Back to Loki, TBPTB = The Best Place To Be

 

We are now back in Loki, Kenya – The Best Place To Be – as our Loki-based MAF-pilot Gero use to say.After almost 6 weeks in Sweden where KeA had a surgery, we met children, grandchildren, friends and relatives, bought things for our various projects, had meetings in churches and other places sharing and showing pictures from our work, cooled down quite a bit etc. It then felt very okay to board the MAF Caravan with pilot David Price at the controls and touchdown in a dry, hot and dusty

Loki.

Karl-Melker, our volunteer, had been holding the reins of our local projects and Gero together with Paul and Sammy the MAF-work. For us it was just to dive back into the work again. Our missionary friends welcomed us with both lunch and supper and the school committee had organized a welcome party for us. All this brought positive energy into our bodies, spirits and souls. 

 

Healthier children – Wonderful!

It is extremely appeasing to see that the health of the children has improved considerably. This is also confirmed by the teachers at our teachers’ meetings on Thursdays. During our time in Sweden they had only sent a few children to the clinic. Health checks, washing of hands before eating, intake of vitamin A, de-worming, a fruit once a week and some other supplement food such as dry fish, sukumawiki (a kind of spinach), cabbage and carrots have made a difference. The children are definitely much healthier and alert now. Wonderful! Without support from abroad this would not be possible.

 

Catherine Abulon – a happy ”Shanga girl” 

Catherine is one of the women in the ANA’s ushanga group (bead work). She has two children, Darmen and Joakim. Joakim is in our school , a smart and spirited little twinkly-eyed fellow. Catherine tells me that her husband took another wife and left her and the children about 1 ½ year ago. This behavior is very common among the Turkana. Soon thereafter another man showed up claiming her. She was in need of financial support and felt obliged to accept him. But the man was not good. He was a drunkard and hit her and the children. She felt like a prisoner. She was also afraid of being contaminated of HIV. After she joined ANA she began to see some light in the tunnel. And one day she called on her brother to come and chase the man away. “I can make it on my own now”, she says with a proud smile. Before Christmas she borrowed some money from the ANA lending scheme and she has now finished building a nice new hut for herself and the children.. 

 

ANA Hotel Ejokonoi!

Ejokonoi is a very positive Turkana word which is used in greetings and when you want to express joy, thankfullness and that everything is well. ANA Hotel Ejokonoi is the name of the little shop with a café/restaurant that our ANA womens’ group is about to open. Hotel in Kiswahili doesn’t nessecarily mean lodging. It can also just mean food. It has been a lot of work renovating and putting the venues that we are renting in order. KeA has helped making a stove (we will have to use wood), casted work tops, drainage etc. Oliver, our German missionary friend has made a nice display cupboard for our breads, cakes and cookies. Myself, I am trying hard to figure out how to decorate the shop and café and how to organize and run the whole thing. 

I tell you, it is quite a challenge!!.

For a long time I have been praying to God for a Turkana woman, who doesn’t have small children, who knows English and how to read, count and write, who knows a little about accounting and who is willing to work at the same salary level as the other women (6USD/week). One morning I prayed with great intensity since I can’t see how we will be able to run the shop without such a woman. Later in the morning when I arrive at the bakery my missionary friend Aldacy is standing there with a woman next to her. Her name is Rebecca. She tells me that she is a trained cook who has worked for the Red Cross, she has no small children, she knows English and how to read, count and write, she knows a little about accounting and she is ready to work with the ANA shop for the same salary as the rest of the women. Guess, was I happy! Thank you God!!! Rebecca has now been voted into the group and we are together going through how to organize everything, what menu we will have, hygiene, work schedule, purchases, book-keeping, training of the women who are going to work in the kitchen and so on.

   

 

Happy jumping!

Last Friday the day had come to inaugurate the new sandpit at the school that Karl-Melker, Francis and Duncan have been working with. Wiebke, our previous volunteer is the sponsor behind the project. There was great excitement as little Ikimat cut the string. Karl-Melker made a fantastic first jump followed by all the children jumping one by one. The styles varied and even the teachers and staff made their inauguration jumps. The spirit was high and all the sweets which were put in the sand quickly disappeared into the mouths of happy jumpers.

