2023.10.04 Engai has come. The electricity has gone.

I woke up to rain pattering on the corrugated tin roof. There is a ceiling lower than the roof, but the sounds on the roof (rain, monkeys, etc.) are rather noticeable. It was a heavy rain all morning and a bit more in the afternoon.

When the rain comes, the Maasai say, “Engai (the monotheistic creator) has come.” It is rather refreshing when things are so dry and dusty.

Now I need to figure out what I’m going to do when the grass starts growing. Do I hire a gardener to “cut” the grass with a thing that looks like a long knife with a bent end about 4 inches long—that is sharpened on both sides. This gets swung back and forth a zillion times to cut the grass. I’ve thought of just getting a battery powered grass trimmer, that in the long run will be cheaper but will not employ a person.

It seems that the power outages are increasing. I was presenting my Marie Curie fellowship via Zoom today with colleagues at VID Specialized University, and the power went out in the middle of the discussion. So, I logged in with my phone, using data. Fortunately, I had things ready on my phone to log in if the power went out.

Perhaps when the short rains come—and this is an El Niño year—then there will be more water for hydroelectricity. I just wish that it was like my colleagues in South Africa, who typically have a rolling brown out schedule. So, they know when the power is going to go out.

Tonight, the Internet is so bad that I can’t even send an email. It takes minutes for a basic webpage to load. So, I write this on a document saved to the desktop, so that I don’t have to make any attempt to link to the cloud.

Finally, the day before yesterday, there was a troupe of green monkeys hanging around my yard. One saw me at the window and slowly came right to the screen. The monkey spent a few minutes traversing the windows and climbing around on the bars covering the windows—real monkey bars!

I just love the hand!

After the rain, there is some purple rain! The rain knocked off quite a few of the jacaranda blossoms. Jacarandas are one of my favorite trees, but it is not indigenous. For my favorite indigenous tree, I think a red thorn acacia tops my list, especially during sunset on the savannah.

Purple rain!

Mungu akubariki! (God bless you!)