Apology

My apologies for not putting up a post last night. Unfortunately my Internet connection conspired against me. Despite being up until very late last night working on my mark book system I was unable to make lasting contact with the World Wide Web. It was very frustrating as it was the first time I've missed a day on the blog from Kenya since I started it.

The sound of a local funeral provided an interesting backdrop to my work last night and lasted well into the small hours of the morning. The soundscape was made even more interesting by frogs, crickets and the alarm on our solar power system which had obviously run out of sunshine! Maintaining the positive approach, the wildlife sounds are often very musical. They make an interesting soundtrack to the early morning.

I was also kept awake last night by the intransigence of the spreadsheet system I started on Friday. I’m glad you can’t get pizzas and energy drinks (the probably apocryphal mainstays of computer programmers) over here as I’m sure I would have been feeling bloated and wired if they were available. It’s worrying how easy it is to get hooked on solving computing problems. I think I have at last broken the back of the spreadsheet design now. Having written copious notes about the various design issues and solutions to them I've got the first prototype of the system running and will show it to some of our teachers tomorrow. It’s part of a plan to monitor the children’s progress in school more effectively by using time saving tools. I hope we can avoid the well documented drawbacks of being ‘driven by data’ but I do think it’s important that we have accurate information. The children we teach only get one shot at education so we need to make sure they are on target for as much of the time as possible.

The weather is a linking thread in many of the things that are happening out here at the moment. Most people cannot remember a time when it rained so heavily for so long and there are already dire predictions about the effects of the rain on the next harvest. Our solar system is struggling to deliver enough power because of the unusually cloudy weather that we are experiencing. It started to get quite gloomy and rained heavily at about three o’clock this afternoon, a good three hours earlier than usual. We are having to run our small generator to keep the lights on for long enough for the children to do their homework in the evening and to give the solar system time to recover and do a deep recharge. It’s only really the frogs who like the rain. It’s a shame that they choose to give voice to their happiness when the rest of the world wants to get to sleep!

The rain also made getting into church this morning a bit trickier than usual. The church ‘building’ is just over the road from our place. There is usually a trickle of water running down the far side of the road that is easy to step across. The run off from the hills close by have turned the trickle into a little stream and somebody has thoughtfully put three small stepping stones across it. I was reminded of more biblical river crossings watching the children crossing to go back over to our school classrooms for Sunday school. I’m sure it was just a coincidence that our Pastor, Kennedy, chose the Israelites crossing of the Red Sea as his main text for the sermon this morning.