Pius

Feb 4th, 2009 - Pius is not your typical Kenyan.

He is a great, great, great grandson of the major chief of the Mbita area. He is on our Polytechnic committee. He is the chairman of the local Mbita Catholic parish. I have also heard him mention 4 or 5 other committees that he is either the chairman for or on. They include primary schools, another Polytechnic, and a group of farmers interested in help from the Minister of Agriculture’s office. He grows trees organically and thinks about the long-term future. Travis says a hippie and if he was from the US he’d be from Eugene.

Pius has a kind, gentle soul. He is intelligent and hardworking. He is well off by Kenya standards and shares what he can with others. He is taller than I am, about 6 foot 3 and slim. He is slim because he walks everywhere from his home. His home is 5 kilometers from church, yet he is the only one that arrives on time for any of our committee meetings. He is 61 years old and says he is from the pre-Cambrian age, referring to the fact that he is not connected to the world through modern technology such as cell-phones, but he is ahead of his time.

He is thoughtful, considerate and retired. He is highly educated. He was a civil servant for about 30 years, working in the finance and banking area of the federal government. At one time I know he worked with and monitored investments from foreign companies and organizations. He has some back to his family land, the land of the chief, and decided to do something different and leave his previous working life behind him.

Yesterday he fetched us and took us to his home. This was not your typical visit that the family was dreading. We’ve been invited to home enough to know that it is usually an uncomfortable experience of sitting around and staring at each other, including out hosts, in silence for several hours. We usually try to be the first one to make an excuse to be excluded from the outing. In this case we all gave up more time at Sero (the wonderful nun’s place for children) to be home for the visit.

Pius said he would have us fetched at 8am, a little early for most of us, but not bad. Knowing how punctual Pius is we got up early and even had Eli get our breakfast prepared early. Pius did not arrive. This concerned us a little but we knew a few things. Pius is a man of his word. He lives 5 kilometers away. There is a river between us and him and gets hard to pass with the rains. It had been raining the night before. I was going to give it a few minutes, until 10 am, before I thought it might not happen. Then Pius showed up. He had waited a while since it had rained to make sure the paths were probably passable. Both Morgan and I checked out his shoes to see what he was wearing and how muddy they were to see how dirty and treacherous our journey might be. He was wearing Hush Puppies and only had a little mud on the sides of his soles.

We are off, but first we had to stop by and see Mary at Mbita Primary School so he could pay off a debt. He says that a person in debt is not his own man. He always has to be looking out for the person wanting their money back. Mary was not there, but he left his 40 shillings (about 53 cents) he owed her. But he needed to take care of it.

We headed up the hill to his place. Pius gave us a running commentary of the area as we passed through. Se stopped several times to greet people at their homes to say hi. We also learned of a few relationships of people we knew that we did not know were related. At one point we turned around to see Mbita, the island of Usinga and several other islands. It was a beautiful view and hike. At one point Pius asked if we had time to visit a shut-in, a man who had be paralyzed for 7 years, from a stroke I assume. His wife has been caring for him lovingly since then as Pius put it. Pius said he like to drop by occasional to pray with the man and visit. Pius says it is good for him to have visitors, it gives him a little change of pace and the knowledge that others are thinking about him and care for him. We stopped by for a few minutes to say hi and chat. We were surprised to also find a week old baby named Cliff. It was a tiny baby with a full head of hair. His skin not much darker than ours is now. It was the first born of one of his daughters. After we chatted for a while and passed the baby around we took off for the last part of our hike.

On the way we passed by a man made water retaining basin made by the government. It did not have any water in it. I did not look like it had ever had much water in it.

As we approached Pius’ place he pointed out the home of various relatives, all who had a piece of the family land. Each had a pretty good share as there were not a lot of relatives left. It seems that when Pius ancestor, the chief, was in power one of the neighboring tribes mounted an attack around 1900. Since he was the chief, his sons and relatives were to lead the men into battle. While the enemy was soundly defeated, most of the family was wiped out.

Shortly after that the British colonization started and the chief gave up his authority. The reason given was that he would not work with and take orders from babies. Pius went on to explain that the new ruling authority, the British, were light skinned. The only light skinned people the Chief knew of at the times were new born babies. And the Chief was not going to deal with babies. While most Kenyans do not get my jokes, Pius gets some of them. So I actually got a little chuckle from him when I said that if the babies were as big as a man, imagine how big the adults were. Pius said they would be giants, showing that he got the joke.

We made it to Pius’ house and were greeted by his wife Pauline. We do not know Pauline as well as Pius but she seems to have the same gracious and giving heart as Pius and genuinely wants to help those in need. She was a very gracious hostess.

As promised we were served porridge, or oogi. This is not the normal thin porridge that the poor eat, but a thick porridge made with finger millet and maize flower (I think), a few other things including lemon juice. It was quite tasty and I think we all enjoyed it, which was a good thing since they had had 2 large pitchers of it for the 6 of us. We made it through most of it. I really did like it, especially with the fresh lemon taste in it.

