Heather And Kris Ville: Little Bit of Fun

SO, we've had some fun lately. A week or so ago, I showed the ladies in the kitchen how to make tortillas, which they loved. They asked for more that afternoon and the next day. Tortillas are very similar to the traditional Kenyan "chipati," which are cooked in oil on the “jiko or giko” a little charcoal grill. Not quite as healthy, but mighty tasty hot off the grill. Every Kenyan woman seems to know how to make them, and we have had them at two different houses, as well as on special occasions here at Tumaini. A few days later the kitchen was full of students and cooks plucking bits off a mountain of dough and rolling out chipati. Kris grabbed the camera and took some great pictures, some of which you’ll see below.

Later that week, we were invited to one of the cook's houses for lunch. Mary is one of the sweetest people here, and we were happy to go for a visit. We met her husband, Stephen, and four kids, and she and a friend had cooked us mokimo, rice, stew, chipati, and cabbages. It was quite a spread, and the stew had the tastiest – and most tender – meat we've had so far. The living room was set up with all the sofas and chairs lined around the room and covered with white doilies, which were nicely offset by the red velvet couches. Mary’s kids and others from neighboring houses ran back and forth in front of the house, peeking in at us, just a little shy of the visiting white people. After eating and conversing for quite a while, we went outside to the back of the house to see the chickens and goats and explore the shamba (garden). I fell immediately in love with the three little two-week old goats, none of them shy. They nibbled at my shoes and I scratched their backs as they hopped around. Then, with Stephen as our guide, we went back into the field behind the house and traipsed through corn and coffee plants on the way to visit his parents. They, along with his brother, all share the shamba, whish has some of the tallest corn plants I’ve ever seen, as well as an avocado tree that must have been way over 25 feet tall.

After the tour, the oldest son brought out plastic garden chairs, where we sat to watch Stephen as he took at ten-foot pole of sugar cane and whacked off the skin with his panga (a big, heavy, general purpose knife). Then he cut foot-long pieces of cane and handed them to us to knaw on. We sat in a semi-circle chewing on the cane, sucking the juice out, and spitting the remaining fibers into a flat basket on the ground. It was great!

When the clouds that had been gathering about us finally released a sprinkling of rain, our party moved the veranda. More conversation ensued, and then we noticed that Mary had gone into the kitchen to start dinner. Wait ... more food? Turns out that they wanted, and expected, us to stay for another meal! It was very kind, but we had to leave and get back to the home. They lock the gates at six, Zach had been reprimanded one time when he was late. (The other time he climbed over the fence). Stephen kindly offered to drive us back, so Mary, the littlest boy, and we three climbed in the car and headed home.

This past Saturday, we took another trip to a trout farm and a town called Nanyuki with a friend, Virginia, who teaches at the secondary school. Either Kris or I will write about it soon.

hjk