It’s a Down Day

Saturday Dec 13^th, 2008 – It’s a down day, both activity wise and emotionally for me. While it is a slower paced day as far as responsibilities go, we still had things to do. Had a school committee meeting after breakfast, an update on that in a moment, and a lunch date. But not a whole lot was actually accomplished. And not being excited about the day and wonder why I’m here on the shores of Lake V, it’s a down day overall.

First the Polytechnic update (see previous entry for more, which was posted at the same time). We met today to short list our candidates for the Manager position. The list was short to begin with with only 4 applications being turned in. Reviewing them was not hard as most of them did not meet most of the qualifications. Only one had any real potential. It was decided to only have him interviewed. Fortunately Joyce had summarized the applicant’s info, otherwise this process would have taken several times longer than the 1+ it took anyway. Of course there were a few other items, the chairperson was late, only 3 of the 7 committee members showed up. So we got 10 productive minutes of work done in our 2 hour meeting. Hmmm, that sounds a little too familiar. Even with 3 of 7 members present we still had a quorum. They have the concept of ‘apologies’ here. This means if you inform the people at the meeting either before or at the time they call you 30 minutes after the meeting starts asking you where you are that you will not be able to attend, you are counted with the number present to determine if a quorum is achieved. I feel sorry for my kids having to sit through these meetings as for the most part the meetings are not very productive and even sleeping or washing dishes would be a better us of time.

As you can see, I’m not real up on the meeting process or the progress today. Hopefully Monday we will hire the one candidate and he will kick things from first to second gear, or maybe I should say get us out of neutral.

The lunch date was fine, same old same old on the food. The high point for me was the pineapple for dessert – very sweet and tasty. They tried to get us to eat more than we wanted, but soon a few other visitors arrived to eat a lot of the remaining food, so it did not look like to much went untouched. I was just thinking of a polite way to excuse ourselves when the tea came out. So another 30 minutes before Joyce politely excused us to head home. That was the time we were invited to various other things, such as visiting where they come from “way over on the other side”. Not sure over or the side of what, but it my impression was it was less than 50 miles. The wife also told us about the women’s group she was in and how they weave things for income when the lake is shut down to fishing during the fish mating season. She said we could market the items for them “were we are”. We assumed she meant the US but she didn’t specify and we were all too leery to ask for clarification. So we’ll need to see what come of that as we did say we’d like to see the items and the shop they have. Being caught a little off guard on the topic we didn’t have a pat answer developed yet to politely say sorry, no can do.

Fortunately our lunch as close by. Nick, Morgan and Eli had a different lunch invite, someplace further away. They left about an hour before us and are still not back. We’ve been back for 3.5 hours. I’m wondering how they are feeling about now, as they did not seem to be jumping for joy when they left. As the sun has set and dinner is in about 1 hour.

So that is a down (low activity) day summary. But I’ve also felt down emotionally today. I’ve asked myself several times today that the heck I’m I here for. I’m wanting to move 6 to 12 months into the future and get the aid of 20-20 hindsight to see what benefits came from this trip. I know benefits already, we are making a small impact on several lives and I hope we are making a larger impact in a couple of lives, some I hope will continue long after we leave.

But that doesn’t seem to make me happy or joyful today. Part of the problem with down activity days is the time to think about the here and now and the things we are missing, or all that is wrong around us and how little we can impact the so large of need. Wondering why this country, that has tremendous potential in people and natural resources, struggles so much.

Yesterday we met a number of US kids in their 3 month of an 11 month, 11 country mission trip. They are part of The World Race, a mission of Adventures in Missions out of Georgia. Sounds like a neat program and opportunity to spread the gospel and see many different cultures. We walked up to SEEK (Suba Ecology Education of Kenya, formerly Kenya Island Mission, formerly associated with World Walk with Massai) to see them. We knew where they were as they had stopped by the parish to pick up a TV and DVD player along with a generator to do a presentation and we got a chance to speak with them for a few minutes. Turns out they had to carry the TV (about a 26 incher tube style) and related items a 1/2 mile up a hill to the point of the presentation. Anyway, I’m way off on a tangent here. My point was to be that at SEEK, while talking to one of the staff members, I heard they had municipal water service. I was very surprised as I did not think that existed in the area and I had not seen any signs of that. We have both water feed and drainage pipes all over the compound here. I assumed that it was from having a compound system that was fed by a pumping system from the lake. It looks to have been in disrepair for quite some time. Maybe it was from the municipal system, maybe not, but why don’t they have water if it is available. Even water feeding one tank in the middle of the compound would be a big improvement over the donkey cart hauling the lake water up. Come to think of it, even a pump coming directly from the lake filling a tank would be an improvement. This said as we are about out of water in our barrels as the donkey cart man has not been around, or at least not filled our barrels in the recent days. Of course we could haul it up bucket by bucket, but I thought that was not going to be needed since the donkey man was around. So why no water?

After having kids around most of the week I need to remove myself this afternoon. I went down to the concrete wall that runs from the shore into the water. It’s a wall now, but it was something else in the past. This can be seen by various metal pieces with holes, brackets and braces all along the wall. I wonder what it was at one time, how long ago was it built, how long ago did it fall apart, why did it fall into disrepair. Anyway, it’s a place I like to go and stand or sit on as it give you a good view of the sunset and most the rest of the bay area we are by. Today I sat facing east, looking at the small waves breaking into the planter. I think it is a planter anyway. It has a tree growing out of it and beach grass. It looks like those 4 foot wide pebble surfaces concrete planters you see in Central Park, USA. It’s in about 4 inches of water now and when the lake is calm, it extends about 15 inches out of the water. Was this always a planter I wonder? If not, what was it? When, where, what, why all come to mind as I watch the foot high waves break against it side and over the edge into it. Of course these are also the questions I’m asking myself today. Maybe tomorrow, maybe a year from now I’ll be able to answer some of those questions. I hope.

Off to another tangent here is why am I doing this blog anyway? On our last trips to Kenya I made it less than 3 days in keeping a written journal. I think this is really mostly for me, so someday I can look back and figure out the purpose of this trip, or just share it with grandkids or my faded memory. But somehow I feel more compelled to do it this time and on a semi-regular basis. Hope someone else is enjoying it now and finding something interesting or enlightening in it. Maybe when I return home you’ll share with me something that struck you and I’ll be able to see this trip in a different light.

Dinner is being set around me so time to go and eat. Yumm, more starch based foods. Still enjoying the salsa additions we have been having the last week or so.

Rambling from Mbita,

Paul