Rice farming in Kenya

Just a few miles out of Embu, I stopped to take pictures of a woman harvesting rice. |I had never actually seen rice being grown or harvested except in Asian movies. I also chatted with a rice farmer and stopped at a mill. SO here it is: Rice is not grown in many places in Kenya. The best soil conditions and the sweetest rice come from an area around a town called Mwea, where I spent the night on a mattress so hard that my back hurt for 2 days. But beside that unpleasant night of no sleep, Mwea was an experience. The fields are first plow by tractor, which most farmers hire for their 2-4 acres. After that, a pair of oxen plow it again to mix the nutrients into the rich soil. Rice seedling, which are started in a nursery, are planted. Once the rice is mature, it is cut with a scythe. The women then use baskets to winnow the rice. When they throw it up in the air, the rice kernels separate from the stalks.After the rice is dried in the sun, it is taken to the mill which separates the husk from the rice. The husks and the stalks from the rice are made into animal feed. The rice is bagged and sold. In Mwea, there are dozens of people with small stalls selling rice. When I asked how they could all make a profit with so much competition, I was told that many of the merchants stay out all night, where they do a brisk business with the truck drivers passing by on the main road. Biking beside the rice paddies gave me a peaceful feeling. The paddies are dotted with white egrets, farmers plowing, women planting and harvesting. Unfortunately, the rice paddies only went for about a 10 mile stretch. In a short distance from Mwea, I reached a small,dry town where it had not rained in two years!

Meru woman selling "uji", traditional Kikuyu porridge

Going solo

Traveling alone has not been difficult, as long as I am the one to make the effort to greet people, preferably in their mother tongue. A smile goes a long way but a few words goes much farther. Most Kenyans speak English, but they seem unsure of me. Who is this crazy mzungu traveling alone on a bicycle? Once the ice is broken, we speak in a mixture of English and Kiswahili. People are actually more open to me now and raised prices I feared has not happened much. People must have thought I hired Toto as my personal bodyguard so they viewed me in a totally different way. For the past few days I have been biking uphill at a 45 degree angle in the foothills of Mount Kenya. From Meru to Embu, I was greeted with banana and papaya trees in the valleys and tea fields on the steep slopes. I've entered the Embu tribal area, so now I greet villagers with "Ni mweega!" instead of "Muga muno!". I decided to take a rest from the sleazy places I usually sleep at after I discovered the Boy Scout Training Center. Rooms are only $4.00 and no worries about drunk men and all night loud music. I can even watch Nigerian soap operas in the cafeteria. As I leave the shadow of Mt. Kenya, the road drops into rice paddies, which I'll be looking forward to on tomorrow's ride.

Tea fields on the slopes of Mount Kenya

"N

A Messianic "synagogue" in Isiolo...or is it a church?

,

I'm missing Isiolo like I'm missing home

There was a knot in my stomach the day we had to leave Isiolo. Toto boarded a bus headed for Nairobi where he had swimming lessons to teach. I was nervous about traveling alone. Not for my personal safety, but for the prices I might be charged. When you are a Mzungu (white person) in Kenya, the prices automatically go up. I know the price of almost everything by now and have learned a few words of Kiswahili, so that helps. Leaving Isiolo was like leaving home. I felt so at ease there because I was surrounded by Afaan Oromo speakers, women wearing hijabs, mosques dotting the landscape, the smell of sambusa(samosa)and Somali restaurants. The hotels owned by Muslims there always have an open courtyard, built as a space for the men to say their daily prayers. However, the large, open area beckens people to sit communally whether it is to chew khat, drink tea, or talk. I have not seen the open courtyards in any other hotel I stayed at so far. Since I teach at a Somali school in St. Paul and many of my friends are Oromo, Isiolo was as close as it gets to home. Now I am in Meru, a small city in the Meru tribal area. Traveling alone has been easy so far. I found my $5.00 "hotel" (brothel) which was quite noisy all night but I felt safe there as long as I didn't venture out of my room after 9 p.m. I met Naitore, one of the maids, who invited me for dinner to meet her daughters. Yesterday I spent in the countryside, talking to the farmers, practicing my Kiswahili, watching old men play Mankala, and reading a novel.

Somali truck drivers chewing khat during their break