World Wide Wabs

While our Kenyan WWOOF host Michael Odula had plenty of land around his home (and more in other parts of Rusinga Island, some told us), there was no farming activity to be seen on any of it. We were told that the crops from the previous year (2008) failed, and he had not done any planting this season (Oct 2009) because the rains had not come.

So in the afternoons we were sent a 20-minute walk downhill to help out at Badilisha, a community centre with a garden run by Mr Odula’s son Evance.

Badilisha offers HIV counseling and non-violent communication workshops to members of the community. It also houses a couple of sewing machines as part of a programme to help women to make and sell crafts (though I think I saw only 1 or 2 women using the machines during our 2 weeks there), and a small library of book related to farming methods, international aid, and spirituality. There are also ambitions to host an orphans feeding programme, but this currently remains unfunded.

Badalisha’s garden hosts an array of banana, papaya, and passionfruit trees. Out here is where we spent most of our time.

Our main standalone project here was to build a chicken coop to house a couple of donated chickens. The idea was to build a structure that could harvest the chicken droppings so that it could be used for fertiliser. The easiest way to do this was to build a portable coop with a wire mesh floor.

The twist in the plot was that to build this coop we had to deconstruct and recycle a disused rabbit hutch (previously used to house a few donated rabbits… hmm). And we had to use mostly recycled nails, a hammer donated by fellow WWOOFer Dan, and a borrowed saw. All in all, more people than tools. So I often wandered off to get a start on digging and watering.

Other tasks: Starting seeds in recycled pill bottles, and watering beds of corn, tomato, cow pea, lemongrass and carrot seedlings.

A couple of the new beds we started.

We also built birdbaths from recycled mineral water bottles to hang in passionfruit trees. The hope was to attract birds so that they would eat the bugs that would otherwise eat the passionfruit. On the right is a passionfruit flower, which I had never seen before.

Digging and watering 5 days a week for 2 weeks may sound mundane, but it’s not. You never know what’s going to pop up out of the ground. Sometimes it’s a pretty seedling. Sometimes it’s a baby python. Eek! I’m trying to remember if this is how we finally managed to convince Dan to stop farming in flipflops…

After our shift is done we usually troop over to the local trading post for some warm soda. Which I am not a fan of. It always makes me burp very painfully through my nose. So instead I gnaw on a snack lovingly remembered from my youth — raw sugarcane, at 1 Kenyan shilling per segment (see size below).

Related posts:

• WWOOFing in Kenya — The Homestay
• WWOOFing in Kenya — Mornings at Millimani Kindergarten
• WWOOFing in Kenya — Perspectives