Dancing the night away

Today has been very rewarding. I have managed to make good progress on both of my ‘big projects’ for this visit and was able to spend some time on the farm with Duncan, (our farm manager), Mary, (our manager) and a guy from the Agriculture department who gave us some helpful advice about dealing with water logging on one of our  plots. He was also very encouraging about the progress we have made on the farm. We are ‘learning by doing’ on the farm so we really appreciated a good report from the man from the ministry. As ministry advisors go our visitor was extremely knowledgeable and very professional. I did feel a bit sorry for him. Mary went to a farming workshop this morning and, I think, almost coerced him into visiting us. Mary is currently a woman on a mission with farming and is determined to make the most of every opportunity for improving our farm and advancing her own knowledge, (I am glad to say).

Our visitors have been a great help to us this week and have been hard at work with maths tuition, school field improvements and arts and crafts. It’s always a slightly anxious time as a new team of visitors settles in. I always worry that they won’t like the accommodation, the food, the climate, the activities or any combination of the above. Jessica, Daniel, Peter and Alex have been a delight to have round the place and I know that they have made a good impression on the children and staff. It is always good to spend time with young people who buck every negative stereotype of “the youths” and take what they are doing very seriously.

I also managed to spend some time this evening with our Standard 8 pupils, (the ‘candidates’ for the Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education exam). We have yet to decide how far we are prepared to go in relation to customary practices regarding the length of the school day for this class as they prepare for this important exam. (See yesterday’s blog). I’m sure that we will keep up their evening ’preps’ programme. During a relatively short trip to Kosele it is often difficult to keep on top of my to do list but I want to spend as much time as I can helping out during the evening study time. Our Standard 8 class are a really excellent group of young people and the teacher in me still enjoys the ‘penny drops’ moments you often experience when students are revising.

On a completely different but tangentially related note I also found an absolute gem of a news story in the newspaper that somebody had brought into the classroom this evening. You couldn’t make it up and it really couldn’t happen anywhere else. It would appear that all night dancing parties after male circumcision ceremonies have become an issue in one district in Kenya so the authorities have banned them. The mind boggles. From my understanding of circumcision the last thing I would want to do after experiencing it would be to celebrate, let alone dance all night.