Faiza's Farm

 

MUZUNGU!  It was a word that had been following me for the last ten days, ever since I'd been in Kenya.  MUZUNGU!  The cry went up again as our car crunched onto the driveway of St. Theresa's School.  Only instead of from the occasional onlooker, this time from hundreds of ecstatic little voices. 

MUZUNGU!  MUZUNGU!  MUZUNGU!...  As I climbed out of the Toyota, the sound picked up in intensity as it swept through the children playing outside that a real live white person was in their midst.

Within seconds I was swarmed so tightly that I could barely move -- wide-eyed, smiling children -- some reaching out to touch my skin, finger my shirt -- but mostly they just stood, beaming, giggling.  I smiled back as best I could and waved and waved...trying to acknowledge the attention.

It struck me that I was experiencing a tad of what Gandhi must have experienced -- or Jesus or Mohammed or the Rajas of Asia...

They pressed in to the right of me...

...and to the left of me.

I was rescued away by the headmistress to address a class, to tell about America. 

 

Of course, I am a long ways from the Mahatma or any such historical personage.  However, I was in a part of Africa where whites are seldom seen, if ever.  Thus the excitement.

And the gratitude.  Through the time that I was there, the headmistress shook my hand and repeated "thank you, thank you for coming" and "karibu, karibu" (welcome, welcome) so many times that I lost count. 

Originally the word "muzungu" comes from the Swahili meaning "white as a ghost."  Then in colonial times it came to refer to white Europeans who passed through and were gone, you know, like a ghost.  Now it has come to refer to people such as myself -- travelers, only there for a few days.  

All of this came about courtesy of a woman named Faiza, who was my host in this part of Kenya.  She was born and raised nearby, later married a German man.  She lived in Europe and Canada, and visited many other places, including the U.S.A.  A few years ago she moved back to her native land; bought a ranch house with acreage and set out farming.

Faiza and some of her farmhands.

 

Faiza's mother and the farmhand who served as my guide.

One morning, with fog hanging thick over the land and the sun but a pale disc on the horizon, I walked about to see a worker pouring out feed to clucking chickens, another doing the same to muddied up pigs, still another squirting milk from a cow's udders into a pail...A crew of three, two men and a woman, had assembled and were being handed hoes and rakes to go out and work the soil...

The farm was coming to life, awakening unto the day.  There's nothing quite like it.  And there, in the heart of Africa, so far away both in miles and in memory, I was harking back to growing up in Pennsylvania, where I had partaken of such tasks more times than I can remember.

That's the thing about travel, you never know where it's going to take you -- in the here and now or otherwise.

 

Maize or corn out drying -- field after field after field of it here.

 

 Stirring ugali or cornmeal mush.  Eaten by both people and livestock.

     

More bounty of the land -- bananas, mangoes, fresh eggs.

Faiza has had her challenges getting the operation going.  Early on, a disease that affects poultry wiped out hundreds of her chickens.  Then overly rainy weather drowned out acres of a tomato crop.  A lot of the labor still is done by hand and throughout the day I could hear workers hacking up an outlying field for planting.  (While I was there, I hardly remember a tractor in the whole area, much less on her farm.)

To do all the work she hired locals and this provides some employment for what is a very poor part of Africa, of the world for that matter.  So I salute what she's doing and wish her the best.  I was particularly admiring of her spirit, that she would even undertake such an endeavor.  

As much as I was taken with the place and the people, after a few days it was time to move on.

I squeezed into a jammed matatu (van/bus) and set out for the city of Kisumu, situated on Lake Victoria.  Bordering three countries, it's the largest lake in Africa and part of the headwaters for the fabled Nile River.

Because I was getting short on time, I had to pass on exploring the famous lake and its environs.  I was down to less than a week in-country and I had yet to see the main reason that I came there -- the mass of wildebeests, zebras, impalas, cape buffalo and more that stream out of the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania this time of year and into southern Kenya.

After a day or two of getting things organized, it was off on safari to the Masai Mara Reserve and the largest herd migration of animals on the planet.

Part IV To Follow Next Weekend