Terry's Blog

Testimonial

2012-03-04T11:03:00.001-08:00

Somedays it's quite difficult to comprehend what life is really like forour neighbours in the community. In church today one of the olderladies in the congregation shared a 'testimonial' that really showedjust how different life is here.

Themembers of our church are a very faithful group of people who come tochurch every Sunday because they want to worship God and share sometime with each other. We meet in a small 'building' made of wood andcorrugated iron. One of the walls has a fairly large gap in it,(which is good because it let's the breeze in). It's a very simple,honest structure and perfectly fits the group of people who meetthere on Sunday and during the week for bible study and fellowship.

Beforethe sermon whoever is leading the service encourages church membersto share any testimonials they have. Today one lady's testimonialreally moved me. The lady explained that she had been suffering fromsome serious disturbances and problems in her life, and asked thechurch members if they would pray for her. She went on to explain twoof her problems. The lady at one time had a sheep and two goats, ashe goat and a kid. The she goat got sick and died, despite beingtreated by the vet. (It wasn't quite clear how long ago this happenedbut, I think,it was fairly recently). As if that wasn't enough a dogkilled the kid and had eaten half of it before the lady could chaseit away. As an encouragement for the congregation this didn't seem tobe going well. At this point in the story the lady said that hersheep started to show signs of being sick. I couldn't imagine whatawful fate the poor sheep had suffered. The story picked up. The ladycouldn't think of anything to do other than pray that the sheep wouldnot die. She prayed. The sheep lived without any other interventionand the story encouraged us all to reach out to God and pray.

Astestimonials go it was unlike anything I have ever heard in England.I guess dogs attack livestock in the UK and goats die. I can'timagine these misfortunes being as 'life and death' in England asthey are out here. As you walk around the community and see how handto mouth most people's lives are you begin to understand howdevastating compounded misfortunes can be. As a Christian from thewest I am humbled and challenged by the depth of faith that ourchurch members have.

All change

2012-03-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

Thepace here slows a little on Saturdays. The children get up a bitlater and there is less rush as they don't have to worry aboutgetting ready for school. After breakfast it's time for washingclothes, tidying the dorms and then relaxing – playing football,reading, doing homework.

Inour seemingly constant stream of innovations and change that maychange a little for the older children soon. My wife Judi emailed mean interesting article about how one of the top High Schools in Kenyaprepares it's students for exams. The 'traditional' way to do it isto make the kids get up incredibly early, make them cram and reviseall day then do the same again until late at night. Six in themorning until ten at night isn't uncommon. The government banned'holiday tuition' for school students a couple of years ago.'Tuition' meant that the students who are preparing for public examsgot to spend their holidays slaving over a hot text book as well asthe term time. (It was also a great opportunity for the schools tomake a bit more money by charging the students for the privilege).

Thefull text makes an interesting read.

KenyaHighSchool:Saturdayisaworkingday,butnotuitionhere.

AtKenya High, ranked seventh with a mean of 10.6, the syllabus iscovered by the beginning of May. Thereafter, candidates embark ongroup discussions which are guided by the teachers.

“Itisalearner-drivenapproachwithteachersonlyguidingtoensurethebarisraisedtoourstandard,”saidtheschool’sdeputyprincipalMsLucyMugendi.

Lowerclasses should have covered the syllabus by October of every yearbefore embarking on the next class’ work.

Theschool timetable runs from 6.20am when students attend preps up to7.20. During this time teachers of compulsory subjects attend to thestudents.

“Theydothisforfreeaswehavenotaskedparentstopayussomething,”saysMsMugendi.

Theythen go to a 40 minute morning devotion before beginning normalclasses which run up to four. They also go for evening classes, whichrun up to nine in the evening.

“Wewantourstudentstohaveenoughrest.Indeedby10.30pmthelightsareout,”shesays.

Theschool, which has a population of more than 1,000 students, has twogames days, Mondays for Form Three and Four, and Friday for the lowerclasses.

Sincethe holiday tuition was banned by the government the school now hasclasses up to Saturday. “Classes begin at 7.30am and run up to 4pm.“Teachers get a small token per session, but mostly it is sacrificeand love for the students that drive teachers,” said Ms Mugendi.

Twointernal CATs per term and random assessment tests, which are eitherset internally or sourced from outside depending on the subjectheads, are also administered.

Chessand scrabble are encouraged to sharpen thinking capacity and build ontheir word power. However, holiday time is strictly for relaxation.

MASENOschool

Hereteachers work hard to cover the syllabus on time and give thestudents time to revise and interact to improve their weak areas.

Fora student to be promoted to the next class, the deputy principalsaid, he has to meet what the school calls The 3C’s Policy—Character, Class work and Conduct.

Wewill be having a staff meeting on Monday to discuss our approach tohomework and teaching on Saturdays. All of the top Kenyan HighSchools have the 'advantage' of being boarding schools. This makes iteasy to implement a regime like the one described above. Havingattended boarding myself in the 70s I remember 'preps' and fairlystructured time management. In the UK wealthy parents still pay forthe privilege of having somebody else put their children through theropes at boarding schools. It obviously delivers results.

Wewill be trying to set up a timetable that gets the best of bothworlds – creating an environment which encourages our students tobe disciplined and successful in their studies and allows sufficient'play' time to prevent them from becoming 'dull' boys and girls. Itwill be a very interesting staff meeting. All of our teaching staffhave been drilled through the study till you drop school of academicrigour. I'm optimistic that we will deliver a good result. LastAugust, during the school holidays, all of the teachers happilyabandoned the traditional approach to 'tuition', (which they allagreed had been a complete waste of time when they did it as studentsthemselves), and embraced a completely different approach topreparing the oldest pupils for their public exams. We are all up fora change to 'the system'.

Old friends

2012-03-02T12:08:00.002-08:00

My to do list took a bit of a poundingtoday, in typically Kenyan fashion. In another “who moved mycheese?” moment yesterday I had an inspired burst of to do listcompilation and consolidation, resulting in a large but, I thought,achievable set of tasks for completion. The best laid plans …........

The basic 'problem' today was a stringof interruptions from visitors. The problem was compounded by thefact that I hadn't seen any of them for some time so there was a lotto catch up on. Consequently the day just got consumed by swappingnews and chewing the fat. It was, of course, very nice to renew andstrengthen friendships. Kenya is a very hospitable country –entertaining visitors is extremely important and not to be rushed.It's another culture clash. We westerners often tend to 'do'conversations and relationships in a kind of shorthand. This isn't anoption in Kenya. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's worthpersevering with.

All hands on deck

2012-03-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

Our visitors from Cisco left thismorning, leaving a number of sad children and staff behind. They madea really good impression while they were here and will, I am sure,have inspired a number of the children. After having had visitors forthe last couple of weeks the place felt a bit quiet today. The lullwill only be temporary. We still have a lot to do.

As I type the rain is pounding on ourroof and I've had to turn the mp3 player up full to hear it. If thisreally is the start of the rainy season we will have our work cut outfor the next 10 days or so to prepare the fields for planting.Duncan, our farm manager, is accompanying our visitors to Nairobi aspart of his training and won't be back until Saturday. When hereturns we will have to convene a major planning session for thefarm. There is now a lot to co-ordinate. The goat enclosure should beready next week and the land has mostly been cleared from last year'sharvest. We should be receiving a visit from an agronomist for adviceabout running the greenhouse soon. We will be putting the FarmingGod's Way method into practise again this season so will be makingmarker ropes for measuring out the fields for planting. We will berunning a training session on Wednesday for our Agriculture Collegestudents and two other groups from projects outside Kosele,(including a guy from Uganda). After the training it will be allhands on deck for digging, planting and mulching our fields.

(For more information on Farming God'sWay go to www.farming-gods-way.org).

Thenext step to completing our plans for agricultural expansion is tofind out how viable it would be to set up a fish pond. We have ameeting with the local fisheries officer on Monday and we are hopingthat he will be able to tell us whether or not it would be possibleto start a fish pond for about five hundred fish on our land. It'spotentially a very exciting project. The fishermen on Lake Victoriahave, for a number of reasons, been finding it difficult to net goodcatches of late. The price of fish has gone up and fish farming hasbecome more popular. The fish market is very lucrative. Being able tosell into it would take us one step closer to self-sufficiency.

Drip, drip, drip

2012-02-29T12:40:00.002-08:00

Our greenhouse has been finished inrecord time and has caused great excitement among the staff and, Isuspect, our neighbours. We are now in plotting and scheming mode aswe make decisions about what to grow in it. There are a number ofpossibilities so it should be an interesting discussion. The dripirrigation is amazing. I've seen videos and read books about dripirrigation but never seen it in action. Jackson, (the engineer whosupervised the construction of the greenhouse), reckons that turningthe drip on for three minutes in the morning and three minutes in theevening will water the crops in the greenhouse sufficiently.

As I type I can hear the gentle patterof rain on the roof. As it's 11:20 pm this is typically good timingand I hope it continues for some time. Having previously reported myhopes that the rains had started, only to have them dashed on therocks of further drought, I am reallyhoping that this is the start of a prolonged wet spell. This is thesecond night we have had rain, accompanied by a great fireworks showin the sky. I can almost hear our vegetables growing.

Our friends from Cisco andsalesforce.com are setting off on their journey home tomorrow. Theywill be taking the same route as the previous team, spending thenight at a safari lodge to break up the trip back to Nairobi. Theyhave given 110% and we will be sad to see them go. Thank you Mike,Sally and Chris.

Having had two teams stay at thevisitors centre now we have been encouraged by the lack of teethingproblems and impressed by the way the solar power system hasperformed. It is always a worry establishing new systems. We aredetermined to develop sustainable approaches to solving everydayproblems and have made a major investment in solar power on ourcompound. If you can't make solar work where we are it won't workanywhere.

The visitors centre has vacancies for alittle while now, giving us a chance to reflect on how we manage itand to design the hotel and tourism curriculum for our young people –using the visitors centre as a training 'hotel'. Anybody who wouldlike to offer their services as volunteers for our project or use ourplace as a base for tourism should email me atterrymkenya@googlemail.com.Book early to avoid disappointment!

Pesky Rustlers

2012-02-28T11:42:00.003-08:00

Having previously written that livingin rural Kenya often feels like being stuck in the middle of a ThomasHardy/Charles Dickens novel I think I will have to extend the literaryframe of reference to include westerns, (the cowboys, indians andrustlers variety). Westerns are a genre of literature that I reallyenjoyed when I was a teenager. If you've never read anything by JTEdson or Zane Grey novel you should give them a try.

Not very far from our place, (but farenough away not to worry), a small scale battle seems to have brokenout between members of the Kalenjin and Luo tribes. Kenya is a verytribal country so it is not unusual for this type of confrontation toflare up – especially on tribal boundaries. It is slightly unusualfor conflict to occur in our part of the country. It normally happensin the north up on the border with Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda.Cross border skirmishes and clashes between villages are commonplaceon these wild, porous borders. In times past the 'battles' would havebeen fought with traditional weapons like bows and arrows, machetesand spears. Nowadays the fighting is more likely to be in the form ofa shoot out – the trusty AK47 being a favourite weapon.

The violence in our area started out,as nearly all such incidents do, as a simple case of cattle rustling.According to The Standard, (one of the main daily papers in Kenya):

“Skirmishesset off by cattle thefts along the borders of Rift Valley and Nyanzaprovinces have escalated hostilities between two neighbouringcommunities, and it is feared the situation could worsen if it gets apolitical dimension.

Oneperson was killed and five others seriously injured as the violenceescalated along Nandi South-Muhoroni border, despite politicalleaders dashing there to make passionate appeals for calm in a seriesof meetings through the day. Whatstarted as a disagreement over theft of a herd of 44 cattle last weekled to wanton destruction of life and property. Hundreds of peoplewere still fleeing the area last evening after hundreds of acres ofsugar cane plantations were set on fire, stoking the bad memories ofthe inter-ethnic clashes that have in the past rocked the area.”

Asa westerner it is very hard to imagine the kind of history andculture that lies behind this kind of conflict. It is particularlyworrying at this time in Kenya because of the imminent presidentialelection. The presidential election held in December 2007 turned intoa very nasty blood bath in January 2008 as tribal rivalries flaredinto major violence. Two of the current 'contenders' for thepresidential title this year have been called to the ICC in the Hagueto face charges linked to the atrocities of the 2007/8 election. Thepolitical atmosphere in Kenya is currently very tense, so it is easyto see why the conflict over cattle rustling is being analysedthrough a political lens.

Oneof our teachers, who lived in the affected area as a child, dismissesthe political angle. In her experience there has always been mistrustand conflict between the two communities in question. The currentflare up is, from this point of view, regrettable but easilyunderstandable. It is, however, equally easy to understand the viewthat this week's problem on the borders of Rift Valley and Nyanzaprovinces does not bode well for the election later in the year,(most probably in December).

Iwould like to believe that Kenya learned its lesson as it teetered onthe edge of major internal conflict in 2007/8. I'm sure that this isa widely held view. In the mean time I hope a suitably constitutedposse is heading for the afflicted area to round up the 'peskyrustlers' and restore law and order before heading off into theKenyan sunset.

Greenhouse progress

2012-02-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

I hadn’t really appreciated how big an area 8 metres x 24 metres isuntil I saw our greenhouse plot this afternoon. The current team of visitors havenow cleared all the ground and the first support posts have been cemented intoplace. Once the cover has gone on, our greenhouse is going to look and feel likea small hanger. The engineer from Amiran, (the company that supplied thegreenhouse), is pleased with progress and is doing a very professional job,making sure everything is done to a high standard. I’m very impressed.

Duncan our farm manager is also very excited by the greenhouse. Wetalked this evening about how it was going and he is clearly delighted that westand a good chance of having the whole thing up in three days, (the engineeroriginally said it was a good four days work). We are planning to grow tomatoesand kale, (sukuma wiki), in the greenhouse and Duncan is confident that we will beable to supply all our own needs for tomatoes and sukuma wiki and have someleft over to sell. I’m as keen as he is to get going. As well as an engineer tohelp us erect the greenhouse, we have paid for the services of an agronomist whowill come and advise us about what to grow in it and how we maintain it. It isdifficult to avoid the temptation to plot and scheme about expanding ourgreenhouse operation. It seems to have so much potential. We have, fortunately,avoided running before we can walk in all of our past projects so I’m suresanity and common sense will prevail again this time. Still ……. I’m sure wehave space for at least two more greenhouses!

Internet/Rain conspiracy

2012-02-26T11:38:00.002-08:00

Apologies for the headline blog yesterday. I couldn’t get an Internetsignal for long enough to get the blog posted and can only do the title on thephone that I use as my emergency Internet backup. I will obviously have to geta smarter phone. Having got into the habit of blogging every day it is veryfrustrating when the technology does not cooperate. I guess I should bethankful that it works at all – we mzungus, (white people), take an awful lotfor granted.

It’s been a very busy week, as usual. A new Cisco team arrivedyesterday. It was almost like a relay changeover as the outgoing team fromCisco met up with the new team at Nairobiairport yesterday morning. The team who were returning home worked like Trojansand the new team have started in exactly the same spirit. All of our visitorsfrom Cisco have been very ‘can do’ people and our work is much richer, (notsimply financially), for it. The new team have the challenge of erecting s verylarge greenhouse in three and a half days. If they carry on at the rate theyare going we can look forward to having a greenhouse before they leave.

The weather, (sorry!), has been very frustrating this week. Everyindication of rain for about the last four days, (i.e. late afternoonwind/breeze, grey clouds, spits of rain), but, at the last moment no rain. Theclouds seem to either evaporate or they turn and head off in the oppositedirection to us. This is becoming a bit disconcerting as we are rapidlyapproaching the planting season. It is really important that we get our seedplanted at the optimum time. A false start by the rain does not help us verymuch.

The Internet seems to be holding up just now so I will post this beforeit goes again. I wonder if it and the rain have some sort of pact between themto wind me up.

I don't seem to have much of an Internet connection on my laptop so this a headline from my mobile. Had a great flight on a small plane today.............. best landing ever!

2012-02-25T12:55:00.002-08:00

Rough roads

2012-02-24T13:50:00.001-08:00

I’m typing the blog tonight from the relative comfort of a cottage at a safari lodge just outside Nakuru – six hours drive from our place and three hours drive from Nairobi. I’m travelling with the Cisco team who have been with us all week to meet up with three of their colleagues who will be staying with us from tomorrow.

The drive from Kosele to the safari lodge would have been amazing fun in a rally car but was a bit less enjoyable in a 9 seater mini bus. We have travelled quite a distance on bad roads today; largely due to repairs on the main road we should have taken giving rise to diversions across country. As it has been dry the extra traffic on the dirt roads we used stirred up the most choking sand storms and reduced visibility to zero at times. The secret of successfully negotiating dirt roads is to scan the road ahead for potholes. In these conditions it’s very difficult to do this so it was a more than usually bumpy ride. The dirt roads are unforgiving on vehicles. We saw large articulated lorries pulled over to repair punctures and about half way through the longest rough road section fell victim to the same problem ourselves – a puncture in the front driver’s side tyre. It’s slightly disconcerting changing a tyre as buses and lorries hurtle past you, and it was very strange, at different points along the road, experiencing grid lock. Lorries, minibuses and cars vied with each other for passing spaces like competitors from the cartoon series The Wacky Races.

We travelled across an interesting cross section of Kenyan landscape today, from the dry dusty hills around Kosele, through the ‘tea zone’ and in and around the hills of the Mau forest before finishing our journey just outside Nakuru. I always enjoy travelling around Kenya, (on the rare occasions that I get a chance to), and it was interesting seeing how each community makes best use of the resources that are locally available. Driving on the dirt road through the Mau forest I was surprised to see homes that looked like alpine huts, made of wood and, in one or two cases, painted in bright colours. I was amazed that farmers in this area were able to grow any crops at all on the steep slopes of the hills. When it rains I could imagine both crops and houses just sliding down the hill.

It should be an interesting day tomorrow. We will be setting off very early to travel to Nairobi to fly off in different directions. Three of the team I am travelling will be off to Heathrow and two will be flying to Mombasa for a few days before returning to London. I shall be flying back in a small plane with a fresh team of volunteers to the landing strip near our place. As I’ve never flown in a small plane before I have mixed feelings about the flight but am, on the whole, looking forward to it. I’m definitely looking forward to meeting our new friends, who have not been to Kosele before.

Thank you team

2012-02-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

This week seems to have flown past and our first team of visitors from Cisco this year have nearly come to the end of their trip. Tomorrow I will be travelling with them to a safari lodge about six hours drive away, to breakup their journey back to Nairobi and make sure that they arrive at Nairobi airport in good time for their flight home on Saturday. I’m travelling to Nairobi airport with them then meeting a second Cisco team and flying back to a small landing strip near our place with them. I know that many modern companies operate a ‘hot desking’ policy to make the most of office space. Our two Cisco teams are taking the concept a step further by ‘hot planing’. The first team are flying back to Heathrow on the plane that the second team come out to Kenya on. It’s all go!

The team that are travelling back tomorrow have worked like Trojans during their stay and have made fantastic progress on building a goat enclosure for our rapidly developing farm. All of this team have been to Kosele before but I think they were a little surprised at how hot and dry it has been this week. Lugging sacks of concrete about and digging holes for wooden posts is not easy in this weather – it’s hard on the muscles and the skin. I know the children in our home and school have enjoyed the time our visitors have spent with them so thank you Camilla, Emma, Julie, Tony and Dave. You have been fantastic.

The team that will be arriving on Saturday have an equally busy time ahead of them. Their biggest single challenge will be working with a team of ‘engineers’ to erect a large greenhouse. All of this team are first time visitors to Kenya and I’m really looking forward to meeting them and introducing them to life in Kosele. It sounds corny to the point, perhaps, of cliché to say that visiting Africa is a life changing experience – but it’s true. Everybody who has visited Kosele has been deeply affected by the contrast between their own lives and life in rural

Kenya

Being plagued by mosquitoes is certainly one of the ‘African’ experiences that we can all definitely do without. I have been driven under the protection of the mosquito net over my bed to finish the blog tonight. I was sure that mosquitoes fill up on blood when they bite you, so I can’t understand why they bite me more on the boniest bits of my hands, toes and ankles than anywhere else. I will definitely be asking God how these horrible insects fit into the great scheme of things. Inconvenient for me, deadly to the thousands of children who die from malaria each year. According to the World Health Organisation, (WHO), a child dies of Malaria in Africa every minute – despite a recent fall in mortality rates. The WHO website contains the following cheery comment on malaria in Africa:

“The long lifespan and strong human-biting habit of the African vector species is the main reason why 85% of the world’s malaria deaths are in Africa”

Just what we need – geriatric mosquitoes with a strong preference for people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is “working with partners around the world to reach a day when no human being has malaria.” I hope they find lots of partners and thar they all work very hard. That day can’t come a moment too soon.

Mosquito proof

2012-02-22T11:16:00.001-08:00

I had to go to Kisumu today to pick a visitor from South Africa up from the airport. We went the ‘scenic’ route, avoiding the major potholes and catching all the local kids on their way to school. Driving by Lake Victoria was inspiring as all the fishing boats were heading out for the day and creating a very biblical scene. It looks like the water hyacinth is coming back on our side of the lake. This aquatic pest grows very quickly, making it difficult for the fisherman to push their boats out. It also reduces oxygen levels in the lake, so it will be bad news if it gets a foothold again.

About twenty minutes out from our place on the journey to Kisumu I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to take my Malerone, (anti malarial), tablet for today. I’ve only just started taking the tablets daily – my previous anti malarial was a very convenient one a week regime. Remembering to take Malerone every day will be a challenge to start with. I tend to be in a rush most of the time and its easy to forget. Malaria is, unfortunately, only too common in our area so I will have to improve my memory very quickly. Getting malaria would be no joke.

I try not to get too freaked out by things medical in Kenya, as it would be quite worrying if I allowed myself to dwell on them. A number of scenarios did cross my mind about the prospects of malaria though. Like. Have I got enough anti malarial resistance in me already to cover one day without taking a tablet? Do the tablets last for exactly twenty hours and if so have I been bitten and contracted malaria already? If I stay in the car until we get back can I avoid getting bitten by a mosquito? Where can I get hold of Malerone in Kisumu at eight in the morning? It ended up being easy to buy some more Malerone and I am now dosed up again. It was a sobering experience for a few moments though. The first missionaries to Africa suffered dreadfully from malaria and a host of other environmentally related health problems.

