Gogo Rono's

Gogo Rono’s 

May 12

Today we went about 1.5 hours away to see Gogo Rono.  She is Alice’s mother and she lives with Alice’s brother Abraham. 

Getting there was quite the adventure. We drove to Mois Bridge and then we took a left onto a dirt road. Now we were in Alice’s new car and I must admit it’s a nice ride, but driving it on these dirt and gravel roads probably isn’t the best for the car. Nelson drove us (he is Alice’s oldest son) and he drives like a little ole man.  I’m told that he isn’t a risk taker, and I would have to agree with that assessment of his driving. Very causious and careful. 

Anyway we get to Abraham’s house and Gogo is sitting outside in a chair by herself. Ellen, Abraham’s wife is busy cooking and comes to greet us and goes back to being busy. So we sit and talk to Gogo for awhile. She’s in the beginnings of Alheimers and gets confused easily, but she is delightful to be around. She kept asking me if I was Michelle’s mother, which I thought was funny cause Michelle is black. 

Abraham’s place is really nice.  The house itself is surrounded by green grass, trees, and many flowering plants. Let’s not forget the chickens running around the yard as well. Abraham has dairy cows, like everyone else in this part of Kenya, but I don’t know how many he has. His dairy is really nice for Kenyan standards. He also has sheep and I didn’t get a chance to count them. One of the cows came looking for her baby and that baby got into the dairy area and then the cow broke down the gate to get to her baby. Then Sarah, Nelson’s wife, herds that calf and grabs it and gets it out of the dairy area, and then, this woman simply amazed me here, she hers that darn cow back out to the pasture. Sarah is definitely a force to be reckoned with, and the stupid cow didn’t have a change in staying close to her baby. Cracked me up to watch Sarah, the school secretary, chase that cow back out to the pasture.

After that fiasco we headed into the house to eat lunch. Lunch consisted of meat and potatoes, rice, chapati, chicken, and veggies. It was good and the company was very nice. The only downfall is that everyone speaks Swahili and most of the time I have no idea what is being said.  I feel very left out when this happens and it happens here a lot to me. Alice tries to translate for me but she often gets wrapped up in the conversation and forgets to translate until I remind her. 

After lunch was over we had tea.  I like Kenyan tea, it’s just like Chai back home. It felt good on my throat. After more talking we started to file outside to get ready to leave. Well it took us awhile to get out of the house and then everyone wanted pictures taken so I began to take pictures. Not sure how many I took, but I took a lot. 

Once we got back into the car we headed home, but we stopped in the small village to pick up something Alice wanted. I have no idea what it was, all I know is that on our way back home we had a chicken riding in the back of the car.

Apparently Abraham gave Ednah a gift and that gift was a chicken. I couldn’t believe we were taking a chicken back home with us in the car. At one point the chicken decided she wasn’t down with the whole riding in the back thing and she started to make a ruckus. Luckily for us, Ednah came to the rescue and subdued the chicken and got her back into the back of the car. 

We arrived back home after dark, and got everything out of the car, including the chicken which Ednah took care of. Chickens are kinda funny things. One minute they aren’t happy, but the next day they are happy as a chicken. lol