Last Sunday, after attending the 7 am Mass here at Gekano, we decided to go for a walk while it was still cool to visit one of the orphans we had recently taken for a medical appointment.  Upon arriving outside the gate of the shamba and hearing us visiting with her brother, the young girl came running out to greet us.  These two orphans live with their aunt who is their guardian.  We wrote about this young girl and her guardian in a previous blog - the young girl we had taken to several doctor appointments because she had been diagnosed with pneumonia as well as a skin condition that needed medical attention.  We were invited to come into their nyumba (house) and have chai but as we were walking toward the house, we could see some young people sitting beside a large pile of maize and removing the kernels from the cobs.  We thanked them for the invite to have chai but said we would much rather observe what was going on in the yard – they could not understand why this manual process was fascinating to us and so we explained how a machine called a combine would remove the kernels from the cobs.  We told them we wanted to help which also threw them for a loop, again, not understanding why we would want to do this work.  They explained the process which is all done by hand – no machines.  First, they pick the cobs when the kernels are hard and remove the husks.  Next, they use a type of tool that looks pretty much like a blunt knife to remove a row or two of the kernels along the length of the cob.  The remaining kernels are then removed by hand using one’s thumbs – it didn’t look hard but as we found out there is a technique to doing it.  The kernels, as you remove them with your thumbs, fall into a winnowing pan which acts as a sieve to filter out the chaff and other particles that don’t belong in the maize.  They had two different winnowing pans in use.  One of the pans was a wicker basket with a mixture of cow dung and mud pressed between the fibers with small spaces in between which allows the chaff to fall through while the other pan consisted of tightly weaved fibers.  The pan made of cow dung and dirt doesn’t sound all that appealing but it works well – the dung helps to hold the mud between the fibers.  After the winnowing, they place the kernels on tarps or gunny sacks to dry in the sun and before storing will winnow it again to remove more of the chaff.  Once the maize is dried, it is stored and as it is needed for food, is taken to someone who has a Posho Mill to be ground into flour.  From the flour, they make porridge or ugali with ugali being a main staple in their diet.   We stayed to help for 30-45 minutes and in that very short amount of time, we both ended up with blisters on our thumbs!  The guardian insisted we take six cobs with us to roast or remove the kernels to make githeri which is a mixture of beans and maize.  We have made githeri – from a can!  The canned version is good but it does need some jazzing up with spices, onions, garlic, tomatoes, etc. to give it some flavor.  Kathy has not yet taken the time to make githeri from scratch but it is on the “to try” recipe list.  It was quite interesting to see the processing of the maize and all the manual labor that goes into it but upon further and a deeper reflection, you could not help but be in awe for what these people do to raise crops to feed their families and to sell for some income. 

Along the lines of the harvest described above, we are currently seeing not only the harvesting of the maize but also the preparation of the soil to plant again.  They remove the cobs of maize from the stalk (by hand), chop the stalks down (by hand with a machete) and then turn the soil over (by hand with a jembe) and finally plant the seeds (by hand).  They are planting now and in approximately 6-7 months will again harvest the maize provided they have plentiful rains and good growing weather.  When they plant the corn seeds, they also will put bean seeds and fertilizer in the same furrow.  The corn plant provides support for the beans as they grow together.  This week we have seen many people out with their jembe including small children. The jembe looks like a large hoe with different sizes to accommodate the men, women, and children though we have seen women using the very large and heavy jembe the men use.  Usually, we only see women working in the fields but we happy to say we are now seeing more men working on the shamba helping to turn the soil over to prepare for planting.  On one of our walks, we came across a husband, wife, and their young daughter (maybe a 4^th or 5^th grader) digging up the soil on their shamba each with their own jembe – the mother and child were not wearing shoes which made us cringe.  We visited with them briefly to say “unafanya kazi nzuri” which means “you are doing good work”.  They seemed amazed that we could speak some Kiswahili…we were too!  We have a jembe here at the Mission house which Kathy uses to work the soil in some of the flower beds and she can attest that it is very heavy.  So, for an anniversary present, Wes bought Kathy a new mid-size jembe that is not quite as heavy! 

