Dave's East Africa Blog: Day 10 September 26, 2011 Kakamega

Greetings

The power is out again tonight. Go figure. I used up my last candle and matches on last nights power outage. Went to the office seems there is a shortage of candles too. They were able to finally find me one and I am typing by candlelight once again.

Today I went back into town to look for another modem. Went to the Orange network and their modem is pretty expensive and to buy airtime I have to go to their store to recharge. Too much work. With Safaricom everything from my phone. Tonight the internet is working 3G pretty good. Not sure if it will last. While I was in town I went to another hardware store to see about lowering the wire cost some more. This guy gave me some outrageous price and I told him that I was going to purchase over a half a ton. He would not come down on his price so I left. I was going to go to my original place but the afternoon storm came in. I had to make way into a shop and wait for the monsoon to stop. The nice lady gave me a chair to sit in while we chatted. I am not sure why most people take cover when it rains and there is no movement in the streets but I will tell you why I take cover. You see when it rains here not only do I not want to get wet I do not want to take the chance of slipping on the mud. Cars do not have traction and sometimes people do not either. Some of you reading this know what I am talking about. The difference with falling in the country side and falling in the city is the nasties that are being washed away with the rain. In America you know that smell when the rain just starts to hit the pavement well that is not the smell that permeates the air when it starts to rain on the city streets here. I guess it is a good way to remove the raw sewage to somewhere else.

I also took the chemical list that Robert had given me to try and find out what they are. Some of them I could find the real chemical name and some I could not. There is one product called Dudutrin and when I was at the chemical store I saw a bottle of something that gets rid of the Du Du bug but it was not Dudutrin. If anyone knows what the chemical name of this is please let me know. Maybe the bottle I was looking at is Dudutrin and I did not realize it. The chemical list has 14 items on it and I have gotten about half of them to where I can determine my calculations. I will have to finish this up with Robert since he has the book that tells me what everything is.

Tomorrow I have to get back on the road if possible. I have spent the last few days working the numbers and documents for this project. There is more work to do to get all the timber, seedlings, wire, and chemicals to the locations. I also am planning to meet with Pastor Ososo and Councilor Ben in Busia on Thursday and into Friday. I do want to spend some time with the leadership of the fish farmer association to hear what they have to say. We also have two passion fruit plots to look while I am in Busia. Some of the orchards are ready to plant and others are still preparing. I need to get a tally of where everyone is and what it is going to take that they are all planted in the next three weeks. I do not have to be here to plant all the orchards I just need to make sure that they have everything they need to accomplish their tasks before I leave in a couple of weeks.

Pastor Ososo's plot in Busia