Woodpile

Phrases like a snake in the grass or a snake in the woodpile don’t really have a lot of resonance in a place like England. Out here in Kenya, where there is a real possibility that a snake could be in either of those places, they are a bit more powerful. We have, fortunately had no snake incidents for some time but these phrases wandered across my mind earlier today.

Saturday tends to be chores day and the big chore today was sorting out the large pile of wood that has been occupying our volley ball pitch for the last week. Our wood is delivered in a lorry every once in a while. Once the driver has successfully parked up by our wood store he sits down for a rest and two other hefty looking guys chuck the wood off the lorry onto a big pile. The wood is left to dry for a little while and then another guy comes to ‘split’ it into manageable sized chunks. The idea of splitting the wood is a term from a by-gone age when an axe was used for this job. Nowadays the timber is ‘ripped’ with a chain saw.

At two this afternoon myself, Mr Isaiah (duty manager) and all the kids set to transferring the wood from the pile to the traditional style house that we use as a wood store. We had made a start on this task a couple of weeks ago and had put the first lot of wood into neat piles depending on size. There is a real art to creating a wood pile that is both compact and easy to take wood from without risking major injury. The kids are now fairly well practised as a chain gang so we got going. I was at the end of the line stacking the larger pieces of timber. I made a lot of noise laying the first few pieces of timber just in case a snake had decided to make itself at home since our last efforts. Fortunately nothing stirred.

Working with the children on a task like this is always good for some light relief. They are very adept at working out who is contributing to the work and who is slacking and tell each other off very readily. The production line stalled a couple of times but we soldiered on for just over an hour pretty much none stop until all the wood had been shifted. It made a nice change from slaving over a hot computer or observing in classrooms. Our newly appointed teacher for Year 4 is very keen on volley ball so I’m looking forward to seeing him inspiring our pupils into action on our newly reclaimed ‘court’.