There hasn’t been any rain here for about a week now. All the plants which sprang back to life in the previous rain are looking droopy again, and even though the major part of the road construction has passed us now, there is a lot of dust in the air once more. The mornings are wonderfully cool and refreshing; however, by 2:00 p.m. it has been getting up to 87º, so we usually take time out for a siesta. Since we are so close to the equator, our days are nearly a precise 12 hours, and by 5:00 p.m. it is cooler again. By 7:00 pm. it is getting dark. That’s when we begin to think about dinner, which we almost always eat out on our little front terrace. The mosquitoes aren’t nearly as rampant as they were last year, but I still have to wear heavy duty repellent or suffer the consequences.
Late Monday afternoon, I put on my NB camo shoes and took a walk with John along the Moshi-Nairobi Road and the little shops on our side of this now double-carriage highway. The first shop going toward Moshi is out kuku cook shack, and then there are tiny dress shops, bars, beauty shops, animal feed stores, building supply yards,tailors, hardware stores, and “pharmacies” (duka la dawa). In front of the shops are the individual vendors, selling peanuts, roasted corn, belts, shoes, and, to our surprise, fish. One woman had a big wok for deep frying fish, which was chopped into pieces and stacked on a small stand beside her. She said it came from Lake Victoria, which could be true, and that it was very good. Since I had already had dinner plans, we passed on fish, but maybe some day we’ll try it.
For some reason, the entrance of our road has become a bottle neck for traffic, and we had the fun of watching pedestrians yelling advice to drivers who were stuck side by side or were trying to get ahead in their line. The drivers here will take either the right or left lane if it looks empty to them, and often they have to back up or risk losing most of the paint on one side of their vehicle. Even on the new double carriage highway, there are lines of traffic going both ways on both sides, and occasionally there is a third line right down the middle. It’s as if each side of I-90 were just a two-lane road. I would never ever venture out into this at night!
On Tuesday, John had to get up early, as he had decided that he would attend a conference on African agricultural, which is being held this week at the big blue Naura Springs Hotel, the Chinese built a decade or so ago. (ECHO East Africa 4th Biennial Symposium on Sustainable Agriculture Best Practices) There will be several hundred people from America, Europe, and a variety of African countries, so John is sure to meet some very interesting folks. Several members of the Arusha Community Church are involved in the planning and running the conference, which is how John heard about it.
Since I didn’t grow up on a farm and can handle unstructured time more contentedly than John, I stayed at Kundayo and did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. That meant a lot of reading and a chat with Mama Kundayo, who is now eager to act as my party planner for the women’s group on February 16th. If I don’t tamp down everyone’s enthusiasm for this event, I will end up having an inappropriately lavish lunch buffet, which will cost me a fortune. I keep telling my eager advisors that we are to keep our refreshments fairly simple so that women who cannot afford to prepare much won’t feel hesitant to volunteer their homes for our meetings, too.
John returned about 6:00 p.m. full of information about low till methods, invasive noxious weeds, new plant strains, and the interesting people he had met. This is going to be a very good week for him—and for me as well.
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