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Published: August 25th 2009
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Sunday being the traditional worship day is just the same here in Kenya. Doug recommended a church that was 10 minute or so drive away that had an English service. The churches here will hold up to 3 services each in different language, English, Luyha, and Swahili. Since this part of Kenya is dominated by the Luyha tribe the Luyha service is the most popular one. The English service is actually considered to be the youth service!
The service itself whilst having some similarities to traditional services back home felt completely different. The singing wasn’t in English but the preacher spoke in English and covered a number of passages, Psalm 115, Revelation 1, quite quickly, very different from Tim and Mikes sermons! There were also some rather unusual distractions to the service due to the Goats and Turkeys milling about outside the church. At one point a Kenyan Salvation Army band paraded along the road outside playing a rather out of tune ‘Oh when the saints’. During the service Mike and Tim stood up to say a few words to the congregation then we were all ushered up to the front to sing Amazing Grace.
After the service we were
shown around the vicarage next door. It was still in the process of being built so a lot of the rooms were not properly habitable. One room even had a chicken pen in it! One of the sad things we noticed was that they only had 1 mosquito net between 3 children so they took turns. We hope to do something about that before we leave.
After the service was over we came back to the guest house to change since next stop was an organic farm. The farm was only 5 minutes down the road and was run by a lady called Josephine. She told us how she had grown up on the farm as a child and then after she had graduated with a Veterinary degree from Nairobi University she had returned with a desire to help other farmers work more efficiently. With that end in mind she has created a kind of demonstration farm using biogas technology. There is a cowshed with a couple of cows. All the slurry from the cows gets mixed together and goes into a biogas digester. The biogas digester produces methane, which is used to run the cooking and lighting saving
money on cooking fuel, and slurry which is perfect fertilizer saving the farmer from buying fertilizer. There are also health benefits to the cattle as they are being cleaned out properly, and being healthier the produce more and better quality milk. On the farm Josephine was able to grow far more produce than a large family could eat so there is lots of produce available to take to the market. The only issue is the initial outlay which is out of the price range of most of the local subsistence farmers so she is trying to work out ways that the local faming authority can help them.
After showing us around the varied crops she was growing (including very hot chilli peppers that she had a contract to grow from a German company who makes pepper spray!) we were invited to a small buffet she had prepared mostly from the produce on the farm. I was already ill at the time so I declined to eat anything although everyone else said it was very tasty.
The rest of the day was pretty much ours to do what we wanted. I retired to my bed as did one or
two others who were feeling under the weather but the rest of the guys got up to some interesting stuff. Jerry and Dave Howe wandered over to a basketball court that was over the back of the guest house and challenged 3 girls who were playing. The results were to put it in Dave’s words “They whooped us”. In the afternoon Francis brought his family to see everyone and the kids had some fun colouring and meeting everyone. Then later on Robert, the local Vicar, invited some people to his house so Matt, Ian, Phil, Julyan and Simon decided to go. They took a bus and then a few taxi-bikes call boda boda to his house and met his family. They stayed there for a while then called for Doug to pick them up as they didn’t fancy the long walk back home since they wouldn’t make Dinner.
After eating and Question time most people headed off to bed since we have the final week ahead of us and much to do before our last day on Friday.
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Debbie Baynham
non-member comment
Getting there!
Hi, I've finally worked around 'security' at work to get on the blog! (yes I am working). Sounds like you are having a great experience, I hope all ill health is past now. Its pouring with rain is sunny Runcorn but not in quite the same style as it does there. Hope all the building work is coming along now. You are on the last leg to home. Well done. Sound like Jerry has a side project of a male voice choir going on. Jerry, I thought you were from Kent not Wales!! Our prayers are with you, God Bless you all. Baynham Family x