Did anyone order a goat? (January 2007)

I have email access at Wajee! What an unexpected gift...

Where did I leave off? I think I'd just eaten gizzards for breakfast and sworn it was the first and last time. Ha ha 'never say never again', Bond was right. Gizzards were served for lunch the day after I arrived here, too!

Well, on January 3rd Faith delivered me to Jagi, the owner of Wajee Nature Park and a passionate conservationist who serves on all kinds of boards and organizations dedicated to eco-tourism. He drove me and Flora (the new manager he hired to run Wajee and whom I'm here to assist) to Nyeri (of Treetops and Queen Elizabeth's visit fame), and then on to the even more rural area where Wajee reserve is located.

The drive was long, but uneventful... except for my slight jet lag, which resulted in several near-snoozes interrupted by the usual *smash* of our wheels going into a cavernous hole. Along the way we passed coffee plantations, bananas, pineapple farms (owned by Dole, of course), and dreadfully hothouses on the side of a lake growing roses for the European market. I cannot tell you how much bloodshed and loss of life, both human and animal, as well as damage to ecosystems, results from these flowers. The lakes are being slowly drained, turning good fertile soil into hopelessly saline waste, soon to be desert for cut roses that last a few days! Conservationists try to patrol the areas and hire locals to guard against both overfishing and misuse of water, but corruption and payoffs abound and often it turns to violence. Recently a well known Kenyan woman, a lifelong conservationist, in the Lake Naivasha area was murdered in her sleep, probably retribution for her vocal efforts to stop the insane use of the lakes waters for flower growing and attempting to patrol the hunting and fishing effectively. Anyway, this is not to depress you just to give you the other side of some of the products that end up for sale in the Western world... there is much injustice that lurks beneath some of the things we buy and enjoy daily.

We arrived safely at Wajee and it was well dark by then, and we held a meeting around the Camp Fire/Bar area with all the workers at the park to introduce Flora as their new manager and myself. They are utterly delightful people; hardworking, sincere and gentle. We open and close each meeting with a prayer, as is often the case in Kenyan meetings, I'm finding. I quite enjoy this spiritual aspect to everything that is done leaving aside religious differences at home, I think our western world is overly secular at the expense of experiencing spirit.

On my first night I stayed in a hut, and on day two I moved into a room in the main cabin, which is nice because nights here are very cold, due to our high altitude. Mosquitoes seem to be an every-second-day phenomenon for some reason; one day they're all over, the next they're not. Malaria is not an issue in this particular area nor, to my knowledge, is the Rift Valley Virus that some of you may have heard about on the news. I gather that is more along the coast, while I'm in Central Kenya at a higher elevation. In any event I'm taking malaria medication preventively, and spraying my skin with repellent appropriately... so I'm sure Ill be quite fine.

Since arrival, I've been adapting to the African rhythm of life and daily work. Things happen differently here. You call someone to come and see about X, he might arrive tomorrow, or not at all. You kind of go along, doing things as they come up, and try to keep the overall goals in mind and aim to get to the most important things when you can. Ive had to shed a lot of my own ideas of what a successful day means since arriving, and just go with it. So far we've typed up new menus, created letterhead, reviewed employee files and re-done contracts and job descriptions, and begun putting together the 2007 Plan and get a grip on the budget and marketing angles of things. Not bad, considering that most days involve about 11 random occurrences that have to be dealt with as we go. Lets see... people stop by and say they were promised a calendar (Jagi dropped some off when he brought us here) but are not on the list of names we have, which is a huge problem. These calendars are quite the commodity in this rural area. Someone comes by and wants to sell us cabbage, or a live chicken, or some fresh milk... or even a goat! No one knows if we need those items or if someone genuinely asked for or ordered them (did anyone order a goat?) and we have to check the kitchen and hum and haw over it. Our Groundsman, Kariru, is a specialist at Nyama Choma, the Kenyan roast meat dish. So he takes his time weighing up the goat and inspecting it, and the whole group discusses the possibility of purchasing this goat at length (I then have visions of seeing the goat one day alive and kicking, and eating it the next. Which is, after all, a more honest way to eat meat but quite unfamiliar territory to me!). Then another time, Jagi's brother, Mburu, comes by to tell us that his guinea fowl are sick and he needs to borrow money for vaccinations. A school group drops in for a paid tour but then get distracted because they all want to meet the mzungu (me... it means "foreigner") lady and shake her hand. Life goes along...

The resort itself is rather run down, having not been managed effectively in recent years. It is, however, located in a beautiful setting and is teeming with gorgeous birds and lovely trees. There are three waterfalls nearby, a perfect view of Mt. Kenya, a local market, and several organic farms. I've not managed to see all these yet, but did get a tour of an organic amaranth farm run by Jagi's brother his family seems to own a lot of the land around here on a hillside. The farming done here does not conform to our notions of rectangular plots by any stretch. Everything just flows into everything else in its own way. Rolling hills, layer after layer of green, disappearing into infinity. Banana trees, avocado trees, mangoes, interspersed with grains and coffee. Almost every tree you point to has some value, medicinal or food. Plants that look like weeds are really young cassava plants, or sweet potato or yam. They seem like they just sprung up there but in fact were deliberately planted the front yard of any given house along the road may look to my eyes like a slope and a ditch, but every corner seems to be used somehow. Amaranth is a new grain to Africa, amazing in its nutritive and medicinal values and its yield per acre of land, and at this farm they are attempting to gain organic certification so they can sell their grain for higher market price. They have dug large composting pits between the banana trees (which give great shade) and are using a Japanese-developed technology known as EM (Effective Microorganisms), which uses helpful microorganisms to speed up the composting process naturally.

After the tour of his farm, Mburu gave us a fresh papaya, some sweet potatoes, and amaranth leaves, and then later his sister dropped by to give us a sugar cane and some pumpkin leaves. Last night, for dinner, I finally tasted this flavourless corn mash (Ugali) I'd heard about, but it wasn't so bad because it was served with nicely stewed and flavourful pumpkin and amaranth leaves. I've tried almost every local specialty now, I think most are some combination of beans, maize and green vegetables, flavoured and prepared a bit differently in each dish. Truthfully, I've enjoyed them all but I will gladly eat a heap of sushi when I get back to Vancouver!

My photos and words just don't do this place justice. Even when I'm home and print the pictures to show you all, or email them to those of you far away, they wont even scratch the surface of the lush, organic, flowing nature of this location and I am failing to find words to express it all! Little shiny birds perch on branches outside the window singing all day, the voices of cows in the distance are interrupted randomly by the beeping of a matatu raging by on the dirt roads (which are constantly shifting with the rains, being just dirt that becomes mud when wet) or a chainsaw. Chickens run around on the ground. The local market is a field where women spread out blankets and sell tomatoes, passionfruits, arrowroot, or colourful woven baskets. Shops sell bits of almost everything but no one has items like tea bags for some reason. What is cheap and what is expensive has no relation to anything I understand or know to be normal. Insects are huge. Caterpillars as big as my hand hang off a tree branch, weighing it down. The rain is torrential when it comes, the sun is scorching. When you stop at the side of the road, you see endless layers of hillsides disappearing into the mists.

The locals are well informed both politically and globally, and love to chat about the state of the environment, upcoming elections, and what is being done about the most critical issues in Kenya and other countries.

And it's all wonderful beyond belief.