The Banda

I’ve had a few questions via email about our daily life here in the Kasigau bush. The banda where we live is owned and operated by Ibrahim (Abs) Jumapili. He built it just a couple years ago, and like almost all structures in Kasigau, the construction is of timbers harvested from the local forests, bricks fired from red dirt on the immediate premises, and thatch from indigenous grasses. He has imported stone from a quarry also in Taita Taveta, the area between here and the coast of the Indian Ocean.





We have fresh water from the mountain for drinking, washing, and showering, and power for lights and recharging batteries, depending on the weather (no cloud cover = more power). There is a separate building with two loos and two showers, with warm water on occasion. At night the loo building and the paths are lit by kerosene lamps if there has not been enough sun for power to be stored.




The food is fresh from the market in Voi each Tuesday (a two hour ride on a “matatu” van) and our cook Lucy is very talented at making it stretch all week. We have chicken a couple times each week, lots of cabbage and kale cooked African style, chapatti, beans, maize (corn), toast, pancakes, the works. In town the menu for lunch is fruit, chapatti bread, and beans. And always “chai”, the Kenyan black tea with milk that some of us have become addicted to and others never drink.


We each have a bed, Ken and I in one room, away from the main facility, three women interns in one room, two in another, and Jesse (the lone male intern) and John (our Kenyan student) in a separate room. Each bed has a mosquito net but not everyone uses theirs as it is a cumbersome and not always comfortable procedure to get in and out of bed.

As one photo shows, the banda is quite private and isolated at the end of a road/path. We mostly hear birds and monkeys and baboons and bats that make a pinging sound, very rarely a motorized vehicle. It is about a 20 minute walk to Bungule, and we are often accompanied by school children as we walk to and from the village. In East Africa greetings are a major aspect of the social structure, and we have been learning all the appropriate greetings in Taita (the mother tongue of the Kasigau region) so that we can participate. Life here is simple and good, beautiful and friendly.





We are all excited to be headed to Mombasa, and next week I’ll post about that trip, and try to introduce the high school students we have been sponsoring, the town of Voi, and more local news.
Kris