The General Secretary was happy to leave the choice up to me but I was not all that well informed, so made the decision to have it at our house.
The advantage of having the nursery at our house was that it was so handy and like Sanawari, I could pop out to do some work at any time [watering especially in the evening]. I realised and understood that having the nursery within our compound meant that people would visit us, but that did not matter. I did not realise that there would be a water problem and that I would have to fix it myself. There was a fence around the compound and that meant straying animals would not be a problem.
The milking sheds were perhaps fifteen minutes walk from the house and the proposed site was shaded by some very large Albizia trees. There was a water race nearby. This water race flowed all the way down to Valeska, one of the villages we would work with and there was violence caused when an Australian fellow, (who was advised by his Kikuyu wife) took all the water for his own purposes - entirely another story. But once we ran out of water at our house, and I transported water from this mferegi (race). Mbise and I filled mapipa (drums) by bucket so I could water the nursery. I think that is where I received my amoeba that latched on to my liver and nearly did me in! You see the school kids bathe in the river where the mfereji comes from, they clean their teeth in it and wash their clothes in it. Not only the school kids, some of the village population. Sadly this water comes from a spring just below the house and it is polluted at the very source.
There was a farm cottage (two attached rooms) in one Paulina lived with her husband Sylvester and their tribe of wild but likeable kids. In the other lived Lucy, it was she who Neema (from a previous blog - and tragic tale) lived. This was basic farm accommodation.
There was no security as such as the cows could wander around and tramp on the plants - a fence could fix that.
The other milker was old Samweli who I would trust under any circumstances (I didn't know that then). He lived way up the hill at Mulala (same village as Mbise) and he made the journey, by foot, early for morning milking and home late after cleaning up after milking.- he spent the day on the farm. Sylvester was supposed to help him with the milking but he was more often than not away with the fairies on piwa.
But this was where the cows spent the night, therefore there was the resource of fertilizer for the nursery.
It wasn't a cont
est really, I opted to set up the nursery beside the house and once Mags had the house in order, she set about cleaning up the garden. I cleared the area that was to be the nursery. The fish farmer vol had grown maize there, but it was hugely overgrown. It took all day to reduce the area to bare earth and I was astounded when I went outside to see the whole area teaming with siafu! Safari ants!
I will do a whole post on these incredible insects but here they covered the whole area that I had cleared and they were about 10cm deep. Now I must have disturbed them for when siafu travel, they go in file, singly or ten/twelve abreast. The column of ants can keep going all day and night and seemingly not end.
I admit to being a little alarmed because if a person fell among them, they would eat him/her! The image of that was a bit much for me.
I had 'used' t
hem at Sanawari: I would kill slugs, cut them in half and place them beside a column
of siafu - they would cut them to pieces and take them away!
I did tests at Makumira to find what food they liked - meat/insects and fats (the cream on our milk and even avocado). They were not interested in sugar or bread.
The next day they were gone and as the nursery area was sloped, I set about digging terraces to sit the pots on. I planted some Sesbania trees to supply some shade as this part of the compound was exposed to the sun for most of the day. At the top there was shade from a huge
Albizia tree but the tree did not grown within the compound. There was a huge Newtonia tree in our compound with a crown of 40 metres in diameter! Branches had reached over the house and for our safety, DME had removed those branches. A guy climbed up there and cut the branches (more than 40 cm through) with a panga - bush knife/machete! Again using basic tools, Tanzanians can achieve amazing outcomes.
The Blue Monkeys and wind caused dead branches to fall, creating a constant supply of firewood and I will add these to future posts as well.
Water came from a large tank/reservoir just up the hill and this was served by a project from high up the mountain - it was not long before this failed but that will have to wait as well. At the stream below the house was a pump house with an electric motor that could also feed the tank/reservoir. This contraption was not used much because of the expense of the electricity. Well that did not exactly stack up as Tanesco did not send out any bills! Well not exactly either! The farm had not paid for the post office box, so they could not empty it! All the time the fish farmer vols had been there, the electricity had not been paid. That was all fixed later.