As I seem to have blogged about wildlife threats to life and limb for two days in a row now it’s probably time to risk a trip to the shower and then bed. While we were in Kisumu I bought new torches - one for our new night guard and one for me. It feels a bit over the top taking a stick as well as a huge torch with me when I go out into the compound in the dark, but you can never be sure what lies lurking in some dark, damp spot at night. It’s probably good to be on the safe side.

Bigger, better torches required

2012-02-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

The ‘official’ visit went as well as can be expected today. I think we made a pretty good impression on our visitors. We have been waiting for some time now for our official registration as a children’s home to be finalised and I’m hopeful that today’s visit will make it happen at last.

We have fascinating conversations some evenings. We have been experimenting with small torches for our night guards instead of the huge lantern like things that they have been carrying. The small torch casts a very powerful beam with new batteries and we were hoping to be able to save some money and improve security at the same time. Unfortunately it seems that the new torches eat batteries so we will be abandoning the experiment and going back to the status quo. As well as the sound economic case for keeping the old torches Mary, our manager, let slip another, much more practical reason during our discussion.

“Did you know that last night one of the guards killed a snake?”

“No I didn’t Mary. How big was it?”

“Quite big.” (Demonstrates about an inch in diameter and eighteen inches long)

“Oh!”

“Yes, so you see it is very important that the night guards have powerful torches all night”.

You can’t really argue with that kind of logic. The snake in question was a black mamba. National Geographic is a mine of useful, (if somewhat unnerving), information about this snake:

“Black mambas are fast, nervous, lethally venomous, and when threatened, highly aggressive. They have been blamed for numerous human deaths, and African myths exaggerate their capabilities to legendary proportions. For these reasons, the black mamba is widely considered the world’s deadliest snake.

Black mambas live in the savannas and rocky hills of southern and eastern Africa. They are Africa’s longest venomous snake, reaching up to 14 feet (4.5 meters) in length, although 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) is more the average. They are also among the fastest snakes in the world, slithering at speeds of up to 12.5 miles per hour (20 kilometres per hour).

Black mambas are shy and will almost always seek to escape when confronted. However, when cornered, these snakes will raise their heads, sometimes with a third of their body off the ground, spread their cobra-like neck-flap, open their black mouths and hiss. If an attacker persists, the mamba will strike not once, but repeatedly, injecting large amounts of potent neuro- and cardiotoxin with each strike.

Before the advent of black mamba antivenin, a bite from this fearsome serpent was 100 percent fatal, usually within about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, antivenin is still not widely available in the rural parts of the mamba’s range, and mamba-related deaths remain frequent.”

So now you know. I’m all for floodlighting the place!

Moving in and rising to a challenge

2012-02-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

Another day of, thankfully, confounded expectations today. I had thought that our move into the new classrooms would be a bit chaotic and fairly time consuming. Thanks to another good team effort things went very smoothly and everybody was in class teaching by 9.30 am. The classrooms are huge! The new block of four classrooms will be home to our lower school and will make it possible to take more children into the school.

Our team of visitors from Cisco have been doing their bit for the Mad Dogs and Englishmen stereotype today, (and a Scotsman too!). They have worked incredibly hard, digging out foundations for our goat enclosure. As it has not rained for some considerable time the ground is like concrete, so their task has been made doubly hard. For those of you old enough to remember the show, this project is a bit like Challenge Anneka. This BBC programme, which was popular in the 1990s involved carrying off an outrageously impossible challenge in a very short time. Our team have the delights of buying all the building materials in Oyugis, (our local town), first thing tomorrow. As its market day in Oyugis tomorrow it should be a good outing.

We have the intriguing prospect of a visit from the ‘men, (and possible women), from the ministry’ tomorrow. The ministry in question is the Children’s Department and the visitors will be coming from Nairobi. I talked to the DCO, (District Children’s Officer), this morning to confirm the visit so that we can prepare for it. He told me that the visitors would definitely be arriving but he didn’t know what time they would come to our place or how many of them there would be. We will be getting a crate of sodas in to be on the safe side, (on the grounds that people from Nairobi will probably expect sodas and not the hot milky tea that we normally give visitors from closer to home).

We also have a visitor arriving from South Africa tomorrow so it promises to be an interesting day.

Praise the Lord

2012-02-19T10:47:00.000-08:00

I really should have had more faith! We have had a very encouraging outcome in the case of the little boy who was the subject of last night’s blog. You may remember that we were not very optimistic about his chances of receiving any kind of examination or treatment until Monday and that we, (and the doctor who was treating him), were worried about his condition.

Last night we decided that Ian and Hilda would make an early start this morning to the closest hospital to us to see what could be done for the lad. As they were preparing to go Hilda managed to get through to the doctor at the hospital treating the child, and found out that he had, despite all of our worst fears, been operated on at midnight and seemed to be making good progress. You can probably imagine the sense of relief and celebration at hearing this news.

I guess prayer is a hard enough thing to get your head round if you do believe in God. It’s certainly hard to explain to people who are sceptical about faith. As a Christian I believe in the power of praying and pray very regularly, (about all sorts of things). Last night we prayed about the little boy’s situation – specifically praying for the problem to be sorted out. While we slept our prayer was answered. It’s easy to say that the boy was delivered from his situation by a caring doctor and an efficient and timely surgical procedure, (which he was). Experience, however, suggests that the treatment the child received was little short of miraculous – especially given the very poor picture painted by the doctor in the hospital yesterday afternoon. Believe it or not. It could be a coincidence. I do know that when I don’t pray the coincidences don’t happen. I’m going to continue praying and thanking God for answers to prayer. I really take encouragement from the good result we have had today.

(Ultra) Sounding off

2012-02-18T11:55:00.000-08:00

After all the last minute fixing and fitting with our Visitors’ Centre our first guests are tucked up and recovering from a very long journey from the UK to our place. I’m sure there will be one or two, hopefully, small things to sort out as we go along but it’s been an encouraging start. In keeping with our vocational training aspirations we arranged for two of our older girls to prepare and serve supper in the Visitors’ Centre tonight and they did a great job – the nicest rice and beans I’ve eaten all week.

I feel really sorry for Hilda this evening. She has had the most horrendous day trying to arrange an ultra sound for a two year old boy who has an obstructed bowel. Over the years I have had some very frustrating experiences in Kenyan Hospitals, but nothing to match Hilda’s marathon today. The boy is the grandson of one of our staff, and his medical nightmare started earlier this week. The blockage in his belly has got worse over the course of the week and he was sent for treatment at the District Hospital in Oyugis, (our closest town). He was treated quite promptly for malaria but this didn’t do a lot to help. An x-ray was taken of his abdomen but it looked more like a map of Lake Victoria than anything else. An ultra sound would provide a better diagnosis.

Hilda set off on her mission to find a hospital that could do an ultra sound this morning, and finally made it back to our place at about 7 pm, having been to 5 hospitals in two different towns – all to no avail as none of them were able to perform the ultra sound. Tonight the child is in a hospital in Kisii, (about forty minutes drive away and much longer by public transport). The hospital he is in is unable to perform basic diagnostic tests and is unlikely to have anybody to perform an ultra sound until Monday. In the meantime the child’s situation is not getting any better.

Talking about the whole experience with Ian and Hilda tonight made us all think how fortunate we are in the West to have such good medical care. Our expectations of health care in Scotland and England are incredibly high, as is the standard of care. I know there are people who would say that basic nursing care and the whole experience of being in hospital are both poor in the UK at the moment. I haven’t been in hospital for a while so am in position to comment but, as far as I am aware, nobody has to share a bed with another patient in UK hospitals, doctors are generally on call 24/7 and you don’t have to pop across the road to the nearest pharmacy to buy the drugs you need as a hospital in-patient. Kenya is not a good place to be sick in – especially in a rural area like ours.

Ian and Hilda will be on the case, trying to secure the right treatment for this little boy tomorrow morning. As they go through the torturous task of finding out what can be done we can only pray that he will be able to hang on for long enough to receive the right treatment. I know that Ian and Hilda will do their best to make sure there is a good outcome to this very sad story. Unfortunately their best will be up against the best our local hospitals have to offer, so it is difficult to predict the outcome. It’s easy to ask the question “What would they do if we weren’t here?” in cases like this one as a way of managing the mixed emotions, (compassion, anger and frustration), that churn you up as you become involved. It’s a question that is easier to ask when you are safely home in the UK. Once you are ‘on the ground’ and have been made aware of the facts of cases like this one it is not easy to step back and say “I’m not here!”

Great team effort

2012-02-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

What a day – trying to make sure our new Visitors Centre doesn’t look like it’s still being built when our visitors arrive has been a challenge but everybody has pulled off a great team effort and it is now finished. I thought it would probably be a close run thing yesterday and that’s the way it turned out. At 3.30 pm we didn’t have power for the lights in half of the building. A phone call to the contractor and the arrival of the ‘on call’ electrician put us on full power by 5.30. I’m sure the paint on the doors will have dried completely by tomorrow afternoon!

During the course of the day it occurred to me that we are now in a position to extend our vocational training for the older children to include a course in hotel and tourist services. Our Visitors Centre will, we hope, be regularly occupied by teams from a number of different backgrounds, who have a heart to work with a project like ours for a while. We don’t quite offer Hilton Dubai standard accommodation but learning to manage it would certainly help our young people to appreciate the skills required to work in the tourist industry. Watch this space. (And if you do fancy volunteering for a ‘holiday’ with a difference get in touch with me:)

terrymkenya@googlemail.com

To cap off a thoroughly TIA, (This Is Africa), day, tonight I went with our two night guards to a rental house just up the road to intervene in a domestic dispute between the two young women who rent the house. They are both in very poor circumstances and Ian and Hilda are assisting them by paying the rent. The two ladies had obviously had a major fall out tonight as one of our guards heard the shouting from our place. When we arrived at the house the situation was more peaceful, though the atmosphere was still rather tense. The house was full of neighbours who were also trying to calm the situation down. It soon became apparent that there was not much that could be done, other than encourage the two ladies to keep the peace and pray, (which is what we did). As we walked back to our place one of the guards said to me, “The problem is they will lock the door and then start fighting again”. I really hope they don’t. Walking up the road I couldn’t help thinking how different this life is from the one I usually live in England. Some days its like stepping back in time and being immersed in the plot of a Thomas Hardy novel.

Long rains

2012-02-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

The Saturday deadline for completing our new visitors’ centre is rapidly approaching. One of the classrooms is full of settees and chairs and we have another room crammed with bed frames, mattresses and seat cushions. I'm starting to feel like the owner of one of those Mediterranean hotels from a number of years ago, when tourists were flocking to holiday destinations to find that the hotel they had booked was actually a building site. I am confident that everything will be ready for our first visitors this year by Saturday morning, but it could be a bit touch and go.

I am now, officially, really excited about the weather. I promise not to go on about it after today, (unless we have a major weather event), but …… this evening we had the first proper rain since last December. I have written before about the practicality of the climate around Kosele – sun during the day, rain mostly during the evening. Tonight’s rain fitted the pattern perfectly. A strong breeze at around 6 p.m. to advertise the rain then a steady, (but not torrential), downpour for about an hour and a half. The children will, I am sure, have thanked God for tonight’s rain as it should mean we don’t need to water the vegetables by hand tomorrow morning.

Until you live in place where there is a strong chance of drought conditions, it is difficult to appreciate just how dry conditions can become when there is no rain. You see the obvious signs – leaves wilting on trees and bushes, dry patchy scrub with no new growth of grass and obviously dried up water holes and ponds. Somewhat paradoxically you only realise how dry the earth has become after is has rained. When I was in Kosele last November a long period of rain meant that our compound looked like it had a stream running through it each time the heavens opened. Walking to the classrooms this evening, after the rain, it was difficult to tell it had rained at all. It was as if all the water had just been sucked deep into the ground. As if the soil was hoarding the moisture.

Hopefully tonight’s change in the weather will be sustained. It would be a foolish farmer who rushed to plant his seed after the first sign of rain. We will need a couple of weeks of consistent rainfall before we are ready to trust our seed and fertiliser to the elements. There is too much riding on the coming harvest for everybody in our community to make mistakes at planting time. It is already clear that the previous harvest was meagre for some of our neighbours. The food will be running out within the next month for many families, and the next season’s harvest has yet to be planted. The coming season is called the ‘long rains’. We will pray that they are.

You win some, you lose some

2012-02-15T11:17:00.001-08:00

Today was very busy and very hot. I had to go to Kisumu, (our nearest ‘big’ town about ninety minutes drive away). I had a number things to do including picking up some anti-malarial drugs I had ordered, (I think I’ve been taking the ‘old school’ drug, Lariam, for long enough now – the dreams are getting more bizarre!). The trip also gave me an opportunity to test drive a Landrover that we have been considering buying. It made a pleasant change maintaining a constant speed, whatever the road conditions, and having a comfortable ride. Our own vehicle slows down to a crawl at the slightest gradient and, despite fitting new shock absorbers recently, the ride is a bit ‘hard’ to say the least. I asked our friend Hamir at Silverline Motors, (Great garage, Great Service), to give the ‘candidate’ Landrover the once over and he told me that it was a "clean car" but overpriced. The vendor wouldn’t drop the price so we are still in the market for a new vehicle.

Having failed at bartering on the ‘new car’ front I did have a minor haggling success on the high street in Kisumu today. I have managed to break the prescription glasses that I brought out to Kenya with me and spotted some reading glasses for sale on a street vendors pitch, outside one of the shops on the high street. As I can’t read a thing without glasses anymore I thought it would be a good idea to buy a spare pair so tried a few on. I discovered, (to my horror), that I now need 1.75 magnification lenses to be able to read. (Does this mean I could accurately calculate when my eyes will actually wear out given that I needed 1.25 magnification glasses as little as three years ago?).

“How much are these?” I asked.

“Twelve hundred shillings”.

“You must be joking; I’ll give you two hundred”.

“What about four fifty?”

“Two fifty”

“Three hundred”

“Ok”

It’s amazing how quickly prices come down. You couldn’t imagine bargaining the same way in Tesco, or Wal-Mart or any of the other big stores. (It would be fun though – I’d love to see the look on people’s faces if you tried haggling at a busy checkout).

A little further down the street I noticed another guy selling the same glasses. I picked up a pair of 1.75s.

“How much are these?”.

“Three hundred and twenty shillings”

“Asante Sana – (thank you very much) – I’ll take them”.

The heat has been quite ferocious today. Driving with the windows open usually creates a pleasant breeze and takes a bit of the sweat out of the weather. Not today. Despite a strong cross wind on the main road from our place to Kisumu travelling in the passenger seat was like sitting under a blow dryer on full heat. To add insult to injury a mini ‘twister’ tracked across the road over our vehicle on the way home and blew my cap off. Quick reactions from Duncan saved it from being ‘lost’. It would be churlish to complain though. The wind is still pointing to a change in the weather and the imminent arrival of rain, and I’d rather be hot than cold any day.

Valentine gifts

2012-02-14T11:45:00.002-08:00

So, Valentine’s Day has been and gone. It’s been interesting to see how it has played out in the Kenyan press. UK papers have been criticised for being ‘London Centric’ for some time and Kenyan papers suffer from the same focus on an urban elite – the emerging middle class in Nairobi. As ever the ads for Valentine’s Day products, like most other western celebration days, have been a little unusual, (though very enterprising). I would never have thought of his and hers mobile phones as an obvious Valentine’s gift and was surprised at the Valentine promotion for the latest model Blackberry phones. Even more bizarre was an advert for a lager style beer. I know that women do drink beer but it’s not exactly a romantic beverage. Dressing it up with a free glass offer for one pack size and 6 roses for a bigger one didn’t really seem to be in the real spirit of the event. In the run up to Feb 14^th there have been a number of articles about keeping the romance alive in long term relationships and marriage. Call me old fashioned but is seems a shame to see the worst aspects of cheap Western commercialism and ‘reality TV’ culture colonising Kenyan media space – in the newspapers, on TV and on numerous billboards. Needless to say the Valentine’s Day celebrations in our community were conspicuous by their absence.

I had a very positive day today, courtesy of the Kenyan government. Mary and I were invited to see the DC, (District Commissioner), this morning. The DC is the head man at the District Administration centre in Kosele. We weren’t sure why he wanted to see us so we set off to his office with a sense of anticipation. As it turned out we saw the DC’s Deputy, (the DO1 – District Officer 1). He is a very nice man, new to this District and, this morning, the bearer of great news for us. Occasionally the government distributes sacks of rice, beans and other staples such as cooking oil and ‘porridge’ to the ‘wananchi’ – (local community members). Our invitation to the DC’s office today came via the DCO, (go on, have a guess ……… OK, District Children’s Officer). He had nominated our children’s home, (and two others), to be the beneficiaries of some food rations that had been left over from a wider distribution in the community. After chatting with the DO1 we were sent to the stores to pick up our ‘chit’ for 150kg of beans, 250kg of rice, 30 litres of cooking oil and a small bale of the porridge flour that we use for feeding the children before school. This unexpected assistance will keep us in beans and rice for the best part of a month.

Chit in hand Mary, our manager, and I hot footed it, (well at least as fast as our Landrover allows), seven kilometres down the road, to the government grain stores next to Lake Victoria, to load up our precious cargo. Once the paper work had been properly processed we were asked to pull up outside a large warehouse where a team of 3 guys loaded us up. We had travelled to the store with the Director of one of the other homes so we split the cost of paying the guys for their labour, (our contribution worked out at about £1.50 or $2.35). The strength of the guys who do this kind of work never ceases to amaze me. They are always very thin and look like they’d blow over in a strong wind. They think nothing of lugging two 50kg sacks on their backs at a time, tossing them with practised ease into any configuration of vehicle.

We took the ‘scenic route’ home – avoiding the vehicle pounding potholes of the shortest route. It’s easy, as a Westerner, to criticise the governments of developing countries and to bemoan the lack of assistance that they provide for their citizens,charities and NGOs, (Non Governmental Organisation). It can be very frustrating working through official channels. Every once in a while though, on a day like today, you can celebrate a little. Knowing that you have been part of a very positive partnership, even for a short time, leaves you feeling that a small step has been taken and that doom, and gloom do not have to set the pattern for the future.

Bean counter

2012-02-13T10:36:00.001-08:00

As I have possibly written before, I never imagined becoming a ‘bean counter’ at any point as part of my career plan. As today has been the first day of half-term it has given me an opportunity to get stuck into our long term business plan.

I always enjoyed teaching spreadsheets to the advanced level students when I was an ICT teacher. It was great watching them work through the advanced tutorial and identifying the moment when the penny dropped that, far from being the dullest piece of software on the planet, Microsoft Excel is actually pretty amazing. Unfortunately not many young people make it this far with spreadsheets and still automatically associate Excel with crushing boredom.

Like most people I’ve always learnt new skills most effectively when there has been some point to learning them. Making the course relevant to the students is one of the biggest challenges facing our Agriculture College. The students will, as part of the course they are following, have to run their own businesses and show that they are able to create business plans and manage accounts. I’m hoping that they will be able to appreciate the power in spreadsheets. It is probably a cliché to suggest that education should transform the student’s thinking, but it is, none the less, true. If we can’t push our students to the ’eureka’ moment and unlock new, creative levels of thinking in them we will not be doing our job properly. I’m sure there will be those among you who would think that waxing lyrical about spreadsheets as a tool for motivating and challenging students is a symptom of ‘losing the plot’. I hope not.

On our recent field trip to the illegal livestock market our students had an opportunity to talk to a very successful entrepreneur. He didn’t really look like the most obvious candidate to be the next Richard Branson. Sitting under a tree, half reclining on a blanket and watching over an assortment of veterinary drugs in tatty looking bottles and packets, he looked distinctly unprofessional. Appearances are often deceptive. The students discovered that he made a very good living going from market to market selling his treatments, and that he owned a thriving ‘Agrovet’ shop in one of the local towns. His enthusiasm for his business, (which became apparent once you started to talking to him), inspired some of our students to reconsider their opinions of enterprise and entrepreneurship.

We are hoping that the students’ enthusiasm for business will help them to make a good start on the initial business planning that they will have to do after half-term. We plan to introduce them to the delights of ‘bean counting’ and financial forecasting. A good spreadsheet can, (believe it or not), be like a good book. It should tell a story and be capable of producing a happy ending. I’m looking forward to teaching our students the skills they will need to make their spreadsheets come alive.

As we ponder the ‘will it, won’t it’ change in the weather I’m also hoping that the students will enjoy counting real beans in July – when we harvest a bumper crop of legumes!

Distant thunder

2012-02-12T10:19:00.000-08:00

Today got off to an exciting start. We have been hoping to buy a new vehicle for some time now, (see yesterday’s post about the sorry state of our Landrover). Just before I left Kenya at the beginning of December last year our friend Douglas, (who arranges our longer distance transport), told me that he had a contact who wanted to sell a Landrover. I finally got to see it this morning and zoomed off up the 'road' to test drive it to Kosele and back. (Not a great distance but far enough to work out whether it’s worth going any further with buying it).

As test drives go it was very successful. The major problems with our current Landrover are; lack of engine power and acceleration, (especially in fourth gear), bone crunching suspension and somewhat sloppy steering. Once you get used to these inconveniences it’s not a bad vehicle. It has done us proud over the last ten years. That said, driving a newer, diesel model, that suffers from none of these deficiencies was amazing. In ‘older and wiser’ mode these days I was able to resist the temptation to rush out and get the cash to pay the vendor on the spot and have arranged to take it on a longer test drive to Kisumu on Tuesday. Once in Kisumu I’ve booked an inspection by a garage that I trust, (shameless plug here for Silverline Services in Kisumu – great garage, great people!). Once Silverline have given it the once over I’ll be in a better position to make a decision about what is, after all, a major investment. The feckless impulse buyer in me is still pushing for the green light.

Have just, (9:03 pm), rushed outside in great excitement. It wasn’t very much, (at first I thought I was hearing things), but ……………… it has just rained! Given the current state of the weather in the UK I can appreciate that this is hardly earth shattering news but it will, I am sure, be greeted with cautious optimism here in Kosele. The rains are the key to our next harvest. We need to be in a position to plant seeds by the first week in March at the latest. This means we need some steady, (but not torrential), rain the week before. There has been a noticeable increase in cloud cover in the last couple of afternoons and the breeze that usually precedes rain has picked up. (I’m not making this stuff up – you really can tell when it’s going to rain). I’m sure I just heard the first, distant roll of thunder as well. Bring it on!

Its half term next week so we will be busy with our land preparation. It could be a very exciting week – new vehicle and a change in the weather. I’ll be busy praying for both.

