Last week’s trip was primarily about preparing the first demo plot for Foundation Farming. As always though, the trip was about several things at once.
Alima is a young girl who sustained terrible burns to one eye and ear and was brought into town for plastic surgery last year. Last week we returned her home after 4 months in rehab.
Graham writes: Alima was in the front with me and we got on well, despite her not having very coherent thoughts in Maasai and me trying to speak coherently in Swahili. She had a very engaging way of looking at me from the corner of her one eye, giggling and trying to explain some complicated thought in Maasai with lots of gesticulations. Then she would stop and check and if I looked totally perplexed she would throw her head into her lap, grasp the back of her head and roar with laughter at my incredible stupidity.
Taking Alima home proved a more interesting exercise than anticipated as Graham became engulfed in a twilight shroud of dust masking all known landmarks and trees and causing him to drive round and round and round............until the very man he was looking for came flying out of the dust – ‘in the middle of nowhere’! He had been watching their progress and running around after them trying to get their attention!
This Koko (seen here in happier times) was knocked over by a dust devil outside her hut two weeks ago resulting in terrible pain in her hip. She had not walked since and had been waiting for ‘Olais’ (Graham) to come and rescue her.
Her idea was that she would go home with him until she was better. There was much discussion in the boma - and with a doctor over the phone - and in the end it was decided that she would improve with the help of painkillers which her grandson was to fetch for her. However, Koko had set her heart on going back with the ‘Mzungu’ so she threatened to curse them all, saying that her boma had cows, sheep and goats and there was no reason why they couldn’t afford to take her to hospital. It is very hard to discern the truth in situations like this. ‘Olais’ was adopted by this koko when he came across her lying under a tree in the ‘middle of nowhere’ unable to walk home from hospital. Everyone in her boma was very alarmed by her threats but in the end a good night’s sleep, with the benefit of strong painkillers, convinced her of the merits of the plan.
Other highlights of the trip were:
• Getting thoroughly stuck in a ‘dry’ river bed after a rain storm - thankfully near a boma where the women folk cooked tea while the men did the digging
• Distributing 520 donated mosquito nets on behalf of the leadership of two villages who had no vehicle to do so.
• Taking a young boy with a four year old growth on his foot to see a doctor along with a man with scabies who had been treating it with battery acid! He was not a pretty sight and too unpleasant even to describe.
• Giving out food and identifying four more women needing cows.
The question on people’s lips seemed to be ‘Who brings this Mzungu? Why does he keep appearing out of the dust or the rain storm to help us?’ An opening we are very glad of..................
