BY APRIL BERESFORD

January 29, 2011

Learning the ropes

10:00pm -
"If you want to life yourself up, life someone else." ~Booker T. Washington

Things I learned today:
*people of caucasian descent fry when placed on the equator
*don't forget your water bottle when going on a hike
*Africa has all sorts of interesting and nasty bugs
*If there is a God, Charles Mulli knows him personally

We began with breakfast at 08:00 after a really cold shower (not on purpose). All of my fears about having horrible hair while here are now gone. I might feel like crap on the inside but my hair is fabulous. Perfect spiral curls like my daughters have. Although I'm blowing my nose every ten minutes I'm ever so slightly starting to feel better. I finally got some decent sleep last night (thanks to Tylenol PM). At 09:30 we began our walking tour of MCF Ndalani with Tom. This place is huge. He explained how they grow their own crops, organize workers, havest and sell crops, process and prepare food. He showed us how they have managed to take the dry, barren earth and cultivate microclimates where food plants can flourish. They do so by planting trees and corn in certain areas in position with the fields of other crops, and by alternating crops and hauling in comoposite material (silt from the river, cow dung, lava rock from West Kenya, etc...) and many hours of hard work in the hot sun. They engage and support the community by employing families in the area: the parents work whiel their children are allowed to study at the MCF schools for free, and meals are provided for everyone. They teach the families how to grow their own food in gardens at home so that someday they can leave MCF and be self-sufficient and take care of themselves. Their dwellings on the MCF property are tiny but provided for free. After walking through lots of scenic fields and farm land, we visited the grainary, the food processing and storage areas, and the irrigation pumphouse, which was run by computer and quite impressive to see. We then walked to the childrens' dormatories and saw room upon room of hand-built bunk-beds with suitcases all lined up along a wall. Each child gets one suitcase in which to keep all of his or her personal belongings, including clothing. It's hard to think about how hard I had to try to keep my packing for this trip to a minimum, and yet one suitcase is all that each child owns. In many cases, the suitcases were nowhere near full. The children wash their bodies and their clothes in the river that runs through the property, called the Thika /TEE-kah/ River. The boys and the girls take shifts. The river is not clean, as the village of Thika is up river and dumps a considerable amount of contaminants into it, but it's what is available when there are over a thousand people who need it. The drinking water comes from wells, and is purified. In the middle of the dormatories are usually clotheslines filled with drying clothes. The smaller kids (ages two to eleven) live together, and the older kids (ages twelve and up) all live together, girls separated from boys. The young adults live in separate housing, though their rooms are very small and made out of sheets of metal. From what I can guess, they are about 5 to 7 feet by about 10 feet per unit. The older kids are called "beneficiaries" and remain here to teach and help care for the younger children while they await a sponsor to help get them to college. There are 50 kids currently in college and almost 150 waiting to go. We arrived in that part of the village around lunchtime. Lunch was being prepared in huge cauldrons over an open fire in a sheet metal hut. The contrast between the updated technology in the farming techniques and the primitive cooking routines confused me. But I guess when funds are limited, you put your money into creating the food and the income, and leave less for food preparation. No food means nothing to cook.

When the Thika River dried up two years ago during the dry season, that's exactly what happened. MCF had to purchase food for months, and they are feeding over two thousand people a day. And not only did they feed their kids and their workers, but they had sponsored feed-ins around the community as well. They also supply clean drinking water to their community as well. Currently they fill up a large water tanker and drive it to town, but they have plans to install a water purification system on the bank of the Thika River this year and this will include a watering station for the community to access as well. Water-borne illnesses here are very common, and is a huge contributor to the high mortality rate. We met some of the dhildren as we took our tour. The small ones, the toddlers, are curious and easily approached. They want to touch us, see our cameras, touch our hair and our skin. Sometimes they are so happy to have our attention that they do not want to let go of us. The breaks my heart. Although they all appear lively and well nourished, they don't have parents. That's why they are here. The benefactors that help them and raise them and educate them are not the parents who created them and should be here to love them. The older kids are a bit more shy but will often smile back or quietly wave "hello". We met the leader of the MCF karate team, Paul, who just qualified to represent Kenya in the next Olympics. He told us that he was rescued as a street kid from the slums but now has a VERY bright future. The karate and soccer teams run up and down the mountains here that surround MCF. That makes my three-mile run at the gym look like a mere warm-up routine. :o)

Lunch was delicious. So far it has been 100% vegetarian, which they eat most of the time. They have to slaughter two cows or 5 goats to feed all of the children, so it's a rarity. We eat rice, potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, and kale a lot. YUM! I don't think every person here is thrilled about it, but I am! After lunch we got on the bus and took a 45-minute ride to the Yatta campus. I enjoy these bus rides because it provides me an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the real, everyday life in Kenya. I have taken over 100 photos so far, but still see a million things I want to capture and share back home. I'm still not used to driving on the left side of the road.