A long bumpy ride

2012-02-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

I experienced another first today – being overtaken by a bicycle on a flat, open road! To add insult to injury the bike was carrying a live goat in a plastic crate tied to the luggage rack. I kid you not!

Our Landrover is very old but there is a good explanation for the slow progress we were making. This afternoon Hilda and I went to the District Hospital in Oyugis, (about 20 minutes drive away), to bring the old lady I wrote about yesterday home. The District Hospital has done all that they can for her so the doctor discharged her. She is still in a lot of pain. Having now seen the x-ray of her broken femur it’s easy to see why. After finishing up the discharge paperwork we managed to get the lady onto a mattress in the back of the Landrover and propped her up so that she could be taken home, accompanied by her son and another, female, relative.

I’ve written a number of times about the state of the road between our place and Oyugis. It’s bad enough being bounced around when you are fit and healthy enough to brace yourself as the vehicle pounds through potholes. If you are nursing a badly injured leg without very effective pain relief the journey must be torture. We drove back from the hospital in first gear for most of the way, crawling along the road. There were still one or two painful moments for our passenger.

We managed to park up about fifty yards from the ladies home, on the compound that she and her husband share with her son and his wife and children. Carrying her on the mattress into her house was less painful for her than getting her into the Landrover at the hospital and she looked very relieved and happy to be home once we had made her comfortable. The doctor has prescribed pain killers and it seems, for now, that there are enough family members around to look after her.

Hilda and I left with mixed emotions. Home is the best place for the lady to be. When Judi and I first came to live in Kenya, nearly ten years ago, an elderly neighbour broke her leg just below the knee. I don’t think her leg ever healed properly but she managed to live on for some time afterwards. We prayed just before leaving the lady this afternoon. I trust in God’s love and mercy and believe that He will bring comfort and strength to this lady and her family. I would ask any of you with the prayerful inclination to include this lady in your prayers tonight and in the days ahead.

Bless this our land and nation

2012-02-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

After the thrill of illegal activities and travel around rural Kenya yesterday, today has been a bit tame. This afternoon we broke up for half-term. The pupils all looked, (and sounded), happy to be off for a short holiday - they were a lot noisier than usual walking out of the school gates. In honour of the occasion the pupils got to sing the national anthem twice today – morning and afternoon at flag raising and lowering time. It’s very easy to dismiss these patriotic activities in school and write them off as mindless nationalism. It is uplifting watching our ‘scouts’ march into the school's assembly area. It was actually quite funny this morning. I was standing to one side of the assembly and was able to watch the scouts preparing to march in. They all held their right arm up, ready to start marching, and then set off. When you are 9 or 10 years old it’s quite difficult getting the hang of swinging arms and legs in unison. Our two lines of scouts did very well – girls in one line wearing our school uniform, boys in the other line wearing a very unisex blue scout shirt over their own school shirt. (Which they keep on all day - I don't know how they manage it in the very hot weather we are currently experiencing). Arms and legs swung in opposite directions towards the end of the line and I couldn’t help thinking that if they were trying to gain momentum with their movements they just sort of cancelled each other out. They take it very seriously, which is touching, and I really hope that “Our God of all creation” will “Bless this our land and nation”.

During half-term we are hoping that our day scholars will come to school in the morning so that they can continue to have breakfast and lunch during the holiday. It’s always difficult to predict how many day scholars will actually turn up each day in the holidays. I suspect that it will mostly be the younger children this half-term as the older ones will be needed at home to prepare the land for planting at the end of the month. However you look at it life is tough for children in rural Kenya.

It’s no easier for old people either. Today Hilda visited an elderly lady in hospital who has been suffering from a problem with her leg for a few weeks now. She was admitted to the District Hospital this week. Since the beginning of January the lady’s condition has been deteriorating and she is now in a lot of pain. Her leg is badly swollen and, until today, we had no idea what was causing the problem. Hilda prevailed on the sister on the ward to authorise an x-ray for the old lady, which revealed a break in the leg just below the hip joint. The x-ray showed an area around the break that the radiographer said was probably infected. The outlook for this lady is not good. It wouldn’t be in the UK either but at least the care options would be better. In a country where the majority of people have no access to health services the choices for sick old ladies in ‘the rurals’ are stark. This lady’s case illustrates the difficult options facing organisations like ours all over the developing world. It’s a case book example of a “What would you do?” scenario. The lady would have to travel some distance to a hospital able to carry out any of the surgery her case requires, (exploratory surgery to treat any infection or, in the worst case, a very high amputation). Either option carries significant risks and a long period of expensive hospitalisation at some distance from home. Not treating her would mean she remains in a lot of pain and discomfort and, ultimately, faces the very real prospect of dying. Once you know about a situation like this it’s very hard to walk away from. What would you do? What should we do? What are the long term implications of any of the actions that we might take? They aren’t easy questions to answer.

I see no cows!

2012-02-09T12:56:00.000-08:00

Until today I had never been to an illegal livestock market before. It’s not really the kind of thing you’d imagine taking place. A conspiracy of cows, sheep and goats. Entry on a strictly ‘password only’ basis. Shady goings on in the livestock underworld. It wasn’t quite like that but it was, none the less, an illegal gathering.

My descent into the criminal fraternity began innocently enough. We will, shortly, be building a goat enclosure so that we can give our Agriculture College students practical experience in rearing goats. There is a well know livestock market not very far from us so we decided to go on our first College field trip this morning to do some market research. I’ve blogged before about the appalling road conditions around our place. It was a bumpy ride. Once we got to the main road we had an unscheduled stop so that the driver of the matatu, (14 seater minibus), that we had hired for the morning could receive the first thousand shillings of the price we had agreed to pay him and put some petrol in the tank. Confident that we would, at least, make it to our destination we set off down a fairly decent road for the last bit of our journey.

It turned out that none of us was sure of the exact location of the market that we were heading for. As we approached the village and there were no obvious signs of livestock being herded in the general direction of a market I became concerned that we had either come on the wrong day, or too late and that the market had already finished. On entering the village our driver remembered the location and we branched off down the ‘high street’. My misgivings were slightly reduced by our driver's confidence but almost immediately increased when I looked behind us to see cattle and goats being driven up the road in the opposite direction. We did a quick about turn and followed the animals and their owners.

The market was held in a largish open space about a kilometre from the village. When we arrived it was pretty much in full swing. Groups of animals and their owners milled around the market area. Billy goats started fights with each other – their owners pulling them apart with varying degrees of success. Sheep clustered together in anxious looking groups as bulls and cows loomed over them. There didn’t seem to be any particular area for the different types of animals. Buyers and sellers haggled and argued about prices before striking a deal with an extravagant handshake.

Our students had been given a questionnaire to fill in and a clipboard and moved off in pairs to find out as much as they could about the livestock trade in general and goats in particular. I was soon accosted by a guy who had visited our place in October and had talked to me about the wisdom of buying a milk cow for our work. He was keen to help me understand the ins and outs of buying and selling in the market. He grabbed me enthusiastically by the hand and we set off round the market together. (In Kenya it is perfectly normal for guys to hold hands when they are walking in public – it’s a bit odd but you get used to it fairly quickly).

It was through my new friend that I found out about the shady side of the market. It turned out to be another TIA classic. There is a ban on the official livestock markets in the area because of an outbreak of disease, (I didn’t catch which type but obviously something serious enough for the authorities to be worried). There is a ‘quarantine’ order in place. To get round the inconvenience of the ban the farmers have simply started another market, outside the village, and continued trading, so far without interference. (As, I guess a minor concession, the market does close a bit earlier than the ‘official’ market would – at 11.30ish instead of mid-afternoon). Nobody seemed especially bothered about the new arrangements. Business continued as usual.

This time of year is a bit of a slack period in the livestock trade. There isn’t much money about as many parents have had to pay the first term’s High School fees for their children and cash is in short supply. Prices should pick up in April and peak from September to November as the next harvest comes in and people have more money in their pockets again. Good timing for our goat project.

We had a great morning and our first outing with the students was a real success. We all learned something new. If you visit our part of Kenya and see someone walking away from a village market with an animal wearing a new rope you’ll know that the animal has just got a new owner. If you see somebody driving animals away from the market with old ropes round their necks you’ll know that the market wasn’t a great success and that the animals are returning home unsold. As the market packed up and everybody headed for home there was a noticeable absence of new ropes around necks. Still, there’s always the next time - for this particular market on Sunday when the farmers will, once again, pit their collective wits against the authorities and reconvene their illegal gathering. Drovers of the world unite!

Killing time

2012-02-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

Trying to coordinate a visit to Kisii, the biggest town within easy distance of our place, is always a nightmare. Even on a simple trip involving no more than the bank and shopping. I felt sorry for Ian and Hilda today, as they ended up with a major trip involving multiple people and a number of activities. Their day involved; (for those with experience of this journey a drum roll would be appropriate here), going to the bank so that Mary our manager could make a money transfer to pay for a greenhouse, taking a young mum and her son for treatment to the boy’s ear, buying a bicycle for one of the church leaders to allow him to expand his pastoral round, taking one of our girls for an eye test and a new pair of glasses, buying material for school uniforms for the Agriculture College students, buying text books for the school and Agriculture College, buying bibles for church members, some general shopping for supplies, and buying a mobile phone . And those are just the things that I knew about. On the surface this to do list might not seem very demanding. But then TIA, (this is Africa), and the majority of the jobs involve at the very least an element of negotiation and clarification.

For instance. Mary dropped our ‘book order’ off at the book shop as soon as she got to Kisii, hoping that the books would be picked, packed and pucker at going home time. Everybody was ready to leave, (Duncan, who had gone with Mary to learn the ropes at the bank, Joyce, who needed the glasses, the lady and her son, Ian, Hilda, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all…). Mary was kept another hour while the book order was processed. The most disarming thing about all this is that you just sort of get into it. (You don’t have much choice). Ian said the book shop owner was very nice and asked him to sign the visitors’ book, (you couldn’t imagine that in Waterstones). If the picking and packing went anything like normal about three people would have been involved in checking to see if the books were in stock, then locating them, stacking them on a table before another person put them in a box tied up by the last member of the despatch team.

There is a point to this rant. I did, really, have a genuine reason for not going to Kisii today, (fine tuning the school and College timetables). I am, for one reason or another, still pretty much in the Western ‘to do list frame of mind’ at the moment. I haven’t got into the more African ‘could do’ mindset yet. (To be honest I rarely do – there’s just so much to do!). From the Western point of view taking the whole day to do a bit of shopping might seem to be indicative of the ‘obvious’ root causes of African poverty and lack of development. Inefficiency, poor planning and inability to 'get things done'. To really believe that would be disingenuous. From a Western point of view all of these things might seem patently true. From another point of view the Westerner’s attitude shows up typical Western arrogance, impatience and unwillingness to see an everyday activity as an opportunity for a relationship. An opportunity for a negotiation. A conversation to be had. The West’s ‘sue me if it’s wrong’, shelf edge pricing mentality completely excludes any kind of bartering. The Western way of shopping is mercifully quick but monumentally impersonal. In a culture where time is the only thing you have an excess of taking a long time over everything isn't a problem. Taking the Western view of time and time management might make short work of the to do list, but I have a nagging feeling that it can short change us on time spent with people.

ET come back later

2012-02-07T12:42:00.001-08:00

I had to take a trip up to Kosele this afternoon to see the local Children’s Officer, accompanied by Mary our manager. It was the first time I have really left our place since arriving a week ago so it was nice to get out for a bit. The visit to the Children’s Officer went well, if a little unpredictably. While we were waiting for our appointment we noticed a couple of young girls, also waiting, without an accompanying adult. The Children’s Department in Kosele has the unenviable task of protecting children from all sorts of threats to their health and welfare on a miniscule budget. If I was the Children’s Officer in Kosele I would either spend a great deal of time ‘in the field’, (ideally a very big, isolated field somewhere), or barricade myself into my office so that none of the pressing demands in the community could make their way in. It turned out that the girls were sisters and had run away from home, for very understandable reasons. The oldest was probably 9 or 10. The Children’s Officer found out more about their case though a couple of phone calls and, in the absence of any other suitable provision, asked if we could care for them until they could be returned home. What can you say? The girls came back to our home and will probably spend a couple of days with us while the Children’s Officer chases up the case. Children do, of course, run away from home in the West, but I would be surprised if they did so as frequently, or at as young an age as they do in

Kenya

. The current dry, hot spell is adding to the burdens of our already overstretched community. The Children’s Officer told us that the increasing hardship brought on by the weather will add to the number of cases presenting themselves at his office each day. It’s hard to imagine living like the people in our community do. The closest I can get to understanding it some days is to compare it with the rural tragedy that Thomas Hardy wrote about so often and the grim social problems that Charles Dickens catalogued. It really is another world. People shouldn’t have to live like this.

Today has been another classic ‘one extreme to another’ kind of day. Having left the Children’s Department with our two new guests we had to stop in Kosele to do some photocopying. We drove across the ‘village square’, (managing to avoid the bicycle repair business located under a tree), and parked up outside the photocopying shop. From the front passenger seat, looking to the left, I saw a largish room containing a pool table. The room had obviously been provided to serve some useful social purpose. There were an interesting collection of posters on the wall advertising local community projects. Inside the room two youngish men were playing pool. Community development has many strands in most parts of the world, but I wondered, as I waited for Mary to bring the photocopying back to the Landrover, what the two little girls in the back made of it all.

From a ‘getting things done’ point of view it’s actually been a good day today. We employed a new teacher to replace last year’s Standard 8 teacher, who has found another job in Kisumu, (the largest town that is anywhere near us). The only blip on the horizon came in a text from our friend who had travelled to Nairobi this morning to pursue our applications for work permits. I’m afraid our initial optimism, (see yesterday’s post), has faded somewhat as it would appear that our file has been ‘misplaced’. Our friend said that he will contact us in a couple of weeks when he hopes to have better news. Guess I will just have to wait patiently for final confirmation of my alien status.

Only a few fainted

2012-02-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

The boys got off to High School this morning at 10.30ish. They were finally enrolled in school at 4.30 p.m. According to Mary, (our manager who drew the short straw for the long day and went with them), “some boys fainted in the line while they were waiting”. Not ours I hasten to add. Duncan, (our farm manager who is an ‘old boy’ of the school that the boys are now attending), told me that each year about 400 new students are enrolled at the school. Hence the long wait to get in. As if that wasn’t bad enough he also said that the dinner queues were ‘quite long’. I guess its all part of growing up in Kenya. Probably character forming stuff. I just hope that the better qualities, (like patience and thinking about the needs of others), win out over the ‘law of the jungle’. They are all good lads. I’m sure they’ll do the right thing and be stronger for it. TIA.

It doesn’t look like we’ll be moving into our new school buildings until Wednesday at the earliest. More progress has been made but there are still a few outstanding ‘last finish’ jobs, (like making sure the off cuts off glass used for the windows are all tidied away). We have a meeting with the contractor tomorrow and I’ve prepared an ‘agreed actions’ schedule to fill in. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Ian, Hilda and I are developing a growing optimism that we will receive our work permits this month. The friend who is helping us to chase them up sent a text today to say that it is now time to pay for the work permits. We haven’t received official notification of this yet, but our friend will be travelling to Nairobi on our behalf tomorrow to, hopefully, take the next steps. Once the necessary payment has been made to the officials in the immigration department it should only be a short time until we are issued with ‘alien registration cards’. Being an official alien will be an interesting experience.

TIA

2012-02-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Seven days have flown past and I’m mostly pleased with our progress so far. I had hoped that we would be moving into our new classrooms tomorrow but it looks like we’ll have to wait at least another day. A classic TIA, (This Is Africa), situation. For those of you who are puzzled by TIA it’s an acronym from the Leonardo DiCaprio film Blood Diamond. It’s a great movie if you haven’t seen it. TIA means that you can’t expect things to happen in Africa the same way they do in the West. This has its ups and downs – most noticeably in relation to meeting deadlines and attention to detail. Having waited this long to finish off our school building project I guess another couple of days isn’t the end of the world.

Tomorrow we will be sending our first students off to High School. The boys, (Tony, Kevin, Victor, Ben and Nicholas), are suitably excited and apprehensive. Attending High School means that they will have to be boarders at their new school. We have managed to buy all of the things that they need to take with them to their new ‘home’. I’m sure the pink melamine cups will be fine! Fortunately, (for us at least), the school is not very far away, in Oyugis, our closest town, so we will be able to support them in their studies by visiting at parents days and being on hand to sort out any difficulties they may have. Many High School students travel a great distance to attend decent High Schools and don't see their parents or guardians very often. The school our lads will be attending, (Agoro Sare High School), has a good reputation and we are as confident as we can be that they will do well there.

I’m hoping that the coming week will be equally encouraging for our Agriculture College students. To foster a sense of collegiate identity we asked the students to design the college uniform and they have come up with a great proposal – practical, smart and green, (in colour). We’ll need to get the local tailor in to measure them up. Assuming the school building handover happens this week we will be able to make their classroom a more suitable base for them. In anticipation of future success as goat breeders we will also, probably, take them on a field trip to one of the local livestock markets.

As we all settle into our new routines I have noticed a worrying personal trend developing – getting into a ritual! So far this is limited to setting out the soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, bottle of water, nail brush and towel in the same place every night in the shower, (always using the same shower cubicle). Our showers are attached to the side of the house that my room is in. They have a wooden frame and are covered by a thin sheet of metal. They don't have a roof so you get an amazing view of the sky at night while you are taking your shower. The shower ritual is, to be honest, a fairly minor obsession and is entirely practical. If you arrange the soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, bottle of water and nail brush any other way they just fall off the wooden beam supporting them and you have to spend five minutes scrabbling around trying to pick them up off the floor. I don’t see myself slipping into the “Who moved my cheese?” mindset any time soon but you have to be sensitive to the early warning signs.

Pain in the neck

2012-02-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

I’m sure that skeletomuscular disorders brought on by overusing a computer aren’t very common in our part of Kenya. Today I’ve been working on a website for our Agriculture College students and I think I might have overdone it a bit. It’s a bit of an obsessional thing when you start getting into it – (fortunately Pizza and Red Bull aren’t an option over here so I can’t really go for the full on web designer approach).

I’m sure I’ve blamed my Dad for a number of things in the past without any justification, but I am absolutely sure that he is largely responsible for my hoarding instincts. Fortunately my hoarding is almost entirely electronic these days, (unlike my Dad whose garage is home to a cornucopia of amazing tools, gadgets, fishing rods, home brew, fixatives, fixtures and fittings that are testimony to a lifetime of inspired ‘stashing things away’). Not to mention the loft full of books! To be fair to Dad his hoarding instinct has meant that he’s always been on the money when the proverbial ‘rainy day’ has come or anybody has needed that specialist tool for an otherwise impossible job.

I digress. Back to the web site. Having made a living as an ICT teacher for a number of years I’ve witnessed the phenomenal growth of the Internet and Information Technology as tools for learning. Despite the more grandiose claims that have been made about the educational value of computers they have certainly opened up a whole new world of learning for anybody who can get on to the world wide web. Unfortunately you really need a fast Internet connection if you want to make the most of the vast quantity of books, audio and video files that are freely available if you have the patience to drill down to the fiftieth page of a Google search. So far I’ve managed to collect about 1500 video files, 4,000 audio files and 7,500 text files, (PDF). Nearly all of them are directly related to our work in Kenya – a combination of resources for our church, school, agriculture college and staff training.

I have a dream, (honest), of rural schools in Kenya that have access to these fabulous resources. On laptop computers, running on solar power. Viewed through a website. At fast broadband speeds. At present not very many of these schools have computers or solar power. Or the skills to design websites for learning. Or a fast internet connection, (despite explosive growth in mobile network coverage in rural Kenya, the Internet is still accessed via a phone SIM, making it nearly impossible to download large audio, video or PDF files).

We’re working on a solution. The website I’m designing will run from the hard disk of our laptops and can be shared with other schools by simply transferring the entire website to their computer(s) via a portable USB hard drive or large capacity memory stick. With the help of our friends from Cisco we are hoping to run the website on a wireless network around our school site, (using the same, simple, router technology that most of you use to run wireless networks in your homes). These simple systems will make it possible for some of the poorest pupils in Kenya to access the same high quality learning resources that better off students in the West take for granted. We hope to have the prototype running by March. Once it’s up and running and the bugs have been ironed out we’ll be able to start offering training to other teachers in the area. After that it’s just a question of helping them to obtain the computers .........................

Growing concern

2012-02-03T11:17:00.000-08:00

The week-end looms after a very busy week in our school and college. The week seems to have passed quickly which I’m taking as a good sign. There has, as usual, been a lot to do and I think we have made good progress on our various plans and schemes. It’s been especially rewarding working with the new college team – students and teachers.

The papers today have continued to speculate on the future shape of education in Kenya. The letters that readers have sent in offer fairly overwhelming support for the proposed changes. It’s interesting to note the widely expressed feeling that.

“To date Kenyan children, almost from nursery school, are burdened with an overwhelming curriculum that places emphasis on rote learning and cramming for exams, rather than on creativity and nurturing talents.”

I seem to remember similar sentiments being aired throughout my past life as a teacher in the UK.

As I type there is a breeze stirring the air. This is a welcome break from the very hot, dry weather that we have been having all day and throughout the week. (Apologies to

readers who are going through a cold spell). As we get further into February the weather will become more critical for our area, as farmers will be planning to plant seeds at the end of the month.

The current hot spell, (which has lasted all of this year so far), is not unusual but does come at a cost – literally. The price of sukuma wiki, (kale), has nearly tripled. As ever this places the largest burden on the poorest people. Sukuma wiki, (Swahili for "stretch the week," or “push the week”), is a ubiquitous Kenyan dish. Nutritious and tasty, it is a way of "stretching" out kitchen resources. It is traditionally served with Ugali, another Kenyan staple, made from maize flour. The price of maize has also risen steeply exacerbating the burden on members of our community and creating real hunger.

As our college students continue preparing the land on our farm for planting we will be keeping a keen eye on the weather and praying for rain by the end of the month. Having celebrated our farming success following the harvest in December 2011 we, like all the other farmers in the country, face the coming growing season with a mixture of expectancy and anxiety. Every new growing season brings you back to the start of the farming cycle, with its attendant rewards and pitfalls. We are fortunate in being able to experiment on our farm in a way that our neighbours can’t. They have too much at stake to risk a crop failing. We have every confidence in our methods of farming but are, like every farmer, at the mercy of an increasingly unpredictable climate. It is, for us, less of a life or death challenge than the poorest members of our community. None the less we will still be working very hard to maximise our harvest. Every farmer faces the same challenges every year. The climate is a great leveller.

