Stuart Barden in Kenya

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Monkeys strike again

Well, we have the internet back after 8 days without it. Turned out a large part of the problem was that the monkeys had bent the internet receiver over to the point it would not receive.
Anyway back on air now, a mob of emails to deal with.
We have been busy with Annie making the most of having many of our household things from the latest container, our house now looks more like our home.
James and Grace are doing well at school, they only board during the week and so its great to have them at home for three nights a week.
Grace enjoys driving around the conservancy on the weekends. James has been fishing although the fish have not been biting as well lately.
We have 7 employees at present plus various contractors, once we get planting done and the 8km or so of fence up we will probably cut back to 3 full time. Thats separate to Alex the gardener and Margaret who works in the house.
Still no rain, although it seems close now.
Annie is excited as she is on the chase for a second hand wardrobe, she has not got a home for her newly arrived clothes yet.
Anyway I do apologize for the long period without posting, blame the monkeys. Every morning we can hear them just on daylight running over the roof. All the roof is, is Hessian, black plastic with thatched grass. As you can imagine it sounds like they are going to fall through.
The previous photos show the planter as it was being put together as well as ten or so of the conservancies workshop men relocating the Simplicity air cart bin.

Planter Progress



Thursday, March 8, 2012

Finally Our Container Arrives

Well what an epic, finally it arrived. Earlier this week I flew down to Mombassa to the port to see if I could get a handle on what was what.
Spent the day waiting,waiting at the bonded container park.
Still dry as a chip here, it looked promising a week or so ago although still waiting.
I am still sick with the tick fever, if I was a dog I would have put me down yesterday.
We hired a crane from Nairobi to unload the container today, they did a good quick job which was great. We will now start to put the planter together, it is in this container.

Egyptian Cobra

Found this fellow in our gravel pit, he took off and I drove around in front of him. He rared up and fanned his face and neck (if snakes have them) out like you see with the snakes that come out of baskets in the movies.
He was supper fast and ended up going down an Aardvark hole.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

7 ft Egyptian Cobra

Bit of excitement for the afternoon, our son James was painting a door on the back veranda and heard a noise, it was a 7 to 8 ft Egyptian Cobra slithering about 10ft from him.
I ran out and saw him clearly, he was huge and fast. He took off I hope not to see him again around the house.
I took a photo of another fellow of the same variety a couple of days ago although he was in our murum/gravel pit a long way from anywhere.
I will post the photo when I download it.