But I had run pumps at the nursery in NZ and had a fair idea of how they work. The fish farmer had told me the motor could run all night and still there was not much water in the tank/reservoir! Well there were leaks and taps that could not be turned off down at the school, but I had no doubt that the actual pump unit was faulty. Everyone had tried tinkering with the motor to give it more power - it didn't need it, it needed a new pump unit. I looked at it and knew parts would be a mission to find, but later the wires were stolen, so I abandoned the idea of resurrecting the pump.
I quickly found one thing that I kept secret. I presumed the tank/reservoir was set up by the German farm manager and he cunningly had the line we were on coming from the botton of the tank, and the other outlet - to the secondary school, primary school about 30cm above it the tank was 4 metres in diameter, therefore after everyone else ran out of water, we still had some 3768 litres left for the house. Our tank held 600 litres, was made of galvanized iron and leaked slightly.
We could afford to share the water, but carefully as if everyone collected water there, we would soon run out too. In the end the only regular was Mama Upendo's family and others depending on their particular case at the time. This was because as things settled down, we only had water coming into the tank for 30 minutes per day - precisely at 7:00 am. I will reveal the reason at another time.
I haven't yet mentioned the mango trees, two of them, just inside our compound. Very large, old trees and they bore abundant fruit that attracted the monkeys, who would waste many by taking a single bite and dropping them (not sweet enough) and primary school kids throwing stones to knock fruit down. This peppered the nursery with stones and caused injuries to the kids when rocks hit them square on the head! I learned to have a roll of toilet paper handy because of the old HIV thing, I could make a wad of paper for the kid to hold on the cut and hurry home for treatment.
From our side of the trees I harvested fruit with a hook on a long pole and tossed them over to the fence to the eager (and grateful) kids.
At odd times kids would climb the tree, but I would call them down because should they fall and injure themselves, then perhaps I would be called to account - I just did not want the hassle.
So I became set up for action.
The advantage of having the nursery at our house was that it was so handy and like Sanawari, I could pop out to do some work at any time [watering especially in the evening]. I realised and understood that having the nursery within our compound meant that people would visit us, but that did not matter. I did not realise that there would be a water problem and that I would have to fix it myself. There was a fence around the compound and that meant straying animals would not be a problem.
The milking sheds were perhaps fifteen minutes walk from the house and the proposed site was shaded by some very large Albizia trees. There was a water race nearby. This water race flowed all the way down to Valeska, one of the villages we would work with and there was violence caused when an Australian fellow, (who was advised by his Kikuyu wife) took all the water for his own purposes - entirely another story. But once we ran out of water at our house, and I transported water from this mferegi (race). Mbise and I filled mapipa (drums) by bucket so I could water the nursery. I think that is where I received my amoeba that latched on to my liver and nearly did me in! You see the school kids bathe in the river where the mfereji comes from, they clean their teeth in it and wash their clothes in it. Not only the school kids, some of the village population. Sadly this water comes from a spring just below the house and it is polluted at the very source.
There was a farm cottage (two attached rooms) in one Paulina lived with her husband Sylvester and their tribe of wild but likeable kids. In the other lived Lucy, it was she who Neema (from a previous blog - and tragic tale) lived. This was basic farm accommodation.
There was no security as such as the cows could wander around and tramp on the plants - a fence could fix that.
The other milker was old Samweli who I would trust under any circumstances (I didn't know that then). He lived way up the hill at Mulala (same village as Mbise) and he made the journey, by foot, early for morning milking and home late after cleaning up after milking.- he spent the day on the farm. Sylvester was supposed to help him with the milking but he was more often than not away with the fairies on piwa.
But this was where the cows spent the night, therefore there was the resource of fertilizer for the nursery.