Stepping out

2012-02-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

Being at the cutting edge of education is always an exciting place to be – as long as you are the person who is planning the new moves. It’s less fun if you are on the receiving end of any changes, as we are discovering with our new Agriculture College venture.

In Kenya it is every primary school students’ dream to get to High School. The prospect of starting a new, and therefore untested, course like ours is a bit of a worry for some of the students. We have been busy explaining the benefits of our new course to some of the students, (again), and reassuring them that it will lead on to great things.

Starting a new college is a bit like launching a completely new product – you invest a lot in the research and design, plan for as much as possible and hope that the punters will be enthusiastic. So far it’s been hard work with a couple of them but I think we are getting there.

We have been assisted in promoting the college by the Kenyan government. In another of our serendipitous coincidences the national newspaper, (the Daily Nation), published an article today which announced the Kenyan government’s plans for “a major departure from the current [education] system”. The government is proposing a radical shake up of education in Kenya to be implemented from September 2013. The newspaper article goes on to give details of two new types of school that would be introduced if the proposals are accepted:

“Talent schools will offer courses in performing and creative arts such as music, drama and games besides the common courses. Vocational secondary schools will focus on artisan and trade courses in addition to the common academic subjects. Some of the core subjects are citizenship education, entrepreneurship, environmental studies, information technology and languages.”

The timing of the announcement could not have come at a better time for us. Our Agriculture College curriculum puts us at the forefront of educational innovation! Being able to share this fact with the students this morning helped us to head off a potential motivation wobble for some of them and lent an extra shine to our promises of a brighter future.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for educational reform to be achieved in Kenya. The proposals pose some serious funding and planning challenges. I really hope that they happen sooner rather than later. However it pans out we will continue to push forward with our plans for changing the students’ experience of secondary education in our bit of Kenya. Tonight I’m very optimistic that our students are less apprehensive about their prospects and that we will all enjoy working on the cutting edge together.

Much to do

2012-02-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about being in Kosele is that no two days are ever the same. This is a great antidote to the whole ‘daily grind’ mentality that it is easy to get trapped in but it does mean that, no matter how hard you try, finishing the days to do list is almost always impossible. The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that it is a waste of time writing one in the first place so it would be best to just let stuff happen. The two extremes of this planning spectrum represent the worst of the West, (to do list slavery), and Africa, (Hakuna Matata – no worries). Somewhere in the middle there is a sane, productive place where heart attacks hardly happen and the really important stuff gets done. I'm really aiming for that place this year, as I will be in Kenya for a fairly long stay this time and have a lot to work on.

Our three goals this year are to make sure the new Agriculture College gets off to a good start, to continue making our primary school an exciting and challenging place to learn in and to set up the most productive farm in our district. Fortunately I have a great team of people to work with and we are all committed to being successful. We were encouraged by the harvest that we brought in at the end of December last year and by coming second in our Zone in the primary school KCPE, (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) exam. Our candidates did us proud and set a high standard for the Year 8 pupils who will be taking the exam this year. Good progress has also been made on our new school buildings, (we should be moving into them on Monday 6^th) and on the Visitors Centre, due to accommodate the first team of visitors from February 18^th.

At this point in the year there are always tough decisions to make. We have received a number of applications from pupils who want to come to our primary school and expect to receive a requests to join the Agriculture College once word gets round that it is open. These decisions are always hard to make. Nearly every application comes from a ‘deserving case’. The level of poverty in our area is very high as is the demand for education, (especially at secondary level).

The High Schools in Kenya start the new school year next week, giving rise to a flurry of fund raising and assistance seeking activities by family members on behalf of prospective Form 1 students. Nearly all of the book shops and school suppliers have got some special offer on for the students who will be starting their first year at High School and for the next week or so public transport will be packed as the next crop of High School students heads off to study.

Five of our young people will be starting High School on the 6th. This will mark a special time for us as we venture out into new territory. They will be going to boarding school, (most good High Schools in Kenya are boarding). Having looked after most of them for the last ten years it’s a bit of an advanced case of ‘the children leaving home’. Still, we are very proud of them and are confident that they will achieve a great deal in their new school.

So far eleven of last year’s Standard 8 class have started in our new Agriculture College. It’s early days yet but the teachers are very positive about the new courses that we will be running in Agriculture, Enterprise, Maths, Science and English. In two years time these students will be taking International GCSE exams. As with any new venture we have a lot to prove if we are to establish ourselves as the course that the majority of pupils want to take after finishing primary school – hence the busy year ahead. Must remember to keep that sane place in focus.

H2 Oh!

2012-01-31T10:36:00.000-08:00

We had a timely reminder about the importance of water today. When I arrived in Kosele yesterday I found that our borehole was unserviceable. A couple of weeks ago I received a slightly worrying email saying that the generator that powers the water pumping gear had stopped working. This was a concernbecause it’s a very powerful generator and cannot be easily swapped out with our other generator. Trying to pump water using the Plan B backup facility is not possible because there is, effectively, no Plan B. It’s a bit of an all or nothing approach to operating the borehole and makes any equipment fault a major problem. Fortunately the generator was easily fixed so we breathed sigh of relief and moved on. Until yesterday.

It may sound a bit like talking up a basically simple story, but you only realise how crucial a resource like the borehole is when you face the prospect of not being able to use it. A fault in the pump control panel had been ‘fixed’ a couple of weeks ago. A quick consultation in Kisumu yesterday, with the technician who fixed it, suggested that a bit of loose wire tightening would sort the problem out. You may recall from previous posts that I am getting better at this type of electrical DIY. Loosening, tightening, poking, switching trip circuit on and off and general bodging about last night didn’t work. To add to our worries, (though probably, with hindsight, to the benefit of the electronics inside the control panel), the starter rope for the generator broke, making it impossible to start the generator up and try any more ‘fixes’. An SOS message was sent to Kisumu and Oliver, (the technician), agreed to come out to see us today.

As 1 pm approached and Oliver didn’t I began to worry about the water situation in earnest. We have been relying on the large water tanks we put up for irrigation for our drinking and cooking water and we only have about five thousand litres left. That doesn’t go far when you are feeding about two hundred people a day and trying to make sure that 35 young people are able to wash themselves and their clothes. Five thousand litres would, under normal conditions, last about 3 days. Given the speed that help, spare parts and problem diagnosis arrive at in Kenya it looked like a major catastrophe loomed. Closure of the school until the crisis is resolved, strict water rationing, no showers at least.

Fortunately Oliver turned up and set to work. We thought we’d try starting the generator with a car battery but that didn’t work so a very Heath Robinson repair was made to the starter rope. After a short experiment in knot tying we managed to turn the generator over and …….. still the control panel light stayed resolutely off. More poking about inside the control panel followed. Still no green light and pumping noises. Situation deteriorating by the moment. Emergency measures imminent.

At this point I noticed a switch on the front of the generator that I hadn’t fiddled with yet, (mostly because we had never tried using the car battery starter method before). With the generator running and nothing to lose I flicked the switch up and bingo. Ignition. Blast off. Water running into the generator house. Relief all round. Just to be on the safe side and to add an element of testing rigour to the solution we tried the new ‘fix’ out a couple of times. Switch down, no water. Switch up, water. It still worked.

There are a number of lessons to be drawn from this incident. First, the best discoveries are often accidental. Second, make sure you know your knots. Third, living on the edge is overrated – Plan B rocks. Finally, don’t take water for granted. A day will come when you, or your children, will wish you were worth your weight in H₂O.

Is matatu travel linked to deep veined thrombosis?

2012-01-30T13:05:00.000-08:00

Back in Kenya and back to blogging. It’s great to be in Kosele again but challenging being so far away from Judi, Ellie and Tom, (my family), for so long. I won’t be seeing them until July.

Being an avid people watcher the flying out to Kenya bit of getting going is always fun. There weren’t many people about at Birmingham airport when I set off but Dubai was, predictably, much busier. I was surprised by the number of people filming the walk through to their departure gate on mobile phones. Navigating the one way system through to the departure gates as a transfer passenger could form part of a personal training regime so I guess they could have been trying to commit the route to film in case they ever have to do it again.

As ever on an overnight flight I didn’t get any sleep and had to stay awake in Dubai for fear of missing my flight to Nairobi. I’m generally a very optimistic person but I tend towards being a bit of a fatalist in airports, (especially when I know I need to stay awake). After walking from one end of the terminal to another in search of gate 225 I managed to find a seat right next to the departure gate and a similar distance from the toilet – double bonus. If you have to wait at Dubai airport gate 225 don’t make the mistake of leaving going through to the departure lounge until the last possible moment in case you need the toilet. Unlike just about every other departure lounge I have ever sat in gate 225 had an entrance to the loo inside it. (I think the practise of not having an accessible loo in departure lounges is a form of torture which should be addressed by a suitably international human rights committee).

I arrived at Nairobi airport somewhat wired through lack of sleep. I decided to bite the bullet and put my new missionary status to the test at the immigration desk by declaring it as my occupation on the arrival declaration form. I got through the check at the immigration desk in a personal best time with no hassle! I am taking it as an encouraging sign that someone up there likes me and is actively on my side.

I eventually arrived in Kisumu, (nearest airport to our place in West Kenya), after an only slightly diverted internal flight from Nairobi to Kisumu via El Doret. This was definitely not advertised on the original plane ticket. I did at one point wonder if the diversion was a further test of my faith, (on two counts i) that we would actually fly to Kisumu from El Doret and ii) that my luggage would fly with us). I still think someone up there likes me. Finally got to the St Anna guest house in Kisumu at 8 pm. (I have, I think, previously blogged about why I don’t like travelling on the roads at night in

Kenya

so had an overnight stay).

I had an uneventful trip to Kosele, (our base in Kenya), from Kisumu today, (Monday), and managed to catch up on a bit of sleep crammed in the back of a matatu, (14 seater mini bus), that we had hired. It was packed full of mattresses and cushions, (long story related to 5 of our oldest students starting High school as boarders next week). As I was going through the ritual of trying to get wedged in comfortably enough to get to sleep I was struck by the thought that I had spent a considerable part of the previous 24 hours doing the same thing in a variety of locations, (3 departure lounges, 3 planes and a matatu). Having read about deep veined thrombosis, (but never really understanding the finer details), I fell asleep entertaining the slightly worrying thought that wedging myself into the matatu seats in the wrong position might set me up for a DVT. Fortunately it was only a relatively short journey so I didn’t have enough time to hit deep sleep and avoided the psychotic type of dreams that come as a side effect of the anti malarial I am taking. They seem to come from the deeper recesses of the mind and usually start off with your last thought before falling asleep. I arrived shaken, (see previous blogs about the roads in Kenya) but rested in the late afternoon with my veins intact. It was really good to see our place again and to start catching up with everybody’s news. So. It’s back to the blog and back to business as usual, (as it can be), in a hot dusty

Kenya

As I type it’s 11.55 p.m. The dogs up the road have been barking for about the last half hour, the mosquitoes are taking advantage of my slow reaction time and I’m looking forward to a busy day tomorrow. It’s going to be a good year.

Back on the blog. Arrived in Kisumu today after a circuitous flight from Nairobi via El Doret. Lots to do - can't wait to get going.

2012-01-29T12:58:00.001-08:00

From my phone at JKA airport. All text in the title as my phone won't edit the main text. Made it - have posted every day from Kenya!

2011-12-02T06:02:00.000-08:00

More mzungu musings

2011-12-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

As this was my last whole day in Kenya I thought I’d make the most of it by getting up really early to drive down to Lake Victoria to watch the sun rise. I hadn’t remembered how dark it is at five in the morning, but it was a nice trip. Our visitors left today and we had actually planned to do the visit to Lake Victoria a couple of mornings ago. Unfortunately rain stopped play at that particular time. The sunrise was slightly disappointing but we did arrive at the Lake in time to see the fisherman setting off for the day’s fishing. It was a very timeless scene. The same kind of boats must have been sailing out at this time of day for hundreds of years. We had a few offers of a ‘trip around the bay’ from the fisherman, (who clearly think they know a gullible catch when they see one). Fortunately time and common sense prevailed and we remained on dry land. At least one of the boats seemed to have almost as much of the lake inside as out.

It is always sad to say goodbye to visitors, especially when they have worked as hard as this team did. Massive thanks to Madeleine, Nicky, Catherine, Alan, Mathieu, Mike and John from the ‘European team’ and also to Ida and Siv, (who are still with us but deserve a mention in dispatches).

It’s always a pain finishing up a trip to Kosele. On the one hand it is great to anticipate being home and on the other there is always the job left behind that is slightly unfinished. That said this has been a very good couple of months. We have made as lot of progress in key areas, especially in relation to Farming God’s Way, (FGW), and starting the Agriculture College. Despite the weather our farm is in good shape and the harvest on the FGW plots is still looking promising.

My DIY skills continue to develop. I think it fitting that I had to do another minor repair on one of the solar systems on my last day in Kosele this year, (actually very minor – fitting a plug to two bare wires that had been poked into one of the inverters in the classroom system). I must be improving - I managed not to give myself an electric shock this time. I am trying to decide what tools to ask Santa for this Christmas, (having got fairly into the whole ‘right tool for the job’ mentality). I actually covet, (which is, I am sure, a major sin), a carbon fibre Leatherman multipurpose tool gadget, like the one Alan, (one of our visitors), brought out with him. Having previously blogged about how heavy the economy version that I brought to Kenya is I was amazed how light and usable the carbon fibre variety is. The only downside to it that I could see was needing a degree to work out how to actually open it up to get at the tools. This could, I guess, be a test of the user’s commitment to gadget geekiness and completing the job at hand.

Anyway, I digress. I’m not sure how easy it will be to blog from Nairobi airport tomorrow but I will try. If that fails I’ll have to wait until I get home on Saturday before the next instalment. It would, to be honest, be a major disappointment to miss the blog for a day. It’s mildly obsessional but is also a very therapeutic activity.

At this point it seems appropriate to thank God, the staff, the children, my family and followers for being so willing to put up with, (even encourage), my antics over here again, and to look forward to a very exciting New Year as our work in Kosele hits another gear.

Talent night

2011-11-30T13:07:00.000-08:00

What an amazing day. It started badly with torrential rain that put paid to a planned early morning trip to Lake Victoria. It finished brilliantly with a ‘talent night’ put on as a team effort by the Cisco team and the children. In between a huge amount of classroom painting was completed. It now looks like we have a new school all over again.

All of the planning and preparation for a visit by a team from the UK brings you to a point where you wonder if the visitors will enjoy what has been planned and worry that something, (or things), will go wrong. Despite the weather this week has flown past in a blur of activity accompanied by a spirit of determination, fun and hard work. We have been so blessed by our visitors. It has been great to see the children who often stay in the background getting involved in new activities, relating well to new people and developing their practical skills and talents. Now that we are building visitors’ centre It will be fun rising to the challenge of keeping it as fully occupied as possible. The children learn so much from being around ‘mzungus’ and I know that all we visitors to Kenya learn a lot from them.

Tomorrow is my last whole day in Kenya for a while. I’ll be flying back to the UK on Friday evening and returning to Kenya towards the end of January. I think I’ve got most of the jobs I need to do in hand, (though you never know what will come up to knock you off track for the day). It will be good to be home for a bit, (though I’m sure the plotting and scheming for the next steps won’t slow down while I’m away from Kosele). At least it will give the staff a chance to catch their breath.

Too much of a good thing

2011-11-29T11:56:00.000-08:00

I can't believe how fast this week is racing away. I shouldn't really be surprised, the last part of a visit to Kenya always rushes away with me. The Cisco team have, yet again, come up trumps in the hard work department and we now have five very smart looking classrooms. The second coat of paint will go on tomorrow. Weather permitting we should also do a version of the Farming God's Way training with the team, (I don't like to miss out on an opportunity to evangelise about our no plough, no nonsense solution to the world hunger problem).

We have only had a small amount of rain today, for which I think many of our neighbours will be grateful. It is hard to believe that we could have too much rain in Kosele, but a number of our neighbours are complaining about the effects of water logging on their crops and on their houses. It's easy to understand the problem of too much water running across the fields and spoiling the crop, (it has happened to us on a small part of our new land). It is more difficult to imagine what it must be like to have water rising through the floor in your house. Ian was out visiting in the community this afternoon and he reported on two cases of houses being badly affected in this way by the rain. For the families involved this is no joke. This is a tough enough place to live in at the best of times.

I keep meaning to get an early night but have so far not managed to get to bed much before midnight. Tonight is going to have to be an exception as we have an early start in the morning. We are planning a visit to Lake Victoria for our visitors and hope to be in time to catch the sun rising. All being well it should be a good way to start the day. Kenya really is a country of great contrasts. Great wealth side by side with grinding poverty. The destructive power of nature accompanied by great natural beauty. Optimism in the least promising circumstances. As our friends from Cisco start their last full day with us I hope that they will have been moved by their experiences of rural Kenya. They have been a great blessing to us. I hope that we will have had the same effect on them.

Running out of time

2011-11-28T11:56:00.000-08:00

The to do list is shrinking, thank goodness, but it could still be touch and go whether I get everything done that I need to before flying back to the UK on Friday. It's been a useful but very administrative kind of day today – signing new teachers' contracts, preparing next years' timetables for school and making sure all the presents that sponsors have sent over have been received by the children and thank you letters have been written.

The Cisco team have been working like Trojans again, finishing the last part of a house build in record time before starting on preparations for painting classrooms. There is a really good atmosphere on the compound tonight. All of the children got involved with sanding the classroom walls before they get painted tomorrow. I can't imagine children in England singing and dancing while working the way our kids have this evening. All credit to them and the Cisco team for getting them going.

Listening to the place close down for the night it strikes me how much of a privilege it is to be here. It's going to be strange being back in England again. I'm sure I'll still find it just as hard to switch off at night and get to sleep. After it has rained in Kosele the noise of frogs, dogs, mosquitoes and overflowing water tanks can keep you awake for a while. At other times, like tonight, the place goes very quiet. Stepping outside at night, when there are no clouds and no electric lights to be seen the stars fill the sky. It is an awesome sight. It makes you feel very small. There are lots of things that I miss about Kenya when I am in England. The tranquillity and the sky late at at night are fairly close to the top of the list. They are a reassuring reminder that God is in His heaven and that whatever else happens there is a plan.

Three wheels on my wagon

2011-11-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

What a day! We seem to have had a bit of everything Kenya can chuck at you one way or another. I think our visitors are getting a full taste of life out here. The day started off with a light drizzle, (not too encouraging), but, fortunately, this didn't last long and we actually had a really hot sunny day until about 4 pm. As it's Sunday today we went to church and I'd like to think that it was the joyful sound that we all made singing and praising God that turned the weather around.

The practical part of the day for our visitors involved putting mud on the walls of a house that is being built for a widow in the community. The 'smearing' part of the house build is always a popular activity and the team made a real go of it this afternoon – finishing two walls. The houses that members of the community live in would be described as 'wattle and daub' in Europe. Properly built they are an impressive testimony to local people's ingenuity in making the most of available resources, (principally wood and mud).

Taking our visitors to the site of the house build and later bringing them back again provided some 4x4 highlights for me. The journey to the site involved a shortish stretch of driving down a narrow, bumpy dirt track. After dropping the team off I had to make a three point turn and managed to drop one of the back wheels of the Landrover over the edge of a ditch, (it was a very narrow road for three point turning!). Engaging the low gears for the four wheel drive fortunately enabled the three wheels that were in contact with solid ground to pull us out of the ditch but it was a bit touch and go for a few minutes. The LR doesn't have a handbrake so doing a hill start out of a ditch on a dirt road was a bit of a challenge. Good old fashioned British engineering triumphed, (thank goodness).

The journey home was also memorable for a different reason. At 5 pm the heavens opened. It was the most severe rain I have seen for a while and it quickly filled the ditches at the side of the 'road' and turned bits of it into what looked like a small river. As I waited for our visitors to reach the pre-arranged rendezvous point I heard the most explosive lightning blast, and watched an electricity pole being struck full on about half a mile away. Some of our visitors were even closer to it than me – about 5 minutes walk away. We drove back along the rapidly growing floods across the road with the Landrover packed in classic Kenya style – three guys and me, the driver, packed into the front and fourteen people, (at least), in the back. It was a fitting end to a very African afternoon – the kind of thing that you don't forget in a hurry. The Cisco team and our two new friends from Denmark have been marvellous so far - it promises to be an interesting week.

Full house

2011-11-26T11:30:00.000-08:00

Kosele is full of visitors now that our friends from Cisco have arrived. I have a feeling that we are in for a very busy week. The day got off to a slightly worrying start, as it looked suspiciously like it might rain again first thing. Fortunately the sun kind of sputtered into life eventually and the rain stayed away. We are all now praying for a return to the normal weather pattern of rain at night. It would be a shame if our visitors were subject to the Noah's Ark version of Kenya while they are here.

One of the nice things about having visitors is that it helps you to see Kenya from a different perspective for a while. It's easy to become so accustomed to your immediate surroundings that you stop noticing the small details. Having to stop and explain places, events and people provides a bit of space for reflection and, sometimes, reassessment.

The Cisco team flew from Nairobi to a small airstrip about an hours drive from our place. It was the first time that I had been there and I was surprised to discover a perfectly serviceable airstrip down one of the rough red roads that we are so used to driving on. The arrival of the plane turned into the usual spectator sport with a large crowd of people of all ages gathering to watch the landing and to weigh up the largish number of mzungus, (white people), that disembarked.

On our way back to Kosele in the Landrover John Appleton, (one of our UK trustees and the leader of the Cisco team), and I noticed a guy by the side of the road scooping something up off the ground and eating it. On closer inspection we could see that he was eating flying ants as they hatched. A freshly hatched flying ant is a real delicacy it would appear. I do remember the same thing happening on our compound when we first came to Kenya. The flying ants hatch in large numbers after heavy rain then burst into life and fly upwards in a great swarm. When it happened in Kosele we had a Kenyan girl who became my daughter Ellie's friend staying with us and she happily chased around after the flying ants, enjoying every, presumably, juicy mouthful.

During the journey back to Kosele from the airstrip we encountered the usual road hazards – potholes deep enough to break your suspension, other drivers suicidal overtaking and vindictive speed humps. Having moaned previously about the state of the last seven kilometres of the journey from Oyugis to Kosele it was really good to see that the earth moving equipment had been in action and scraped off the worst of the potholes, significantly speeding our journey up. It would be expecting too much to expect the road surface to be tarmacked but it does make a change to be able to get as high as third gear on the last leg of the journey home. Let's hope it is a sign of good things to come in the days ahead.