We got to Yatta at around 3:00pm, and it was unbearably HOT. The sun is harsh. It is stronger than any sun I have ever felt. I'm being irradiated. We spent about 2 hours walking through the crop fields and the greenhouses, the plant nurseries, and the produce handling areas. We were able to walk into the produce cooler, which is the only air-conditioned room on the property. Row after row, MCF grows enough food for about 9,000 meals a day. Their farming practices are excellent; they go way past LEED practices at home! They waste nothing and reuse everything possible, including rainwater. We also walked by the seven manmade fish ponds, all in a row, where they farm tillapia. That's a LOT of fish! One of the ponds was damaged a few months ago by a hippopontamus. I'm definitely NOT in Michigan anymore! On the hillside by the fish is where the pineapple, mango, and banana groves are. (There's nothing quite as delicious as fresh bananas, mango and pineapple for dessert... trust me!) Row upon row, these plants are well cared for and nothing is overlooked. Just last year I lost 25% of my garden to weed overgrowth, quite embarrasing! That just doesn't happen here. They work six days a week. It blows my mind that in a country where malnutrition takes lives and starvation is a real threat, they are able to reap so much on a consistant basis.

Before heading to the living quarters, we walked down a long trail, up a huge hill, to where the livestock is kept. They have about 50 cattle (which look VERY different from cows in the USA), 100 goats, and about a thousand chickens. The goats and cattle are let loose twice a day to graze with shepherds through the surrounding bush and scrub fields. None of them appear 'fleshy' like my animals do at home. Herding animals like this is common practice here. It's not uncommon to see herds walking down the side of the road with traffic whizzing by, or see them tied by their back ankles to a tree or bush in the hot sun. Some of the kids shepherding the animals are no more than 6 or 7 years old.

Back now to the part of Yatta where the kids live and go to school. Yatta is mostly girls, women & children. Their faces are so beautiful. They live in shared dormatories, like their Ndalani counterparts. The girls go to school during the day and their little ones go to 'baby class' which is like preschool. There are a lot of child mothers here. It's a sad reality in the culture here. The schools here concentrate on giving the girls life skills and a vocation: sewing, hairdressing, or secretarial, for example. The sewing machines they use have the old style foot pedals that have to be manually powered. Still, the students are able to create nice things. They do not have enough material to practice with so they use old burlap bags to learn on. There were several nice burlap outfits hanging around the perimeter of the room. Even a dress shirt and tie, all sewn and pressed. Material is expensive and only used for final exams and clothing made for their brothers and sisters at MCF. The beauty parlor school was not outfitted with a lot, but I hear it's quite a popular program. The computers in the classroom were old IBM machines but well maintained. After our tour and a chance to meet with some of the residents we went over to the cinder block church for an evening worship service. Every weat was taken, and a worship team played a guitar, keyboard, and drums. The children sang worship songs in both English and Swahili, and some danced up on stage. Have you ever heard 500 African children singing gospel praises? It's the most beautiful sound in the world! It was so joyful, and unlike anything I've ever heard before. As soon as we sat down we had kids in our laps, and I loved the impromptu snuggle. :o)

Back on the bus to Ndalani for a later dinner. Driving at dusk I was surprised at how many people walk the roadside at disk. It's amazing I haven't seen anyone hit by a car yet. Even children walk by themselves in the dark. At dusk I was able to get a quick glimpse of the inside of a few of the huts as we drove by some that were near the roadside. They use gas laps to light up at night, and through open doors I was able to see that these tiny little huts didn't have much in them at all. Most huts weren't more than 20 by 30 feet. A bed, maybe a couple of shelves. So humbling.

At dinner, Esther Mulli (AKA "Mama Mulli") told us about the local wildlife in Ndalani. Leopards apparently get in the trash so they have to put the trash bucket away at night. Leopards?!?! And that cackling noise coming from the trees at night are the bush babies. Oh, and from time to time the babboons block traffic up on the roads. Seriously. No mentin of lions or elephants in this area, but there were hippos in the Thika last year. Oh, my! :o)