 

 

These are the words in a famous Swedish song for children that maybe mirror the Western attitude towards water - it is something always available … simply just there. Here it is quite different. Most of the people have to struggle each day to get water for themselves, their children and animals, for cooking, washing clothes, hygiene etc. 

    As we take our afternoon walk in the dry river bed there are very obvious evidents of this desperate search for water. There are a number of twenty feet or even deeper holes where people are trying to find enough water for their own basic needs and their animals. - By now they're all are gapping empty. 

For a long time we have been thinking of how to solve the water problem at the school and the two villages where we are working. There is no water well on that side of the town and people have to go far to get water. 

At the school a 5000 liter water tank is filled about every third week by an old, tatty bowser truck. It is both costly and unpractical. The bowser brakes down every so often or something else is not working. Thanks to funds from generous donors a geological survey has now been performed in order to determine whether there is water in the vicinity of the school and the villages and a possibility to drill a well. The project got air under its wings when Water for All (a within Atlas Cocpo) told us that they are ready to become the main sponsor of the drilling and the installation of a pump. The survey was done when we were in Sweden and Karl-Melker was one of the guys h the geologist Mr Kinuya by running back and forth with measuring equipment. Pastor Francis helped as well. After our return we have studied the report and it seems as if there could be water at a very handy spot in the vicinity of the two villages and not far from the school. After a school committee meeting we went to the appointed place in the twilight of the day, grabbed each other’s hands, lifted them to heaven and prayed to the Creator of Heaven and Earth for a richly filled water hole just there. The plan is to start drilling early May. Please help us pray!

Early walk through Nagarakais och Naurenpetet

It’s eight o’clock in the morning. I park our jeep outside Franci’s small mud house. It doesn’t take a minute and Francis is there with his happy smiling face. We wander into the village labyrinth of small paths bordered by the typical Turkana huts and its alaar (fences made of thorn bushes)). Some children, they ought to be in sc like a long tail. The village Nagarakais looks pretty empty. Most of the women have left. Some to get water and wood and others have gone to their small plots to prepare them for sowing as soon as the rains come. A project called – Food for work – launched by OXFAM who offer food if people begin to farm. Some girls in their teens are doing hopscotch. They seem to remain in the village to look after some toddlers. The babies follow their mothers hanging on their backs getting some slurps from breasts more or less full. The men are out in the bush with their cows, sheep and goats, sleeping in the huts or playing games under a tree.

A little boy is pooping in the middle of the path. He has diarrhea. I try to cover the sludge with some sand using my sandal. I ask Francis to tell the mother who is close by to take the child to the toilet. There is no toilet, is the answer. Sigh! Our latrine project is on the way but has not yet reached this part. We find Edapal Eiton outside her hut sitting on the ground with her youngest on her lap. Edapal is blind and her children, 6 of them, are always very dirty, thin and sad-looking. What surprises me a lot is that the people in the village don’t seem to care to help one another. Some younger women gather where we are and they laugh abashedly when I ask them why no one is helping the blind woman. “Couldn’t some of you go and fetch water and help this blind woman clean her children”, I’m asking. “It is very far and heavy”, they answer. ”We have to fetch for ourselves”.  

  

We visit several older women who struggle and have a hard time to help themselves. One of them seems to have epilepsy. She falls and start shaking I am told. When I ask if she has been to the clinic the answer is no. There is no money for that. I see to that she can be taken to the clinic and if it is epilepsy there is medicine to get. 

A man, Lokopu, has an amputated leg and is not at all well. He is dehydrated and very thin. He has had diarrhea back and forth for weeks now, they tell me. 

I see to that they get a taxi to take him to the clinic to be exa-mined by a clinical officer. I also hand out some money so they can buy some oil to mix with the maize, to make it more digestible. One more visit and we need a break. The sun is now high in the sky and I need to go home to drink and go to the bathroom. We decide to meet again in an hour and continue our walk in the next village.

These were some glimpses from our horizon. We are so happy and thankful to be here. Tomorrow we will get a visit from Sweden. Eva and Göran, two good old friends from Malmö and Sara a girl I had as a student years ago. She is also a friend of Karl-Melker. It will be wonderful to share a week of our Loki-life with them. We will also go together to the coast for a week of holiday.Will be wonderful since we have worked 150% since we came back.

Warm greetings and blessings, this time through Birgitta