Jambo day

As usual it’s quite late as I type today’s entry. It is a very hot sticky night. The kind of night that mosquitoes love and anti-perspirant manufacturers must pray for. It is difficult to believe that 4,000 miles away in England people will probably be scraping the snow off their cars in the morning and cursing the freezing cold weather.

I caught an early flight from Nairobi to Kisumu this morning and was impressed by the early morning sunrise over Nairobi. The daylight seems to creep in as if it’s on a fader, gradually revealing an orange backdrop to the day. I flew with Kenya airways. They are obviously making an effort with customer care and pre-flight entertainment on internal flights at the moment. The relatively small jet I flew in today had small screens on the back of each seat saying Welcome to Kenya. The welcome message was underlined by a choice selection of Kenyan tourist tunes, starting with Jambo Kenya and moving onto a soulful rendition by a very American sounding singer praising Kenya “the land that I love”. It’s a sentiment shared by many people (myself included) but it did clash a bit with the unfolding beauty in the sky outside.

The Kisumu to-do list was mercifully small today. I had a meeting with one of our staff, Millie, who is currently studying in Kisumu on a social work and development course. It was a very enjoyable meeting and encouraged me a great deal. Millie is clearly making good progress on her course and has been able to visit a number of projects around Kisumu that have the same vision that we do. It was especially encouraging to hear Millie talk about the potential benefits of fish farming and bee keeping – two developments that I have been keen on for a number of years now. Millie’s course finishes in May. She is committed to coming back to work with us in Kosele and I am looking forward to seeing her putting her new skills and ideas into action.

I have written before about the atrocious condition of the ‘rough road’ that we have to use for the last seven kilometers of our trip from Kisumu to Kosele. Rough road comes nowhere near describing the state of it now. Heavy rains earlier in the month have left some deep puddles to negotiate and the constant erosion of the rock, gravel and sand have created what would be a very good four by four trial track. I hate to be a prophet of doom but I can see some roads in the UK going the same way. The road has been well used recently by politicians on the campaign trail for the election on March the fourth. It would be nice to think that their experience of bumping along the entire 14 kilometer stretch might lead to a major road improvement project but it seems unlikely.

It is really good to be back in Kosele. We have just harvested our maize crop and I spent a very enjoyable twenty minutes this afternoon with some of our teachers and pupils stripping kernels of maize from the cobs that have been picked. I’m not sure how many sacks of maize we will end up with but it looked like a good amount to me. We should know in a few days once all of the cobs have been stripped. The farm continues to develop. Our banana trees are now looking a bit more plantation like and are taller than I am. Once we have finished with our harvesting we will have to get on with preparing the land for the next planting time at the beginning of March. This will be interesting this season as we need to carry out our first rotation of crops to allow the soil to improve. This basically means shifting everything down a plot and planting a leguminous crop, like beans, where our maize was grown to help the soil to recover from the strain of growing the maize. I still find the whole preparing and planting cycle fascinating. The process of sowing and harvesting is nothing short of miraculous. We plan to really promote the value of farming this year to encourage the children to take it seriously. There’s gold and a rewarding vocation in the soil!

The same cannot be said of our goats at the moment. We are still planning to breed goats so that we can sell the kids and milk in local markets. On the way back from Kisumu Duncan, our farm manager, told me that there is a bit of a problem at the moment with our male goat. He doesn't seem to be very keen on doing his bit in making baby goats. The situation is under review and plans are being made to encourage him to perform better, starting with a diet supplement. I wonder if Millie’s course covers performance management for goats. I’ll keep you posted.