Big day out

2011-11-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

It has been a very African day today. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because, in the end, everything that needed to happen happened. The down side is that the ups and downs of making it through the day aren't always very good for my blood pressure.

Anybody that has spent any time in Africa will be familiar with the idea of 'African Time'. It is a fact that very little happens on time in Africa the way that Westerners are used to. This isn't a problem for Africans and it shouldn't really be a problem for us Western folks who are, after all, usually just visitors to Africa.

Today was a big day for our oldest children – the pupils in Class 8 who recently completed their primary education by taking their KCPE, (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education), exams. As a celebration of this fact we arranged a nice lunch and small excursion for them. All of the Class 8 pupils and all of the teachers took part in the day's activities.

The day didn't exactly get off to the anticipated start due to rain. I have commented on the amount of rain that we have had a number of times but today's rain was unusual – it started in the morning and has continued on and off all day. As I type it is raining quite heavily. This was not, obviously, the ideal way to start the day. Fortunately Plan B – watching a video for a bit – worked, (thanks to our small generator). We were finally able to get off on our day out at about 10.30 am. It is perhaps just as well that the rain delayed the start of play as the bus that we had booked for 8.00 am was nearly two hours late arriving, ('African Time'). Once aboard the bus we piled off to Kendu Bay, a nearby town that is by Lake Victoria, stopping en route for a brief sightseeing visit to a new water project.

It has been a while since I visited Lake Victoria. We used to take the children their fairly regularly when they were small enough to fit all of them in our Landrover. Revisiting the Lake I was struck by how much the waterline has receded. An old cargo boat that was 'moored' (actually half sunk), by an old pier is now resting on dry land. The fishermen now land their catch at a different site, hemmed in by weeds and vegetation that is now colonising what was once the shore of the lake. Despite this change it was nice to be back at the lake, watching two fishing boats land their catches, (which were promptly bought up by Mary our manager who has a keen eye for a bargain). The Lake has a soothing effect. The fishermen that we watched plying their trade today could just as easily have been fishermen from Jesus' day. They use the same boats and the same 'technology' – ragged sails and fragile looking boats seemingly held together by prayers and string.

As we made our way back to the bus to go to our lunch appointment I noticed a group of our teachers stood on the pier by the old boat pointing at something in the swampy ground beneath them. “Shhh” they said, “there is a big snake down there”. Peering down into the grass I caught a glimpse of the middle section of a very fat, (and therefore quite large), Black Mamba as it glided through a gap in the the long grass – the first time I have ever seen one of these deadly snakes in the flesh in the wild. It was an exciting moment.

We had lunch in a restaurant called the Big Five in Kendu Bay. (Though quite when any of the Big Five animals was last seen in Kendu Bay heaven only knows). The meal was wonderful – between us we had chosen fish, beef and chicken dishes which were served very efficiently, (though the seating arrangements were a bit squeezed). The kids were served first followed by the rest of us. The meal was, (I think), a great success. As we finished eating the rain stopped, allowing us to extend our day a bit by taking a visit to a local 'historical site' – a volcanic lake called Lake Simbi. According to a travel website “Simbi Lake is a popular destination for birdwatchers and a footpath allows visitors to walk around the circular lake. There is a local myth about this crater lake. As it goes, an old lady was denied food and lodging by the residents of a village and she made the rain came down so hard that the village was swamped to become Simbi Lake.” We had a very nice walk round the lake and did seem some beautifully coloured wading birds.

I did have a 'mzungu, (white person), moment just before we set off for the Lake. The driver of the bus ate slightly later than we did, (because we had packed out the dining room), and so we were kept waiting, sat on the bus, for about twenty minutes while he finished his lunch and then had to do something to the bus before we set off. As I said, it was a very African Day. I'm sure I was the only person on the bus who was at all bothered by the unscheduled wait, and we did set off eventually. It may sound a small problem but this type of transgression of Western notions of service and efficiency is one of the most testing things about living in Kenya.

As we were waiting by the bus for the last stragglers from the walk around the lake to arrive back Madam Nyangwe, (one of our teachers), told me that a small gaggle of young children standing by the bus were very pleased about our visit. They had never seen a white person before. Another example of something you just wouldn't expect.

The route we travelled to and from Kendu Bay on was a 'short cut' that seemed to take longer than the road that we normally use. It was, to be fair, a much better “road” and it made a nice change to see some new scenery. On the way home there was a nice atmosphere in the bus – the kids were quite talkative and in good humour. As we alternated between hurtling and crawling along the red dirt track back to Kosele it was good to be able to reflect on the day. I think I must be mellowing. As long as you don't let it get under your skin African Time works. On the whole the delays didn't add up to much and everybody had a good time. Maybe us mzungus are just too uptight. Our Kenyans friends die from many tragic causes, but I'm fairly sure stress isn't one of them.

Dead novelists society

2011-11-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a really weird day with the weather today – the most torrential downpour mid afternoon. I feel very sorry for anybody that was caught out in it. It meant that I was stuck in the office so I decided I would do a job that I have been meaning to get round to for a while.

All of our work in Kosele depends on the support of sponsors and donors from the UK, so it is very important for us to keep good records about the children's circumstances. With a hundred and thirty children coming to our school as 'day scholars' it is a challenging task. As we open new classrooms next year we will be able to provide education and a feeding program for even more needy children in the community. I digress. This afternoon I set about typing up some of the children's stories and was struck, again, by how awful some of them are.

When I was about twenty I had plans to become an English teacher, so started a Combined Studies degree course in Northampton which included English as one of the subjects. We studied a number of the classic authors, and during the course of my first year I read a lot of books by Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Reading through the notes that our staff had made about the children's cases this afternoon was very much like reading Dickens and Hardy. Stories of the most awful child neglect, rural poverty and family breakdown, often caused by premature death due to easily preventable diseases. The most tragic of Dickens and Hardy's characters have modern counterparts here in Kosele. Women get bought and are abandoned, children are forced to work from an early age and young girls are extremely vulnerable. Apart from the intrusion of the mobile phone a five minute walk away from our main road would bring you face to face with living conditions that are straight out of pre-industrial Europe.

Of all the details that I read and typed up today the one that gave me most pause for thought was the case of the two children whose parents had been 'lost' in the post election violence of 2008. The phrase he or she 'got lost' describes one of the real tragedies of modern Kenya. It has a variety of meanings but they all amount to the same thing. Somebody, somewhere is unaccounted for – probably dead. Men leave their wives and families to seek work in urban centres and don't come back. Young, single men and women leave home to make their way in life and aren't heard from again, or come back in a coffin.

When you take a look at life in rural Africa you can't help being shocked. Firstly by the sheer grind of it all but then by the resilience that so many of our neighbours show in the face of the most appalling adversity. I honestly don't know how some of them stay alive, or maintain the will to live – but they do. Thomas Hardy was often criticised for spinning many of his stories around implausible coincidences. If he'd lived around Kosele and written about the characters here the criticism wouldn't stand up. You couldn't make any of this stuff up!

Spanner in the works

2011-11-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

Today has been another day of small victories – yes I’ve been DIYing again. I might need to be careful about continuing to blog about my small achievements in the fixing things department. I don’t want to build up any unrealistic expectations for my return home. That said I am much keener on maintenance and mending nowadays. I was thinking about the reason behind this new-found enthusiasm this afternoon. I think it boils down to the pioneer spirit. This might sound a bit odd so I’d better explain.

Living out in rural Kenya makes you much more aware of how easily we come to depend on other people to come to our rescue. The problem I was fixing today wasn’t especially complicated. Yesterday afternoon James, one of our security guards, told me that the starter rope on the generator we use for our borehole had broken. This really is a pain as the borehole is so deep that it needs a powerful electrical pump to raise the water up. We do have a back up generator but it does not generate enough power for this job. One of James’ jobs is to make sure the water tank that we use for drinking water is kept topped up. It runs out after about three days and, with about two hundred people to provide food and drinks for a day, running out of water is a serious problem.

There were two possible solutions to fixing the generator. Either replace the starter rope or attach a car battery to the generator to start it automatically. A quick trip to Oyugis, (our nearest ‘town’), this morning made the repair the only option, (there weren’t any suitable batteries for sale anywhere). There were plenty of ropes to replace the broken one. Whilst in Oyugis I also experienced one of the joys of Kenya. The idea of the happy, helpful African is, perhaps, sometimes an unhelpful and patronising stereotype, but it is, none the less, based in fact. Today a really helpful mechanic in Oyugis dropped the job that he was doing to help me locate a shop that sold decent quality spanners, (also required for the generator fix). It turns out that he was assisted by a French organisation to train as a mechanic and set up shop in Oyugis because there was too much competition in Kisumu, (a much bigger town about ninety minutes drive from Oyugis). He was very keen to point out that he, unlike many other people he knew, took great care of his tools and that he had in the past come up to our place to fix the Landrover. He was good company.

Anyway. Back at base, new spanner in hand I was able to make fairly short work of taking the rope starter bit of the generator apart and putting the new rope in. Certainly not rocket science but it was very satisfying hearing the generator roar into life at the first pull. Which is where the pioneer spirit kicks in. Back home there are relatively few occasions when failing to fix something yourself will threaten your ability to keep things going. Inconvenience perhaps. Failure to fix the generator today would mean that, as I type, we would have run out of drinking water. That kind of problem is a great stimulant to effective action. So, the generator is now fixed. I did eventually stop feeling smug about it and I’m now wondering what will go wrong next that I can apply my new enthusiasm and rapidly growing tool kit to.

Follow the cow!

2011-11-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

The cow, (and its by products) have a number of uses in Africa. Status symbol, savings bank, life insurance, dinner, fertiliser, wall finish, clothing. It’s quite an impressive list, (and I’m sure there are other things that cows are good for that I’ve missed). Almost poetic. I am musing about cows this evening because we have been doing Farming God’s Way, (FGW), training again and I have had a revelation. It was very exciting.

A few weeks ago we started our push to persuade as many farmers as possible in our community to turn to Farming God’s Way by training some of our church leaders. The idea is to plant a number of 6m x 6m plots with maize and beans to demonstrate how effective Farming God’s Way, (a non tillage approach to farming), is. With proof that it works to show we are equipping church members to train others in the new approach. We are making good progress. Today’s session was set up to give everybody who has been trained so far an opportunity to deliver a bit of the training themselves. The session was co-ordinated by Ian and we moved at a good pace though all of the practical and biblical aspects of the course.

We have, over the years, wondered what the best way is to help members of the community here in Kosele. We are aware of, (and actively working against), the tendency for outside help from an organisation like ours to create dependency – doing so much for people that they are not encouraged to work on ways of helping themselves. Farming God’s Way is a great tool for discouraging dependency and encouraging food security. It depends on working to a high standard, performing tasks on time and with minimal wastage. One of the important ingredients of successful, sustainable farming, is fertiliser. Most people think of fertiliser as a kind of boost for healthy plant growth. Whilst this is an important consideration it is equally important to recognise that applying inputs to the soil before planting is also enriching the soil. Sustainable soil management involves putting in as well as taking out. In FGW terms “you reap what you sow”. Sowing without applying fertiliser produces a poor yield and, in the long run, kills the soil. The problem I have been wrestling with is how poor farmers in our area can afford to fertilise their soil. So today’s revelation was very welcome.

We were digging a Well Watered Garden on Kennedy’s land today. Kennedy is one of the church leaders and he has one, small, skinny cow. To be fair to Kennedy most of the cows around our area are fairly small and skinny. Like all cows it does produce fertiliser – naturally - every day. I know because I went round Kennedy’s fairly small piece of land counting the number of cowpats and termite mounds. This might seem like a peculiar obsession but it had a purpose. Manure and anthill soil, (our friends the termites again!), are both good farm inputs. Poor farmers’ inability to afford farming inputs is a constant complaint around Kenya – yet it lies around the fields uncollected and, therefore, unused. I did an experiment with one of the dried up cowpats. First I chopped it up with a panga, (a big lethal looking machete), and then put it into a 350 ml cup, (the amount of manure required to fill one FGW hole). One cowpat nearly filled the cup. So I added a bit more from the next cowpat and took my cupful of dried up cow poo back to our gang of trainers. Exhibit A!.

When we came to the part of the training that involved the fertiliser I got the team to duplicate my wander round the farm counting piles of poo. We agreed that there were about twenty. Going by my, admittedly slightly unscientific, experiment with the poo and the panga that would be enough fertiliser for about fifteen of the holes that we dug on the Well Watered Garden plot, (there are sixty-six altogether). A five-minute search for poo provided the Eureka moment for fertiliser. Follow the cow! We talked about how often a cow delivers a deposit each day. Four times seemed to be the general consensus. (We will have to conduct scientific research). At a conservative three times a day that means that Kennedy’s small, skinny cow will deposit three times ninety piles of poo by the end of February. At the end of February everybody around our area will be ready to plant their seeds for the long rains. That lead in time gives Kennedy fertiliser for at least two hundred holes – as long as he and his family develop a commitment to following the cow.

In our discussion Kennedy made the interesting observation that many local cattle owners graze their cattle some distance away from the land they grow crops on and therefore wouldn’t be able to collect the manure they create. “What should they do?” he asked. “Take a bucket and spade with them”, I replied. This caused a bit of amusement initially but then, (I think), it began to dawn on people that a fantastic, free, source of fertiliser is being systematically wasted - fertilising rough grazing grounds. I don’t know whether the idea will catch on but I think it should. If we and our Kenyan friends want to escape the dependency syndrome we will have to work together to seek novel solutions. Following the cow might be one of them.

Slow news day

2011-11-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

The clock is ticking on the days left before returning to the UK for a short while. At this point my to do list seems to have taken on a life of its own and I am wondering if I’ll manage to get everything done in time. As I’ve been through this process a few times now I’m not unduly worried. Things have a habit of unravelling one day then coming back together the next. As I’ve said before the unpredictable nature of days out here makes it a more interesting place to be.

The rain is becoming a little patchier. I think it is now in wind up mode – threatening to pour down then quietly disappearing leaving a somewhat hot, sweaty night behind. I will have to look up the requirements for our maize in what remains of the growing season. Duncan is still making a morning pilgrimage to the plots and is working on a mid December harvest. I am disappointed that I won’t be here to see it come in. I’ll have to make sure Ian and Hilda take lots of pictures.

We have two new visitors staying with us – two young women from Denmark, (our first visitors from there). They promise to be a blessing to us as school winds down to the end of term and the children get less inclined to study. Given the examination overkill that we have experienced in the last month I’m surprised any of the children want to come to school at all. They will, hopefully, enjoy the more practical ‘curriculum’ that we have prepared for them for the next two weeks. In the run up to the Cisco team’s visit at the end of the week the teachers and pupils will be preparing to paint the classrooms, enjoying some mini ‘sports afternoons’ and doing some Art work. It should give us all a nice opportunity to wind down.

A good read

2011-11-20T05:55:00.000-08:00

If you have been following my blog you may have drawn the conclusion that I enjoy reading. You would be right. I like devouring books. I blame my Mum and Dad and the library at RAF Tengah in Singapore, (to which I was a regular visitor for a couple of years at an impressionable age). Reading occasionally feels like a guilty pleasure – a real indulgence. I justify it on the grounds that it's one of God's greatest gifts for unlocking your mind. In the absence of TV and a broadband Internet connection I am greatly blessed here in Kosele by having time to read.

Sunday is a good day for reading. We usually have very few visitors requiring payment of any kind, (which I am responsible for as Mary, our manager, has week-ends off). I find it very difficult to resist the temptation of buying a new tome to get through when I am travelling. On my way to Kenya in October I bought a book called Africa – Altered States, Ordinary Miracles by Richard Dowden, who has made Africa a life's work in a number of roles but principally as a journalist.

If you only ever read one book Africa read this one. Since first coming to Kenya in 2002 I have been fascinated, shocked, amused, moved and overwhelmed by Africa. As a result of being a participant in development in Kenya I have become a keen student of African politics and history. Africa – Altered States, Ordinary Miracles achieves the extraordinary feat of making a very complex historical, political and cultural narrative immensely readable. The chapters in the book move from one country to another, each one casting light on, for me at least, previously half understood details. No wonder the Independent review said it is 'a remarkable, ground breaking achievement, capturing the complex texture of a rapidly changing continent. It is also terribly moving'.

With the festive season rapidly gathering momentum, (in Europe and America at least), go mad and add this book to your list for Santa. Even better – rush out to the shops and buy it for yourself now as an early gift. You won't be disappointed, (though you may end up having a few late nights).

Back on the farm

2011-11-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

It’s been another good day on the farm today – ooh aar. A group of people from a church in Kisii, (our closest ‘big’ town), visited today to find out more about Farming God’s Way (FGW). One way or another I’ve had a fairly office based week so far so it was nice to get out and do something practical again.

We started the training with a tour of the latrines and the farm. Starting a tour with an in depth look at the toilets might not seem like the obvious way to get going but our visitors seemed suitably impressed by the Ecosan latrines and the compost we make from them. On then to the farm… It is difficult not to gloat over the cobs of corn that we have on the FGW plots – they really are huge. Having a field full of the evidence that FGW really does work gets our training off to a good start. We are really hoping that a very, very large number of people in our area will adopt this method of farming but will not go out on the stump shouting its praises. We are hoping that leading by example will stimulate real interest in FGW.

The best part of the training is the ‘science bit’ at the end of the hole digging. (For a fuller explanation of the steps involved in setting up a FGW plot follow either one of these links) –

http://www.hopeandkindness.org/ProjectFarming.htm – (Our website)

http://www.farming-gods-way.org/home.htm – FGW site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avlBtPSipa0 – FGW videos

The experiments demonstrate how wasteful traditional approaches to farming are and help to explain why so much of Africa’s topsoil is being deposited in oceans! Our visitors seemed convinced by the demonstrations and I am optimistic that some of them will be Farming God’s Way in the next growing season. Pastor Peter, who led the group, has promised to let us know how his church members get on and I hope that we will be able to post pictures of good harvests on our website in the coming year.

It's a crazy world

2011-11-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

It’s been a long day today. As ever a collection of unpredictable things to deal with and a to do list a mile long. I’m not complaining – I like being fully occupied and appreciate the fact that every day is different. I’ve been continuing to grapple with the problem of longevity, (of Hope and Kindness, not me), and have finally finished Built to Last, (the book that I have been drawing inspiration from). As I have blogged previously it has been a very stimulating read and has generated a lot of doodling on my planning pad.

I haven’t been consciously abstaining from news but had been news free for about a week until this afternoon. The transition from news junkie to news free has been easier than I would have thought a few months ago. Very few withdrawal symptoms. I did have a quick flick through the Standard, (Kenya’s ‘other’ daily newspaper). It would appear that Kenya is winning in the fight against Al-Shabbab. It will be interesting to see how much media space this has generated in the West. The press in Kenya is, understandably, full of news and views on the situation. Opinion seems fairly mixed about whether Kenya’s involvement in the current war in Somalia is a good or a bad thing. It is certainly very significant for the Horn of Africa. It’s difficult not to be pessimistic about Somalia’s future prospects, and very hard to imagine what life must be life for the average Somali. We live in a crazy world.

In a couple of weeks I will be heading back to the UK for a bit of a break before returning to Kenya to start a new school year in January. I always find it difficult readjusting to life in the West after a few months over here. I will be flying back via Dubai and will, I am sure, find the ‘Dubai Experience’ as perplexing as ever. Dubai is a miracle of modern urban and airport design – a temple to all things buildable. Like most airport terminals Dubai seems to lose its charm after a couple of visits. Once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. Having said that it is impossible not to be impressed by it’s sheer audacity – common sense says that it shouldn’t be possible to build such a structure in such an unpromising and inhospitable location.

Wikipedia contains some interesting facts about Dubai. “Currently, human waste is collected daily from thousands of septic tanks across the city and driven by tankers to the city's only sewage treatment plant at Al-Awir. Dubai's rapid growth means that it is stretching its limited sewage treatment infrastructure to its limits. Because of the long queues and delays, some tanker drivers resort to illegally dumping the effluent into storm drains or behind dunes in the desert. Sewage dumped into storm drains flows directly into the Persian Gulf, near the city's prime swimming beaches. Doctors have warned that tourists using the beaches run the risk of contracting serious illnesses like typhoid and hepatitis.”

“The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: برج العرب, "Tower of the Arabs") is a luxury hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates managed by the Jumeirah Group and built by Said Khalil. Its construction started in 1994 and ended in 1999. It was designed by Tom Wright of WS Atkins PLC. The hotel cost $650,000,000 to build. At 321 metres (1,053 ft) and 60 floors, it was the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel until being succeeded by Rose Rayhaan by Rotana in 23 December 2009, again in Dubai. The Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island 280 metres (919 ft) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, designed to symbolise Dubai's urban transformation and to mimic the sail of a boat.”

From the sub-slime to the ridiculous!

It will be great to catch up with my family again but anticipating the return journey from a developing country to a developed country via an over-developing country always makes me more acutely aware of the sheer injustice of Kosele’s existence on the margins of sustainability. Tomorrow we have a group of visitors coming over to see what Farming God’s Way is all about. I pray that their visit will inspire them to audacious visions for their own communities. Somewhere between Kenya, Somalia, Dubai and the UK there must be a place where people live in peace and enjoy rich, fulfilling and sustainable lives. That would be an interesting place to visit!

Good News

2011-11-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

I’m really hoping that this will be the last blog about the war against the termites. The moat around house 4 is now deeper, (down to the foundations), and we have applied the serious chemical treatment. A last few survivors are trying to escape through cracks in the floor of the house but there has been no new activity outside. Looking on the positive side of the whole thing it’s reassuring to know how deep the house foundations are. Jared, the guy who has done the digging for us, is one of the hardest working people on planet earth and it took him a long time to finish the digging.

Further good news – this time about the Landrover. The clutch has now been fixed and the test drive only revealed one funny noise from under the vehicle. The guys didn’t finish working on it until quite late so we haven’t had a chance to really do the final inspection in daylight, but things are looking good so far. Mary, Ian and Hilda will be taking a trip to Kisii tomorrow so we shall see.

