Hello and welcome to what is probably the penultimate in - Kenya blog. The first time I wrote this, I wrote at this point that it would be a fairly short one this week, but after writing for an hour the computers in the cybercafe cafe where I am now, all cocked up and restarted. This meant that I lost it all, so its now going to even swifter, as I am no longer in the perky, enthusiastic mood i was earlier, and I cannot be bothered to write the nice, long, detailed account of everything I did before. So if this blog is a bit below par, don't blame me, I will give you the address of the man you can take it up with.

Anyway, cracking on before any more catastrophes, lets start at the usual place; Monday, at work in the forest. The first two days this week were taken up with building benches on a plot around the DFO (district forest office) complex, presumably as part of the picnic area mentioned in last week's blog. This involved digging up weathered wooden posts from another place alongside the road and digging more fresh holes about a foot deep in the chosen plot for the poles to go into with a machete (who new it was such a multi - purpose tool?). These formed the legs for the benches. Additionally, there were various planks of timber to measure and saw. These, with the persuasive aid of a hammer and nails, were fashioned into the seats. I apologise for the sprinkle of cynicism but I could not really see the point in this. The benches, made from dodgy, recycled wood and made by people a long way from being joiners were not exactly of professional standard, and I cannot see how they would help sustain or develop the forest or community. This, needless to say, was not my favourite of jobs, but regardless that was our project for Monday and Tuesday.
The next two days took us back to conventional machete work, and more bonding time with Sargent Slashalot. We first had to wait at the warden's office for a lift, which took us up the road to a far edge of the forest. Here we began hacking, slashing and chopping away the vegetation up and along the solar fence. We were working up towards a school and apparently provided quite a spectator sport for the pupils, who thought it thoroughly worthwhile to skive for half an hour and watch us work. I felt this work was far preferable and was actually doing some good in helping the community. You see, if the vegetation gets to wild and overgrown on and around the fence it hinders it in two main ways; firstly it grounds the charge or covers the fence so the Elephants don't get shocked and can then damage or break through and wreak havoc on local's crops and land. Secondly, it blocks the fence making it impossible for the wardens to access and repair it once broken. So therefore, in order for the fence to function and protect local's livelihoods, the vegetation around it has to be maintained. This was reinforced when (presumably) a local resident went past and praised us for our work, explaiing that there had recently been Elephants in that area causing trouble. On Thursday we went to another patch of fence and did the same again.
Friday, brought another change of work and we were back at the former minister for finance's house. My Kenyan mum, Dorothy, has been given a plot on his land where she can make a nursery and use it to benefit the community. Her general plan is to build a nursery for indigenous trees as well as medicinal plants and herbs and fruits/crops too. She then wants to use this place to train and teach others in the community about creating such plots themselves and maintaining them. So our job on Friday was to start this plot off, by removing the weeds and levelling the ground, as well as potting some soil pots.
So that more or less sums up our week in work. During the week, whilst at the forest, we noticed that there was a lot of logging going on near to where we were walking. This seemed to be a bit counter constructive from our point of view. But the reason behind it, as explained by our group leader, Mercy, is quite interesting. The trees being logged were Eucalyptus, which are very thirsty trees and take in a lot of water. This consequently deprives other trees and also rivers etc of water, which is a growing issue here due to increasing unreliability of wet seasons. So there is a nationwide initiative to remove Eucalyptus trees and plant five others in its place. And this, I suppose is where we come into play with all the work on Nurseries we have done since being in Kenya.
In other news, I have managed to find out the sum paid for the dowry the other week. 100,000 shillings, which is about 850 pounds, a tidy little sum for a family to pay over here. Right, thats it for this week, see you all soon. x