The Kenyan Highlands and Bungoma

Top: A breathtaking Kenyan sunset
Middle: Farm family hard at work using One Acre Fund techniques and bumpin' Mariah Carey
Middle: Matunda (passion fruit) the cow!
Bottom: Adelaide and Geoffrey, Stephen and Evelyn's youngest daughter and second youngest son

Friday morning we departed for Eldoret in western Kenya. From Eldoret, One Acre Fund's driver, Ebrahim, collected us and we drove two more hours to Bungoma, a very rural town even further west of Eldoret, two hours from the Ugandan border.

This was the Africa I had been waiting for, not that Nairobi isn't amazing, but I couldn't wait to see Kenya's bread basket. The two hours drive offered picturesque views of the longest, most incredible sunset. The land carved out for farming along the roadside was accented deeply by rolling hills, allowing the sunset to light aflame the already red earth and dark green foliage in so many different views. I must have snapped around 100 pictures of this one hour alone. The light kept changing so dramatically and the views were too panoramic to be believed, there was just so much sky upon which to see the palette of this Kenyan sunset. I was in awe, it was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

We arrived just after dark in Bungoma to One Acre's headquarters, which they lovingly call 'the compound'; indeed it is. There are 4 or 5 houses on a small plot of land where the expatriate staff lives with chickens, two pigs, two dogs and two cats. You get the idea that they have a lot of fun, as they are all around the same age (24-30) and live together in a very dorm-like way making the whole place feel like a displaced part of Uni campus. This effect lends to the idea that OAF is in itself, a youth group affecting massive change in Kenyan agricultural production by working with rural farmers in doubling their farm harvests per planted acre. They now serve 8,000 farmers and will grow to serve 40,000 at scale in 2011. Remarkable.

We visited with one of their star families, Evelyn, Stephen and all their children. Both parents work for OAF, Evelyn is a 'Light Mother' providing a guiding light in basic healthcare and parenting to other OAF mothers, and Stephen is a farm facilitator assisting the local farm manager in the proper plantation of the maize farm inputs. Evelyn and Stephen have no less than seven children. Luckily, Stephen is a bright entrepreneur who took his farming success and transformed it into a seedling and brick-making business, sold for 4 KSh each (about 0.30 USD). He is so proud of his success from the new passion fruit farming introduced by OAF, that he purchased a very healthy cow (most in the area are emaciated) and named her Matunda, meaning passion fruit. Naming animals is very rare in Kenya, most pets (rare that they do not also have a function or job as well) are just called cat, chicken, dog, etc.

OAF's impact on the naming of things and people locally was obvious. The choosing of a name in Kenya for children is greatly dependant on the surroundings and happenings near birth. For instance, you may be called Friday if born on yes, a Friday. Many local children are also called One Acre Fund or named after some of the expat staff, which is just adorable.

We walked through one farming district with a farm manager, Edith and OAF's unbelievably dedicated founder, Andrew Youn who I quite like. As we arrived at the third homestead, we began to have a following of local children shouting "Mazungu, Mazungu!" (whitey, pale face, etc.) as we passed, calling even more kiddles from the woodwork. There were about 20 when we arrived at the next farmhouse. I took their pictures and showed them on the digital camera, even a few short videos, which they LOVED. They laughed and screeched with joy over seeing their images for the first time. We looked like the pied pipers of Bungoma with pen tricks of rudimentary 'magic' care of Oliver, and photos to lead them along the paths behind their farms. It was great fun but also difficult to see that some were very ill, mostly from respiratory illnesses caused by constant smoke inhalation from the cooking fires.

We had two days in lovely Bungoma and then set off in the early afternoon to Kampala, Uganda by the only road available with Ebrahim of OAF, for more adventure.