A day in the life #5 (2009)

I was up early to visit Joel’s shop. He is blind but is determined to make his own living. With some of the money friends have given me I provided the stock to kick start this small business.

The outside of his house and shop – he serves people through that small window.

Time stamp. Again, way too early.

I then headed back down the road to meetup with some of the teachers as we were going on a….

…road trip! A teacher does some work for a UK publishing house and he gets paid a western salary which means he is one of the very few to have a car. We were going to Hombolo which is perhaps 40km away from my village. There is a primary school there with a tiny residential unit for blind and partially sighted children who can’t get a place in the specialist school I’m living at.

Here they are. I had some items left over from a previous project and so distributed a few things. The guy on the left is Tom and he is an albino. There should be 6 more children but they can’t afford the tiny amount it costs to travel to school at the start of each term.

Here are the guys I went with as well as some of the Hombolo teachers. There are two blind teachers at the school and I gave them talking watches. One of them kissed my hand and said I’d given him a new life. That was perhaps a bit over the top but I’m amazed just how much of a difference the watches make to the people out here. My sister is visiting me in April and bringing out a further 20 so that should keep me nicely stocked up.

We left the school around lunchtime and I noticed the temperature gauge…

Our next destination was a vineyard. An Italian has set up a wine-making business here. I was expecting it to consist of a few mudhuts and so was surprised to see how advanced everything is – I didn’t expect to find this in the middle of the bush. The tour was more centred on tastings rather than finding out how the stuff was made.

I was expecting the tastings to consist of just a couple of mouthfuls, but we were handed full glass after full glass.

I felt a little fuzzy and warm here.

In fact this is probably how I was seeing things. These guys were emptying crates of grapes into the crusher.

Omary and David have cropped up in previous ADIMLs

David really hit the wine hard. He likes wine but doesn’t often have the opportunity to drink it – here it was plentiful and free, so he went to town.

For some reason I’m slightly red faced here.

After a few hours we headed back towards home.

Time check.

You can observe David dozing in the back.

And here he is again.

We stopped off in Ihumwa for some food. The butchers don’t mess around with fridges and I’m sure the concept of hygiene is unknown to them, but they do have very tasty meat which is prepared daily and so fresh enough for me to not worry a great deal. Here we picked up 2kgs of goat.

The butcher prepared and barbecued it on site.

This man came over to have his photo taken. at the end I tried to shake his hand only to realise it was actually a withered stump. Whenever I read the numberplate I think it says something else.

Here are two of the teachers on either side and the man in the middle is our driver. For some reason I thought having a hired designated driver would mean he didn’t drink, but oh no.

Our dinner eventually arrives in individul plastic bags and we are also given a plate of tomato and chilli.

The woman on the left is the one who served us drinks and the other two are the guys who cooked the food. If there are child labour laws here, they are not enforced.