Unsurprisingly, I already feel like calling this place home. My arrival has been a bit different from that of Ebba, Emma, and Mohammed.
I was lucky to find them waiting for me with a very warm welcome after my 24 hours trip before arriving to Shianda.
In these past weeks I have felt a lot of emotions, most of them very pleasant, sometimes a bit of frustration but I can surely say that the current balance of the experience is so far more than positive!
From my second week in Shianda, together with Ebba, I got the chance to visit several of the group of farmers that WEFOCO works with. Apart from the differences in organization and schedule, it has been enriching to talk to the different women that are part of these groups.
Understanding their challenges is not always straightforward, one of the issues being going past the problems that they are well aware of, and for which they directly ask help for. But sometimes it is also necessary to go a bit further and more in depth apart from their explicit requests.
However, we are fully dedicated to supporting them, and we are trying to maximize our efforts and be as efficient as possible to help them with the more and less obvious issues.
Being on the receiving side of their requests is a very humbling experience. For them to ask for things in such a direct way is a sign that they really need it, and although we cannot give them everything they ask for, I personally feel very happy to be here and to play my role in helping them achieving their goals, and improve their quality of life.
The first picture is from one of the visits, here, they were showing us their sweet potatoes that will soon be ready to be harvested!
Changing topic, we also had to chance to go around the area for some visits!
Together with Mohammed, Emma and Ebba, we went to Kakamega to visit the so-called crying stone. It was a curios location to visit, and our local guide was happy to share all her knowledge with us. However, right after that we became famous for about half an hour: there were some locals (some students, some other were also tourists visiting the stone) which all had one thing in common: they all wanted to take pictures with us! We stayed there with them for quite some time as they wanted to take group pictures, individual ones with each one of us and also wanted all of our contacts: email, phone numbers and whatnot.
It was quite a funny experience, although it made me realize that I am happy to be a not-famous person!!
The picture is with all the people that were also visiting, and they just wanted to have a picture with us :)
Here in Shianda, for now we mainly had good weather and the amount of rain has started to increase lately. However, last week we had a crazy rainstorm while Ebba and I were at Evelyn’s house (one of the chairladies) as we were visiting her group.
We thought we were going to get stuck there as it was already late afternoon and it was heavily raining and also hailing! We managed to get back home, but only to find that the power had gone out. Nothing too strange, as we often have some power cuts. That usually entails that we stay without electricity for some time, usually some minutes or one-two hours.
Well, not this time! The extreme rain from that afternoon had burned some of the electric wires on the main road, meaning that from Thursday, we only got the electricity in our house on Tuesday evening. It might not seem that long, but considering that at 7pm it is already night, and that the fridge and everything else in the house was not working, the four of us had some funny days and some candle-light dinners. We somewhat enjoyed it although eventually we were missing the comforts of electricity!
It has only been some weeks since I arrived here, but thanks to my housemates and colleagues, Esther (WEFOCO’s superhero-director) and the locals which are very friendly, I really feel comfortable and already at home. Especially the first two weeks were of adjustment, but once that period has passed, I got to start fully enjoying this experience.
I also have the luck to be able to go running early in the morning during the week (we all became morning people due to our routine) and I am really enjoying running in the unpaved roads, seeing all the people starting their days as we share some quick greetings as I run by.
The next month will be very interesting, as I will become even more involved with the local groups during the trainings that we are preparing for them, I am enthusiastic about working side by side with these people. They are very resilient and hard-working women, role models from which I have a lot to learn from.
Below, you can see another picture from one of the groups that we visited: they were all wearing matching dresses during our visit :)
I will be back with some updates in some time!
Mattia
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