Day 8 - Kerio Valley

We started the day relatively late and with a nice breakfast and a shower. Although in terms of timing it would have been better to postpone that shower till after the hike that we had. Emanuel lead us around the area on the slopes of the Valley where his farm was, while sharing stories in a mix of English and Dutch. Again it was very green, with a small river and a waterfall overlooking Keirio Valley. Really incredibly beautiful.

We were also shown the reason why kids are usually at school on time, which is the chewing gum tree. If you make small carvings in this tree, ‘chewing gum’ will have formed there the next morning day. Kids would get up early and make their way to the tree as early as possible to make sure none of the other kids would take all the gum and since this was on the way to school they would make it there in time as well. He also guided us through the village, which to us seemed to be more a collection of randomly scattered huts. It did not take long for the kids to notice us. One member of our group brought some balloons that they all wanted to have. All of the kids also really liked to have their picture taken and then see themselves back on the little screen of your camera. We visited the school, which was empty since it was a Saturday, but all the kids had followed us there and were keen to show us around. I have to say it was interesting to see what these kids were being thought. Then we made the ascend up to the slope of the valley back to the farm, after which a shower would have been nice.

After lunch we had a few hours to relax and then Emanuel gave us a tour of his farm. I have to say it was quite inspiring to see. After he bought the farm he found out that there were big boulders in the soil which he single handedly took out. He introduced compost to the soil and won a price for the biggest crop (I forgot what it was, watermelon , pumpkin or something like that). Then he taught the other farmers in the village how to do it. His reasoning was, that they were quite less likely to steal his stuff if they were able to grow something decent themselves as well. He installed some irrigation system, getting water from a spring to his farm and all water that he does not need people from the community can come and get for free. Same thing with the biogas that he is currently generating. Three cows produce enough biogas for his own needs, so the remainder others can get. And to avoid his wife having to get up at 5 am to make fire so her husband has warm water to wash himself at 6, he installed some fancy system on his roof, that would give them access to warm water day round. Moreover, he had planted an avocado tree to see if they would grow there. All the neighbors thought he was crazy, as avocado was baby food, but by his own account avocado is what gave him the energy to get all those boulders out of the ground, so now adults eat avocado there as well. And he made the calculation for us, that the avocado trees that he had now, would generate enough income for him and his family, when he was an ‘opa’ and would be too old to work on the land. When he started growing bulb peppers, neighbors said he was crazy again, growing food for white people. But on the market he started giving these peppers to customers that would buy other products from him and he would give them recipes for peppers. Then when people started to ask for the peppers he started to charge for them. I mean, it’s the tactics of a drug dealer, but nobody can deny that it’s a good business model. By now he had made enough money for himself to start building a new and bigger house, that he had designed himself as he also studied some architecture. We got a tour in the new house in progress as well as in the old / current one, where we got to see the pictures from his trip to Holland, including the windmill in Lonneker.