Village Life

We’ve now been out in our house in the village for two weeks so I thought I’d share some of the highlights;

As usual with a move, I’ve spent the last two weeks looking and looking through boxes and never finding what I need at the time – on the first night after moving out here a good friend thoughtfully cooked us dinner and I found some plates to eat off but couldn’t find any spoons – after a while I stumbled upon three teaspoons so we ate our rice and beans off our little kids plastic table, sitting on camping chairs with teaspoons. Dinner took a lot longer than usual!

The rainy season has started out here, very late but very appreciated and we have been housebound on several occasions as our roads turn to sticky mud once the water gets flowing. We put out all our buckets and basins catching the rainwater and it’s very satisfying using this water and conserving our bought tank water! Later on we’ll set up guttering for our house and a large underground tank and we’re expecting to catch lots of water off our roof – hopefully enough to see us through the dry seasons without having to transport water.

With the rains starting I had to walk the 3km to work in the mud on three days – but I am finding the walk quite a social event as many other workers live out in our area and I’m bound to run into at least one and chat to them as we slip and slide along the road.

I made a bad decision the other morning when heading early into work to walk in the morning with a friend – I thought the mud had dried out enough to ride my bicycle but halfway there the front tyre was completely seized up with a thick layer of mud between the tyre and mudguard! Luckily a Mama friend of mine was behind me and she just took my bicycle, hoisted it up onto her head and walked with me through the worst of it and then we took sticks to try and dig out the mud before I was able to continue along on my way – arriving late and quite muddy but we still got to walk and I carried my bicycle in various places on the way home. Lesson well learned – bicycles and our mud don’t mix.

We slept the first night out here without our front doors on, quite a windy night and nobody slept well. The next day the doors were on and the house was much quieter but there is still a man-sized gap between the top of the walls and the start of our iron sheeting roof which is fairly easy to climb over. Due to this Gody and I often patrol the house in the early hours of the morning when we hear loud noises – he taking up his crowbar and I our machete, checking around with our little hand-held solar lights. I don’t know what I’d do with the machete if we actually had someone in our house but I feel the need to at least carry something! We’re working on getting bricks put into this space and hopefully the process will be finished during this coming week so we can sleep a little more soundly.

We’ve killed four rats so far that came into our house to shelter from the rain and also sample our food – perhaps they are one of the reasons we are often hearing noises at night. I’m told snakes soon follow where the rats go so we’re planning on finding a cat to help solve this problem before I stumble onto a snake in amongst our food boxes.

A stray dog has adopted us, a skinny thing with only one eye from day one here it just decided that it would hang around and try it’s best to appeal to our compassionate sides. He has been affectionately named "Flat Stanley". We also have four goats that enjoy coming and eating the trees we planted along our boundaries. This has made for many a day of chasing them off our property, and Gody’s younger brother and I spent an unsuccessful hour trying to catch at least one of them – apparently once caught you wait for the owner to come and claim the goat and ask for payment for the many trees they have destroyed. A friend of ours has been keeping two sheep in with his chickens for over a month as the owner is too scared to go and claim them!

On Friday night we woke up to hear voices just outside our house, getting the machete and crowbar as usual we looked out the window to see a group of local Masai neighbours beating one man with a stick – apparently there was a circumcision ceremony the next day and all the men of a certain age are required to spend the night together singing, dancing and preparing the younger boys who will be circumcised early in the morning. When they discover someone hasn’t turned up they go to his house, drag him outside and give him a few whacks with a stick then he joins the group and they move onto the next recalcitrant’s house. Needless to say we went back to bed feeling quite safe with all those Masai patrolling the village and very thankful that Gody is not a Masai and could get a good sleep!

Our off-the-grid appliances have been getting a good workout – the washing machine is working really well (and I am happy because I am hopeless at hand washing large amounts of clothes!) and the terracotta pot fridge can keep vegetables fresh for around a week if I remember to water it about twice a day. I was also really thankful this week to be able to buy a gas oven as squatting next to our little camping gas cooker was getting harder and harder with my growing belly – now I can stand up to cook and have more options than one pot dishes.

 

With each day we spend out here we are so thankful to God who blessed us with this land, our duka (shop) business and our house. Even though life is very different living in an unfinished house without many of the usual basics (for us westerners anyway) – running water, electricity and all the appliances it brings, I often sit and take time out to gaze at the beautiful sunset and reflect on where God has brought me over the past four years. Gody and I eagerly look forward to what God has in store for us out here in the future and at the moment are clearly seeing his provision each day and can thank Him for all the small and large steps we take along the way.