Women Guild is the new headmistress of this school. When we were having lunch together discussing the Guild, she brought up her school and I decided that I should visit before I go back. She told me about the needs of the school and that the children often come to school (where there are no meals served currently) without having eaten sometimes even for a few days. She told me that she has had several faint during the morning assembly because of hunger. The atmosphere of the school was very different than the other schools I have visited. The children at this school obviously have some real self-esteem issues. At other schools, the children are excited to see me and want to ask me so many questions; here many would not even look up from their desks. A member of this community told me that is was probably because their English was not very good and they were afraid, but that is not what I saw in their eyes. I am so glad that Janice has taken over, and her deputy Mr. Bundi was a jolly man with a lot of enthusiasm. The school actually has a lot of unutilized resources. The amount of land that they have is three times what they can use for the school alone; it has just sat unused for years. Janice wants to start a meal program at the school so much of the property has been planted with maize. There is also coffee, but no one has harvested it, it was just sitting there. I asked if there would be more vegetables and some beans planted next time and I think they will, water is plentiful and so is the land. The test scores at the school are very low and much of that is probably because hungry children don’t learn and develop properly. There was a block of classrooms that is currently sitting unused, and these will be used for a kitchen and serving area when the food program starts. I have a lot of hope for the future of that school. As long as the students and staff take advantage of what is available to them and work hard for a few years, everything will change from the attitudes of the community, the self-esteem of the pupils, the test scores, everything. I hope to get a report from someone in the future that the school has turned around; I really believe that it will. Before I left, the students gathered to lower the flag. They sang a song for me, I sang a song for them, and we all prayed together teachers, students, and staff before walking down the dusty road to our homes.