Day 41 Kakamega June 18, 2011

Greetings

Today I met up with Pastor Ososo again here in Kakamega.  He was in town to bury his sister who died a few weeks ago.  Pastor Ososo came by the guest house this morning before the funeral and then again afterwards.  We discussed the possibility of putting passion fruit on his 3 acre farm in Busia and the ground nut/simsim project at Matasia UMC church in Nairobi.  He has expressed a desire to take part in putting up some land to plant a passion fruit orchard.

Pastor Ososo has told me that the ground nut and simsim project is moving along nicely.  They have rented a store on the main road to Ngong right at the Hotel Camp David where I stay while I am in Nairobi.  I can’t wait to see it.  They have the funds to purchase the new jiko and registration.  Today we went and bought the bag sealer for sealing the bags.  It will be able to seal three bags at one time.  Hopefully no one will burn their fingers.  He was amazed to find the sealer in the Nakumatt for 2100 Ksh versus over 5000 Ksh back in a local shop in Nairobi.  Usually the Nakumatt is much more expensive.  The Nakumatt is the Wal-Mart of Kenya but the poor cannot afford to shop there.  He will meet again with the Matasia UMC church this coming Saturday to explain the loan process to them and then will distribute the rest of the funds to get them to the next step.

The other day while I was in the Nakumatt I was going through the Indian aisle and I noticed some dates on the shelf.  It was like a full pound for a buck fifty.  I love dates and I was yearning for something sweet.  Today I was admiring how good these dates tasted and I picked up the container to see where they came from and I noticed they came from Iran.  Such a shame I do not remember the California dates tasting as good as these and the price can’t be beat.

Also today I worked on the numbers again for the passion fruit.  I do not know what I did to my excel spreadsheets but they are all corrupted with data from all the other sheets.  It is such a mess and I gave up on it today.  Tomorrow I will clean up all the data and continue to work on the cost analysis of each size orchard.

Take care and God bless

Dave