When I travel in Kenya, I am always amazed at how quickly and drastically the landscape can change.
Aram, Debbi, the kids and I went to western Kenya to distribute some relief food that someone had donated. The climate, tribe, and crops changed dramatically many times on the nine hour drive. We would be driving through semi-arid land, nothing but sand and acacia trees to the horizon, then come over a ridge and suddenly we'd be in green farmland, or tea fields, or an evergreen forest.
The tea fields are my favorite. The tea bushes grow very close together, and the fields stretch for miles. The top leaves of the tea bushes are chartreuse, so for miles we were driving through a sea of neon green.
People picking tea.
Then the tea ends. Abruptly. The rolling, neon green fields, suddenly become steep hills, covered in a patchwork of red plowed soil and green crops. We also changed from Kalenjin territory to Luo land.
We spent the first night in a hotel on Lake Victoria. At one point the hotel had been very nice; it now has an aura of decomposing luxury. There was a lovely pool, and I was broiling hot. The kids swam for a couple minutes until we were informed in a very indirect, African way that the pool was closed; “We just put in chlorine so you might not want to swim right now.” (The water was barely chlorinated.) I was very annoyed, the water would have felt SO good after sitting in a hot car all day.
We ordered supper, and waited, and waited, and waited. It was nearly an hour and a half before our food arrived. I should not have been surprised, but I was.
Priska was rather sick during the night, and we were awakened every few hours by her vomiting. Dehydration, we decided, was the culprit.
We rose early, having been told that we were going to start the food distribution at 0900, and our destination was still two hours away. We arrived at 1000; the area chief, who was supposed to be administrating the distribution, had gone somewhere. It was unknown when he would return.
So we chilled (or rather, baked) for a few hours, waiting for him to return. We talked to people, ate sugar cane, Aram and I played a game of chess. Finally, around 1330, someone took charge and we started handing out the food. The chief was still absent when we finished.
About halfway home we stopped for the night at a small lodge on a hill above a creek. They served really tasty Indian food, and it only took them forty-five minutes to prepare it.
I was awakened at 0530 by what sounded like someone shoveling gravel into a metal wheelbarrow outside my window, so I got up and wandered around. A locked gate blocked my way to the creek, but that was not much of a problem since it was missing a hinge. There was a six-foot, man-made waterfall, a waterwheel (Installed backwards so it scooped water, and it did not have a race of any kind so it turned quite slowly.) and a bunch of pipes.
Apparently water had been pumped from this creek and piped to somewhere that needed it. But it was no longer in use, the waterwheel was disconnected.
I took Shadrack down to the waterfall and he was entranced; I think he would have stood and stared at it for ever. Priska thought it was great fun to jump around at the edge of the falls. I am sort of surprised that she did not fall in...
The rest of the trip home was uneventful, except that Shadrack was sick and vomited at intervals most of the way.
I took 643 pictures on the three day trip; 487 of them are of the many different landscapes that I drove through.
Some of the people to whom we gave food.
Safari ants. These guys are about 3/4 of an inch long.
A six foot tall termite mound
A tendril from some sort of vine.
More tea
Lake Elementaita
A mountain was reflected in the lake, it was AMAZING. Unfortunately the auto-focus on my camera malfunctioned, so it is out of focus.
Sunset