It wasn't a cont
est really, I opted to set up the nursery beside the house and once Mags had the house in order, she set about cleaning up the garden. I cleared the area that was to be the nursery. The fish farmer vol had grown maize there, but it was hugely overgrown. It took all day to reduce the area to bare earth and I was astounded when I went outside to see the whole area teaming with siafu! Safari ants!I will do a whole post on these incredible insects but here they covered the whole area that I had cleared and they were about 10cm deep. Now I must have disturbed them for when siafu travel, they go in file, singly or ten/twelve abreast. The column of ants can keep going all day and night and seemingly not end.
I admit to being a little alarmed because if a person fell among them, they would eat him/her! The image of that was a bit much for me.
I had 'used' t
hem at Sanawari: I would kill slugs, cut them in half and place them beside a columnof siafu - they would cut them to pieces and take them away!
I did tests at Makumira to find what food they liked - meat/insects and fats (the cream on our milk and even avocado). They were not interested in sugar or bread.
The next day they were gone and as the nursery area was sloped, I set about digging terraces to sit the pots on. I planted some Sesbania trees to supply some shade as this part of the compound was exposed to the sun for most of the day. At the top there was shade from a huge
Albizia tree but the tree did not grown within the compound. There was a huge Newtonia tree in our compound with a crown of 40 metres in diameter! Branches had reached over the house and for our safety, DME had removed those branches. A guy climbed up there and cut the branches (more than 40 cm through) with a panga - bush knife/machete! Again using basic tools, Tanzanians can achieve amazing outcomes. The Blue Monkeys and wind caused dead branches to fall, creating a constant supply of firewood and I will add these to future posts as well.
Water came from a large tank/reservoir just up the hill and this was served by a project from high up the mountain - it was not long before this failed but that will have to wait as well. At the stream below the house was a pump house with an electric motor that could also feed the tank/reservoir. This contraption was not used much because of the expense of the electricity. Well that did not exactly stack up as Tanesco did not send out any bills! Well not exactly either! The farm had not paid for the post office box, so they could not empty it! All the time the fish farmer vols had been there, the electricity had not been paid. That was all fixed later.
But I had run pumps at the nursery in NZ and had a fair idea of how they work. The fish farmer had told me the motor could run all night and still there was not much water in the tank/reservoir! Well there were leaks and taps that could not be turned off down at the school, but I had no doubt that the actual pump unit was faulty. Everyone had tried tinkering with the motor to give it more power - it didn't need it, it needed a new pump unit. I looked at it and knew parts would be a mission to find, but later the wires were stolen, so I abandoned the idea of resurrecting the pump.
I quickly found one thing that I kept secret. I presumed the tank/reservoir was set up by the German farm manager and he cunningly had the line we were on coming from the botton of the tank, and the other outlet - to the secondary school, primary school about 30cm above it the tank was 4 metres in diameter, therefore after everyone else ran out of water, we still had some 3768 litres left for the house. Our tank held 600 litres, was made of galvanized iron and leaked slightly.
We could afford to share the water, but carefully as if everyone collected water there, we would soon run out too. In the end the only regular was Mama Upendo's family and others depending on their particular case at the time. This was because as things settled down, we only had water coming into the tank for 30 minutes per day - precisely at 7:00 am. I will reveal the reason at another time.
I haven't yet mentioned the mango trees, two of them, just inside our compound. Very large, old trees and they bore abundant fruit that attracted the monkeys, who would waste many by taking a single bite and dropping them (not sweet enough) and primary school kids throwing stones to knock fruit down. This peppered the nursery with stones and caused injuries to the kids when rocks hit them square on the head! I learned to have a roll of toilet paper handy because of the old HIV thing, I could make a wad of paper for the kid to hold on the cut and hurry home for treatment.
From our side of the trees I harvested fruit with a hook on a long pole and tossed them over to the fence to the eager (and grateful) kids.
At odd times kids would climb the tree, but I would call them down because should they fall and injure themselves, then perhaps I would be called to account - I just did not want the hassle.
So I became set up for action.
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