In the past few weeks there have been a number of wedding Masses held at the church next door.  Fr. David gave us a brief explanation of how weddings tend to go around here.  The priest picks the day and all those couples that are ready are married on the same day at the same Mass.  Recently, there were eleven couples while on another day there were eight couples.  There was a wedding Mass this past week but not sure how many couples were joined in marriage.  Because there aren’t enough priests for the number of Catholics here, when the Sacraments are celebrated for First Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, etc., there tends to be a lot of participants. According to Fr. David, who has worked out the statistics which he has posted in his blogs (Notes from Africa), in the Kisii diocese where we are, there are almost 723,000 Catholics in an area of 847 square miles.  This means there are 91,263 Catholics per square mile and one priest for every 9,767 Catholics based on the number of priests here.  If one compares the Kisii diocese with the Diocese of Bismarck and the number of active priests in the Bismarck Diocese, there are 61,862 Catholics in an area of 34,773 square miles meaning there are 178 Catholics per square mile, and one priest for every 773 people!  When the eleven couples were married, the Mass lasted between four and five hours! It would be interesting to go to one of these multi-couple wedding Masses but can’t bring ourselves to attend one just yet!  Along the lines of attending weddings, we wish we were able to be back home to attend the wedding of Maria Semenko and Andrew Vetter later this month.  We were looking forward to being there to celebrate their special day with them but they couldn’t wait for three more years until we got back!  We are very happy for them and our thoughts and prayers are with them as they begin their new lives together – may they always trust in the grace of God to lead them on their journey together as husband and wife.  We will celebrate our 36^th wedding anniversary on July 11^th and as we look back to our wedding day, we would never have thought that we’d be here in Kenya at the Mission helping the orphans and others.  We did talk about hoping to travel to different parts of the world someday…but Kenya?!  God’s plans are always better than ours! 

On Wednesday we had another Water with Blessings training at a new place called Nyasumi.  The women were most grateful for the gift of the filter and once again wanted to show their appreciation by giving us gifts from their shamba:  cabbage, tomatoes, eggs, two large bunches of bananas and maize.  A picture in the photo section shows the two “bunches” we received.  The two bunches, also known as a “banana stem” can weigh anywhere from 65 to over 100 pounds.  We can attest to how heavy they are since we have lifted a few of them when Fr. David has received them during the sadaka or second offering at Sunday Mass.  We also distributed blankets to the women at Biticha who attended at least five of the six follow-ups.  We gave away fifteen blankets which meant every woman in the group had attended the follow-ups as was asked of them when they were initially trained. It is very heart-warming to see the difference the water filter is making in the lives of these women and their families. 

