I don't usually write in the middle of the month but this has been an unusual week. On Monday we had 195mm of rain in 14 hours. That's almost 8 inches. We've had 405mm in the first 8 days of May compared to 114mm in the whole month of May 2016. Last week I missed the clinic in Bamba and this week the clinic in Kanamai on Tuesday because of the rains. There were flood warnings and it was too dangerous to drive there. The saddest picture was on the front page of the newspaper. A herder from Marsabit stood looking at all his sheep dead on the ground in front of him. They had survived the drought and the rain came so quickly they couldn't adjust and they died from the cold.
The cost of food is sky rocketing and people are not putting milk and sugar in their tea. They are starting to eat chapatis (which used to be for special occasions) because wheat is cheaper than maize! Josephine, who helps me in the house, had two rooms of her house fall down. I had helped her fix her house last year and those four rooms are still standing. She had planted cow peas, kale and spinach. It all got washed away in the rains. Remember, this is the woman who had her watermelons stolen last month.
Even in my neighborhood where the houses are better things are crumbling. A perimeter wall at the hospital fell on the small houses next to a nearby school and killed 6 people, three of them children. God only knows how many people in the slums have slid down the hillsides and disappeared.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima. I do think that the poor here are doing enough penance. Those of us who have more than we need should do more penance and get involved with helping out those is such need...wherever we find ourselves in the world.
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