Day 8 September 24, 2011 Bulinda

Greetings

This morning I awoke early and decided to have breakfast.  I do not know why I don’t eat breakfast more often.  It is included in my evening rate.  I am starting to feel bad about the Kenya shilling.  When I stayed here a couple of years ago my room rate was 1000 Ksh a night and the exchange rate at the time was as low as 67 Ksh to a dollar.  So that 1000 Ksh a night was $14.93 a night.  Today I exchanged some money and it was 95 Ksh to a dollar.  I still pay 1000 Ksh a night or $10.53 a night.  To make things worse for the guest house is that they have to give the government 18% this leaves them with a whopping 820 shillings or about $9.11 per night.  I looked on the menu and if I was to buy the breakfast without staying it would be 400 Ksh or about half the room rate.  Where in America can you get a deal like this?  You could go to Denny’s and get a $1.99 breakfast deal but you do not get fresh ripened pineapple straight from the plantation.  Breakfast is usually quite tasty.  Every now and then I get an egg that tastes funny.  Here in Kenya they do not refrigerate the eggs and you never know how long they have been sitting on the counter.  I keep telling myself they come from straight under the chicken to the stove.

This morning I continued to work on the numbers until Pastor Robert came to pick me up.  We stopped by the Equity bank in Mumias to talk with the bank managers about the problem with the new bank account.  I guess it will all be worked out in the next couple of days.  After the bank we headed out to Bulinda to view the main orchard site and our seedlings.  This plot will be managed and worked on by the staff at Wamula.  This orchard will be used to help support Wamula International and Pastor Robert’s ministry.  This is the largest of the orchards we are planting.  This plot will be planted in a 2 meter by 3 meter layout and shorter rows.  All three plots in Bulinda are going to be planted 2 meters by 3 meters.  The other 21 plots are going to be 2 meters by 2 meters.  We stopped in the nursery to check on the seedlings and they still look much better then the last batches we picked up.  This time I took some pictures.  Early next week we will start to deliver the seedlings to the plots that are ready to plant.  I would load some more pictures but my computer took 10 minutes to get this one done.  I am back on the 2G network and it is really slow.  I have had to save and reboot this three times in the last hour.  Not having a good blogging experience tonight.

A few thousand of the seedlings ready for planting

 

Tomorrow I will continue on all the documents that are needed for Wamula to manage the loans.  I am still looking to reduce the costs of the chemicals, posts, and such so we can provide some training, cover transportation costs, etc.  For a few of you that are reading this you do know what happens on the roads here when it rains.  Some of you remember our journey down in a ditch.  It was a very exciting time.  Well today it was raining in Bulinda and I was worried that fate was going to repeat itself.  The road turns into zero and I mean zero traction.  The car goes where it wants no matter what the driver does.  You have to drive the crest of the road or you just slide right off.  The problem lies when two cars are approaching one another and neither want to leave the crest of the road.  As we approached each other both cars came to a near stand still as we passed each other and I then started to feel us heading for the ditch.  The car next to us was doing the same in the opposite direction.  Luckily for both of us we managed to get back onto the crest without sliding into the ditch.  I thank God that for the 10 or so kilometers that was the only car we encountered.  The motor bikes, bicycles, cows, people, chickens, etc. they just have to get out of the way. 

Take care and be blessed.               

Dave