On Thursday morning, I awoke to the power still being out in our area of Nairobi. Yay for the generator! My driver and friend, Joseph Nganga was at the house at 8am. We loaded these drip irrigation supplies and a few other goodies and set off for the Kiriko Special School which is above Thika, north of Nairobi.
The drive up through the mountains was really beautiful. I had to make Joseph stop and go back so I could take a picture of this overlook.
We were greeted at the school by the principal, Peter Muiruri, the teachers, the area chief, and some other community members.
We talked with Mr. Muiruri for a little while about the order of the program for the next few days. We also took our morning tea. African tea is mixed with milk and served piping hot. I opted for some black tea, which I did sweeten, by the way. We assembled the rest of the folks and I dove right into some training on conservation agriculture. Chief Joseph Munene is seated at the far end of the table in the picture above and is wearing glasses. He also serves as the Representative to the President for the Gituamba area of Kiambu county. I was honored to have him join us.
The school is on the property of a large Catholic church. You can see the gutters on the side of the roof. These will be connected to 3 – 5000 liter tanks which they will use to water the garden area. They also have a municipal water source if there isn’t enough rain to keep enough water in the tanks.
These are some of the beds that are being prepared for the drip irrigation installation.
We are overnighting in Thika. It has been raining steadily for several hours here. I am hoping it has not rained this much up at the school. If it has, it may be a real mess. Tomorrow we will set one of the tanks and get the drip system set up.
Ed. note. My apologies if the spacing is a little off. WordPress is not cooperating tonight and I am tired. So it is what it is at this point! Thanks for reading!
EDEN in Africa 