Kangundo

Driving up the bumpy dusty dirt road to Isaac and Monica's farm is one of my favorite experiences.  The mamas welcome us with such exuberant singing and dancing that touches each of us so deeply.  This little village surrounding Isaac's farm has been hard hit with Aids and frequent drought. Isaac and Monica (Miriam's parents) have slowly but surely helped bring healing and sustainability to these dear women and their families.

Our main task here was to interact with the families, bring them bags of clothes, and provide them with about three weeks of food.  We set up several stations, each with a different food item, and helped them fill bags with one of everything: milk, oil, rice, sugar, flour, salt, margarine, seasoning, bread, toothpaste, and toothbrushes.  This system was way more efficient than last year, allowing us more time to greet the families.  

Next it was time for the medical team to set up at the grounds of the community church and begin seeing the first group of patients.  People who wanted to see the doctors were given numbers ahead of time letting them know which day they could attend.  This also was way more efficient and Bob reported that the first day was much calmer.  We are learning!

Those of us not on the medical team went to help build a garden for a family in the village. The man named Nicholas, who has been helping the community learn more sustainable gardening practices, had looked a bit concerned when Miriam said it was mostly women coming to help him.  Those of you who know me can figure out where this story is going....he came back to Miriam afterward and said, "Boy those women can work!" Uh...yeah. 

Nicholas has been helping these families build raised garden beds with a drip irrigation system attached to a small water tower next to the garden bed. when we got there the walls of the garden were in place, so we laid down landscape fabric inside, then spread a thin layer of ash around the perimeter for pest control, then gathered up dried leaves and spread them out, then shoveled dirt into buckets and carried them to the bed, poured them in, then shoveled composite top soil on top. Tim and Jamrick, one of our rescue boys from Nairobi, did most of the shoveling, while the rest of us carried and dumped buckets of dirt. 

Nicholas was working with a few village men to finish building the support structure for the water tower. He then showed us how to connect the drip irrigation line and we laid those out on top of the garden.  Connecting pipes and a spigot were added, leading from the water tower to the drip lines in the garden.  Voila!  Too bad I will miss the actual planting of the vegetables on Friday, as I will be at New Dawn with Judy. 

Some of the neighboring mamas came to watch with their grandchildren. It was hot and tiring work, but only this little boy got to take a nap under some shade!