Pride Goeth Before Destruction – Part I of III

Another amazing week has come and gone. The only thing this week had in common with my past weeks here is that it was different from every other week. Most of this week was planning. We planned and planned and planned. Five year plans. Five year budget. One year roll out plan. One year budget. Season work plan. Whew. Roughly 1.34 gazillion Excel cells were filled with important and detailed plans about what healthcare here will look like the next four years. These were all submitted to the boss about an hour ago. We were then called into his office/bedroom to explain ourselves (living together really blurs the lines between work life and personal life). To my surprise, he was impressed. Though I do not believe him, he too claims to be an Excel nerd (what he means by the term is that he is proficient in Excel; I mean that I enjoy playing with formulas and colored boxes). At least he appreciated the nice job I did with the borders of various widths. And I suppose the vision Janine and I set to heal the people of Kuria.

That was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday's work. But what about Thursday? What happened on Thursday? Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip, that started on a … well that's about as much of the song as is relevant. The tale I will tell is a tale of great drama and tragedy. Thursday, August 6, 2009 will be a day that will live in infamy.

So Thursday was Input Issue Day; the day that some absurd number of pounds of fertilizer and seed were to be loaned out to our 680 (I think) Nuru Farmers (at least those who paid back the last loan; with a 400% increase in yield, you should be able to pay back your loans). Jake had an elaborate logistical plan for the distribution in place. For once, all I had to do was show up. I can't remember the last time complicated logistics happened near me without me. So I was supposed to be at Gukipimo, a border town that, because of weak border enforcement with Tanzaniza, is where all the trucks go to transport grain into hungry Kenya.

Gukipimo is a bit of a tough place, where all the non-farming young men go to hire themselves out as loaders and unloaders. They do this as long as their strength lasts, getting overpaid during harvest season by grain transporters who, especially during the present famine, are making a killing. These men are called 'idlers' by the farmers, probably because their high pay rate allows them to sit around for a vast majority of their lives. As it is said, idle hands are the devils playthings; the men amuse themselves by alcohol and ruckus (and vice-versa).

Nevertheless, Gukipimo was near where many of our farmers lived, so Jake had decided to set it up as an input issue site. Janine and I arrived there ultimately at 9:00am. The entire logistical operation would be handled by a single medium-sized truck. It arrived, with Jake and a few other of our officers riding along, the back of the truck filled with fertilizer and seed.

The adventure was about to begin!

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