Water, Gardens and a Star is born.

So it's Sunday evening now, almost a week since my last post. I am sitting in the house waiting for the pump that we have rigged to pump enough water up in a small water tower so that we can have enough running water in the house to wash up and flush toilets etc. The water has stopped coming in any quantity from the public water lines and the tanks at the orphanage are dry. They older kids have to walk about 1.5 kilometres to a stream/swamp to fetch water for bathing and laundry. We still have a few hundred gallons in one of our tanks here on the farm so the smaller kids fetch water here for cooking and drinking.

Some of you have asked about a well, and one had been drilled here two years ago but it only worked for a very short time and then quit working. The organization had charged a large amount of money for this well and then just walked away. SSooo..... we are going to attempt to investigate the state of this well in the next month or so, and I am sure that we will need additional finances to repair it.

The gardening workshop with Organics4orphans went very well. The agriculture students are very excited as are the teachers and the Murrays. We have currently one bed of Kale planted, and one bed of nightshade greens, approximately 200 plants in all. As well, we have established a 5x5 foot compost that will provide composted soil in less than 6 weeks. We started a nursery bed in which our tomatoes, cauliflower, chard, cabbage, beets, red onions,and turnip seedlings will be started to transplant later. Tomorrow we will dig more beds and plant soya-beans and cow-peas. In the next few weeks we hope to cultivate over 1/2 acre of raised vegetable beds so that by Christmas we will be over run with fresh vegetables.

The rest of the team left this week to return Canada, leaving Karen, Chelsey and I to settle in as temporary residents of this small rural Kenyan village. The Bishop and his family make sure that we are very well cared for as his first missionaries to Bura.

Yesterday we walked to the village to go grocery shopping.  Ben, the Bishops son, accompanied us to help us find what we wanted. Ben was continually amused as Karen listed things off that were unavailable here, or he didn't even know what they were. No brown rice, only white, no baking spices, very few yellow vegetables. We mainly have cabbage, Kale, onions, and chard for vegetables. We did, however, find three small eggplant, 3 passionfruit, 6 oranges, 1 papaya, 1 small coconut, 5 avocados, 3 small green peppers, some mixed spice for salads, 1 dozen rolls, a small plastic basin and a 6 litre bucket for kitchen compost,  all for less than $7.00.  So you see the fresh produce is not expensive or the locals who live in such poverty could not afford it.  Most of the people here who are working earn between $1 and $2 per day.

Chelsey and Ben have been composing a new song and it's really good. Chelsey wrote the lyrics and Ben the chorus. The are collaborating on the music. Ben plans to record three of the tracks on his next CD with Chelsey, very exciting. She has become a bit of a local celebrity here. We were walking down the road the other day and as we passed all the little girls began to sing Chelseys part in the song she sang at open air concerts held the last two weeks.

By the way thank-you for all your prayers for little Ali. He is much better and I even saw him trying to run and jump yesterday, so cute. He has also begun talking  a little to the other children. It really is a wonder to see his progress day to day. We are hoping at some point to travel to Voi, 40 kms away soon to an internet cafe where we can get a connection good enough to upload some photos.

Well that's it for now, I've got to go shut the pump off and hopefully have a quick, cold, dribble of a shower.
:)