Village Things

Hello,

Although I'm in Cape Town right now, I wanted to back up a little to the few weeks before I left the village. Rainy season had just started and there were a lot of things going on! A little late, but I'll give some updates now.

First off, Anerico's chicken project. Two days before Rachel and I were going to leave, we made an impromptu overnight trip to Eldoret to look into chickens for the chicken house. Although we didn't come back with chickens, it was a very worthwhile trip. We were able to ask all our questions about chickens, as well as place an order for pick up on April 27th. We decided to get 2 month old chickens, mainly cause day old chicks require heat, and without electricity that heat comes from a fire. That makes day old chicks pretty high maintenance! We were also able to get a new breed to the area, it is a cross breed between the local chicken and a larger exotic type. Although they were a little more expensive, the cross with the local chicken is supposed to make it more disease resistant. We ordered 16 chickens, 14 hens and 2 roosters. It looks like I will be picking up 16 chickens and carrying them home on the bus at the end of this month. That should be pretty funny!

With the chickens on order...the next priority is to get the house finished!

Here are some photos of our progress:

This is the completed frame of the chicken house. It is a pretty big house, Anerico will have lots of room to multiply his flock.

Here I am working on the mudding! I find it funny that my 'work clothes' consist of a skirt now.

Phew...mudding is hard work. Here is layer one almost complete.

Lunch break...with fresh and extremely juicy mangoes for dessert. I have yet to learn to eat a mango without making a huge mess.

There is still some work to do on the house before the chickens move in, but this is how we left it a few weeks ago. It's looking good no?

Another project that we are working on at Anerico's house is having a demonstration garden. Rachel and I bought a bunch of different seeds in town, and even a few that people in the area don't really grow too much, like watermelon and eggplant. We would like to have a demonstration garden where people can come to learn about growing different plants as well as a place to experiment with some different crops. Here is a volunteer named Olie who stopped by for a couple of weeks. We put him right to work building a fence around our seed nursery to keep out chickens.

Next I will talk about agriculture at the school...