Electricity Problems, Rain and Vacation Time

Written on April 10, 2008 in Kakamega, Kenya

By Anne Olson

We were without internet on Tuesday and without electricity and internet yesterday. Electricity came back on about 5:30pm. All of Kakamega was affected. Also, there is a shortage of water in all of Kakamega. The good news is that the land line phone and 2 internet connections were installed in the office yesterday (not Monday as expected). We are so happy to have internet connection here in the office. It was okay to walk over to another office on the site but much better to be able to work here. It was interesting to watch the internet installation – trenches were dug from the main building to our building, coax cable was pulled through a plastic pipe, all was laid in the trench and covered. Then the cable was brought into the office through the various cracks and holes that are found in the construction. Things here do not always “match up” leaving lots of small openings for cables.

Two days without internet left a lot of time on my hands. I helped Linnet by writing all of the checks to the VBMs with their grant money. Now they can do the training and disburse the grants in the next couple of weeks. I also helped sort paperwork so that it would be ready for the part-time help (casual worker as they say in Kenya) to enter into the grant database. So many pieces of paper to keep track of and store.

It is planting season here so everyone is waiting for rain. It hasn’t rained since the first Sunday I was here (March 30). Yesterday it clouded up and this morning it rained very hard from 8:30 to 9:00 am, the time I am usually walking to the office. I just waited it out at the hotel and when it stopped I threw on my coat and backpack and took off. Luckily I arrived with no more rain. There’s been a few sprinkles since then but not much. This rain will make the local farmers very happy.

It’s evening now and it is raining very hard again. I like the sound of the rain and am VERY happy not to be out in it. The rain this morning was good to settle the dust. This rain will make mud again.

Tomorrow I will leave my computer at the office as I am going on vacation in Uganda next week and don’t want to carry it. I will leave Sunday morning to go to the border using local transport called matatu (it’s a small van and travels when full, stopping whenever someone wants on or off). Michael, the VEF Country Director in Uganda, will meet me at the border as I have a box of things for Uganda that I don’t want to take with me on vacation. I will then take another matatu or a bus to Jinja which is where I will start my vacation. My friend Sharae will meet me there Sunday night. On Monday we leave for Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas there. I am very excited about that. When we return to Jinja, we will go river rafting on the Nile, visit the Source of the Nile, and visit a local village. It will be a fun time. Hopefully it won’t rain the whole time but if it does, we’ll deal with it.