Mud

It rained most of the night last night.  This morning it was very overcast with occasional spatters.  Rain all night turns all the very bad dirt roads to even worse mud roads. Since we had only a few miles of pavement and ten miles of dirt roads on the way to Olosheki, we were bound for some adventure.

And adventure it was, as it turned the ruts into wheel-eating sinkholes.  The wet mud was also very slippery, causing the truck to shimmy and slide around at times.  One section of the road had a good crown to it, and a small truck got a little to close to the edge and slid sideways into the deep muddy ditch at the edge of the road.  We stopped to help him out, pulling him down the road for a ways with one side in the ditch and finally managing to get him fully on the road.  Turns out he was delivering a solar setup for another mission organization to a site nearby.  I only hope he made it the rest of the way.

We made it to the well site without further incident but I’m sure we contributed to the depth of the ruts in the road by bumping our way through them.

Entering the well site, Michael was positioning the Land Cruiser when the rear wheel hit a soft spot and sank to the axle in the mud.  We had to pull him out with the truck.  It’s a good thing we took two vehicles today as we needed one to pull the other out.

The only building now on the site is a small shed made of corrugated metal. This will eventually become the home of the overseer or caretaker of the property.  Right now there were a few things stored in it.  We gathered a few chairs into this building and Joy brought a bunch of her supplies in and we sat in there to wait out the rain.  Duncan was there, the local pastor was there, and a few Maasai guys who happened to be nearby.  Joy served chai tea from the makeshift kitchen she set up and we watched a couple of the Maasai shape the handles for a few new jembe that we had picked up in the hardware store on the way in.  Fascinating to watch them hack at the wood with a machete to shape it to fit the metal end of the tool.  In the US, we would buy the entire tool, here it’s some assembly required. Jembe is a tool for digging dirt, resembling a hoe.

Sitting next to me was an older Maasai guy who whittled his hoe handle for a while.  I had the opportunity to give him one of the audio Bibles that Kenya Hope gives to people here who can’t read--A Bible in his own language.  It was a bit awkward, giving him this little box that was currently voicing out a Bible passage in a language that I can’t understand, but he accepted it with gratitude, and Duncan eventually came over to show him how to use it, being able to explain it in a language he would understand.

The rain eventually started to let up, so we ventured outside and began laying out supports for the water tower.  When it stopped, I set to welding the tower together and Willie and Dave put together the scaffold.

Duncan and his crew used the jembe to dig holes along the fence lines for eventually planting trees.  The row of trees and an upgrade to the existing fence will eventually mark the site boundaries and provide some protection from the animals eating the produce and plant from an eventual garden.

By the end of the day, the scaffold was up and the two sides of the water tower were put together.  On Monday we will stand the tower supports up, weather permitting.

At one point Dave received a call from the guy who supplies the pump.  Seems he had some suppliers that we wanted to see the setup, could he send someone out to lead them to the site?  I don’t know why a bunch of Chinese suppliers would want to come to Kenya and drive these awful roads on a rainy day to see a hole in the ground, but, whatever.

Joy and Michael took off in the Land Cruiser to go fetch them.  I launched the drone and followed them for a ways, managing to catch them at one point where they got a little stuck and had to  back up and try again. 

The trip back was just as muddy as the trip out, and the ruts were probably a bit deeper due to being driven through.  But we made it back to the tarmac and the hotel, very dirty, but in one piece.  We had an ice cream bar to top off the day.

We had dinner at the hotel, sharing about the day and sharing pictures.  So many pictures.  Each person with a different take and different opportunities.  This was kind of two days rolled up into one.  The first part sitting around in the rain, and the second part actually working outside on the project.  Both parts involved a lot of driving on muddy roads.

Olosheki literally means “The place of rain”.  I guess that about sums it up, except I would add the mud aspect to it.  Perhaps Mudosheki?

More photos from today:

We were getting a stream of water from the well, even on an overcast day.

Willie, Dave, Tim

Yours truly, welding a tower section.  The Chinese guys are in the background, looking at a hole in the ground.

Duncan and his wife

Joy, pouring chai tea.  Everything is done on the floor in these parts.

Our shelter in the time of rain.

making concrete pylons for the tower

A kitchen that everyone would envy.