We had an unexpected visitor today. When we first started our work in Kosele in 2002 a number of young people from Kisumu, (our nearest very large town, about ninety minutes drive away), stayed with us. One of them was a young man called Nick. We lost contact with him after he returned to Kisumu in 2003 but earlier this year he got in touch to say that he was working as a mechanic for CMC, one of the largest car dealerships in Kenya. CMC are agents for Landrover and Nick is very close to finishing his training with CMC – making him a fully-fledged Landrover mechanic. It was really good to catch up with him again and great to know that he has done so well for himself. In the current gloomy economic climate, both here in Kenya and the rest of the world, it is encouraging to hear a success story.

The battle rages on!

2011-11-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

The battle against the termites continues. They will have to go on the list of questions for God, (along with mosquitoes and bed bugs!). House 4, (where Ian and Hilda are staying), is beginning to look like it has a moat around it. If it rains tonight it might well do. The termites seem to have stopped trying to invade from inside the house and have switched their attention to a patch of earth to the left of the porch. It doesn’t look like there is any alternative to the serious chemicals tomorrow. This is, to be honest, slightly disappointing. One of our neighbours came over to suss out the problem first thing this morning, (hence the moat that has now been dug around the house). This evening, armed with the sprayer that we used on the maize in the battle against stalk borers, he sprayed the most lethal smelling stuff down the various termite holes. It would certainly have put me off burrowing any more. It might be fairer to leave our final assessment of the first stage of the battle until the morning –perhaps the stuff takes a while to work.

There was great excitement this afternoon for a number of the boys in our school. Following an initial visit by a local mechanic to assess the situation with our broken down Landrover, what seemed like a small army of mechanic’s assistants turned up to start dismantling the gearbox and clutch. Watching mechanics fix cars is a popular spectator sport in Kenya and our lads stood and watched in time honoured fashion. I’m not sure what the fascination is. There is usually a lot of noise. To be fair to the mechanics there didn’t seem to be much cursing but nearly all the parts that needed to be removed seemed to need the encouragement of a hammer. It was fascinating to watch. First the front seats came out, followed by the gear stick, bulkhead and assorted bits of the floor. As I type what remains of the gearbox and clutch housing are hanging under the vehicle. The head mechanic has assured me that it will all be fixed by tomorrow evening.

We seem to have hit a bit of a dry spell for the last couple of days. This is a bit more like the pattern of rainfall that we are used to at this time of year and will, most likely, come as a relief to a number of our neighbours. It seems that there is often no happy medium in Kenya – there is either too much rain, causing flooding, or too little. Duncan and I took a walk to Kosele this morning and couldn’t help noticing that in a number of our neighbours’ fields the maize has grown tall but shows little evidence of cobs. That said there is still optimism in the community that this season the harvest will be better than the last one. We have already heard reports of people picking and then boiling the maize that they have in their fields at the moment. This is not such good news. It means that maize is being harvested before it has had time to fully mature and dry. The high cost of maize in the local markets has driven some of our neighbours to this poor state of affairs. We will pray that our area enjoys the right combination of sunshine and rain to bring a good harvest from what remains of the maize. It would be good if the rain stays away until we’ve sorted the termites out though – we don’t want to have to build a drawbridge for Ian and Hilda.

Hakuna Matata (there are no worries!)

2011-11-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

Life here in Kosele is never dull – there is always something happening that keeps you on your toes. Having had a really up, efficient kind of day yesterday it was back to situation normal today. It isn’t entirely discouraging – just highly unpredictable. The school is back in exam mode again. We have a supervisor back on the scene, (but no armed guard this time). Now that the KCPE, (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education), is over and done with the other classes get their opportunity to shine. It’s a shame the powers that be can’t!

According to our planning the pupils in classes 3, 5 and 6 should be doing zonal exams next week. The pupils in class 7, (who are now the ‘pre-candidate’ class, as they become KCPE ‘candidates’ next year), should have started divisional mock exams yesterday. All of these exams are set externally and the papers should be delivered to the school. For reasons, which were not entirely clear today, the class 7 exams have been postponed until Thursday and the other classes started their exams today, (instead of next week). Given the early start for the majority of the school a teacher was despatched to Oyugis to buy exam papers for the pupils in classes 1 and 2 to ensure that all of our end year exams are conducted this week. You have to remain nonplussed by it all – it’s life as normal out here. Nobody seemed to expect an explanation and none was given. No parents will come to the school to complain tomorrow and the children don’t seem to mind. I couldn’t imagine a response like that in the UK!

To add insult to injury the clutch packed up on the Landrover this afternoon so it had to be towed back to base.

The termites, (see yesterday’s blog), seem to have been shaken but not seriously deterred by the hot bath last night. They are still excavating a small amount of soil in the house, (though there aren’t as many termites in evidence as there were yesterday). One of the side effects of the anti malarial drug that I take is that it gives you very vivid dreams – I'm anticipating dreaming about the house sinking into a huge hole in the ground and then being eaten by monster termites in the near future, (the dreams seem to take a couple of days to catch up). Fortunately they don’t seem to want to eat any of the other buildings so we don’t have too big a problem to deal with.

As the day draws to a close I wonder what will happen tomorrow. It makes sense to plan ahead but it can drive you mad if you take it too seriously. ‘African time’ really is at a different location on the time, space continuum. Some days it seems crazy, some days it doesn’t. According to wikipedia hakuna matata is a swahili phrase that means "there are no worries". Under the circumstances it's the only sane way of thinking.

We don't like termites or snakes

2011-11-14T10:52:00.000-08:00

It was a long day but we have managed to appoint two strong candidates as teachers in our Agriculture College next year. The day got off to a good start as the candidates arrived on time, (a minor miracle in itself given the state of the roads and public transport). The interviews were conducted ‘mzungu’ style, (hence the long day), and the interviewees responded with enthusiasm. The tour around the farm was a success. Our crops are growing well. The cobs of corn are “admirable” according to Duncan, our farm manager. This is high praise indeed as Duncan is a master of the understatement. The cobs on many of the maize plants are actually huge, and still have some growing to do. Our interviewees appreciated the vision that we have for farm productivity and experimentation and we are looking forward to their input into the work. Finding two teachers at this point is a great relief and makes the next stages of planning easier in many respects. Working on the principle that three heads are better than one I am hoping that our newest members of staff will ease the burden of leadership and will fire up the students with enthusiasm next year.

It promises to be an interesting evening. I’ve just taken a short break from blogging to investigate a couple of wildlife problems over in the house Ian and Hilda are staying in. We have noticed an increase in termite activity around the house over the last week and had been planning to get something lethal to treat them with next time we are in Oyugis. For such small insects termites are incredibly destructive. They have now excavated a hole about a couple of inches wide next to the front porch of the house and, even more worryingly, have started to emerge in the small space between the living room and kitchen through a crack in the floor. This means there is a termite tunnel under the house! We must act quickly.

The termite problem also alerted us to another wildlife issue. Whilst looking for evidence of termite activity outside the front of the house Ian and Hilda spotted a baby black mamba – a small version of a somewhat dangerous snake that is native to this part of Africa. Leonard, one of our security guards quickly killed it with an axe, (which he has now armed himself with for the rest of the night). It would be a bit more of a problem dealing with mummy mamba. I suspect we will be praying especially hard for the next few nights. (It certainly spices up a trip to the latrine once it has got dark). Big sticks have been issued and the guards will be extra vigilant. The snakes become more active when it rains, and we have had a lot of rain recently. Further investigation of the termite problem revealed a large frog sat over the top of the termite hole, waiting for them to emerge. The frogs also become more active in the rain. We are hoping that the top link in the food chain finds easier pickings elsewhere. We will have to encourage the children to be noisier than usual tomorrow.

Strictly no time wasters

2011-11-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

I have had a fairly restful day, for once, and feel well prepared for what will, I hope, be a big day tomorrow. The main reason for my current trip to Kosele is to prepare the ground, (literally), for our Agriculture College, which will be starting in January. Tomorrow we will be interviewing three candidates for the teaching post(s), which this new venture creates.

It is a both exciting and challenging prospect. We have advertised more widely than usual for these posts and have got good candidates to choose from. There will be four of us on the interview panel; Mr Dedans, our head teacher, Mary our manager, Duncan the farm manager and myself. Between us we should be asking a series of carefully honed questions to really put the interviewees through their paces. I am trying to decide whether or not it would be mean to get them to answer a short exam paper as well as do an interview.

It is encouraging to see how much agriculture is being promoted in the Kenyan media. One of the key things we will be looking for in the interviewees tomorrow is a good understanding of the challenges facing Kenyan agriculture at present and a real enthusiasm for doing something about it. As part of our drive to become a more self-sufficient organisation the teachers in the Agriculture College will have their pay tied to the performance of the farm. We are hoping that this will deter any but serious applicants. If we are unable to appoint anybody tomorrow we will have to cast our recruitment net further, (and I will have to teach the students myself for the first few weeks of term). This shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The most exciting part of this whole project is its unique character. Planning a curriculum and timetable around the agricultural calendar presents a number of opportunities for creative approaches to teaching and learning. I can’t wait to get stuck into it with our first group of students.

Making it all add up

2011-11-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

One of the other things I never imagined was turning into an accountant, (as well as a dodgy electrician). I’m actually better at accounting because it’s a computer thing. At least it is now. It probably says a lot about me but I do really enjoy setting up spreadsheet packages. I have spent some time fine tuning our books so that they are easy to enter and audit. It took a long time but we finally bit the bullet and stopped keeping any paper-based accounts in Kosele this July. I think I was probably more nervous about the switch over than anybody else. Up until July we’d been keeping a dual system – entering the data in job lots onto the computer from the paper based system. It was a bit labour intensive at times but did at least provide the reassurance of being more or less computer proof.

We have had somewhat mixed experience with computers since starting our work in Kenya – hence the reluctance to trust a completely computer based system. For one thing it’s a much tougher environment for electrical equipment. The amount of dust that clogs everything up is incredible. We’ve had a couple of hard drives collapse under the strain. We also seem to have had more than our fair share of problems with power packs and USB drives. This has, in the past, been compounded by relying on solar power, (though our present system seems quite robust). Our current accounts manager, Mary is much gentler with most of our electrical equipment than all of her predecessors. So far we’ve only had to replace one power pack, (and to be fair to Mary Judi’s own laptop in the UK, which is the same type, suffered a similar problem).

The hardest thing really has been the amount of support needed to make sure all ICT related eventualities are covered. Anybody who has had the dubious pleasure of trying to solve a computer problem using a telephone or email based support system will know how easy it is to get to the ‘throw it out of the window’ stage in this situation. If you add the problem of the computer user, (in our case mostly Mary), being fairly new to the task you will begin to appreciate the problem of maintaining our mission critical ICT systems at a distance, (in our case about 4,000 miles). Until very recently It has been easier to trust the low tech, (but very reliable), approach of paper, pen, tippex and a regular trip to the local photocopy shop. It’s not quite Staples but it does a wonderful job.

So, today I’ve been burning the midnight oil convincing myself that we have a dependable system. I’m fairly happy with it so far. We should be able to give Mary the required amount of support between us over the next few months without resorting to the call centre solution. Next step in our rapid march into the twenty first century will be the school systems. Onwards and upwards into a ‘data rich’ future.

Thriving on chaos and built to last

2011-11-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

I’ve been reading again. In the absence of my usual media vices, (CNN, The Today Program and the DVD box set of The West Wing), it has been really good to have an opportunity to catch up on a number of books that I’ve bought in the last couple of years and just dipped in to. The book I’m reading at the moment is called Built to Last by a guy called Jim Collins. It’s not particularly new, (published in the 90s), but comes billed as “one of the most eye-opening business studies since In Search of Excellence. This is an interesting comparison as Tom Peters, (the ‘uber guru’ of business gurus according to The Economist, and author of In Search of Excellence), is quite critical of Jim Collins. They are both a good read and both books are very challenging.

Built to Last (subtitle Successful habits of visionary companies) is giving rise to yet more scribbling and quote jottings in my inspirations pad. Working in Kenya is both exhilarating and exasperating. The potential for change is huge but the inertia created by badly designed and corrupted social structures is also substantial. Some days you feel you’ve taken a number of steps forward. Other days you wonder how you will recover from taking steps backwards. In addition to writing In Search of Excellence Tom Peters has also written a book called Thriving on Chaos. I'm sure I bought it just for the title. As Tom Peters is such an influential thinker a number of commentaries on his work have appeared. I like a question posed in one of these, culled from the Internet. “How has eternal confusion affected your organisation’s fortunes?” In the Kenyan context it’s the same as asking “Haven’t you nailed that jelly to the wall yet?” Some days it’s up, some days it’s sliding down.

Today has, on the whole, been up. Thanks to Built to Last, (which I note from a review is “even referred to by trendy pastors”), I have found some more nuggets to add to my collection of inspirations and practical steps to take to make sure Hope and Kindness runs the race for a long time and finishes well, (see the Apostle Paul’s thoughts on this in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

Shocking truths

2011-11-10T12:11:00.000-08:00

The Class 8 pupils have finally finished their exams and are now looking forward to a bit of a break and then the next part of their education. Having known most of them since they were seven or eight years old it makes me feel quite ancient to think of them flapping their wings a bit and moving on to the next stage of their lives. A number of them will stay with us and attend the Agriculture College that we are staring in January next year. I’m looking forward to being a part of it.

I did some more DIY this evening and once again surprised myself by really enjoying it. We have been having a bit of a problem with the solar power on the school buildings due to the absence of sunlight. The problem this evening involved a plug socket that we use for running the TV and DVD player. The children in our home watch a film most Friday and Sunday nights. As a special treat for the Class 8 pupils we were also planning a film night this evening. Unfortunately the power didn’t want to play so, assisted by our head boy Kennedy and Duncan, the farm manager, I set to fixing it.

I think the most enjoyable bit of this type of practical work is the problem solving. Trying to work out why the plug wasn’t working involved a process of elimination, starting with a visual inspection and ending up in swapping plug sockets, re-routing the power temporarily through me via a metal filing cabinet and finally finding a new four way power adapter to plug into the rewired socket. I’m probably just a bit thick with electrical problems. I’m sure a half way competent electrician would have sorted it all out in half the time that I did. I’m not sure he would have had as much fun though, or the same sense of satisfaction when it all finally worked. It still amazes me that we can get electricity free from the sun and that our system works as well as it does.

Running on solar power does sometimes do funny things to you. It is a cliché to say you don’t really appreciate what you have until you don’t have it any more, but it is, none the less, true when it comes to electricity. I think I have now tried most of the different kinds of ‘alternatively powered’ torches and lamps that it is possible to buy. My own electricity consumption on a daily basis is fairly basic. I need enough power in my office and room to power up a laptop and provide light to read and make notes by. So far, despite the lack of sunshine some days, the solar power that I tap in to has stayed up and been reliable. In case of emergency I have a number of backups – a torch that has a lever you squeeze up and down to produce power, a wind up portable lamp, a re-chargeable torch, a solar powered reading lamp, a 'head torch' and the good old-fashioned hand-held torch that runs on batteries. Every once in a while I go into Apollo 13 mode and try to get power consumption down to an acceptable minimum. (For those of you who don’t get the Apollo 13 reference rent the movie. It’s a great film and will help you to really appreciate those ‘little luxuries’ that you take for granted). As a result of my research I can recommend the following:

Don’t use the torches that are powered by squeezing a handle up and down. They make a dreadful noise, produce a pathetic amount of light and make your hand hurt. If you are into this kind of exercise you’d be much better off squeezing a squash ball.

Don’t buy anything that claims to be re-chargeable if it says it was made in China. The only good thing about the re-chargeable torch that I have is its bright yellow colour, which psychologists say is good for cheering you up. The light that it produces certainly doesn’t

Don’t be fooled by the small lantern that you charge up by winding up a handle. It looks convincingly like a decent light, (modelled on the old-fashioned kerosene lantern) and does produce a fairly bright light for a short time. The only problem is that the light only covers a very small area. Using the handle to wind it up is not too taxing but it is easy to over wind one of these lamps. You know when this has happened because the winding action loses all resistance and you end up winding away and getting nowhere. If this happens throw the lamp away immediately as it is now useless.

The solar powered reading lamp is brilliant. There are a number of models on the market. The one that I use every night for reading looks like a little orange flying saucer. It is probably made in China but it must be from the bit of China that makes stuff that works for longer than a week. The light stays bright enough to read by for fourteen hours and it charges up quite easily in a day. You can also buy a more expensive version of the same thing from Ikea. The solar battery is like a little plastic brick that you leave out in the sun to charge. It is a bit expensive but very good.

Finally the humble battery driven torch is great if used sparingly, (batteries aren’t really very good for the environment). This is particularly true if you have an outside toilet. It is difficult to beat the assurance of a steady light if you have to use an outside toilet during the night, (as happens here in Kosele). Actually the best type of torch to use for this particular purpose is the kind that you wear on your head. It produces a brilliant white light from LED bulbs which is obviously very directional, (unless you opt for the dual light version which has a red night vision bulb – I have yet to work out the value of this feature. I think it is a gimmicky add on for would be assassins or wannabe SAS types). It probably goes without saying that the squeezy lever torch is absolutely useless for a night-time trip to the toilet. For one thing the pathetic light it creates means you keep on tripping over things. The constant need to squeeze the handle for power and the consequent disability of having to use the toilet one handed creates problems which I’m sure you will be able to appreciate. Kind of a co-ordination and rhythm thing!

The ramblings of a self-satisfied DIYer, celebrating another small victory or not you will be glad you read tonight’s blog when peak oil happens and all the lights go out.

Rain stops play - and revision

2011-11-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

It is encouraging to know that the educational powers that be in Kenya are reading my blog. Having felt cheated yesterday about the absence of police security, today we had armed supervision for our KCPE exams. The policeman who watched over us today arrived in good time dressed in a camouflage uniform and toting a semi-automatic rifle loaded with 20 shells. He was a very nice guy and patrolled our exams very efficiently. It’s the last day of exams tomorrow with one paper remaining. I’m sure our candidates will be relieved when it’s all over.

Had a very good day today planning with the teachers. It is a real pleasure working with them on our plans for next year. We are considering ways of enhancing and improving our curriculum and have come up with some good ideas today. Having run the same discussion activity about the purpose of our school twice now it is very interesting to see that none of us mentioned passing exams in our list of priorities. Making sure the pupils become responsible citizens, self-disciplined and self-reliant, good members of the community and have a good character were unanimously selected as the most important tasks of our school. I guess that teachers and schools all over the world have wrestled with the same problems for years and tended to come to similar conclusions. It’s still encouraging to know that the decisions we make in our school will help to build up a school that we really want to work in and, as a result, the children should really enjoy learning in.

I had to spending some time this evening rushing about rigging up a generator to supply light for the class 8 candidates to revise by. The rain situation is great news for our crops at the moment but causes a few problems for our solar power system. Today the cloud cover has meant that our batteries haven’t been charged so we had to resort to the backup method – currently a small generator. I think we will have to review our Plan B for electricity. Fortunately the power in the classrooms is mainly used for lights, so it should be easy to set up a fairly simple alternative to the solar system in the case of prolonged heavy rain. It’s a nice problem to have – in recent years the rainfall has been very sporadic and has caused great hardship and hunger. It would be great if the deluges that we have experienced over the last few weeks becomes the norm again. In a basically hostile environment predictable rain would be a significant improvement and a great blessing to everybody in the community.

Exams, visitors and blowing up the curriculum

2011-11-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

I am definitely feeling cheated today. Despite all the advance publicity there was a no show by the police guard for the KCPE exam today. Apart from that the exams went well and most of the kids sound confident about their performances. It might be a tougher day tomorrow with Science and Kiswahili papers to look forward to. The candidates are all busy revising as I type. I’m still very impressed with their whole approach to these exams.

Today was another busy day for visitors. We will have to employ a tour guide. Most of them came from Finland and are staying at the hospital up the road. A very nice young lady in the group is studying for a Masters Degree and is looking at the use and management of Ecosan latrines in Kenya. We had a good walk and talk around our site and chatted about the ways we manage the latrines and what we do with the by-products. Our visitor was pleased to see the progress that we have made in applying the compost to our maize crops.

Other members of the visitors group included an ENT doctor and a team of Kenyan dental health workers who came to do a check-up on the children’s teeth. Given the large number of children who were seen by the dental team I was pleased that only a small number of them needed any treatment. The teaching staff also took the opportunity to have their teeth checked over. One or two cavities to deal with in their case!

The exam chaos has helped us to get some work done on the farm and gave me an opportunity to make a start on planning and team building work with some of the teachers. I had a very enjoyable morning working with three teachers on some new ideas for next year. There is widespread agreement at all levels in the education system in Kenya that there is a pressing need for reform. Work has been started on looking at alternatives to current educational practises and curriculum design. It is not really clear when any reforms might be introduced – I got the impression from our staff that they are not holding their breath for rapid change. We are fortunate in being a private school. As long as the children are taught what they need to know to be successful in the KCPE exam at the end of their primary education we can organise our timetable and curriculum to match our values and priorities. It is perhaps no coincide that we have started our work on curriculum change so close to November 5th – celebrated as bonfire night in the UK. We are looking forward to having more success blowing up the curriculum than Guy Fawkes did blowing up the House of Lords in London.

Down on the farm

2011-11-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

It’s a hot sweaty night in Kosele, despite the rain we’ve had. I hope this isn’t the start of a hotter, drier spell. We still need another couple of weeks of rain for the best yields on our farm.

Although I hadn’t planned it, today has ended up being a down on the farm day. Our Monday morning planning sessions are becoming very fruitful now. Mary and Duncan are both really getting the hang of what they’re for. As a result of the school closure due to exams we have a larger army of child labour to exploit than usual for the next three days. Weeding and land clearance will be happening as well as bean harvesting. I can’t wait to see the bean harvest figures. They will be our first proper harvest on the new land we have acquired.

The ‘big green tractor’ trundled off to one of the local primary schools today to fetch more grass for mulching our Farming God’s Way, (FGW), plots. We have done really well in our quest for one hundred per cent mulch cover. Our God’s Blanket is really thick on most of the FGW plots now. It’s amazing how much grass you can squeeze inside and on top of a Landrover – not to mention down your shirt, trousers and throat. The kids swept into action once we’d got our precious load back to base and we soon had the mulch sorted. Even the smallest children pile in to carry off big bundles of mulch. They really enjoy themselves playing with the grass.

