Maisha ya Wanyala (Life in Budalang'i)

Josi is the owner and head cook at Jubilee, my favorite 'hoteli' I frequent for my daily meals. The fish he is holding is Nile Perch, known locally as 'Buta.' As you can see, its a pretty freakin' huge fish. It has become a staple in my diet - I prefer eating it at least once, often twice a day.

Kenyans generally prepare fish by frying first, then stewing to get 'soupu,' which is nice to dip your Ugali (a doughy substance of maize flour served with just about every meal here) into. I generally ask them to boil the fish fresh for me, with tomatos and onions. Its then served with a vegetable (either 'sukuma wiki' (kale) or 'kunde' (an indigenous leafy-green cooked with milk added)). To say I'm eating better here than in Mali would be an understatement.

My friend ‘Dadi’ works at New Imani Butchery, one of several butcheries in town. No longer do I have to wait for one of a handful of holidays a year for meat, when a large cow would be slaughtered under a tree and meat arranged in piles for each household. Because of the abundance of butcheries, we never lack for meat of all kind: beef, pork, or goat!

We are well within the rainy season, with heavy rains coming nearly every night. The rivers are swelling, floods are threatening, and many homesteads are soggy with standing rainwater. But besides the problems, agriculture is a chief benefit of rain’s arrival. Most locals are now actively engaged in farming maize, beans, peanuts, vegetables, or other crops. These women are weeding their maize field using the traditional hoe known as the ‘jembe’.

This field is a little further along, healthily green with the recent heavy rains. Unfortunately, those living in lower-lying areas, specifically by the swamp, have already lost much of their crop due to rising floodwaters.

Remember those Malian women slaving all day over mortar and pestle to pound millet for breakfast, again for lunch, then yet again for dinner? Well, it’s amazing what a little development can do. This practice is a thing of the past in Kenya. People are still by-and-large subsistence farmers, but instead of pounding their grains by hand, here maize instead of millet, they visit their nearby ‘posho mill’, where grains are mechanically ground down to a fine flour using either gas or electrical power. This technology literally saves each woman hours of work per day.

And how do you stir that maize flour and water into the white cakey substance we affectionately know as Ugali? Why, with a huge wooden spoon, of course! Pasquale is a local ‘mzee’ (elder) who sets up his showroom under a small tree in the center of town each day, carving these spoons, as well as ‘jembe’ and other such traditional tools, by hand. He is also a great guy, making it very easy to loose a day sitting and chatting with the man.

One of the many ‘duka’ (general stores) in town. This store is always busy, as it has the largest selection of foodstuffs and household products. The town is full of businesses, but the problem is that they all pretty much sell the same things. Too much direct competition, not enough diversification. 

My grandmother might be old enough to remember cobblers, but this is rather new to me. You know when your sole has worn down to where your toe is poking through, or the sole has cracked in half? No need to buy a new pair here, just take it down to your local ‘fundi wa viatu’ (shoe repairman), and they’ll cut the shoe apart and stitch in a new sole. This is another place I like to sit daily, chatting with Fundi and other local men. Fundi (right) hails from Nyanza region, and is actually 'mjaluo', a different ethnic group. He recently requested his nephew (left) to come and assist him.

This little man is the best 'fundi wa basikeli' in town, and is a bit of a character. His work is well needed, as most bikes, including mine, hail from China. To say they are poor quality is to put it mildly. It seems you need to replace each part with a spare before it will actually run without issue.

This is one of my favorite places to stop and chat during the day. From front to back, this building hosts a clothing store, an auto parts store, a Coca-Cola vendor, and another clothing store. Outside of the building, from front to back, my good friend Shila cooks and sells ‘chipsy’ (french fries), my friends Jack, Gorie, and Moshe repair motorcycles, and welders construct metal doors and windows. Because of all this activity, there’s always a good number of people around to ‘piga story’ (beat the story, or chat).

Many of the young men spend their days playing pool at this simple pool hall in the center of town. Another good place to stop and chat, maybe play a game of ‘kila’ (a different game than our standard ‘eight ball’, which they refer to as ‘special’).

On a Wednesday, market day, vendors sell shoes, fabric, clothing, plastic and cooking wares atop blankets arranged in town as rain clouds roll in. Due to the rainy season and all of the construction in the area (our roads are in the processed of being widened and paved), town is awfully muddy at the moment.

On Easter Sunday, Mumbaya Youth Group, the group I joined upon first arriving here, met in the late afternoon in order to build a house for the three pigs kept by the group for profit. The house, really just a pen, is made entirely of wood cut from the fields. This will now keep the pigs from running away, as well as from damaging other people's crops.

TEAMWORK

Just seems like one of those pictures, you know, with a big, bold word at the bottom. These men are sand-harvesting along the Nzoia River. They collect sand from the river bottom by boat, then toss the sand up to men on land. Each man then throws small amounts of sand by shovel from one pile to the one above, where another man throws it further up. Finally, a 'lori' (truck) hauls it away to a construction site. The repetitive work in succesion kinda reminds me of that old video game 'Lemmings'!

This woman in Mubwayo market center is packing local hand-made baskets for shipment to Nairobi. Bunyala Handicrafts Society was formed by local villagers to allow traditional basket-weavers to pool their resources, helping them to sell their products outside of Bunyala Sub-County. PALWECO, the partnership between the Kenyan and Finnish governments that I am working with for my school lunch projects, is currently working to support them in marketing and capacity building.