In Kenya the gift giving is also not as extensive as in the Western world but for most families, new clothes for the children are a must. Even families that are of humble means will try to buy new clothes for their children at Christmas. Santa is not an African phenomenon but I grew up knowing Father Christmas who would be seen in shopping malls and supermarket during Christmas giving candy to kids, but that is as far as it goes.

In Kenya most businesses start wounding up for the year around the 20th of December and do not open until around the first week of January. Officially two days are given for the Christmas holiday, the 25th and the 26th. The 26th is boxing day which apparently is the day that the boxed gifts were to be opened.  This is off course a British tradition adopted by Kenya from her previous colonial master. When we were growing up we did not know the meaning of Boxing Day and we would actually box each on Boxing Day; such is the joy of childhood foolishness!

                                    Countryside

Kenyans have a strong attachment with the land and most of them own a home in the village or countryside even when they live and work in the cities. At Christmas time most Kenyans will travel to the countryside to be together with the extended family.  The cities are like ghost towns at this time due to this migration and also because most businesses are closed.

In my family we would have my grandfather who was the head of the family hosting everyone which included, uncles, aunties, cousins, nephews, nieces and the rest. Christmas time is really a time of catching up and celebration with the family at large. It is a time for the different generations to meet together and share family love and blessings.

                                    Food

The food eaten in Kenya for Christmas is unique to all Kenyans. Just like Turkey and ham is eaten in the USA as a tradition, Kenyans too have theirs. In Kenya goat meat and chicken are the main meat dishes served on Christmas day. The goats are slaughtered fresh at home from the family stock or bought at the market. The slaughtering and cutting up of the meat is the domain of men who will also roast it. Chicken is also popular although goat is preferred because it is cheaper and more practical for a big family.

Another food that is a must in Kenya for Christmas is chapati. This is flat bread similar to the Jews unleavened bread. Chapati eaten in Kenya is likely to have been introduced from South Asia through trading thousand of years back. However Kenyans make their chapatis differently as they use salad or liquid oil to fry the chapatis. Chapati is made from wheat flour and even the humblest family will ensure that they have saved enough to buy the flour for making chapatis. The chapatis are made on a flat heavy pan over a charcoal stove. Traditional villagers would share the pan for making chapatis if they had someone amongst them who could not afford to buy one. Africans are very communal by nature and will share when it is necessary.  Chapati bread,. rice, and vegetables

Most children, particularly those whose families cannot afford to eat chapatis more often associate Christmas withchapatis and they look forward to the day with joy. Most families would also serve rice and other traditional foods like “irio” (peas mashed with potatoes) as well as vegetables, which are a must for all Kenyan meals. Kenyans are not into sweets and dessert will mostly be fruit salad.

            The celebration

Kenyans never divorce Christmas from the one being celebrated. It must be remembered that 80% of the nation subscribe to the Christian faith.  Most people attend church service on Christmas Eve and there is also a Christmas service on the morning of Christmas day. Most people will wake up early and prepare some of the dishes before going to church. The celebration starts after the church service.

One of the benefits of having Christmas in the village is the space. There is a lot of open land in the family compound with beautiful grass and fresh air and people will sit outside in groups and enjoy the food and drinks as they catch up with news. The Kenyan favorite drink for those who indulge in alcohol is beer. Most people will drink sodas and tea which are the main beverages served in Kenya.

The thing I miss most is the simplicity of it all and the presence of a loving family even when we did not agree. As we celebrate this Christmas in our various traditions and at different places may I wish you all a merry Christmas and may the New Year herald new blessings.  

            The environmental consequences of our proudly called “welfare” have been obviated almost until the second half of the past century. The industrial revolution, whose beginning took place precisely in the British islands shook off the ancient crafts and the nice-old villages of the medieval age to enhance a new way of living. Nonetheless, this new way of living caused serious injuries to many vital and natural resources. We are now just paying for this unconscious progress, and the first question we should made to ourselves is whether it is too late or, on the contrary, we must accept there is a possible remedy.

            Focusing this world-wide concern in Britain, though it is properly a general and international issue, we find that since the Neolithic ages England and Wales specially have suffered increasing clearings of forests. From the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, intensive farming and new technological equipment related to agriculture varied that situation, because landowners did not need larger areas to achieve larger outputs.

