Munyiva's farm

Thursday was a busy day for everyone at the Rescue Center. In preperation for the visit of the Children's District Officer, the girls were given cooking and cleaning tasks to do instead of their normal school day lessons. The girls and women had set up a makeshift kitchen in one of the classrooms where they were cooking mandazi (a sweet roll), rice, and stew, while dancing to a blasting stereo. We were drawn into the room by the amazing smells and air of excitement. Nancy and Betty stealthily showed us handfulls of sugar that they had stolen and had stored in their pockets. The Children's District Officer was one of several visitors who were coming that day. One of which was Sophie, a good friend of Dean Cycon, who came to pick us up and bring us to her mother's coffee farm. The girls were also anticipating the arrival of Lilian and Betty's long lost grandmother. Francis told us that she had been located in March and was finally coming to meet her daughter's daughters for the first time. We only got a glimpse of her as we were leaving but we could see, even from afar, how happy Lilian and Betty were to meet her.
When we got into Sophie's car, we of course introduced ourselves to all of the passengers, Sophie, her son, her nephew and her husband who was driving. As Sophie was talking to Francis outside, we had a lengthy conversation with her husband. First we introduced ourselves, and proceeded to ask him several questions about himself. Sophie and her family live in America and are on vacation in Kenya, so we asked him how long he had lived in America. He answered that he lived in Nairobi, which confused us a bit but we didn't dwell on it.
The drive up to Munyiva's farm, which is deep in the hills of Machakos (the very ones that we've been admiring throughout our stay in Machakos), was very bumpy and dusty. The roads were a deep red color, and on either side was a lush green of the farmland. Upon arriving at Munyiva's house, we took a couple minutes to just take in the view of the farmlands below, which was spectacular. Equally as amazing as the view was the lunch that Munyiva served us soon after we arrived. The two of us, Munyiva, Sophie, her nephew, and her son sat down at the table for a delicious lunch of rice and stew. Sophie's husband (Munyiva's son) sat seperate from us, on the couch, to eat his lunch. Nobody was speaking to him which also confused us but again, we didn't dwell on it. After lunch Munyiva gave us a tour of her "shamba" (garden). It turns out that most of the hill actually belongs to her and her family. Although her main crop is coffee beans, she also grows bananas, avacados, macademia nuts, beans, corn, pumpkins and probably more that we didn't even see.
We spent most of the next day at the Machakos open market. We'd been there several times, but this time was very different as Munyiva knew most of the venders and stopped to chat with everyone there. For lunch we ate a meal that was familiar to us because of the Trader Joe's frozen section. Although we do appreciate Trader Joe's, the homemade lentils and chapati that Munyiva made put frozen food to shame. We spent the meal talking to Munyiva about her life and her ten children. When she mentioned that we should meet her oldest son, Sophie's husband, we confusedly asked her who the man who had been with Sophie and driven us here was. She off handedly answered that he was the cab driver. We both broke into hysterics about our mistake, and Munyiva, not knowing what we were laughing about, joined in, which only fueled our laughter more. Later we realized that this was just the true nature of Munyiva, who's a really fantastic woman. Although she's seventy-six-years-old, she lives alone and spends the whole day working really hard. Since her husband died a couple years ago, she's been running the farm by herself. She doesn't seem lonely because her daughter-in-law and grandaughter live literally ten feet away in the next house. On Saturday, we went on a gorgeous run through Munyiva's shambas with her ten-year-old grandaugther, Grace. It quite possibly could have been the most scenic run that either of us had ever been on.
Throughout our time spent with Munyiva we tried numerous tradtional Kenyan meals, thoroughly enjoying every single one of them. We had ugali, chapati, getheri, rice and stew, and much more. Every meal was followed by fresh oranges and two cups of delicious tea (0% hot water, 100% hot milk). We drank more milk in those three days than we had in the past two weeks.