Friday was spent at the doctor’s office with an orphan we had previously taken for medical appointments – same orphan mentioned at the beginning of this blog.  The young girl had to see two doctors:  a dermatologist (follow-up appointment) and a pediatrician.  We picked up the young girl and her guardian at 8:15 am and returned home at 4:00 pm – it was a very long day. Upon arriving at the clinic in Kisii, we got in line to pay our fee but the cashier was not there so had to wait until she came even though the clinic had already been opened for at least a half hour. As stated before, the order in which the consultation fee is paid, is the order in which you get to see the doctor – no appointments can be made.  Once the cashier came, we paid the consultation fee of Ksh 2000 ($20) for each doctor and then our wait began.  After 2 ½ hours, we were finally taken to see the pediatrician, a very nice man.  He wanted some labs done so after he wrote the orders, we took the paper to the lab for them to write the prices on the sheet and then headed back to the cashier to pay the lab fees of Ksh 1950 ($19.50).  Once we paid and got our receipt, we headed back to the lab to have blood taken.  We then went back to the waiting room and in a relatively short time - considering this is Kenya where we usually wait a long time - we had lab results in hand but then had to wait for the doctor to return which was another 40-minute wait.  He wrote three prescriptions and said to return in two weeks.  After we were done with the pediatrician, we then had to wait for the dermatologist.  When we had first arrived at the clinic at 9:00 am we were told the dermatologist was “on his way” and at noon when we inquired as to how long it might be, were told again that he was “on his way”.  We finally got to see him at 1:00 pm!  After his examination, he wrote three prescriptions and so now we had a total of six prescriptions to be filled.  For convenience’s sake, we went to the chemist in this same building – here a pharmacy is called a chemist.  There was no one in the little cubby though the light was on.  After waiting for about 20 minutes, a young man came and looked at our prescriptions and then searched high and low for the different medications.  He couldn’t find them and so made a phone call to someone who was trying to tell him over the phone where to find the meds.  Kathy was beginning to wonder if this guy really was a chemist/pharmacist.  He then wrote some prices on our prescription which we had to take to the cashier to pay before we could get the medications.  The cashier would take our money but would not give a receipt because of a computer problem so we decided we would go elsewhere to get the prescriptions filled as we needed a receipt.  Besides, the guy who was searching for the medications made Kathy a little nervous anyway.  By this time, some in the group were quite hungry so we went to eat at the deli across the street in the grocery store.  The guardian had bread and a soda the last time we took them to eat so Kathy asked her if she wanted the same or something different.  The guardian didn’t say much but as the others were deciding what they wanted, she pulled Kathy aside and asked her if she could just get a bottle of cooking oil instead of eating.  This was another one of those times where Kathy got a lump in her throat…this woman would rather forego lunch to get a bottle of cooking oil for making food for the family.  As stated in previous blogs, the cost of cooking oil here has almost doubled in price and people just can’t afford to buy it.  Kathy told her to get what she wanted to eat and we would buy cooking oil before leaving the store…she reluctantly picked out a loaf of bread and a soda. Kathy and the guardian did go shopping and not only did we get cooking oil, we bought some flour and rice as well.  Kathy also asked if the young girl would need any supplies for the new school term and the guardian with hesitation said there were a couple of things:  a bar of clothes soap, toilet paper and toothpaste.  This is a much different list of school supplies compared to what we are used to back home.  The bar of clothes soap was for the young girl, a 5^th grader, to hand wash her clothes while at boarding school and yes, they have to bring their own toilet paper.  Before leaving the grocery store, Kathy checked with the chemist there about getting the prescriptions filled but they could only fill half of them.  Wes then drove us to another chemist who could fill four of the six but she offered to call some other places to see if they had the medications.  She found a place and told us they would send one of their workers to obtain the two remaining prescriptions but would need transport money of Ksh 50 (50 cents) for the worker to take a Pikipiki. Kathy gladly gave the extra 50 cents because poor Wes was having to drive in the crazy traffic and finding these small shops is not easy and it can be hard to find parking.  Once the worker came back, we found out that they only had one of the medications so we would have to go searching for another chemist.  We tried three more chemists before we were finally able to get the remaining medication.  In total, we went to six chemists to get the six prescriptions filled.  Total medical costs for the consultation fees for two specialists, labs, and prescriptions was Ksh 10,190 ($102).  That doesn’t seem like a lot to us for all that was done but here it is a lot of money.  For many families having to make a choice between buying food or paying for medical care is a tough choice and, in the end, the buying of food to feed the family most likely will take precedence. 

On Saturday, we had Mission Saturday at Ichuni and Gekano.  It was a very busy day at both places since the second school term starts this week.  In addition to doing the normal things done on Mission Saturday, there was the paying of the school fees with checks written to the many different schools and given to the orphans to take with them when they start the new term.  Because of this extra step, Sr. Teresa wrote out the checks while Kathy handed out the Kenyan Shillings and wrote out the receipts for the stipends, uniform fees, book fees, transport fees, etc.  For any child who is HIV positive, the Mission pays a transport fee of KSH 300 ($3) to the child so they can take a Pikipiki or matatu to a clinic to get their medications which are free.  If a child does not come to school with the monies needed for school fees within the first few weeks of the new term starting, the school will send them home and unfortunately, the child will not be attending school even though they are supposed to be in school.  It was a busy day but a very good day and when you see the number of children who come through and are benefitting from this education program, one is so grateful to the people of the diocese who support the Mission - none of this would be possible for these orphans if not for the generosity of so many people back in ND.   

We are very excited to be coming home in a few weeks and look forward to seeing family and friends.  We continue to keep you in our prayers and ask that you keep us and the Mission in yours.  Mungu Akubariki!

See photos from this week in the album section: 

https://stjparish.com/photoalbums/kenya-7-10-22