What a day! We seem to have had a bit of everything Kenya can chuck at you one way or another. I think our visitors are getting a full taste of life out here. The day started off with a light drizzle, (not too encouraging), but, fortunately, this didn't last long and we actually had a really hot sunny day until about 4 pm. As it's Sunday today we went to church and I'd like to think that it was the joyful sound that we all made singing and praising God that turned the weather around.
The practical part of the day for our visitors involved putting mud on the walls of a house that is being built for a widow in the community. The 'smearing' part of the house build is always a popular activity and the team made a real go of it this afternoon – finishing two walls. The houses that members of the community live in would be described as 'wattle and daub' in Europe. Properly built they are an impressive testimony to local people's ingenuity in making the most of available resources, (principally wood and mud).
Taking our visitors to the site of the house build and later bringing them back again provided some 4x4 highlights for me. The journey to the site involved a shortish stretch of driving down a narrow, bumpy dirt track. After dropping the team off I had to make a three point turn and managed to drop one of the back wheels of the Landrover over the edge of a ditch, (it was a very narrow road for three point turning!). Engaging the low gears for the four wheel drive fortunately enabled the three wheels that were in contact with solid ground to pull us out of the ditch but it was a bit touch and go for a few minutes. The LR doesn't have a handbrake so doing a hill start out of a ditch on a dirt road was a bit of a challenge. Good old fashioned British engineering triumphed, (thank goodness).
The journey home was also memorable for a different reason. At 5 pm the heavens opened. It was the most severe rain I have seen for a while and it quickly filled the ditches at the side of the 'road' and turned bits of it into what looked like a small river. As I waited for our visitors to reach the pre-arranged rendezvous point I heard the most explosive lightning blast, and watched an electricity pole being struck full on about half a mile away. Some of our visitors were even closer to it than me – about 5 minutes walk away. We drove back along the rapidly growing floods across the road with the Landrover packed in classic Kenya style – three guys and me, the driver, packed into the front and fourteen people, (at least), in the back. It was a fitting end to a very African afternoon – the kind of thing that you don't forget in a hurry. The Cisco team and our two new friends from Denmark have been marvellous so far - it promises to be an interesting week.
No comments:
Post a Comment