            The golden age of British farming ran among 1815 and 1870. Fallow areas virtually disappeared, and most of the seasonal pastures became arable land; in addition to this, guano and other Chilean nitrates were imported and efficiently used. However, the arrival of intensive techniques was actually introducing a prior and later problem: rural unemployment and village deprivation. On the other hand, urban population started to demand the relaxing quietness of village housing, whose prices rose in a vertiginous spiral, preventing local young couples to settle down there. This phenomenon ended with a large deal of commuters living in the countryside and with a maybe larger quantity of rural inhabitants migrating to the endlessly growing cities.

            At the same time, urban suburbs absorbed nearer towns and surrounding countryside without a rationale development. Between the World Wars, this trouble became urgent; to give an example, half the population of England lived in the London area at this specific period of time.

            It was Ebenezer Howard who first saw the threat of uncontrolled urban growth, in the early twentieth century. Howard proposed a compact and strictly confined development of cityscape, never beyond a permanent belt of  open land around each big town. The evolution of this proposal produced the contemporary “green belts”. Nevertheless, it is not possible to find an Act for Urban Development and Planning until 1947. This Act establishes the nationalisation of the landowner right to use their land as they saw fit. Instead of the former freedom, they would need to apply for planning permissions to the local authority if they wanted to sell or to employ their properties for either industrial or housing purposes.

            Farmers lost their ability to decide for themselves how their land may be used apart from agriculture, but it was really necessary to stop the unruly enticement of housing developers and industrial executives.

            All the same, the initial aim of avoiding urban growth turned to another deep trouble of the British countryside: wildlife and landscape’s conservation. Farmers saw the countryside from a functional perspective, where changes were permitted and maybe necessary, but other people began to consider the countryside “wilderness”, untouchable savage life. This recently appeared point of view conflicts with one of the most deeply-rooted Western customs: the utilitarian sense of the countryside.

            The 1949 Act about National Parks and Access to the Countryside gave the first step to the emergent concept of “designation”. Designated areas of England and Wales such as Peak District, Dartmoor or Snowdonia would become protected and seriously prevented from industrial buildings and the very day-tripper misuse and pollution, either as National Parks -the first being Lake District, in 1951- or Sites of Special Scientific Interest. The 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, finally, promoted the voluntary co-operation of farmers and landowners to conservation purposes by means of the so called “management agreements”. They keep their properties, but they grant some rights to local authorities about matters of wildlife preservation and recreation access.

            Unfortunately, as it was alleged at the beginning, some of the consequences of the unresponsive “industrial progress” are acid rain, river pollution, and the probable extinction of many species such as tuna, badgers, red squirrels, bats, whales, dolphins and hedgehogs. In the specific case of hedgehogs, they have adapted well to life in cities and are even common in many suburban areas. In spite of that, road traffic and lawnmowers are increasingly lowering hedgehog population in Britain. Anyway, the most dangerous threat is habitat loss. Over the last 30 years, agriculture has favoured large fields and the traditional habitats of the hedgehog, particularly hedges, have disappeared. Pesticide usage also puts more and more pressure on its survival.

            It is clear that conservation of natural richness implies the management of encountered interests. However, industrial and economical interests have been stronger for ages than the environmental concern; as a result, the exigencies of development have been more likely taken in account by national and local policies. It is not reasonable to assure that these preferences are actually suffering deep alterations. Thinking twice, it seems that the final consequences of former damages to the British Environment are taking place right now. It seems that it is only possible to preserve what is still left, but even this task appears as a utopian target if we have a look at the upsetting resistance of state and economical powers to change the actual status quo.

You would think that with all the awareness now of climate change and the importance of cutting carbon emissions that governments around the world would concentrate on getting cars off the road – not encouraging them.

Here, in the UK, billions of pounds is spent on building new roads which we wouldn’t need if a fraction of that money was invested in improving public transport. Our public transport policy seems to be calculated to put people off using it.

For a few years now, I have been wanting to do without a car, but have found it is impossible to do so. I live on the outskirts of a small town, with a main road nearby. Buses run every half an hour from about 7am to 6.30pm between the two biggest towns, so if you want to travel outside of these times – bad luck. There is a train station in town, but you can’t get to it in the evening, and there is only parking for 6 cars, so you’re unlikely to be able to leave your car there whilst you use the train.

Most buses are so badly maintained that not only are they dirty (you are lucky if you can see out of the windows), but they sound like they are falling apart; you spend most of the journey wondering if you are actually going to make it to your destination. Quite often, the drivers try to keep to the timetable by missing stops altogether, leaving people standing at the stop stranded. It is no wonder that this puts people off ever using a bus again!

A good example of the lack of joined-up thinking is that when there are bus services that run to train stations, they are timed to arrive after the train has departed! Maybe this is just where I live, I don’t know.