We then went to see Pius shamba (small garden) and trees. Pius had attended a seminar shortly before he retired that a man said he had decided to plant trees on his land rather then grain crops. Most of the trees died, but the eucalyptus lived. So Pius thought that would be a good us for his land and started to investigate the eucalyptus tree. He asked around and the main question he got back in response was what type of the 800 varieties do you want to plant? He said that one that will grow where I live. Most folds thought he as a little nuts for trying to grow trees, no one does that and the area is really considered desert and not suitable. Pius persisted and finally found out about a hybrid from South Africa. He sad he started with 2000 the first year, a mistake as it turns out since he didn’t know how to grow them. He was told about a product the helps retain the water when planting and used it. Unfortunately this also kept the soil cool which attracted bug. And as the bugs rested in the coolness they also ate, his seedlings. Only 500 survived of the first 2000. But Pius was happy and had prayed (Pius is always praying, he is a devout Catholic who starts each day in the bible. He prays for guidance, thanks, encouragement and just about everything else. I think we had 7 prayers with him this day.) that if even one survives he would continue. So with 500 surviving he continued on, only without the water retaining addition. He plants a few more every year and now has about 5000 and will stop when he gets to 8000. He plans on rotating the harvesting of them. His use was going to be mainly selling them as telephone poles after about 10 years growth. One of the wonders of the eucalyptus is that it re-grows from the remaining roots and trunk so he doesn’t need to ever replant. This is great because even after he is dead his kids, his kid’s kids, etc will still benefit from his work. And after the first harvest, the trees grow faster because the root system is already established and down to the water table. It was very beautiful walking through the thousands of trees he has.

He has also planted a few other items. Some for a little diversity, but mainly for water and erosion control. But most of those plants also have a second purpose. The Aloe plants for ointments and the other cactus for the fibers that can be used to make ropes. A skill that his wife knows. Other trees supply eatable beans.

The other main tree he grows are mangos. These are not the native mangos that most grow around the area. These are big delicious ones. He starts with the standard ones and grafts on the better fruit ones. He has his own little nursery set up to do this and at some point will raise enough to sell to others. He has a couple hundred mango trees now and hopes to get to 600. These mangos as delicious. They are bigger than the normal ones and do not have the fibrous meat part inside. And they are very sweet and tasty. As Eli put it “they are more than good.”

Unfortunately this growing season the fruits dropped before maturity because of lack of water. There were a few left, but not nearly as many as they should have gotten. While this is bad news, God told Pius to dg a bore hole for water. This would give them plenty of water and allow them not to be dependent on rain and also give them better success with the eucalyptus trees as they lose many to lack of water. The problem is, there is no water underground, or so they have been told by people who know. And getting a machine in from Nairobi to do it would cost 2,000,000 shillings (26,000 USD) which would not be affordable. But Pauline’s dad had used a couple of men several years ago to do it by hand. She tracked them down and they would do the job for 100,000 (about 1,300 USD) plus room and board. Pius was a little skeptical, since water was not supposed to be underground, but since he only had to pay if water was produced he was willing to try. We looked down the 3 – 4 foot hole that was about 50 feet deep. We could not see the bottom, or the man at the bottom that was digging. The dig manually and once deep enough haul up the dirt and rock by bucket and rope. The rope was made by Pauline and is also used for the man at the bottom to climb out with. This is not an easy task. They use a shorten jumbe and sledge hammers and chisels. The ground is mostly rock with very little soil in between. While at the start they get about 10 feet a day, towards the end a good day might be 6 inches. To locate the water they use a divining rod. Sound suspicious to me and Pius too. But since they only charge if they find water, he went for it.

Pius also recycles just about everything and grows organically. All the waste water is captured and saved for watering, or mixing with the organic waste they have, such as peels and g-nut shells. He has several barrels of this waste all in different stages is decomposition. And it smells terrible I found out as he opened one to show use what it contained and looked like. They do have pit toilets, so no worry about that water making it to the garden, but the animal wastes, such as the chickens, does make it to the garden. Just a minute – He is having a new pit latrine built and did mention that the old one will be capped and once decomposed will be used for fertilizer.

We thought it was about time to leave, but Pius invited us into his house one more time – for a surprise lunch. We should not have been surprised since a meal always accompanies a home visit, but we thought the oogi was it. It was a tasty meal with much more than we could eat. We did get reprimanded a little, by both Pius and his wife, for not showing enough ‘respect’ in eating the ugali. Among us we only finished ½ the small bowl of it. This was a very bad showing as two good Kenyans, like Fr Charles, would have easily finished off the whole thing. There was also some new to us, a sauce that could be used over the greens. It was made by boiling milk to get the cream, letting it sit a while and sour, taking the liquid that was left and boiling it again – or something like that that made it sound like it was just boiled rotten milk. Ashley was the only one that tried it and reported that it was really not very good, even though she told Pauline otherwise.

And big news came in while we were eating – water had been hit in the bore hole! Pius was excited and could hardly contain himself. This would solve a lot of problems for them. Of course being the generous man he is he also planned on sharing with his neighbors as he was able. He says since he has the resources he needs to share, be a good example, help others. Since the have the land, they need to do something productive with it. So much of the land around him just sits idle. He says too many people with land when asked what they are doing with it respond ‘keeping it’. Anyway, after we finished eating the great mangos, we went out and looked down the hole and could see the water. Of course it was time for another prayer. A few more days of digging a little deeper, a little work to prepare the bottom of the well so the water is clear and the top gets put into place and he’ll have his water.

Dessert was fresh fruit. We finally got to try some of the mangos. I had been disappointed on our garden walk that we were not offered any. They were delicious and we all gorged ourselves on them. We even got a couple to take home.

The walk back was lead by Pius. He had to show us the way. Fortunately it had cooled a little, the clouds were coming over and the wind was picking up. He also took us a little more direct route back. It also didn’t seem to have as many hills. This was good as Joyce almost didn’t make it to his house. Other then a comment by Pius about the drunk young men we met wasting they lives, and the story of a nephew he tried to help several times with school, who he gave up on because he wouldn’t even dig holes for his mango trees for a good wage to help out with the money he wanted, they trip back was relaxing.

God bless,
Paul