cutting trees

One of our team members was able to trim many of the trees on our compound. The finished open space looked great but resulted in lots of branches that needed to be cleaned up. Most of the smaller branches with their leaves made good food for the local goats and the bigger branches make good posts for future fences. This means we have to cut the smaller branches from the big ones to clean things up. This is the fun part of things. It’s great to be able to grab a panga (Kenyan version of a machete) and clean off the branches. I’m not sure if it’s the type of wood or the panga that makes it easy but its simple to do J. Once the branches are clean the harder work of lugging the small leafy branches to the fence and tossing them over starts. These branches are quickly eaten clean by the hungry local goats. At times it seems easier to just let the goats into the compound for lunch instead of tossing them over the fence however there are some dogs who would enjoy it for other reasons……and I don’t think the goats would have much of a meal thus defeating the entire plan. 

Food

I mentioned in my newsletter that many of the foods we eat we have to cook from scratch. One book that has been a huge help has been the More With Less cookbook as it has recipes for most things and they are from scratch. Google is another huge help and I’ve been able to find some good recipes with it. My biggest challenge so far is to get produce in the local market. For the most part so far all that has been available on a regular basis is onions, garlic, and some local greens which I’m not sure what to do with. I have seen some potatoes, oranges, and watermelon, and mushrooms but they are there on a limited basis. There for a few weeks then gone until next season. Other basic necessities are readily available such as noodles, flour, soaps, sugar, salt, tomato paste, and coffee/tea for those that drink it. There even are a few stores that have cheese, canned tuna, and other luxury items we normally ship from Kenya. Its expensive but then so is flying the stuff in, especially the canned goods. one thing I have been working on figuring out is how to eat from what is available locally instead of flying foods in. 

One such sort of success was spaghetti. The pasta and tomato paste is available locally and once my tomato plants start producing tomatoes I should be able to make spaghetti and only need to ship in the spices and herbs from Kenya. That being said I have a few ideas on how to grow my own herbs and spices too but I’m still working on that part.

Another success was homemade potato chips. I have yet to see any potato chips in the market but there are potatoes some times. I found a recipe online and decided to try it. The result was a great success. Now I just have to figure out how to add the different flavors to the chips. Salt is easy enough. I recently even found some salt/vinegar powder in the big city when I was on my R&R. I’ll try that and see what happens. 

some local sorgum partially prepared.

what not to do with milk.... 

this was accidentally left out of the fridge overnight....

 

food at the local ethiopian restaurant

same ethiopian restaurant, different meal

 

quick update

I am now in the capital city and enjoying a quick break from normal life to get some paperwork and shopping done (and spend time with a certain special someone). I haven't been able to post much on my blog over the last few months as the internet connection where I normally stay hasn't been very reliable. I can get emails pretty regularly however anything beyond that is difficult and blog posts have been impossible. Over the next day or so I hope to get some old blog posts up that were written over the last few months. My time here in the capital has been productive and I'm thankful for the time I have had here. I've been able to get most of what I needed completed and have learned many things about city life and how I can best fit in here in the future when I move here in the future.

Life in the big city

After spending 3 months in a remote location doing language learning for 2 months then work in the medical clinic for 1 month it was off to the city for some mandatory R&R.  The big city was just that…  BIG. It also had lots of food that I didn’t have to cook from scratch on my coal stove.  The first night me and a friend went shopping and got pizza, ice cream, and chips. It was a night of food, fun, movies, and relaxing. Friday afternoon was time for some serious shopping at the local version of Superstore. I was able to get everything but teff flour (a staple in Ethiopian food) which is hard to get here anyways. Not bad for all the stuff I needed on my list. Saturday was the day to hit the local market for “new” clothing. Shipping costs to fly goods are expensive enough that its worth having clothing at my home location and my R&R locations.  Since much of the clothing in the market comes from used clothing stores from all over the world (mainly north America and Europe) its interesting to see the different styles that are there. Interestingly I found that my taste in clothing has also been somewhat altered already. Instead of the standard casual jeans/tshirt stuff I normally go for, I found some fancier shirts/skirts that fit the practical yet light requirement for the heat out here.  Saturday afternoon resulted in a 1 hour walk to a different compound. Interesting enough I did this walk two days in a row and felt just fine unlike the first time I did the walk about a week after I arrived in Africa barely finished it the first time. I guess I’m more in shape than I was when I arrived.  I have to admit the first walk this time I did take a taxi back as I picked up 10-15kg of stuff to bring to my fiancée. Since I had a few extra kgs of free luggage space in my personal luggage and I knew he had stuff he didn't have space for on his last trip home, I got some of his stuff to max out my kg allowance. Somehow I managed to do this perfectly. I had a 40 kg allowance and managed to have one bag at 19.7kgs and the other at 20.3kgs….. I don’t think I could get that precise again. Then again my next flight I had a 20kg allowance and came in at 20.05kgs…. maybe my luggage scale is helping :)

