Work in Kenya February 2004

Clearly, we did not go to Kenya for employment. But Joanne wishes us to participate fully in daily life. That means that a portion of the time is spent working alongside the Kenyans. The good news is we didn't have the typical Kenyan commute (they often get up at 4 AM in order to be at work on time). This page will discuss the work we did.

Doug and Charles were assigned to replace (with Nick and Alex) a drainage ditch that was grossly undersized (and also being damaged by the roots of the neighboring tree. You can see Nick here laying out the route for the new ditch.

Needless to say, Kenyans do not expect the concrete lorry to come with ready-mixed concrete in it. So you can see we used a nice open spot on the patio to mix the concrete on, then poured it into the ditch that had been dug the day before.

(On the right, Alex is managing the wheelbarrow while Nick, as foreman, is explaining what to do).

Meanwhile, Doug had been reassigned to painting (better for his heart in addition to being needed). As you can see however, when the kids got breaks from their classes, the ladder and the paint brush became attractions that made getting work done rather difficult.

Note that while the children are HIV positive, no special precautions are needed (unless both you and the child have open cuts, then you bandage both (using gloves) before proceeding. The good news is that AIDS is really not very contagious (it takes serious hard work to get infected) while the bad news is once infected, there's no known cure.

Meanwhile, the ladies had been assigned "women's work". Note however that they do have the use of a power scrubber/polisher. This is not typical Kenyan by any manner of means (in fact, the device costs several month's salary at Kenyan wages).

You'll note that the ladies are enjoying the fact that at home they hire people to do this work for them. In actual fact, they very much enjoyed the chance this gave them to interact not only with the housekeeping staff, but also with the people whose work spaces they cleaned.

Once a concrete base has been poured (and it's there in this picture, just covered with mud from last night's rain), the next step is to make walls out of stone. The stone is some form of Volcanic aggregate, but of course, it's not the right size. So here (on the left) you see me learning how to make the stone the right size to fit the next place.

On the right you can see Alex laying the cut stone onto a bed of concrete.

The finished ditch requires a protective cover so children (and others) don't break legs in the opening. The cover is simply an L channel with rebar welded into it. On the left, you can see me painting the finished product with good old red-lead (but without the lead thank heavens) primer.

On the right you can see the installed base (without the concrete cap yet) into which the cover will be inserted.

Here you can see Jinga (another member of the KCF work crew) cutting the rebar into the necessary lengths. Once he has enough of it cut, he will take back the chair (that you see me sitting in above) and start welding together another cover.

The final step of the assembly process is to put a concrete cap next to the frame. Since part of this was inserted right next to the walkway, that portion was carefully troweled smooth and when I mentioned that I'd used a steel trowel before, they handed me [their only] one and said go to it.

You can see here the approval team of Alex and Jinga commenting on Nick's and my work. I guess the best complement was when Jinga looked at what I'd done and said "You've done this before I see!".

The other "last day" action was to clean the floor of the classroom. This worked out well as the children had a field trip (whether that was good luck or good planning was never clarified for us) and before they left they took all the furniture (except for a very heavy TV cabinet) out of the room so there was a clear floor to work on.

As you can see from the grins on both sides, everybody was very pleased with how the room was coming out (but then, these ladies almost always had a very pretty smile for they enjoyed their work and where they were working).

Alice