Blog #14

I miss sausage rolls dipped in brown sauce but thats about it. Its funny how over the last couple of weeks, because I haven’t had many of the things I usually eat back home, I am beginning to get cravings for them and just imagining them makes me want them more. I have particularly grown fond of Kuku and Chapatti too and you should have seen the way both Matthew and I acted when confronted with this particular meal just the other night. We were like little kids in a sweet shop and guzzled it down that fast that if you were watching us eat it, you would have thought we hadn’t eaten in weeks.

The week started off tough once again with the house building to complete which required lots of energy and effort as we were mudding, and just as it sounds, we were basically pulling mud from the ground, making it into a clay and using it to make walls.

It was fun. Monday morning we woke up, ate, went to the office and after a short delay all jumped into the Landrover and took off to finish the construction work that had taken up most of last week. We arrived at the site where an area had already been marked out where we would get our mud from, and they had already begun soaking it with water to make it muddier and easier to break up. Today’s help consisted most of the local women in the community. There were around 8 of them with some of them quite old and at least one of them pregnant. They were carrying water in containers on their heads and pouring it in the required areas to aid with the mudding. The few guys that were around did their part by using tools to break down and shift the mud slightly, where the women and children would continuously tread in it to get the consistency right so it could be moulded.

We got our uniforms on as obviously today was going to be a messy day. Opening the box Matthew painted yesterday, he pulled out our gum boots and overalls, and then realised he had forgotten our most important equipment, the gloves. It wasn’t a big deal though, infact it made the whole process more fun and I think getting your hands extremely dirty was the whole point and excitement in mudding a house.


We were stood around at first watching the people as they had their skirts and trousers pulled up above their knees, stamping and jumping around in the muddy pit. I was hesitant at first whether to stamp around in the mud, as the boots I was wearing were a couple of sizes too big for me and I struggled to walk and keep my feet in them when just walking on a normal surface. Matthew took one for the team and made his way into the pit, carefully standing in the mud to test his ability to move. He struggled, but at the same time had a lot of fun prancing around, occasionally using his hands to stop himself from falling face first into the gooey dark mud. I had a few stamps in the mud but must admit left most of it to Matthew and took up the role of doing the mudding inside the house, creating the walls.

Matthew continued to stamp the mud and then create balls of mud about the size of a house brick, maybe slightly larger, along with others and pass them to the children who then threw them inside the house for a few of us to begin the mudding of the walls. The house soon became full with piles of sloppy mud and I began to dig out a guttering which I then filled with mud, stacked up to the roof of the house. Finger nails caked in mud and clay all the way up to my wrist, I was having so much fun and felt like I was playing a big part in getting this lady’s life more comfortable again.

We continued this until all the marked out area in which would collect mud from was completely empty. We then called it lunch time and had a little break to regain some energy because believe me its hard work bending down, picking up and stacking mud most of the morning. After lunch we all came together and began mudding the whole house. I had completed almost three walls by myself, but as soon as the rest of the community came to help, the time in which it took to create a wall increased dramatically, with more hands helping do the work. Matthew got out his video camera for the final day of recording and got some great footage of all of us doing our part on the construction of the house. Again we had children climbing up the side of the house, helping to stack mud on the top of the walls. We had elderly women stood on ladders contributing and also some of us on the ground rolling and passing up the mud.

This was a huge social event for these people and it was awesome to be involved in such a lively and productive activity. Towards 4pm we were almost complete and as planned, and luckily because the weather was starting to turn, we prepared to leave and gave the Landrover a call. Unfortunately the Landrover was unable to come collect us and with a large metal box filled with tools and equipment, it was going to be a bit of a farce getting home. We used both the Buda-Buda and Matatu for the last time to make it home and arrived in Kimilili at around 5.45pm. Trying to avoid the drunken Buda-Buda’s who desperately wanted our custom we made it back to the offices to pack away. At the office was Mike, the brother of Edgar who I met on the first day of my arrival here in Kenya. Mike had returned home from Nairobi where he is studying Law, and is now around for four months. He is a cool guy and a nice character and I’m sure he will be a good laugh and great company of the next couple of months.


