Food For Work

Unloading and carrying food at the riverbed
The Enajooli Donkey Cart

This week was quite an extravaganza of Food for Work activities. Coming into the week, we knew that rain had deteriorated the already less-than-German "roads" that would be used to transport food locally. We sent some of the staff to scout out the roads to figure out the best way to get the food from Nairobi and then distributed locally.

By tuesday, it was clear we were in trouble. The one, and only, road to Mosiro (adjacent region to Ewuaso....seen as the Maasai hinterland) was completely washed out, including one spot where the river had dug a trench about 2m deep through which any heavy truck could not pass. The plan was to bring the food to the trench, unload it, move it by hand to the other side, and then reload on a truck coming from the Mosiro side of the trench.

Wednesday was distribution day and I, fortunately, stayed at home waiting for trucks to arrive. By 7pm I started to wonder if and when they'd show up. The first truck arrived at 10pm, almost every truck got stuck in various mud pits and riverbeds. The people who receive food were supposed to unload the truck, but were angry at having to wait all day, so they decided to unload only the first truck and let any other trucks wait till morning.

The other trucks were stuck outside Ewuaso, where Sam and Simion (MFSDP staff and FFW manager) were trying to unload, and reload various trucks to help them pass through especially poor stretches of road. They didn't sleep all night.

8am the next morning, I meandered over to the church and saw the 3rd and 4th truck arrive. A truck had arrived over night and was unloaded by 3 people (a process that took 3 hours!). Normally, one truck is loaded or unloaded by 10-20 people and takes 45 minutes......

Once all the food arrived in Najile, it was time to redistribute it to the local centers. I was sent with my friend Nchachu on my motorcycle to scout out the road to a particularly distant center. Why didn't we just call them on the cell phone (every Maasai has a cell phone it seems).....because there's no reception in half the local centers so we had to undertake a voyage to survey the road.

The road was bad. For anybody who's never seen non-Western roads....it's like offroading...minus the fun and minus the "being able to go fast"-ness. We weaved our way over rocks and sand and rocksandsand, crashed once, and were chased by 6 ostriches (not to be fooled with....recently they started pecking at Simion's motorcycle, forcing him to abandon bike and hide in the woods!), before reaching Olentoko church. Instead of going out further to the center we were supposed to scout out, we asked the locals at Olentoko if they thought the road was passable. I said, "as long as you know you're the ones carrying the food by hand if the truck gets stuck...."......

I sat around the house in a tired stupor for the rest of Thursday before round 3 on Friday. The Mosiro trucks had got waylaid thursday night because the trucks on the Mosiro side had went home before our trucks arrived. We sent those plus another truck to do a massive load, unload, reload, and then unload project, to be manned by about 400 people to move about 35Tons of food. I stayed at home. We're praying that the food makes it safely!

One final note, in Enajooli, (between Najile and Ewuaso), the unloaders left before their food came. This is a major no-no and the food was thereby sent to Najile where the Enajoolians had to get it themselves. So, while loading a 10T lorry, two small donkey carts pull up to the church door. Yes, Enajooli got 4 donkeys to bring their food. It was pretty amazing.

Will post pictures as soon as Simion comes back with the camera.

PS. there was a partial eclipse today