Nzeluni

We spent four days working in Nzeluni to help with the building of a weir.  Basically we carried rocks, big heavy rocks, a lot of them, for quite a distance.  The great thing about carrying rocks is that it gives you time to talk.  At first most of us talked to each other about where we were and what we saw but within hours we were talking to the kids who started carrying rocks with us.  They were young kids, about four to ten years old at first but they would carry rocks that seemed half their size and they would run, fast, up and down the river bed to show off how great they were at this rock carrying.  By the afternoon of the first full day there were teenagers who started to carry rocks with us and most of them knew at least a little english, some of them knew a lot.  We talked to them for the next few days about their lives in Kenya, our lives in Canada and most importantly the differences between the two.

While we were carrying rocks a group of the ladies from the community took care of making tea and the lunches we had every day.  For a large part of the time we were walking past them every couple minutes and we slowly got to know them too even though few of them knew English.  On the third day Janet hurt her back and it was decided that she should rest for a while and from then on she spent her time with these cooking ladies.  There was allllllways laughter coming from that group as we passed.  They really enjoyed her company and especially teaching her new words which she diligently wrote down in her book.  I think if we had stayed for three weeks she would have been fluent in KiKamba!

Our experiences in Nzeluni were very different from what we saw in Mitiboni in 2008.  By staying at the work site to share lunch with everyone else there we gained their trust and laughter a lot sooner than we did in Mitiboni.  As well the number of people who had at least a general understanding of english really helped us to build relationships and understand each other and the huge differences in culture that exist.  I don't for a second want to degrade how much we all enjoyed Mitiboni but I think it's fair to say that nearly everyone who was on their second trip really felt a deeper and more fulfilling relationship to the people of Nzeluni.  I'm sure that our confidence and ease in the culture helped in all this and I'm excited to see what this could mean in terms of our next trip to Kenya.

lisa