We made it home for dinner absolutely shattered from working and walking, and basically just living the tiring days over the past week. I spent most of the evening hanging out in the Simba with Mike, listening to some of the Kenyan radio stations and hearing some new songs and versions I had never heard before. Most of the evening was spent sitting and talking until it was time for a rest in bed.



Tuesday became our wind down day. I spent most of it in the office writing out my blog’s and catching up with emails that I had got behind on as I had been very busy over the last week. There isn’t much to report really for today, however I did manage to get a lot of little things completed and had some time to sit and do my own thing. Both Matthew and I come home to an awesome meal made by Helen, that we felt like we hadn’t had in weeks and acted like little children. Watching another few episodes of Only Fools & Horses on DVD with Jane, we finished off the day nicely.

I started off Wednesday by giving my place a once over and collected my huge pile of washing into a bag ready to be cleaned for the weekend. I gave the room a sweep, gave the bathroom and sink a wipe down, stripped my bed and aired the room. I even gave the room a quick squirt with Mosquito repellent that I was using as an air freshener to give my room a nicer smell. I finished this around 10.30am then headed to the office leaving Matthew to finish his cleaning and Rose with a few T shirts and trousers of mine to wash.

At lunch time I came back to the guesthouse for an unexpected large meal, something we don’t usually get during the day with sandwiches being our normal lunch. In the afternoon I spent some of my time knocking together a letter for work about the things I had done and seen over my time here in Kenya.

We dedicated our evening to ripping the footage we had taken from the house construction, creating a copy onto my laptop. This took most of the evening and a lot of my hard drive memory also.

I was in the office Thursday morning and had a visit from Mary and Joy asking for the key to the Yellow room. Today we were expecting two new visitors, Raul and Marianne, and they were going to be staying in the room I had been using for my shower for over the last couple of days. After heading back to the guesthouse to give them the key and also have my shower looked at and fixed, I met up with Dennis and Edgar and we made our way to the market for the morning. On our way we stopped off at Edgar’s house to pick up Mike and then made our way to the market walking what seemed like the long way there. At the market we met with another guy, who unfortunately I didn’t catch his name, but we spent most of our time looking round the stalls at T shirts and other items in which the lads fancied the look of.

Throughout my time at the market I managed to witness a domestic, where a husband and wife were getting slightly violent and no one was doing anything to stop it, and also purchased a T shirt and hat for myself. The T shirt cost me 60 Kenyan shillings (40p?) and the hat, which I will probably never wear and only purchased because of the humorous situation we were having, cost me 40 Kenya shillings (30p?). We then took a long stroll back and arrived just in time for me to not be late for lunch.
Lunch was set out for five people although there was only Jane, Matthew and myself, with the guests not having arrived yet. Matthew told us about the DVD he had of the launching we attended at Misikhu a couple of weeks ago and how it was really poor quality. We spent some of the afternoon checking out this DVD that looked like a pirate copy it was that poor quality, and then brushed over the Transformation Kenya project before dinner.

Back at the guesthouse we met with Roel and Marianne who were sat on the veranda relaxing. They had arrived around 3.30pm and had already been to have a look at the house they are having built here, just round the corner almost from where we are staying. We had a chat and found out a little about each other and my first impressions of them were very positive. I think the time we will spend interacting with them over the next couple of weeks will be very pleasurable as they seem like such nice people. They also have their son and his friend arriving next week and I'm sure their company will be just as good. They are from Holland and have been coming here for years. Roel used to work here as a teacher at Kimilili Boys School.

After a rather large dinner from having the opportunity of extra helpings and also sharing some of Marianne’s potatoes, Matthew and I watched a Christmas special episode of our new favourite TV series.

Back in my room I realised I must have caught a lot of sun on my neck from being stood around in the market. There is no pain or irritation but ill have a pretty wicked tan in the next couple of days.




God Bless x