Working On An Organic Farm In Kenya

After a brief stay with some more of Phillips family near Isiolo we went to Nanyuki, one of the bigger towns in Kenya and one of the most western ones. Which mainly the british military is accountable for because their base is right next to Nanyuki. Nevertheless that was definitely not what we went there for. We went there to experience MOOF, a organic farm with a lovely view onto Mt. Kenya at which we had stayed before for one night when travelling to the children's home in Meru.

"Ok, so I think I am starting to understand the concept of it." I told Peter as he explained to us the working process for the next 2 weeks. We were going to prepare a room for mushroom growing and I will design a flyer for the organic restaurant, sounds like a relaxed two weeks. During which we would sleep in the army tents, unfortunately this time of year the temperatures dropped at night to about 5 °C which meant sleeping in. However we were staying right on the equator so during the days the sun was so intense that even the locals would get sunburnt.

Most of the days were a little mundane because there was really not much work for us, so we spent most of our time going to town and buying second hand clothes for ourselves and family. One of these days, we had just come back from a little shopping tour which we gifted ourselves for finishing the preparations for the mushroom shed, I started to feel a little drowsy.

"Felix, I don't feel so good, I think I'm going to skip dinner tonight and just eat some mangoes instead." I said while taking off my clothes and getting into bed with the little speakers we had bought playing 'Das Känguruh' a story about a communist kangaroo from Vietnam living in Berlin with an artist and getting up to all sorts of mischief like driving a Porsche into a rooftop swimming pool.

The next morning I wake up drenched in very smelly cold sweat and not really being able to move. Again I miss out on the meals of the day and instead just sleep outside under the shade of a banana tree in a state of total delirium. I carry myself into bed in the evening, the sour and musty smell of my sweat making me feel disgusted. I dream weird and wild dreams that night of raging oceans and wake up more than once completely disoriented and in a soaked bed. Which due to the cold temperatures outside started almost freezing (or so I felt, my senses might not have been functioning properly). I wake up in the morning at about 10am and to my surprise I feel fine. If I ignored the smell my body felt healthy and fit again and so did my head which had been ravaged by the fever so badly. Somehow this uncomfortable night allowed my body and mind to recover and after a long shower I felt anew. Later I discover when talking to one of the people involved in the mushroom project that most people that come to the area around Nanyuki seem to get this so called 24h virus, a short lasting feverish illness which can hit you quite hard. Luckily it didn't have any lasting effects which meant that Felix and I could travel to the distant Kitale, near the Ugandan border, to continue our trip of Kenya.