Mice and rats.... doesn't matter they are pests

What would you do if you were kept up at night due to scurrying in your ceiling or food missing/chewed on. Ok I only lost some of my food when I wasn’t even here yet. My food and supplies had been shipped up here a month prior to my arrival and some rats got into it. Normally one would think that mice are easy enough to catch… set a trap with some good food on it and wait….. well these mice/rats are of a much smarter sort. I set up 2 traps and added some peanut butter to each trap….. the next morning the peanut butter was gone but there was no mice. They managed to eat it off the set trap and get away.

Attempt #2 – smear peanut butter all over the trap sensor thing and wait again. Again these mice managed to clean off the trap without getting caught.

Attempt #3 – not very creative but I decided to hit the mice I saw in my roof with a broom….(the roofs here are thatch with a layer of clear tarp underneath so any animals are visible from the underside). Fail again.

Attempt #4 resulted in a google search to see if there were other ways to get these pesky creatures. I found a few sites that showed a water bucket trap (http://fivegallonideas.com/bucket-mouse-trap/ ) and so I created something similar (sorry no pics) with some rope, a bucket, a tin can, peanut butter, and a bench. The next night I woke up from the noise of a can clunking…. The mouse had managed to pull the can to the edge of the bucket and was happily eating the peanut butter off the can while sitting on the bench I had as a ramp into the bucket….. Ok I admit the trap wasn’t identical but it should have worked for a normal mouse.

Attempt #5 – After chatting with one of my fellow missionaries I decided to try her suggestion and glue peanuts to the trap. My mistake was not pealing the outer skin off the peanut and again the mouse got away. I decided to try this version one more time but with just the peanut and lots of glue. FINALLY success.  When I awoke the next morning I saw that I had won the battle against the mouse.  

Now hopefully there are no more that want to come visit and I can get some sleep. 

Trip to my location

Flying on chartered planes is a whole new and different experience. I’ve lived in a small city that has a small airport where we actually would walk out to the plane on the tarmac instead of through those long arms in big commercial airports (though I think the local airport has done some major upgrades recently). In these cases there are usually lines on the asphalt indicating where to go and a few staff directing you to the plane. That is totally not the case out here. We arrived at the airport and were checked through security then we were off to the waiting area to await further direction from our pilot. There was no 2-3 hour wait for international flights. Instead what I thought was a ½ hr wait was actually about 10 minutes. Walking to the plane was basically follow the pilot and don’t get too close to other planes. There were about 20 or so planes on the tarmac in various stages of being prepared for trips and there we were walking right next to them.   Soon we were off to our first destination. Out here you need to “check out” of a country and “checkin” to the new country so that meant we had to land at 2 aistrips along the border. The first one checkpoint (still in Kenya) was pretty big and pretty empty except for the planes parked beside the runway in various states of disrepair or crash damage. If you are nervous to fly, landing at places like this is not the most encouraging thing. Plane crashes do happen but out here the planes are not shipped off to a plane graveyard and any form of disassembly is much more difficult so many of them are just pulled out of the way and left there. 

 the planes in the picture don't work

Our next stop was a dusty airstrip with cows, goats, and people running around next to the landing area. Apparently the place we landed doesn’t get many flights through here so we were somewhat of a novelty to the local people. Many people were there to greet us. It took a while but some members of the team were able to figure out what tribe they were even though none of us spoke their language and they didn’t speak English. Cameras also were a novelty and I had to take many pictures of them and then show them their pictures which they thought was pretty cool. We were soon on our way again and off to our final destination.

A few more hours of flying and we were soon circling the final airfield. 2 years ago this area was a small community and now it’s a huge refugee camp. The whole area was dotted with white UN tarps. Again there were airplanes at the edge of the runway. One pulled waaay off to the side (and was one of the planes that crashed with people from our team) and a larger one just to the side.  We landed safely and got out. I had seen previous pictures of the landing strip prior to its expansion and knew it had been expanded but I wasn’t prepared for how small I felt once I was standing out there. Here I was, in some remote area, standing on a landing strip that can land some pretty big planes.  I felt pretty small standing there looking out at the other huge planes that were landing.  

Out here we are able to get up close to and involved with flight stuff. Loading, unloading, and walking around on the airstrips. Pretty different from the commercial flights I have been on where access is very controlled. Maybe one of these times I’ll be able to fly a plane (no worries I wont be landing/taking off any time soon).