The dairy was built in 1935 and very little of the equipment has been updated since then. Chris explained that the farmers work under a “co-op” system. Raw milk is trucked in every AM in large metal milk cans from many outlying farms, marked with an ID number. The containers are weighed and payment per liter tallied up for each farmer. After pasteurization, some is siphoned off for cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. This is the biggest cheese factory in Kenya and it makes some 30 different kinds including the popular “paneer”, favorite of the large Indian population. Tinned (canned) milk and cream is also very popular as it has a long shelf life and does not require refrigeration. Cream cheese is also well-liked but an 8 oz.container is almost US$3. which is more than we pay here. There are no refrigerated trucks, so products are shipped out quickly, before the ice cream can melt! There was a milk program for school children from 1979 –1992 but it has not been reinstated, and milk is too expensive for most poor families to afford. I spotted goats grazing by the roadside but unfortunately Kenyans do not drink goat’s milk, nor make goat cheese. Goats are raised for meat.
Once a week an enormous farmers market is held. Streets on the edge of town are lined with vendors, often 3-4 deep, selling everything imaginable: plastic house wears, T-shirts from American sports teams, toiletries, vitamin potions, mountains of shoes, wilting vegetables and squawking chickens etc. It goes on and on, street after street for at least a couple miles. Colorful, wild, outrageous but also rife with pick-pockets. I kept my distance.
Every year in March the Agricultural Fair is held for 5 days, a very popular event for all of western Kenya, and it has up to 40,000 visitors DAILY! It covers 50 acres and students have the day off to attend. It reminded me of the World’s Fair of 1964 in New York where you enter inside a building or large tent along a cordoned walkway as various posters/videos/demonstrations are shown, and emerge on the other side, flush with new information. There is something for everyone here: amusement park rides, pin wheels and balloon animals for the kids, importers show off shiny new Korean farm tractors, and seed manufacturers exhibit their “test” gardens with buoyant emerald cornstalks and juicy tomatoes. Everywhere there are happy faces enjoying this delightful event. Even MTRH had a pavilion where they fearlessly handed out condoms while soliciting volunteers for on-the-spot blood bank donation, as well as breast exams, blood sugar, cholesterol and HIV testing. Young pre-school children, attending with their teachers, were encouraged to come in and learn.The hospital proudly showed off it’s ambulance. The noise of the crowds was deafening. The hospital had even brought in a DJ for entertainment. I found myself grooving to the beat of some African reggae band being piped out on loudspeakers and I learned it was music from the “Kanungo”, the tribe of Obama! The following day I purchased the CD at a record store for US$2.50. Why so cheap? You make your request to the shop-keeper, he slips both an empty disc and the original disc in a computer, pushes a few buttons and moments later hands you the finished product with a Xerox copy of the original cover. Voila! ....Hakuna-matata!! (no problem!)
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| Cheese, please! GottagettaGouda! |
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| Fresh farmers cheese |
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| David never turns down vanilla ice cream! |
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| Giganormous shopping area, many football fields in size |
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