Morning Run & New Clay

You may know that Kenya produces some of the world’s best distance runners. Nearly all the world’s top marathon runners hail from in and around the town of Eldoret. One reason for this is that the elevation is quite high, something around 3000m above sea level. Kiminini is probably about 80km away from Eldoret, so I’ve taken up a bit of running in the mornings. The first rule is getting up early, the sun can be quite hot, so as it begins to rise, I’ll begin to run. It took a few times to get acclimatized but once I was able to catch my breath, everything was fine. There is nothing like running on a dirt road through the middle of farms as the sun rises and the fog lifts up over the fields so I tried to take a few pictures.

October means I have been here nearly five months which is quite incredible to find it’s already been that long. In many ways it still feels like I just got here. At the factory we’ve been doing a little bit of experimenting. While not too long ago we went and picked up some kaolin, recently we ventured to a village just outside of Kakamenga where we got a sample of some new clay. We also did some more upgrading to hydraulic presses, installing a brake and brace on the two of them so that they now work simply and effectively.

In town are marketing is starting to pick up. The marketing team made a trip to Bungoma, a town not far from Kitale, to start a promotion outside of the supermarkets there, including a Khetias where they were able to not only create awareness but sell filters as well. Of course marketing and sales work in Kenya poses its own unique challenges. One thing about Kenya is mobile banking, or banking on ones cell phone is quite popular here. The most popular service is safaricoms “m-pesa” which allows people to send money to one another via cellphone and will store deposited money. We’ve been working  on ways to try and incorporate such tools into our approach.

The hut with the thatch roof is where I stay

They narrowly beat out the Kiminini Hilton for the title of "Best"

One problem for us here has been inflation. Election tactics, a distracted government, recession, whatever the reason the shilling has been deflating against the dollar, and in the country prices for commodities, such as sugar have been rising. At the start of the month Safaricom changed their calling rates from 3/= a minute to Canada to 10/=. Which admittedly probably isn’t a terrible rate, but it was a surprise to me when I found my call was more than three times what I thought it had been.

Clay from near Kakamenga

The weather here has been quite irregular. While people tell me by this time of year it should be hot, and not raining, it’s still been raining fairly often as well. But it’s still been quite hot, if there is one thing I think I’m fearing it’s moving back to Canada just in time for winter.