The Rains have come!

Liquid Gold has arrived...........and boy does Odede need it. Everyone everywhere is planting. This morning I woke to seeing mumma, who is approximately 70yrs, or more planting seeds in the small shamba near my house. The best things about the rain is that it is cooler.....mind you to the Africans it is freezing but believe me I can now sleep at night.

 I just want to share another adventure with you just to make you smile........yesterday was the day Walter, George and I went to Kisumu to purchase a water pump for our Fish Ponds. It is important that we keep changing the water so it became necessary to get a pump. Well we started off in my favourite vehicle, the mittatoo and for the first 10kms we travelled at approx. 40km/phr....yes he was looking for fares so you can imagine, we were on a mission having to get back so we could pump to the ponds but Oh No.......you just don't plan things as far as time goes in Africa......so we finally seemed to have enough people to get started so off we went to only get about 5kms to discover there was a problem with the battery...so we pulled over at a small market and replaced the battery and yes we had to get a kick start and off we went again..........only to discover that another 5km down the track the battery started smoking and we managed to get to a small town and all GOT OUT IN A HURRY!!!!. So thank goodness I had Walter otherwise I would not have know what to do as far as getting into another vehicle and then off to Kisumu. Well the 1 1/2 hour trip took 3hrs.........yes so finally arrived in Kisumu and because they don't travel to Kisumu too often we couldn't find the place to buy the pump :):):):) true story but as they are very resourceful we asked people and there it appeared. So because in Africa you can't trust too many people, expecially those in a shop I ofcourse had to get a second quote so of we went searching for another shop which we ofcourse found....anyway to cut a long long story short we purchased the 5.5hp Hona pump, the inlet hose (big round hose), 2 x 3' water pipes, 2x2' water pipes nuts and bolts taps etc and had to get them to the bus stop.....oh yes all this on public transport.....unbelievable but possible in Kenya....next we had to find a 'pick up truck' who tried to rip me off being a mazoongoo but finally bargained him down to a reasonable price to get us to the main bus stop where they proceeded to strap the water pump to the back of the nissan van with the door open, all the pipes on the roof and off we headed for Odede.........then you may ask how do we get them down to the village.....(well that is what I was thinking) Walter had called ahead of time and there at our stop was Omondi with a wheelbarrow......so resourceful.....and so we made it home..No we couldn't pump on the day but we made it... Today I woke to rain so we won't be able to test it but as soon as it stops, if it does, we will go to the ponds and try it out.....it is a beautiful pump as it will be strong enough to irrigate when we plant crops for the centre.

 So my friends until next the adventure." All human wisdom is summed up in these two words - Wait and Hope"

 Cheers Marilyn

My beautiful Mumma working in the rain.