Hello everyone! It feels like ages since I last wrote, but it's only been a week! Time moves much more slowly over here that's for sure! Now where to start!?
Well we made it to Mutumbu last Friday afternoon...and I freaked out a little to be honest! It was just so overwhelming - the compound, the kids everywhere, the complete lack of facilities, and the toilets are absolutely disgusting. They are literally tiny little sheds with a hole in the floor and the smell is indescribable all the time, and even worse in the middle of the day and flies everywhere....but enough about those! So Friday was hard, but I woke up feeling much better already on Saturday. On Saturday we went for a walk around the village, and it is beautiful - it is very green for the most part and hilly in places, and many people have built their little huts into the hills...it is life at its simplest. The scenery is breathtaking, and the main highway that runs through the village (of which we are right on the side of) runs all the way into Uganda, so much that you can just see Uganda in the far far distance. But the village is wonderful and the people are so welcoming, many people stop when we're walking past and say hello and introduce themselves, and every day on the way to the site little kids pop out from everywhere yelling "Mzungu (which means 'white person'), how are you!" and if you answer anything, whether it's in Engligh or Swahilli, they erupt in a fit of giggles..it's hilarious!
On Sunday we visited Dr Martin, who is yet another incredible person doing the most amazing work over here - he runs a school/clinic/hospital. He had originally set up something similar in Mombassa but there were riots, I'm not sure exactly when, a few years ago I think, and some of his staff and the children were murdered. He literally picked up what was left and started all over again just outside Mutumbu. But the classrooms are falling apart, and the hospital is not much more than a crumbling building with a few cubicles...in fact just today he rang us and said that one of the hospital walls had collapsed (which was only a matter of time, when we went there on Sunday it was already at a very deep lean). They only have one birth delivery kit, and they deliver a few babies a week, but if there are two being delivered at one time it's disastrous because they only have the one kit and it takes hours to sterilise. The kits are around 4,500 shillings so only about $100. There are just two beds for deliveries, of which only one bed has a plastic cover, so you can imagine all the blood and fluids that soak into the matress without a cover. The floors are all just concrete which as well is not easy to clean. They're in the process of building a new hospital, they have the bones of the structure up, and it is great, much much bigger with actual rooms, but they need around $50,000 to finish it...the plastering, the floor, sinks, etc. Dr Martin has lobbied the Government many times for a grant or loan to complete it, but has had no success which is a real shame because it would benefit the whole community and many neighbouring communities as well. The man is just amazing, he could be in Europe or somewhere earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet he is here, in a tiny village in western Kenya, helping people who need it the most.
We started work at the community centre on Monday, which has been very hard and extremely hot but satisfying. The room must be around 8.5 metres x 5 metres maybe - the walls were already completed when we started, and on Monday and Tuesday we had to reduce the height of the floor by at least a foot, so that involved a LOT of picking dirt and shovelling dirt, and wheelbarrowing dirt out...and apparently 1 metre of compact dirt is equal to 1.4 metres of loose dirt, so that gives you some idea of how much there was to get rid of! On Wednesday we had to cover the floor with big rocks, but we got a good production line going so that job still took a day but seemed much quicker and was a nice change from shovelling dirt! Yesterday we helped to mix the concrete for the floor....they make concrete here by getting this type of sand, not sure what exactly, then spreading some type of rocks over the top and then mixing it together with water - the boys said that's how we used to do it back home pre-industrial age. All I know was that it was damn heavy to shovel! And while we have been doing all this, the "fundis" (builders) have finished the wall and put on the roof, so it's really starting to come together even just after 4 days of work. But it must be about 34 degrees out here, and doing that kind of work in that kind of heat is so exhausting! And the malaria tablets really do increase your sensitivity to the sun! The days on the site feel like they go on forever but it's wonderful going back to the compound after a long day, it's really starting to feel like home. I then wash out of a bucket and get rid of all the dirt, which feels wonderful, I never thought I'd be so content and glad to wash out of a small bucket! I even washed my hair out of a bucket yesterday, which was the first time it had been washed in a week! And today was the first time I saw a mirror in a week! Quite an odd feeling not to see your reflection at all for 7 days, you don't realise how many mirrors and windows there are at home!
We're spending the weekend at Kakamaga National Park, which is basically a retreat in the middle of a huge forest, how much of a "retreat" I'm not sure...we're expecting showers but not necessarily hot ones and I believe the toilets are still drop toilets outside, which is a bit disappointing! But it should be great, it is supposed to be an absolutely beautiful place. And home to black mumba snakes, which if they bite you, 50% of the time they inject venom and you die within 3 minutes! So I'll be on the lookout for those, Peg! But apparently there are lots, Kakamaga is their home in Kenya! So that will be out mid-program break, then we come back to Kisumu on Christmas Eve, go back to Mutumbu for Christmas, have a couple of days work and then I think we finish our project on the 30th and come back to Kisumu for New Years, and I guess I'll be here until we leave for the safari which I think is on the 3rd. So our time is pretty broken up, which is good. Coming back into Kisumu today, I really missed the village! It's so nice and quiet and no one bothers you! I can't wait to take off, go to the big supermarket to pick up snacks and get back on the road to Mutumbu this afternoon!
I miss everyone heaps, I especially want to see my brand new niece Sianna, it feels like I've been gone much longer than 2 weeks, but I'm having a great time and everyone is getting along really well. So I'll write again on Christmas Eve! Take care xoxo