After dealing with the mulch I found myself doing guided tours of the farm for the head teacher at the school we got the grass from, followed by the District and Area Education officers. They were all very enthusiastic about what they saw and I am hoping that their enthusiasm will give me opportunities to take the FGW training into some of the local schools. The two education officers had to put up with a somewhat extended talk through the principles of FGW due to a downpour that lasted a couple of hours. I am a bit of an evangelist for FGW and they are both keen on developing it so we had a very fruitful time together. One of the great things about the training is that it gives opportunities for a number of very effective experiments to demonstrate the science of this method of farming. Kenyan school pupils have relatively few opportunities for direct experience of scientific experiments, data gathering and analysis so it’s really exciting being able to share ‘doable’ science with influential and keen education officers.

Mr Dedans, our head teacher, confirmed the possibility of a police officer turning up at school tomorrow to supervise access to the exam area. He did reassure the kids that there was no need to worry about being arrested. The new exam desks that Joseph has made look very impressive in the exam room and the grass in the school compound was ‘slashed’ by some of the boys in Class 7 as part of our general tidying up for the exam supervisor’s arrival. Slashed is probably a bit of an exaggeration, (although it is the term that is used for cutting grass). The lads just tried to beat it into submission with the slashers, (long bits of metal shaped a bit like hockey sticks with a sharp edge). I think the grass won really.

The exam supervisor turned out to be a really nice guy. He is a teacher in another primary school and is very keen on farming. He also did the farm tour and made some really helpful suggestions about plants that act as weed and insect repellents. I will be arranging a visit to his farm to see the tissue culture banana trees that he is growing, (it sounds like he has a small forest of them – five hundred altogether). This is REALLY exciting news as we have been planning to grow tissue culture bananas for some time. They are specially prepared to make the seedlings that they are grown from disease free and consequently higher yielding trees. The local, ‘indigenous’ trees are generally not disease free and do not produce very high yields.

Must try to get an early night tonight, (though I suspect the heat might make it a bit difficult). It’s a big day tomorrow and I, like the Class 8 pupils, want to make sure it goes well.

Aiming high

2011-11-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday our oldest pupils will start their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, (KCPE), exams. The exams last for three days and will be conducted under the most stringent security conditions to avoid cheating. None of the teachers except the head teacher will be allowed on the school compound. All the pupils except the members of class 8 will be at home for the duration of the exam period. Mobile phones within earshot of the exam room will be confiscated and I am sure that someone told me a policeman will be in attendance as well. It would not surprise me.

Our ‘candidates', (as they are now called), must be the best-prepared group of students I have seen. They have been drilled since at least August and have sat three mock exams in the last four weeks. I’m actually very proud of them. One of the mock exams they sat recently was the divisional mock. Our school came 13th out of the 131 schools in our division. We came 2nd out of the 22 schools in our zone. Out of 3649 candidates our top pupil, Kevin, came 3rd in English. He came 85th overall, (he is our only pupil in the top 100), with a score of 395 – 5 more marks would gain him admittance to a prestigious National High school. The results are encouraging and show improvements in maths. We can do better in future but are heading in the right direction. We are top school in English in our zone and 4th out of 131 in the Division at English. If this sounds a bit like boasting I suppose it is but I think the pupils and their teachers deserve a pat on the back.

The candidates have also been well prayed for. There was a day of prayer in Kosele, (our local village), on Thursday that was attended by many local schools. The other pupils in the school prayed with them on Friday and our church prayed for them today. This might seem like spiritual overkill but it is very encouraging to see that the spiritual dimension of our young people’s live is taken so seriously. The KCPE exam is a very big deal in Kenya and is a significant transition point for all of the young people taking it. Despite the possibility of cheating and corruption the marks will be eagerly anticipated and will feature prominently in the national press when they are released. Asking for God’s favour at such a time is the right thing to do. It seems to have been done very well.

Tomorrow, in addition to checking that all the final preparations have been made for the smooth running of the KCPE exams, I will be working on a cunning plan to spend some time with the teaching staff. Assuming the teachers will actually be allowed onto our compound at all, it should be a good opportunity for us to prepare for dominating all the exam performance tables next year. I hope we don’t have to resort to an excessive amount of subterfuge to ensure our meetings can take place. It will be difficult to disguise the fact that the teachers have arrived for work. Our compound is not very big and the teachers tend to be quite well dressed. Disguising them as a group of itinerant labourers come to erect fencing would be a bit of a challenge. I am hoping that sanity will prevail and that it will be possible for us to work in peace, without disturbing the sanctity of the exam area or incurring the wrath of the police officer. The police in Kenya are usually armed. We will need to be careful in our discussions about aiming high.

Coincidence?

2011-11-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

I love it when a plan starts to really come together. I’ve been planning to do some serious management and leadership training with our team in the home and the school and have been reading my way round books by Stephen Covey, (The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People) and John Maxwell, (Developing the Leader Within You). The basic shape of the training has been kind of emerging over the last few days but needed resources to give it legs. I was made up yesterday when I managed to buy three John Maxwell DVDs and two Stephen Covey audio books in Kisumu for less that £10. They are just what I need.

It is always tempting to write off the various leadership/management gurus as clever people who are very good at mining the personal development market for all its worth – helping people to scratch their various aspirational/ego itches. In the case of the two writers I have mentioned I would have to say that this is not true. What they write and present are genuine servant leadership principles. Putting into practise what many people simply preach. Once again I find that resources are lining up with our growth and development needs. Very encouraging answers to prayer. Many people would write ‘answers to prayer’ off as coincidences - When I stop praying the coincidences seem to stop happening.

Carrying on the biblical theme I had a real moment of revelation today which helped me, in a matter of minutes, to write a personal mission statement – something I have been mulling over for some time with varying degrees of frustration. Having made a start on my new resource collection I was inspired to write the following in my notebook:

“The key to our future success and longevity lies in bringing up a new generation of Kenyan leaders of Hope and Kindness. I will, therefore, invest my heart, time and resources into identifying them, equipping them and trusting them with the future of Hope and Kindness.”

Having a personal mission statement might sound a bit pompous or pretentious but I find it a really helpful tool for focusing my time and energy. This version might need a bit of tweaking but it felt like a real leap forward today. Thank you God for the gift of ‘coincidences’.

Highway Code

2011-11-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Today Duncan, Mary and I made our postponed trip to Kisumu, (nearest big town about and hour and a half away). Following a last warning by a local police officer we have had to get the cracked windscreen on our Landrover fixed and Hamir, the owner of a good garage in Kisumu called Silverline Motors, offered to fix it for free. We set off at 7.30 a.m. to make sure we got to Kisumu early.

Driving in Kenya is an interesting experience. You have to drive very defensively and assume that everybody else on the road is out to get you. The national papers frequently carry stories about horrendous pile-ups involving buses and matatus, (mini bus taxis – pronounced ma ta too). The constant carnage on the roads is a national scandal.

Our Landrover is a very old vehicle. It was made in 1987 and has seen some pretty tough action on unforgiving roads. You don’t really steer it. It’s more like sailing, as the steering is probably the most fatigued part of the vehicle. It’s quite safe, once you get used to it, and we regularly have it tightened up. With a top speed of 80 kph, (50 miles per hour), we aren’t exactly setting land speed records on any of our journeys. Driving defensively basically means driving fairly slowly.

The most harrowing thing about driving to Kisumu is the buses. They come hurtling towards you as they race to Nairobi, hell bent on being first there and making a quick turn around for the return journey. I have visions of the bus drivers as drug fuelled speed merchants who never sleep and have a casual disregard for life and limb – especially other people’s. The roads between Kosele and Kisumu aren’t very wide and the drop off at the side of some stretches would be enough to give the Landrover a serious shaking at the very least. In addition to the break neck speeds the buses travel at the way they ‘crab’ across the road is also very worrying. Nearly all of the buses that come towards you look like the body is set at a slant to the chassis – a kind of extra side swipe capability to make sure they get you one way or another. The only thing you can do as they come past is grip the wheel firmly and try to maintain a position just your side of the white line down the middle of the road. Sometimes this manoeuvre feels a bit to close to playing chicken for comfort.

The other problems on the roads are; the matatus, (minibuses that provide a fast ‘bus’ service between towns), white taxis, all the other drivers, motor cyclists, pushbikes and potholes. The matatu drivers are probably nice friendly, home loving kind of guys when they aren’t matatu driving. Unfortunately that probably isn’t very often. The only way the matatu operators can make a living is to pile as many passengers as possible in per journey and to get from A to B as fast as possible to maximise the number of journeys in a day. They too probably stay awake on all kinds of concoctions and hardly ever sleep. They tend to fly up and down the road in packs, racing each other to the next passenger and beeping their horns at anything or anybody that gets in the way. They have inspiring names like ‘Determination’, ‘Never Say Die’, 'Terminator', ‘Jesus Saves’ and the like.

In England white van drivers are, stereotypically, the worse drivers on the road. In Kenya it is, to be honest, hard to differentiate to this extent. I do think, however, that anybody who has the desire to own or drive a white taxi, (these days usually the estate car version that I have blogged about previously), should automatically be barred from driving for life. I have had similar thoughts about white van drivers in England. The economics of operating a public transport vehicle make it impossible to drive safely and make a profit. Speed and turnaround time are of the essence. The white taxi drivers are sneakier than the matatus. As they are generally quicker and less easy to spot in the rear view mirror they can kind of creep up on you. Once rammed up your rear bumper they blast the horn for you to get out of the way so they can squeeze past in the space between you and the oncoming traffic. This is particularly hazardous if you are, at the same time, trying to pull out into the road to avoid the cyclist carrying a wide load on his passenger rack, (like a door frame or settee – I kid you not!).

The rules for driving at night in Kenya are the same as stated above only more so. We were a bit late getting away from Kisumu tonight so it was dark after about the first half of the journey. Three extra hazards present themselves at night. Pedestrians, cyclists and speed bumps. (Actually the speed bumps are also a problem in the daytime, but they really come into their own at night).

As you drive along a road at night in Kenya people and bicycles kind of loom up out of the dark at you. The people are spookier than the cyclists, though usually less dangerous, (apart from those who have a death wish and seem to wait for you to be driving along before they dash across the road). In the early evening you have the impression of some large, ghostly army on the move, made up of every kind of individual. All with the sole purpose of freaking you out and getting you to crash into the vehicle approaching from the other direction.

The cyclists are also a nightmare. More likely to be carrying passengers than wide loads at this time of day, none of the bikes that you pass have lights. There is an almost uniform look to bicycles in Kenya. Most of them are made in China and have black frames. They tend to be pedalled by black people and to carry dark coloured passengers. They are, to all intents and purposes, the ultimate stealth weapon – invisible until you are on top of them, at which point they force you into evasive action.

The west could learn a thing or two about traffic calming from Kenya. Kenya is home to the most effective speed bumps in the world – capable of forcing vehicles to go from 60 to 0 miles per hour in seconds. They come in a variety of forms. The most irritating type consists of two to six thin, shallow bumps with a tiny gap between them Whatever speed you cross them at you feel your teeth rattle and get the impression that your vehicle is going to shake itself apart before the crossing has finished. Then there are the mountainous bumps – only passable in first gear at very low speed. You kind of crawl up and over this type of speed bump or risk serious damage to your vehicle. The most lethal kind is the ‘vigilante’ type. This speed bump is usually made of a combination of mud, rocks and occasionally concrete and is put up by members of a community once they have got completely fed up with the Grand Prix that races through their town or village every day. They are erected without warning or signposts and are just the right height and shape to make every passenger in a vehicle crack his or her head on the roof if passed over at speed. This often happens. The vigilante speed bump must, I imagine, be made in the dead of the night, (perhaps that’s what all the people on the move are doing), as this gives maximum advantage to surprise the following morning in the war against reckless driving.

Having said all of this we did get home safely - shaken by the last bit of rough road and surprised by the number of new, deeper potholes, but otherwise OK. I was, at least, able to see all of the hazards described above with extra clarity thanks to the new windscreen, and was able to dodge around obstacles with ease because of the newly tightened steering. Thanks Hamir.

Without land you are not a man

2011-11-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

We learnt yesterday that we had to attend a meeting of the Land Board today to formalise our most recent land purchase. The Land Board is a type of court which sanctions land transactions, after carefully checking that all family members are in agreement about the sale. Land is a hugely important matter in Kenya. While we were waiting for the proceedings to start I was chatting to a Kenyan guy about the case he was involved with. He told me “without land you are not a man – however big or small the land”. This explains the formality and significance of the Land Board. Proceeding were supposed to start at 10.00 am but didn’t get off the ground until midday. (We had anticipated the delay and all brought books to read). It is always interesting watching a crowd gather in Kenya, whether it is for a church service, a football match or a land board. Peak numbers are usually achieved about an hour and a half after the official start time.

I had expected to be kept all day by the Land Board but, due to some miracle, our case was called first. The Land Board members, (about 12 of them), checked that all parties were present, (me, Mary and Ian on our part, plus two members of the family selling the land and their witness). There were questions about whether or not the full payment had been made for the land. It hadn’t so I wrote out the two cheques required after a brief discussion about whether this was acceptable. The Chairman then made sure that we were aware of the problems that might be caused if any family members who were not at the court decided they had been cheated. The seller and her son assured the Board that all the necessary agreements had been made within the family and I explained that we had met the family in August. This satisfied the Board and we were told that we would have to return next Thursday to collect the official approval form. As we walked out of the meeting I got the impression that the crowd had grown in the few minutes it took for our case to be heard. I couldn’t imagine a crowd in England waiting as patiently as they do in Kenya. Admittedly the weather was very nice for hanging around in but nobody seemed bothered by the fact that the start was delayed by two hours. Only us mzungus, (white people).

The lady with the malnourished baby has not come to see us today, so I am assuming that she and the baby are improving. I really hope so. I cannot begin to imagine what it must feel like to watch your child’s health deteriorate so badly and know that you are unable to do anything about it. I am passionate about Farming God’s Way because I believe that it is a very powerful tool for the poor in Kenya. Something that can lift them up from the desperate conditions so many of them are living in and give them a hope for the future.

Where there is no doctor

2011-11-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

Day two of our Farming God’s Way, (FGW), training has gone well. Yesterday we holed out, (dug all our holes and furrows). Today we planted out and covered the plot with leaves, twigs and grass, (mulch or God's Blanket). We have planted in faith, prayed for a good harvest and rain and – guess what – as I type we are having exactly the right type of rain. A gradual downpour - not too heavy and designed to really soak into our mulch. An encouraging start. Today were also the day for the science bit – demonstrations of the why behind not ploughing and using mulch. The demonstrations worked well on the training DVD, were obviously doable in the field because we did them in Lesotho and they worked on our plot today. The next step, (apart from the bumper harvest!), is to make sure that the team I have just trained can do the same for our church members.

I’ve written before about the ‘playing at God’ problem of our work. Making the right response to people’s requests for assistance is very challenging. Making sure we don’t create dependency but at the same time being compassionate is a really difficult juggling act. A young mum came to see us late this afternoon with a very young child suffering from severe malnutrition. Instinctive response is to rush the child to hospital but that didn’t feel right in this case. Further investigation revealed the fact that this lady had a younger baby, one month old, (which is why the older child was no longer being breast fed), and a husband who had just started a new job. Our standard reference for a second opinion in cases like this is a remarkable book called “Where there is no doctor”, which is specially designed for situations where there is no doctor! The child had the classic symptoms of kwashiorkor – swollen legs, sores, bulging tummy, and swollen face. We decided to invest in the ingredients of a local ‘super food’, which mothers in our area use to build children up. Creating this wonder food involved a trip to the market in Kosele to buy some Omena, (small dried fish) for the food mix, vitamin tablets and an anti-biotic. The other ingredients were available from our stores - rice, groundnuts and porridge flour. As we don’t have a blender the ingredients were sent to the local posho mill to be ground into flour. While all this was happening the little lad happily munched a few bananas and was already starting to look like he had perked up.

The lady and child will be coming to see us on Saturday for a progress report and we are confident that there will be a significant improvement. I’m sure that we made the right decision but it’s not easy. What if we got it wrong? I’m sure the lady will be back quickly if the child takes a serious turn for the worse. Then we can start to consider the alternatives. In the meantime we can only pray for the child and for wisdom the next time we find ourselves in the same situation.

Hoe, Hoe, Hoe

2011-11-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

I've had a quite tiring but very rewarding day today. Our plans to roll out Farming God’s Way to our church members got off to an excellent start. Altogether ten of us spent the best part of the day, (from 9.15 a.m. to 2.15 p.m.), transforming a 10 metre by 10 metre patch of land into a Well Watered Garden. The reference to a Well Watered Garden comes from Isaiah 58. The garden itself is a 6 metre by 6 metre demonstration plot designed to encourage members of the community to develop an interest in Farming God’s Way, (FGW). One of the most important principles of FGW is that the land is not ploughed. Today we put our backs into hoeing the land into shape. It was hard work but there were, fortunately, a good number of hands to do it. Seeing mzungus, (white people), out digging in the fields is a novel experience for most of the people in our community. It is, to be honest, a novel experience doing it. I think I'll have to get a hoe with a specially long handle to keep my back in shape.

I was, initially, quite nervous about running this training. Having had a great week in Lesotho at the beginning of August learning a lot about working and training with a local community I was fired up and well motivated to get going. The main aim of the training this week is to help members of our church to understand how to do the practical bit of FGW and to start them off on a training track that will enable them to train other members of the church.

As well as the practical tasks, (which you can see details of on our website if you follow this link http://www.hopeandkindness.org/ProjectFarming.htm), there are some important biblical principles behind FGW. These focus on care for the land, abandoning traditional practises of witchcraft and ancestor worship, and living a godly lifestyle. The trainees were a very receptive and responsive group – including a curious onlooker who joined us to see what was going on and ended up staying for the whole training session. Grant Dryden, the driving force behind FGW, describes it as “the Bible with boots on”. From our experience today it’s a very apt description. It was most encouraging to receive the rain that we prayed for during the late afternoon – just enough to prepare our holes for placing fertiliser and seeds in tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s session includes a lot of the science behind FGW, with some great practical demonstrations of the benefits of this type of conservation farming. I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m also looking forward to forthcoming visits from Cisco teams – one at the end of this month, two in February and one in March. These teams of volunteers from Cisco, the global ICT company, always go the extra mile to make sure their visits bring maximum benefit to the children and our neighbours in Kosele. This evening I was able to join a conference call via call back from Cisco, (Webex), from Kosele for the first time. I still find it quite mind blowing that it is possible to do this – even though I was an ICT teacher for most of my teaching career. The rapid growth of ICT and communications infrastructure in our part of Kenya is very impressive and will open up many opportunities for our young people. It’s very exciting.

Preventing daylight robbery

2011-10-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

Today started well with a very efficient and upbeat management meeting with Duncan and Mary. Unfortunately things took a turn for the worse shortly after our meeting finished when Mary told me that our building contractor had experienced a problem at the bank – again.

Our building work is currently making great progress and should be completed on time. The classroom block and visitors’ centre are really taking shape now and we should see the roof timbers going up this week. So far so good.

I wish the same could be said of the arrangements that we have made to pay for this work as it goes on. We have drawn up an agreed payment schedule with the contractor responsible for the building work. Each time a particular milestone is reached a payment is triggered. Paying by cheque is the most convenient method of payment for the work, but I am beginning to wonder if this was actually a wise decision. The contractor has now been unable to claim payment on two cheques that we have given him. It is very frustrating.

Kenya is infamous for corruption and financial mismanagement. To be fair to Kenya it is not the only country in the world that suffers from significant ‘transparency’ problems. The problems we have experienced making payments to the contractor are a result of genuine efforts to reduce fraud and forgery in Kenya but they do make doing business difficult. Our most recent problem, (today), was caused by a regulation made by the banking authorities in Kenya, capping the maximum value that can be written on a cheque at one million shillings. At the current exchange rate that’s about £6,300 or $10,000. The cheque, which I wrote to the contractor, was for slightly more than a million shillings so he was unable to pay it into his account. This resulted in a hurriedly arranged meeting with him this morning at our bank in Kisii to make a direct transfer of funds to his account. The contractor was very reasonable about it all and the transfer was eventually made. Looking at the whole experience in a positive light we have learned another valuable lesson in transacting business in Kenya and won’t get caught out again. I always appreciate the small lessons in humility that I benefit from when dealing with official policy – especially in the banking sector. I also enjoyed a bonus back massage courtesy of the bumpy roads between our place and the bank so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

On the other hand I do sometimes wonder how the average Kenyan can be expected to climb the ladder to financial success and security when the support structures available to him or her are so shaky. It makes me more determined than ever to make sure the children that are growing up in our care are prepared for every eventuality – including the mind mangling, patience pummelling, sanity sapping idiosyncrasies of the banking system.

The week ahead

2011-10-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Following last night’s blog I was pleasantly surprised when the party noise died out early, (though the drumming from one of the local churches did carry on for a while). I still woke up tired tough. The anti malaria tablets I take are a bit old school and have the interesting side effect of making you have very vivid dreams. Nothing particularly psycho, weird or scary but very active. It’s quite exhausting some nights.

This week looks like being busy. I will be doing two days of Farming God’s Way, (FGW), training on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m looking forward to it, as it will be an opportunity to apply the training I received myself in Lesotho earlier this month. I am slightly nervous about it – there’s quite a lot to get through and it will be my first time fronting a ‘live’ audience on my own. The plan is to train up a small group of people to equip them for training others. As well as the novelty factor I’m also slightly anxious about the plot we will be planting being successful. We will be planting the seed a little bit late in the season. Even though it is a specially selected ‘short season’ seed, which matures very quickly, I will be praying hard for its rapid growth.

Our main FGW crop is doing very well. Some of the maize stalks must be at least 8 feet tall now. The treatment against pests has been successful so far and the cobs of corn are already evident in the first stage of development. It looks like a fair number of our maize plants will produce two cobs of corn. It’s very exciting watching it all happen. The intricate balance in nature which enables things to grow is fascinating. Our maize plants “tassled” a few days ago. The tassles poke out of the top of the plant ready to pollinate the silks on the corn cobs as they emerge. The silks look a bit like a wispy silk beard growing out of the leaves holding the cob. Each individual silk is connected to a kernel on the cob and once pollinated the kernel develops. The pollen is shaken off the tassles by the wind, (or the farmer, depending on circumstances). I’m really looking forward to the harvest.

