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| Indangalasia Area |
I love being outside of busy Kakamega. The landscape is so lush and bright green. We see so many little kids and are met with warm handshakes and offers for lunch at every home we pass. As we walk Jackson we laugh a lot and dream of KASFOOC one day having their own helicopter to monitor their sites. We spend a lot of time worrying about if the other is getting too hot or tired. After two hours and 6 or 7 springs, we agreed that we would go for another hour. Somehow that morphed into 17 springs and 5 hours! I would not have made it without the stick of sugar cane one of the farmers gave to us. It's not pretty to eat (it involves a lot of peeling and tearing with your teeth, chewing and sucking to get out the sweet juice, and then spitting out the fibres) and it can't be good for your teeth, but it's really delicious and quite refreshing. My other saviour was the "Cool Band-it" that mom got us for Christmas. It is a little tie that you soak in water and wear around your neck. It is filled with some kind of gel that expands and hold moisture so that you stay cool. I kept soaking it in the springs as we went. Joyce thought it was quite wonderful -- mom gave me an extra so I will give one to her.
About half way into our tour, Jackson remembered to introduce our leader as the recipient of the One Drop of Hope spring! The spring that One Drop of Hope funded is on his land. We will visit it next time. He gave great thanks to us and told me that there is no more typhoid fever or cholera since the spring was protected. When we did that spring, there was an old man in the village who said he had never had been using that spring for his whole life and this was the first time it was clean. He has since died, but was able to enjoy clean water for a year.
Each spring serves between 25 and 50 homes. Each "home" may have six houses on it and each house may be for 7 people. So the impact is huge. Every spring we visited was being used by women, young girls, and very small kids helping their mothers. Some of the little ones couldn't have been more than two years old with their own little containers to fill. Some of the springs are at the bottom of incredibly steep and narrow trails. Two were especially bad. I hope there are funds for stairs. We will check in with Alinda to find out. If not, that may be a fundraising opportunity. Jackson told us that "this spring causes lots of divorces" because of the steep, steep hill. We had a hard enough time getting up it, let alone trying to imagine carrying a 20 litre bucket on our head!
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| Steep access to spring |
When we had visited the last spring for the day, Jackson told us that it would be too far to walk back to the road and we should take a piki piki... oh boy. KASFOOC had other business to take care of in the community, so we could go on ahead. He negotiated a fare of 150 shillings for the both of us back to Nakumat. Terry and I got on the back of the motorcycle -- yes, we were on the same bike -- me behind the driver and Terry on the back. Despite the lack of helmets and protective gear (I was wearing a halter top because I split my pants when I was bending down for a picture... oops... and had to tie my blouse around my waist), and the packed dirt road, it felt surprisingly safe. The driver put on his winter vest for the ride. At the main road we had to switch to another piki piki because our guy ran out of petrol. This one had a helmet, but only for himself. It was really a nice way to get around and we will use them more I am sure.
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| Yep, this is where I split my pants. |
By the time we got back to Nakumat at 3:30pm, I was burnt to a crisp (forgot to put on sunscreen this morning), and totally exhausted. We stopped in for a large water, Fanta, and chips before we came home to veg out watching episodes of The Office on the computer and snoozing on the couch.
A very, very good day.
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