Day 61 Mumias July 8, 2011

Greetings

I have been battling a bug that I caught in Maralal for quite a few days now.  I think I caught something when I was shaking hands with the children up at Lare-Oibor.  I don’t know why I let this linger so long.  Here in Kenya you can go to the Chemist and get the drugs you need without a prescription.  Drugs are pretty cheap too.  I bought fifteen adult Amoxycillin tablets good enough for a week for 460 Ksh or about five bucks and they were not generic they were GlaxoSmithKline. 

We were supposed to go to Mt. Elgon today to meet up with Pastor Joseph but Hezron has been unable to reach him for a couple of days now.  It was also better for me since I am not feeling that great and I have had enough driving for a while.  This afternoon we did go to visit with Charles and his family to celebrate the purchase of his motor bike.  We had a very good visit with Charles and he is about the happiest guy on earth.  I also got to meet his parents and they were so excited to finally have a white person come and visit their family enclave.

Before we headed to Mumias we went by the passion fruit orchard so I could look at the plants.  I am not sure what the prognosis is but some of the seedlings have really taken off, some have died or look like they are dying and some still look healthy but are slow to start moving up the sticks.  I talked with Pastor Robert and he has offered to replace the dead or dying seedlings.  He will also be in Kakamega on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to train the widows and a few others on growing passion fruit.  He seems to think that we might have planted them improperly.  This time we are going to let him plant them so everyone can see first hand how to plant them.

Tomorrow we will meet with Pastor Robert again in Mumias to visit with Equity Bank to see about opening up the accounts for the micro-finance institution with Wamula International.  It might prove to be an interesting day.  Hezron and I are also going to meet with another 40 plus widow’s group that one of his Pastors whom is a widow herself has formed in her church in Mumias.  They too have some land that can be used to grow passion fruit.  But before we plant another plot I need to find out what we did wrong with planting the first plot.  I tend to believe that there was a combination of errors and I know that we did some damage to some of them during transport.  Robert told me that he usually does the training before the planting not after.  I am so thankful that this has happened before I left for the states.     

Take care and God bless

Dave