On the Road Again!

We praise God that the third monthly distribution has been completed successfully! Success in this context is best defined as “all the food going to the right people (7,400 house holds) on the exact day promised” – no easy feat!  We have one more distribution to go just before Christmas, after which we will pass on the torch to our replacement IRM’s, Rients and Margaret Mazereeuw, in January.  A five day overlap with them will help ensure a smooth transition.

Presently we are happily at  “home” in Nairobi for eleven days.  Here we have a comfortable bed, minimal bugs, a good choice of foods and a much more comfortable climate. We spend our time in Nairobi doing reports and administrative tasks for our project.  Most days we work in the World Renew office.  Here we share Monday devotions, Friday lunches, project information, field reports, and office space (which sometimes is very minimal) with an interesting collection of employees.  These include accountants, disaster response staff and the drivers, all of who regularly rotate between the office and their project sites. Some days we exercise the option of working from our apartment where there is minimal distraction and a large dining room table to spread out our papers and files.

We really enjoy the variety in our work.  Much as it is a nice change to be in Nairobi, the excitement is greater and the work more hands-on in the field.  Our time “on the road” really is what it sounds like.  We spend two weeks living out of our suitcases, daily driving to and attending a food distribution, tramping along on a water pan site, or both. We go to observe the events, looking for careful adherence to the project, interacting with the beneficiaries (interpretation available) and encouraging the coordinators and committee members.

It is hard to resist sending some photos along with this blog to help define the “roads” we travel.

The Nairobi/Mombasa highway is an adventure in itself. This paved road is well travelled by a huge amount of truck traffic coming to and from the port of Mombasa.  It is mostly a two-lane highway filled with trucks and vehicles with great variations in their ability to get up the hills, their drivers’ patience for slower vehicles ahead and their mechanical fitness.  Regular maintenance of this road does not seem to be a priority.

We quickly adjusted to this initially daunting road, only to meet many more interesting and challenging ones in the field.  Here our driver manouvres our vehicle through herds of cows and goats, carefully passes over-loaded donkey carts and regularly honks his horn to warn school children and other pedestrians (all using this road – no sidewalks!) that there is a motorized vehicle approaching. One big challenge is to avoid very large potholes and deep ruts caused by past rainfalls and previously stuck trucks. Frequently we drive on the wrong side of the road (correct side in Canada) or even off the road to find a diversion when needed. The four-wheel drive we use is absolutely necessary and Julius, our experienced driver, who knows these roads, is invaluable!

The photos attached to this blog will describe some of the paths, lanes or whatever you may wish to call them, that we need to traverse in order to get to our distributions and water pans.  In the past two blogs we have shared in detail the hard work that the beneficiaries are required to do on the water pans, but there is another option. In a number of our districts, some of the beneficiaries are working on access roads instead of working on the water pans.  This would be for one of the following reasons: a community has identified that along with access to water, roads are a vital necessity, there are too many beneficiaries working on one water pan to be effective, or there is no water pan within a reasonable distance from their homes for the 10 days of work per month that they are required to do. These new roads may serve to connect two neighboring villages, to by-pass schools to improve safety for the children and most important, grant access to dispensaries (clinics).  Ambulances are unable to reach many of the inhabitants in these counties.

We are amazed at how much progress one hundred beneficiaries can make in a 10-day period of work. They clear a ten-metre width of field for long stretches removing all trees (including stumps), lots of brush and any rocks or other obstructions. Next they dig a trench on each side of the road and add spillways to handle the rain. Last, they add soil to the road and tramp down each shovel-full to make the road strong and lasting. We have found that their completed roads are better than many of the ones we travel.

As of next Wednesday we will be “on the road again”.  Meanwhile, we wish all of you God’s blessing and “happy travels” as your week unfolds.  May all your paths be smooth!