Bees Elephants and Community

Another post by Sarah:

Its late, I’ve just gotten back from a full week in the field on the coast of Kenya.  I thought I’d be fast asleep by now, but I wanted to check email, then wait for some the water heater to heat up….and then thought perhaps I’ll quickly jot down some thoughts from the week I’ve had…while its fresh.  This week I was in an eastern district in Kenya called Kinango. I visited 17 homes with filters and was so grateful to see how much the filters had impacted the peoples lives here. No more diarrhea. No more ringworm. No more scratchy skin. Their clothes actually get white. Their food tastes better. They feel “majestic” (my favourite comment). They feel strong. They feel they can focus better. They feel proud. They feel….thankful, and they rejoice.

Some highlights:

1) I slept in a room where bees were my neighbor (a door….that didn’t close separated us). Actually, numerous beehives were in the room next door. SP is implementing a bee- keeping project as an income generating activity. I learned that burning grass makes bees feel sleepy and docile, and you really can coexist with each other if you just let there be peace between you.

2) We went elephant chasing!! Or attempted to. (Now hold on for a moment, this is Stuart.  Sarah sent me this post as an email and asked me to post it.  I had the dilemma of should I edit this whole section out.  But then I guess I would need to edit the entire post out and all it would say is hello, Kenya was nice and everything is fine.  Bye.  On that note, maybe you can all stop reading right now, and try to forget about Sarah shooing away 10000LB animals) One evening as we were getting ready for bed, a man started to knock at our door, in a panic. He said that the elephants were in his maize (think corn) field, and eating all his maize.  Side-note: This is a common problem here, and quite a difficult situation. The elephants come just as the maize is ready for harvest and can easily clear out a whole field in one night. The elephants have killed people that have tried to get them out of their fields (SEE!!! I told you to stop reading!). The government does not give any compensation for lost maize. And, if you shot the elephant, you get 7 years in prison (minimum).  The man told us that elephants were scared of light, so he wanted us to drive to his field and “scare” the elephants away with the trucks high-beams. So, we prayed, and off we went! We started to drive…..and then go off road, until there was no road, and then the men started to hack away bushes to make a passable road. In amongst all the excitement, I realized I was with three men with machetes and we were trying to hunt down elephants and scare them…..and I started to wonder if any of this was a good idea. When I started to wonder if these men actually had any maize fields, we arrived at their farm, and saw the elephants path- they had left. Back into the bush…somewhere.  We went back to the base unscathed, and I said a good hearty “thank-you” to God.  (Now, I think that a nice warm bed and a relaxing evening is also a great reason to thank God)

3) One community SP is working with is far from everything and anything. On these roads, we averaged about 15km/hour. The schedule for the day was to help the community set up a construction site for where they would manufacture their BioSand Filters. Once we arrived, the construction started and the community set up and built an entire worksite with local materials in less than three hours. Some people brought long poles, others brought bark for tying poles together, some brought water, some brought tools. I was amazed to see how the community just knew how to build together. There were no discussions on who should do what, or how it should be built….they just worked together in unity. It was incredible.  They wanted to feed us lunch, and it was precious how much effort they went into giving us such a warm welcome. One man bicycled 28km to bring us a Sprite…in the dead heat of the day.

This weekend I’ll be in Nairobi Kenya, visiting a friend I’ve gotten to know recently in Uganda - Melanie, and an old friend - June that I met in Gambia in 2002!! Off to Ethiopia on Sunday.  I’ve never been to Ethiopia before, but it has been on my top “to see countries” for awhile now. I am very thankful. All the best.

A note from Stuart:  Things with me a fine.  And when I say fine that doesnt mean I was playing chicken with dumptrucks.  I did start renting a motorcycle here.  Ahem, 3 months ago.  So Sarah and I are both in the dog house with the parents.  Oops.