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| I resumed my reading of Stott each morning before breakfast, while
sitting looking out over the plain. Breakfast in Garsen was always porridge, boiled egg
and four slices of white bread. Twice, the boiled egg was replaced by omelette, which
seemed like a real treat in the circumstances, and sometimes the porridge was brown, which
turned out not to be the chocolate treat it resembled. Small, lively ants on the bread did
nothing to lift the spirits of the team – though they were a fairly rare occurrence. |
| A South African family, who were about to become missionaries with
Sheepfold in Tanzania, were holidaying in Kenya. They had arrived the day before at the
Masai’s, and had stayed with us at the ‘Y’. Johannes drove a fairly new
land rover. His wife was called Trudi and they had two young boys, who spoke no English or
Swahili. Johannes helped to provide travel for the team during our first few days in
Garsen. |
We travelled in two groups to the building site, where the
Masai’s new house was to be built. Very little had been done, so
our first job was to clear the compound of bushes. We quickly realised that the plants in
the area basically came in two varieties – those with very hard, sharp thorns and
those with soft exteriors, but lots of poisonous sap that blisters the skin on contact.
Many of the plants were very small, but had root systems that seemed to go on for miles.
Some of the team immediately regretted not having brought gloves. I was only too happy to
be wearing boots, jeans, a rugby top and gardening gloves , but wasn't surprised that some of the team held back a little in their
shorts, sandals and t-shirts.Just before lunch, Johannes
drove Baba Jesse, John, Tom and myself in the land rover to pick up some rafters for the
house. We expected a three-minute journey to Garsen. Over an hour later, we had seen a
number of villages and ended up at the Tana River. |
| During the journey for the rafters, I had a great chance to talk to
Baba Jesse about the Orma people and his work in Garsen. Mind you, we learned a valuable
lesson on arrival. Johannes took a photo of a man in his canoe on the river. The man went
mad and it took a lot of Baba Jesse’s best negotiating skills to appease him.
Fortunately, Johannes was using a digital camera and was able to show the man that he had
deleted the picture. I guess you should never take a picture of anyone without his or her
permission. |
Anyway, as it happened, the rafters turned out to be sticks –
long, straight sticks,  but sticks
none-the-less. We loaded up the land rover, left Tom and Baba Jesse behind, and set out
for Garsen. One reason the journey had been so slow was because the road was barely really
a road. Someone had chopped down the trees to make a path, but left the stumps behind. We
had carefully avoided these until now, but it was clear that with the land rover fully
laden, catching the edge of one of the stumps would likely puncture the tyre. It was at
this point that Johannes informed us that he had left his jack at home. We couldn’t
afford a puncture so we had to go very slowly, with John walking ahead, directing the land
rover around the stumps. About three hours later, we arrived back at the site and
offloaded. The others had gone back to Baba Jesse’s and had lunch. Some were enjoying
a siesta, while others had gone for a stroll round Garsen. |
On the way back to Garsen, Johannes let us listen to a song  from ‘Out of Africa’
by Scott Wesley Brown. It was about a Christian, living in the suburbs and promising to
tithe 12%, collect for missionary work and wash out all the communion cups, so long as God
promised not to send him to Africa, "where the natives are restless at night".After a quick lunch, Tim and Johannes set out to pick up Tom and Baba Jesse,
together with the last of the ‘rafters’. Meanwhile, the rest of us headed back
to finish clearing the compound, dragging the trees and bushes we cut down to form a
rather nasty perimeter fence. |
| On returning to the ‘Y’, we found that many of us had to
change rooms, as the keys to the rooms we were in had been lost. Unfortunately, the lights
weren’t working that well in the new rooms. It took quite some time to match up
working fluorescent tubes and starters, partly due to the dodgy wiring. The first night,
one of the girls’ rooms had no light – a little harsh when it goes dark at about
6.30 – but the ‘Y’ were kind enough to supply candles. We fixed their light
the next day, but then the light failed in the boys’ room. We never did get this
fixed throughout our time in Garsen. In fact, the large, open refectory had at least a
dozen fluorescent tubes. There were maybe four of these working at the start, but we were
reduced to one and one flashing by the end of our stay. (Maybe we should have been glad
for any light at all. The ‘Y’, situated two or three kilometres from Garsen had
two large noisy generators. Many people in Garsen had no electricity at all.) After small
group discussions about the previous day’s adventures, we went to bed. |
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