Service Times
- 8am Holy Communion
- 10.00am Sung Eucharist
- 6.00pm Evensong
- Plus daily services
St Peters is a church within
the Anglo-Catholic tradition
that believes in a daily
communion service
The Church is open daily
for private prayer
between 9am and 5pm
Click for service schedule
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The Earth is Telling (by David Pitts)
....the glory of God. (Compare Psalm 19.1). Not least in all its living creatures. And when you go to Kenya, what do people think of? Animals
You can see lots of wild animals in the national parks there (though not always the ones you would especially like to). The Kenyans are astute - the entry fees are a multiple for non-Kenyans of what they charge their own people. Our hosts in September (the Bishop and diocese of Mt Kenya West) had pencilled in a visit to a national park for us. But when my co-visitor discovered that the fee for a non-Kenyan had gone up to over £50 each (plus about £30 to take your vehicle in), she said No thanks. I very much concurred. To spend that much on one's own pleasure when there are so many poor and needy in the country! And we would only have had an hour or so anyway, and had both visited parks in previous years.
You don't see all that many animals while driving through the countryside (and almost all of Kenya is countryside). While crossing an extensive small-tree-and-bush-dotted plain, we saw a few - mostly baboons, gazelle, zebra and especially giraffes. I recalled two years ago when walking on another open plain where the wild animals also roam, watching a giraffe approach a high wire fence (to an estate) and wondering whether it would turn left or right when it reached it, and it did neither. It just stepped over it. That was tall, but this year one group of five in particular were even taller - and majestic, strongly marked and darkly coloured (of the reticulated variety), and walking, or occasionally lolloping, along parallel with the road and only a few feet from us. A wonderful sight.
We almost ran into a pair of what looked like storks, but twice the size of the white ones I have seen in Eastern Europe. They must have been chest high on a man; their wings dark-coloured and with bright red on their beaks. They flapped leisurely away just in time.
But most unexpected was a huge herd of camels. I didn't count but they must have numbered well over 100. They don't usually inhabit these parts. We were told that they had migrated from the drought in the North.
I had been accustomed to the young of animals each sticking close to its mother. But here the younger camels were in a group apart from the adults - just like a group of teenaged humans, I thought!
When we reached our destination, the vicar of St Christopher's, Doldol (a remote Masai parish in foothills), he told us that elephants had also migrated. I should explain that his vicarage was one of a handful of buildings scattered apparently haphazardly about the slope - no roads, only tracks - and without gardens or enclosures; you step out of the front door onto the hillside open to all. Well, the elephants had come right up to the house; and Rev Joseph pointed to broken branches on a number of near trees, and one with the trunk broken , which he watched the elephants doing.. He told us that there were also lions and cheetahs about.
We walked down the hill (and back) to the village about half a mile away, and I was disappointed to see neither elephant nor lion nor cheetah. Perhaps just as well. "Every month" Rev Joseph told us " we hear of someone killed by an elephant." (A digression - but I am unsure whether these deaths ever get into the national statistics. Out there they bury the dead the same day, and thereafter never mention them.)
Elsewhere we had seen other birds - cranes, egrets, and ibis with its long curved beak, for example - but here I watched a smaller bird whose back glimmered iridescently in the sun, green or blue depending on the angle of vision, and with coloured underbelly. To judge by the distinctive nests in the trees, weaver birds? I am not a birdspotter, but if I were I would go to Kenya to exercise my hobby.
Walking in the vicinity we came across the widest cactus plants I have ever seen, and on the tips of some pointed leaves were fruits. Victoria plum in size and purply-red. They had a hard rind, but when you broke through this, inside was a juicy, sweet and tasty fruit. They are so rare that they are not even harvested and sold in Kenya; so I was fortunate to have the opportunity to taste them. But we did enjoy other fruits fresh rather than after a long refrigerated journey. Just ripe, freshly picked (and slightly chilled) pawpaw for breakfast was delicious.
Also on that hillside we came across more than one hole in the ground inches wide and about two feet deep, with a tunnel running off at the bottom. These holes were made by termites, but when they vacated them were sometimes occupied by another insect called njore (if it has an English name, I don't know it). There were none in the first hole we inspected, and I could not resist saying "The njore is out". (Well, the Kenyans saw the pun .) But they were in the next one - looking like large ants but a dull black and winged. The notable thing about them is that, like the bees, they make honey. Apparently it is even sweeter than bee honey.
There can be danger from animals even in a town. We visited a Teachers Training College which was also the place where children from a Primary School boarded (the projects of an Anglican lay canon), and watched both lots of pupils playing in the large adjoining field. We had scarcely left when a wild dog appeared and bit some of the children. They had to go to hospital for what I understand is a painful anti-rabies injection. How blessed we are to have the English Channel to keep rabies at bay.
If you are interested in propagation, we saw rubber trees in a nursery where earth was placed round the base of the branches (held there with plastic sheeting). Apparently the branches then grow roots. They are then cut off and planted. But I don't know that that works with any other kind of tree.
The joint owner of a tea factory showed us round. We had previously been to tea plantations and told how to pick - only two leaves and a bud, so that only new freshly growing tips are used. They are then taken to Collection Stations and laid out for inspection; then to the factories. There we saw how they were dried and repeatedly cut. They ended up in five grades (looking more like grains than leaves). The largest size went to the UK, but it is always blended with other teas and so at home we never buy Kenyan tea as such. There was a sixth grade; this was really the roughage which was cut out and pushed aside by rollers. But some peoples liked it and so it was exported to e.g. Afghanistan.
But we did not go to Kenya to see fauna and flora. We went there to visit the Anglican Church. Experiencing all these living entities in God's creation was an extra. (And I have not started on the Aberdare Forest with its various trees, including the increasingly rare camphor.) Even I could see that they were good.
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