It breaks my heart to see the countryside that I was born and grew up in destroyed by the building of new roads, especially as I can’t see any logic to it. Yes, the roads are overflowing, but only because so many people have no choice other than to drive a car. Also, so many more lorries use the roads now, carrying goods that used to be transported by rail, sea or even waterways.

Anyway, I feel slightly better after having a rant, thanks for listening!

In nearly every property show on British TV there is always someone who wants to move to a rural location, a cottage with roses around the door, far from the madding crowd.

Why? A hundred years ago, country folk were clamouring to move to the towns and cities. Then, as now agricultural labouring was a low paid job, so they decided to become economic migrants and moved nearer to the higher paid jobs in the factories and mills.
 
Living in the country nowadays doesn’t mean working in the country. With the advent of motorways and high speed rail links, modern man has now the chance to live the dream.

But wait, is it really a dream? If you are one of these rustic wannabes, what exactly are you searching for!

Peace and Quiet?

I can tell you it’s no fun being woken up at five o’clock on a sunny morning to the sound of a tractor working in the field at the bottom of your garden and having to climb out of bed to shut the windows because of the clouds of dust that follow the damned thing.
 
Then there’s trying to sleep on a warm, late summer evening when a combine harvester is working until midnight to get the harvest in before the rain comes, and again getting out of bed to close the windows to keep the chaff out.

When you do finally drop off you are suddenly awakened by the dogs barking dementedly at a fox rifling your dustbin.

How about birdsong, you like birdsong, don’t you? I love hearing a few birds singing, but when every bird in a five mile radius decides to use your hedges to tune up at daybreak, the attraction starts to wane!
 
Sunday is shooting day. Everyone in the area with a blood lust and a shot gun tries to blast every rabbit and wood pigeon residing near the back of my house into oblivion on the day of rest.

Try sitting in the garden with a cup of tea on a Sunday morning and it’s like being on the set of a John Wayne movie!

To Get Close to Nature?

You can do that OK! Moles pushing up hills on your manicured lawn, rabbits gnawing down young plants and wood pigeons doing the same thing, that’s after they’ve eaten the entire contents of your bird table, depriving every other bird of an easy meal.

Then there are the mice that live in your shed and the visiting rats from the neighbouring fields, looking for a change in diet.

Did I mention the wasp’s nest and the incessantly squawking starlings in the loft?

Then there is the matter of adders sunbathing on the patio and grass snakes swallowing the frogs in the pond, whole.

Live in the countryside and you’ll never have to watch another wild life documentary!

Fresh Air?

It doesn’t come any fresher than the continual dust storms in the summer, the plethora of pollen and the diesel fumes from the tractors, an asthmatics dream.

The aroma of muck spreading or wet cabbages is an acquired taste (or smell) as well.

Low Crime Rate?

Don’t bank on it! Kid’s setting light to corn fields and joy riders dumping and burning out stolen cars.
 
The latest fad is trail bikers revving up their engine outside your house before they take off over the farmers crops. My local farmer had £10,000 worth of broccoli destined for Marks and Spencer’s vandalised in this way, a couple of years ago.
 
They may give the farmer a break and ride along public footpaths and bridleways, an illegal act in the UK.
 
Some mornings you will wake up, throw open the curtains and there it is, on the roadside verge opposite your house, a pile of builders rubble, car tyres and garden rubbish. You didn’t hear them, but while you were sleeping you had a visit from the townie fly tippers!

You may also be troubled with unreportable crime in the guise of horses and livestock trespassing in your front garden, grazing on the lawn and the herbaceous borders.

I can guarantee that you will never be bothered with police patrol cars passing your house. If you phone the police station in your nearest town for assistance, be prepared to wait a couple of days before they arrive. Of course, there is always a possibility that they can’t find your house, and never arrive.

Are You Made of the Right Stuff?

Summing up, do you really want noise, vermin, smells and crime?
 
To add to this, will you be happy driving for ten minutes to get your Sunday paper or a bottle of milk from your local shop?
 
Because of post office closures, do you really want to drive the ten miles to the nearest town to send a parcel?
 
You pay for 10MB broadband, do you want to receive just 1Mb because you live miles upon miles from the telephone exchange?

Do you mind your mobile phone being redundant at home because it is, and always will be, impossible to get a signal?

Will you be able to survive without lighting, heating, TV, desktop PC, washing machine, dishwasher, cordless phone, lighting and every electrical gadget in your life, when power lines are down for a couple of days in the middle of winter?

If you can answer yes to every one of these questions, then all I can say is ‘Welcome, neighbour.’!

