Yesterday afternoon Katy and I had the opportunity to head
to Pius’ home to buy eggs. So of
course we took it! We thought it would be a fairly quick trip. But one thing we have learned since
being in Kenya is not to assume or expect anything J. So we could not have predicted what was
about to happen on this trek.
As we
were leaving Mariann the nursery school children were also leaving. They are some of the sweetest children,
so naturally they wanted to walk with us.
Katy had an amazing line of five children hand in hand J. I also had a few children holding my
hands as well. Being as small as
they are their strides were quite a bit smaller than Katy and mine. We slowed our pace to match their
strides. Don’t misunderstand me,
we loved walking with these children but it slowed our progress to Pius’ a
great deal. Katy and I like to
joke that the Kalenjins produce great runners, but they do not produce speed
walkers J.
Once we
left the children we continued our hike to Pius’ making only one wrong turn,
which we realized very quickly. As
we approached Pius’ we received a call from Ludya, his wife, explaining to us
that she would be home shortly.
One of the perks of being the only two wzungus in the area is that
people can spot you from almost anywhere! Anyways Katy and I thought that Ludya
must have been at a friend’s home and seen us pass by.
When we
reached Pius’ we learned that Pius had just arrived home, and Ludya was down at
the river rescuing one of their cows that had fallen in (just to clarify these
rivers are more like small streams).
Pius asked us to accompany him to the river. When we got there Ludya, Rosa, and another man had managed
to get the cow out of the river.
But the cow was very weak and was now lying in tall marsh grass. Pius explained to us that when cows
stand in water for a long time it makes their legs very weak, which helped us
understand why the cow wouldn’t just get up and move. Granted they were not sure if the adult cow was hurt or just
being stubborn, but they seemed to conclude that the cow’s legs were too weak
for the animal to stand up.
The poor
animal was poked and prodded for over an hour. Pius, Ludya, Rosa, and a neighbor were able to slide some
pieces of wood under the huge animal (around 300kg). At one point they successful got the cow onto her feet. Unfortunately after one step her legs
gave way, and she was back on the ground againL. There was some more poking and
prodding, but Pius finally decided that they could not move the cow at this time,
so we left it in the marsh grass for the time being.
You are
probably all thinking wow Katy and Ashley tried to help get a cow to its
feet. Quite the contrary haha, we
stood there and watched as everyone else gave assistance. We wanted to help but really didn’t
have any experience in this area.
We felt like we would be more in the way than help, so we took our
position and observed J. The
Kenyans kind of view us as dainty weaklings from the U.S. anyways haha. In the words of Pius (sarcastically
talking to his neighbor) as we were walking to go help Ludya with the cow, “I
brought some wzungus from America to help pull the cow out of the ditch.”
We went
back to Pius’ home where we had chai and bought 11 eggs. Finally around 6:45pm we headed home. Pius left with us to try to help the
cow. And I received word today that the cow is now on it’s feet, but is still
needing support. Pius reported
that she is slowly improving--Praise God! So what we thought would be a fairly
quick trip yesterday turned into quite an African experience!