However there are growing numbers of campaigners for farming that is biologically sound and economically just; notably some celebrity chefs in recent documentaries. They don’t consider themselves a bunch of romantics motivated by sentimentality for a countryside ideal; they believe it crucial for the planet to save the small producer, even if industrialists believe their destruction has been predetermined by economics and technology, regardless of our destruction of the environment.

The truth is that industrial agriculture is destructive and ultimately doomed to failure.

Every day we see global reports of environmental damage – pollution by toxic animal factory wastes and the spread of pests and diseases by the long-distance transportation of food, indifferent cruelty to animals, exploitation of cheap labour, the abuse of migrant workers, not to mention the threat of biological warfare by terrorists facilitated by global industrial practices.

What are our politicians doing about any of this? There is of course far too much money involved in industrial agriculture for any of our leaders to consider taking on board campaigners’ views.

Modern society also has widespread prejudice against country people.

In fact we should be supporting the world’s small farmers, and their ecologically sound farming techniques, in any way possible. Patronising comments about small producers, of small towns, of anything identifiable as provincial and rural (and therefore considered small minded) can be found everywhere: in comic strips, TV shows, newspaper editorials, magazines, and so on.

Small farmers and the people of small towns are rarely given the same respect or coverage in the media as things metropolitan or cosmopolitan, and you only have to look at the state of country roads and out of town public transport networks to see how much our own government really wants to invest in rural life.

Of course, it’s clear that not all small producers are living some kind of wonderful idyllic life, not all of them are ‘’salt of the earth” and not all of them are open minded and generous people. Stereotypes don’t work in any area of life. But we should never forget that farming is an ancient, useful, honourable vocation, requiring admirable intelligence and skill, a complex local culture, great patience and endurance, and moral responsibilities of the gravest kind.

Big business agriculture has replaced people with machines and chemicals and most people do not notice, or if they notice they do not care. The dispossession of farmers and their replacement by machines, chemicals, and oppressed migrants on slave labour wages is thought of by many as inevitable, and it is too late for correction.

The question is this: what is the best way to farm – not anywhere or everywhere, but in every one of the Earth’s fragile localities? Who will protect the world’s ecosystem when the small farmers have all gone?

Like most parents of young children, it can be a challenge to escape to the loo never mind “to the country” …but this Spring I have resolved to make more time for ME and to get more exercise in the fresh air – after all there’s plenty of it and it’s free! There’s no need to pay expensive club fees like at a gym, (and no worries of looking awful in a pair of leggings either!) just peace and quiet and lots of wide open spaces !

I am lucky to live on the edge of a forest and try whenever I can to “escape” the daily chores by taking my daughter to the forest park as we both love it up there! There’s something strangely “reassuring” about the tall pine trees that surround the play area there; just the fact that they have been there for so many years, surviving all the troubles of the world ! For me, forests have a strange “mystery” all of their own; sights, smells and sounds that capture the imagination and calm jangled nerves! In fact, I’m convinced I must have been one of Robin Hood’s gang in a former life !

Let’s face it, modern life can be too fast and busy; rushing from work to supermarket, nursery to home…T.V adverts seem to offer answers with their “instant” meals, quick-fix remedies to the stress of trying to cram too much into too little time and be “all things to all people”! I feel sure that if we all put just a little (half an hour!) time instead to stroll in the country side, or even sit in the garden we would be calmer, fitter and full of fresh energy to meet life’s demands ! After all, a worn out, grumpy parent is hardly much fun for a young child, (or partner) or a particularly good role model for that matter – surely we need to set an example that each of us deserves time to relax and “do our own thing” – what ever that may be!

I read something years ago that has stuck with me, reminding me to get my priorities in order – It was simply “Unless you take yourself out of the world, you will loose yourself in it!” and it says it all for me !

Most of the holidays involve some hard work to improve the countryside. They are a great way of meeting new people and cost very little with food all in the price. When you are looking at the different holidays take note of the accommodation as this can vary from very basic conditions with little amenities to good quality services.

You will need to have an adventurous, versatile spirit with an enjoyment of meeting new people. There are categories of holidays for different age ranges from young to old. Most of the holidays range from a 3-day break to a full week. One day out of the week is used to do something different like go for a walk or visit a place of interest.

The conservation tasks include dry-stone walling, constructing pathways and pruning trees and bushes. On an evening you can share a drink, have a game of cards, go for a walk and get to know each other better.

If you are thinking on going on one of these holidays I would definitely recommend it and I hope you have a fantastic time.