Later in the week I’m off to Kisumu, an hour and a half’s drive away, to have the windscreen in our Landrover replaced. The crack in the windscreen has just started to draw the attention of one of the local policemen in Oyugis and we are on notice to do something about it. If this is the beginning of a general crackdown on damaged windscreens I think I will invest all of next month’s income in the local autoglass industry – Kenya must have more damaged windscreens per capita than anywhere else I have been to. A function of the wonderful roads. I’m hoping that we will make it all the way to Kisumu on this trip. Last time the Landrover went to Kisumu, to fetch Judi from the airport, the front prop shaft fell off on the return journey to Kosele. Fortunately no one was hurt. Silverline, our favourite garage in Kenya, repaired the Landrover, free of charge. Hamir, the owner, is a great friend to Hope and Kindness. He has generously offered to fix our windscreen free of charge as well. Acts of kindness like this do great things for your faith in human nature. Many thanks to Hamir.

Party on

2011-10-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

The early evening is a lovely time in Kosele. As dusk settles in the community starts stirring itself. It’s a very sociable time of day as people take advantage of the cool of the evening to get things done and catch up with each other. It’s also, often, a very beautiful time of day. The sky changes dramatically as the sun goes down and the Homa Hills seem to loom forward from the distance, bathed in red and orange. Sometimes it looks like the sky is on fire. The sky is so big this close to the equator that it dwarfs everything else. You can understand why people worshipped the sun and the elements when you see them so close up and so powerfully. This evening the sky was particularly spectacular – like looking at heaven. Often the clouds just pile up over the edge of Lake Victoria then seem to drift towards us. The sun behind this evening’s clouds looked like a huge light show – straight rods of light shooting out of the billowing grey mountains of cloud. It was awe-inspiring.

If the early evening is a sociable time in Kosele the night-time and early hours of the morning are party time. As I write, (10.30 p.m. Kosele time), the first wave of noise from the disco over the road and a little way up the hill are drifting towards us. From here it sounds like a badly distorted version of the tune from The Magic Roundabout, (a children’s TV show in the UK). The same thing happened last night, (and will, in all probability happen tomorrow). The reason for the ‘party’ is sure to be a funeral. Funerals are, sadly, the most frequently occurring ‘social’ event around Kosele, (and many other parts of Kenya). HIV/AIDS has taken a dreadful toll around here, leaving a trail of orphans and hard pressed grandparents in its wake. Once the funeral has been conducted, and the body has been buried, the sound system goes into action. A properly managed sound system can keep going until the crack of dawn – the system that has started up tonight was playing as I woke up this morning. This is an impressive achievement, given that car batteries are the main source of power at these events.

The organisers of tonight’s wake have obviously not been reading the national press much this week. Area officials in another part of Kenya have banned discos until the KCSE exams have finished in a couple of weeks time to improve student performance. I can’t imagine that going down very well in the UK. It is a serious issue though. Concern about the goings on at discos is widespread. Having a good time is seriously dangerous to your health in Kenya. In addition to the very strong risk of becoming HIV positive as a result of a casual liaison, the locally brewed ‘changa’ can also be lethal. The press regularly carries stories about people being blinded and even killed by this badly prepared hooch. The curse of poverty is all pervasive. The cavalier attitude of ‘eat, drink and be merry’ has more serious consequences in this part of Kenya than some other parts of the world. Unfortunately it doesn’t put people off. The batteries are holding out up the road and the night is still young.

Becoming more effective

2011-10-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been a good day today. It didn’t really start brilliantly – grey, drizzle, cold. This is somewhat unusual in my experience of Kosele. I had to put an extra shirt on for a while. The downside of all this rain is that it encourages mosquitoes. They seem to go into some kind of reproductive frenzy. In the last hour I am easily into double figures killing them as I work. I will definitely be asking God about them - they have eaten me alive in the last week. Still, I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least I can protect myself against malaria, unlike most of our neighbours.

I have been meaning to read Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” for some time. I’m not really a great fan of ‘quick fix’ personal growth books and have been pleased to find that The 7 Habits doesn’t fit into this category. It is a powerful tool for change. I have been encouraged by reading it, and have started to use it in my own efforts to become more effective.

I am very excited by a companion book, also by Stephen Covey, called “The Leader in Me” which explains “How schools and parents around the world are inspiring greatness, one child at a time”. Like the 7 Habits it’s not a quick fix recipe book. I‘ve spent a very productive day gathering my thoughts about how to apply some of the insights in the book to our school in Kosele and how I might use it in the Agriculture College.

One of our biggest challenges for the coming year(s) is making sure that our school and college really do the best that they can for the children. Today I’ve been planning how to step up our efforts by making our educational activities more Rigorous, Relevant and Relational. (I will confess now that these terms have been borrowed from Dr William Daggert). One of the things that helped me in deciding to leave my job in July was an increasing sense of disillusionment with the English education system. It’s a long story but not unique to England.

In “The Leader in Me” Maria del Carmen Acena, the Guatemalan Education Minister in 2003 is quoted as saying;

“Educators are feeling enormous regret from the realisation that over the last decade so much emphasis has been placed on raising test scores that it has come at the expense of students not learning some of the most basic skills needed for everyday life. They also regret that in the process of focusing on academics they have failed to pass on to students more of a love of learning and a love of life”.

As a result of my efforts with “The Leader in Me” today I have added another page filled with quotes and exhortations to my planning pad. The pupils will be returning from half term on Monday and I have a meeting with the teachers in the afternoon. I will have to make sure I don’t resort to communicating in mission statements in the meeting! I really do want to make sure that we start the school improvement ball rolling so it starts to pick up momentum as soon as possible.

The most inspiring idea I came across in “The Leader in Me” said:

“Leadership is communicating people’s worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.”

It’s a style of leadership that I hope we will all aspire to.

Yes Jesus loves me

2011-10-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

I really don’t know how Noah managed to keep it all together while God was busy flooding the earth. Today we have had what feels like an almost biblical amount of rain. Duncan is pleased because it is very good news for all of the onion seedlings that he has just planted out. We have had an impressive result with our vegetable plot this year. We haven’t had to buy any onions or Kale since mid August and have even managed to sell some of the kale to a high school for girls in Kosele. It is all very encouraging.

On another positive note we have just received the first application for the teaching posts in our Agriculture College that we have just advertised. Advertising a teaching vacancy around here is rather different to back in England. We don’t have a local job centre. The District Education Officer has been kind enough to photocopy and paste up our full page job advert in a variety of public places on his travels around the district. As the adverts were only posted yesterday this is a good start as it’s the first time that we have formally advertised for teachers. Our last recruitment drive was aimed at graduates from the local Teacher Training College in Kosele run by our friend Stephen. I’m looking forward to the interviews in a couple of week’s time.

I had a really priceless moment today because of the rain. At some points this afternoon it looked like somebody was just emptying buckets of water out of the sky. When it rains like this the only sensible thing to do is take shelter and sit it out until the rain stops. Two of our younger children holed up in the classroom next to my office. I don’t think they knew I was in the room next door – we’ve just had ceiling board put up to make it look a bit more presentable for visitors and to cut down the noise of the rain on the corrugated iron roof. One of the downsides of sitting in some of our buildings is the machine gun volume of the rain if it falls particularly heavily. The rain lasted for most of the afternoon, so the two little ones were inside for the long run. As the volume of the rain rose and fell I could hear them reading, chatting, playing games and finally, when all else had been exhausted, singing. It was as if the rain knew that a special moment was at hand. The downpour slowed to a steady, quieter drizzle and two little voices piped up “Yes Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus loves me, The Bible tells me so”. It was beautiful.

Take me to the future

2011-10-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve been trundling about doing Terry’s taxi service in our Landrover today, ferrying Ian, Hilda and our church leaders to and from Oyugis, (our nearest town) for a planning meeting and away day. I was struck by how many motor bike taxis there were in Oyugis. Even compared to last year there seems to have been an exponential increase in the number of young men with motorbikes parked up in mobs, (not sure what the correct collective noun for motor cyclists is), by the side of the road. I’m no economist, (the maths was too hard and the logic was too inscrutable), but I would say the supply side of motorcycle taxis in Oyugis is out of whack with the number of customers.

These bikes are Chinese or Indian makes, between 150 and 250 cc, so not really very big bikes. They ply their trade along the most horrible roads once they have left the main road in Oyugis. They carry incredible loads. Best one I saw today was carrying two passengers with what looked like a 90 kg sack of maize tied on the back. It isn’t unusual to see Mum, Dad and child/children as passengers on one bike.

The other overcrowded mode of transport that I have blogged about previously is the estate car taxi. On our way back from Kosele at the end of the day Ian and I were both astonished to see two ladies get out of the boot of one of these vehicles, leaving a guy and about a dozen chickens remaining.

All of these transport observations have got me thinking – are they a metaphor for economic prospects in Kenya?

The motor bike taxis have superseded the humble boda boda bike, (a fixed gear pushbike with a cushioned passenger seat on top of the parcel rack). These bikes were the principle form of transport over short distances for many people until about two years ago. They have the advantage of being cheap and environmentally friendly. They provided regular employment for a large number of young men and do not travel at dangerously high speeds. On the down side they can only carry one passenger. In addition the passenger cannot be guaranteed a ride up steep hills.

So. The onward march of technology is a more efficient mode of transport, (it can carry more passengers and heavier loads), and provides a more comfortable and , arguably, more enjoyable service for the passenger(s). Most of the boda boda bikes came from China so the trade implications are comparable. At present it seems that all the boda boda operators just migrated to motor bikes, so there are still as many of them plying their trade. How many of them are profitable or making a living is a different question. The increased number of motor bikes has caused more accidents because the boda boda guys still seem to be getting the hang of riding motor bikes. The motor bikes also cause increased distress to pedestrians in the town, (they kind of creep up behind you).

The estate car taxis seem more robust than earlier models and provide a smoother ride, even on the rough road between our place and Oyugis. They also seem to have extra load capacity so are more efficient. However the serious overloading which goes on is a major cause for concern, (as are the associated animal rights issues). The improved design of the cars seems to make it possible to drive faster and, inevitably, more recklessly in pursuit of greater profits and more passengers. In the morning and evening ‘rush hours’ the competition between taxi drivers looks like the Wacky Races, as each driver hurtles along the road in attempt to be the first to get to the next lot of waiting passengers. Again, the toll on the nerves and reflexes of the innocent pedestrian is significant.

So, to summarise. The type of taxi services that are available in Oyugis have changed considerably in the last couple of years. Taxi operators have taken advantage of new technologies to provide ‘improved’ services for customers. So far so good. A half-decent modern economy needs to make the most of advances in technology. Unfortunately the brakes which need to be applied to too rapid a change have not been in much evidence in the taxi business, (motorbike or estate car), in Oyugis – literally. It remains to be seen how many motorbike taxis will remain viable in the long run. Unemployment amongst motorbike taxi operators seems inevitable. In the absence of alternative jobs structural unemployment seems likely. It also seems clear that the training required for the safe operation of this service has not been provided, leading to significant accident and health hazards. The reckless overcrowding as regards passengers and loads carried by both types of taxi adds to this problem. Overcrowding and speeding push the vehicles to the boundaries of safe and sustainable operation. The only winners in this situation are shock absorber manufacturers, hospitals and mortuaries.

Both the estate car and motor bike taxi services also create additional environmental hazards as well as economic problems. In an economy which cannot guarantee uninterrupted supplies of regular petrol it does not make sense to add further to the level of demand for this fuel. It seems widely accepted that the planet is not capable of sustaining such a significant increase in the number of petrol fuelled vehicles.

It is probably unfair to push the metaphor too far. Kenya is the most prosperous East African economy, despite its current problems. Like most developing countries, looking to catch up with a more western lifestyle and standard of living, it is not unreasonable for Kenyans to want to benefit from technological change. The problem is that it’s not a sustainable aspiration. Perhaps the metaphor should be extended to include the world economy. It seems to be hurtling, at break neck speed, to a pile up, fuelled by the desire to squeeze more out of its diminishing resources. All in the name of progress.

Lamenting the demise of the humble boda boda bike may seem like the worst type of reactionary response to change. Whinging on about the environment may qualify me among the tree hugging fringes of the blogosphere. Be that as it may I bet the Chines will be making push bikes for many years to come.

First pray

2011-10-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

Being an agricultural, educational missionary is incredibly rewarding. It’s funny how life works out. I’m sure God enjoys turning the tables on people and sending them off in unlikely directions. Jonah had a whale of a time running away from God. There’s plenty of evidence of God’s ‘interference’ in people’s lives in the Bible so it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that I should end up here doing this. I think God was setting me up for Kenya years before I became a Christian.

I am absolutely useless at drawing. After accidentally becoming an IT teacher in the 1980s I began to really appreciate all the great things that computers could do – like clipart. Art was one of the lessons at secondary school I never really looked forward to. I never seemed to make any progress. Despite my inability to draw or paint I was able to draw a map of Africa in great detail when I was about nine. I was at a school in Suffolk at the time and remember drawing lots of maps of Africa. My Mum, brother and sister and I had recently returned from living in Singapore for two years. During that time my Dad, (who was in the air force), took us round the most off the beaten track parts of Singapore, (which was going some as it’s not really a very big island), and through some interesting bits of Malaya. It gave me a sense of adventure, a desire to see new places and an awareness that a lot of people lived in very poor conditions.

A number of years later, as a sociology student in Northampton, I really enjoyed studying development issues. The Report of the Brandt Commission (North South), was a very influential book while I was a student and had a big influence on my thinking, politics and conscience. The report is another book, that was written over thirty years ago yet still has a very contemporary message. Willy Brandt, (the German Chancellor at the time), prefaces the book by saying:

“This Report deals with great risks, but it does not accept any kind of fatalism. It sets out to demonstrate that the mortal dangers threatening our children and grandchildren can be averted; and that we have a chance — whether we are living in the North or South, East or West — if we are determined to do so, to shape the world’s future in peace and welfare, in solidarity and dignity.” It was, (still is), stirring stuff.

I think, (with the benefit of hindsight, age and a rewired spirit), that it leaves out an essential ingredient for world transformation. All the economic change, technological change and social readjustment that the world can make will come to nothing it they are not informed by a spiritual transformation. I think I must be a very slow learner. I took a long time to pick up all of the clues that God put in front of me to get me here – 42 years in fact.

The struggles that are so much a part of life in this part of Kenya are played out against a backdrop of influences – Christian, Muslim, secular, ancestral and animistic. As a Christian it has the feel of a very Old Testament society – where religion is a kind of insurance policy. In these circumstances it makes sense to have a variety of policies. There is a widely accepted view that in Africa Christianity is a “mile wide and an inch deep”. As a Christian development worker Kosele is a very challenging place.

Because Christianity is so widely accepted and adopted here it is easier to live out my faith in Kosele than it is in England. None of the staff think it is strange to fast and pray before making important decisions. Prayer is a normal, rather than unusual, activity in and around Kosele. The concept of a spiritual battle, with real winners and losers, is a part of everyday life here. It has some very scary consequences. People, (usually elderly) are burnt for practising witchcraft with predictable regularity around Kisii, (a town about forty minute’s drive from our place).

In the Bible it says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12 - NIV Bible). It is easy to pour scorn on such mumbo jumbo from a comfortable seat in the developed world. It is less easy when you live amongst the evidence.

The battle against inflation, poverty, climate change, the forces of globalisation and the Chinese will no doubt, continue for many years. Debate will rage about the most prudent, practical (and, ultimately, populist) measures that can be taken to ensure the future health and prosperity of planet earth’s people. There are many economic and political measures that can, and should be brought into the fight. Out here in Kosele we will watch with interest as events unfold. We would be stupid to ignore current development theory and practise. It has moved a considerable distance since the Brandt Commission Report.

But before we consider all of that we will fast, pray and win the spiritual battle.

Small steps

2011-10-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

I have a collection of inspirational quotes stuck to the wall by my desk. They act a bit like the security blanket that the Peanuts cartoon character Linus took everywhere with him. They often help me to focus and keep on track with the real purpose of being here. My favourite one comes from the Farming God’s Way training manual. It says:

“We cannot provide for every person’s physical needs, but we can definitely equip the poor with the knowledge to provide for themselves … This equipping brings a liberty that no gift or donation could ever give, as it is empowering the poor into perpetuity”.

I’ve had a really enjoyable day today putting more pieces of the puzzle into place for January and the kick off for all things educational – especially the Agriculture College. Kosele is a very challenging place to live in because there are so many people with desperate physical needs and I know that we can only meet a very small fraction of them. A while ago I listened to an interview with a nurse who had been working for an aid agency during the famine in Ethiopia that led to the Live Aid concert in 1985. She said that at times she felt as if she was “playing at being God”. I know what she means.

‘Equipping’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘empowering the poor’ are words that can ring hollow through overuse, (or misuse). It is easy to write them off as clichés. I have to believe that they are meaningful and powerful because they are fundamental to my sanity. If I stopped believing in them it would be impossible to function and I would just be another well intentioned Mzungu, (white man), with a heart for the poor and a rapidly emptying wallet.

So today has been another day of small victories – this time in team building, agricultural planning, timetable designing, colour coding, financial forecasting and, most of all, moving forward. Some days the bigger vision seems a little out of focus. Today it is easy to picture the new students at the Agriculture College, putting flesh on the bones of equipping, knowledge and empowerment.

Tomorrow might be different – you can’t predict what or who will happen to you from one day to the next. Out here many people only have a very loose grip on the basics of life. They lurch from crisis to crisis feeling anything but equipped, knowledgeable or empowered. Tonight I know that people will be going to bed hungry. Others will be sick and many will be feeling hopeless. But I also know that some young people will be sitting behind desks in our Agriculture College and working in the fields in January. And today we took another step closer to making it all happen.

The abundant life

2011-10-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am one of life’s optimists. A number of years ago now, if the glass was half full it would need to have been filled again fairly quickly but it would still have been half full, not half empty. It’s a useful perspective to have when you are involved in the kind of development work that we are doing in Kosele. Whether you are considering spiritual transformation, environmental rehabilitation or sustainable farming a pessimistic outlook is a serious handicap.

It being a day of rest again, (it seems to have come round again very quickly). I have been trying to apply a bit of perspective to what I’ve done over the last few weeks and reflecting on a verse from the New Testament that we were looking at in Sunday School with the young people this morning. In John 10:10 it says – “The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly”. Whatever your take on the spiritual life it’s worth pausing sometimes to think about what an abundant life looks like.

Over the last few years I have been greatly encouraged by books that seem to come along at just the right time. I am a fairly voracious reader and couldn’t imagine life without at least one book on the go. In the last twelve months I’ve read three books that were published between the early seventies and late eighties and have been struck by two things; a) how prophetic they are and b) how little attention people tend to pay to prophets. The three books are:

Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher (1971)
The Greening of Africa by Paul Harrison (1987)
Ripening Harvest, Gathering Storm by Maurice Sinclair (1988)

Paul Harrison chooses a Swahili proverb to preface part one of his book – The Challenge. The proverb says:

“Do not borrow off the earth for the earth will require its own back with interest.”

Maurice Sinclair creates a memorable image of the world’s population crisis when he writes; “An overcrowded ship may take on extra passengers without sinking but the further this process continues the more important it becomes that the passengers should be distributed evenly and that their movements be carefully restrained. No such conditions apply now on the overcrowded earth.”

The prophets in the bible had a pretty torrid time – stoned, imprisoned and generally abused for telling people things that they didn’t want to hear, (but probably knew were true). Modern day prophets may not be physically abused in the same way but the process of vilification and ‘head in the sand’ responses remain much the same. I like to look at the publication dates in books because it helps me to evaluate what the writer is saying. You could put 2011 as the publication date in these three books and the warnings would still be relevant and mostly unheeded. In the forty years that have passed since the publication of the first of the trio we don’t seem to have learned very much.

Maurice Sinclair also notes that “… whatever balance of optimism or pessimism we prefer, and whatever direction a day’s headlines may propel us, we have to try at least to face both the menace and the promise which hover over us. Can we come to terms with the fact that we live in days of accelerating change and accumulating crises? And what in global and personal terms does this mean?”

What indeed? As an optimistic Christian with a firm belief in the kingdom on earth as well as in heaven I don’t think the world will go belly up or that the good ship mother earth will really capsize. Our battered Landrover will lean over a long way before it tips over. The sensible thing to do is drive it within its limits. The earth requires the same careful stewardship.

For me an abundant life is one that means everybody has enough to eat, enjoys good health, has a secure home that doesn’t leak when it rains and has good relationships with family, friends and neighbours. It doesn’t seem especially extravagant but it doesn’t seem to be the way that many people live – certainly not where I am now. Whatever your take on the thief, (or thieves), something is amiss in the world, and many millions of people are being robbed of the abundant life. There are no easy answers. I count myself fortunate to be here, doing this work and believe that the community that is growing here will enjoy an abundant life in the future - especially if we can carry on winning the war against the stalk borers, striga and environmental collapse, and, most optimistically of all, if we can really learn to love God and our neighbours.

Necessity ...... Mother ..... Invention

2011-10-22T14:19:00.001-07:00

Today has been a day of small triumphs against a lifelong history of DIY incompetence. Back in the UK I am not really a keen DIYer for all the usual reasons – lack of time, pressure of work, fear of failure and, if I’m really honest, lack of interest and basic ineptitude in most things DIY. (I am, however, a very good man B and work quite well under supervision). A case of “if it’s not very, very broke don’t fix it”.

The light in the front bedroom in the small boys’ dormitory has needed fixing for some time, (apparently), so I decided that today would be the day to fix it. I don’t really have drawers to keep things in so haven’t got a ‘man drawer’.

(Google man drawer or follow this link www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xxqVzlSeE)

I have, however, got a really good multi-gadget thing with all the necessary blades, screwdrivers and pliers to carry out emergency DIY in Africa.

I don’t know what happens to me when I get to Kenya. I suddenly become a lot more practical than I usually am in England and relish the challenge of making things work. The fact that other people have tried to fix the problem before me and made it worse is also an incentive but I do, honestly, enjoy the whole maintenance thing out here. So … on to the small boys’ dorm, armed with multi-gadget handy tool, (budget price version), a Swiss army knife, (insurance policy) and bags of, almost certainly misplaced, confidence.

The wiring in the small boys’ dorm is a bit of a cat’s cradle affair. All of our electricity now comes from solar power as part of our continuing attempts at sustainability. When we first lived in Kosele we ran the electricity on our compound from a generator. This means that there are actually two wiring systems in all of the houses that now have solar power – (including the small boys’ dorm). The wiring system in the small boys’ dorm seems to have become a bit of a hybrid, so it’s difficult to see exactly how the lights are connected. I spent some time going from room to room trying to figure it out. This proved a bit fruitless so I got started on dismantling the light bulb holder, (which had rotted and cracked under the heat and the pressure of hanging in a room full of smallish boys). Access to the bulb holder was slightly tricky and involved balancing on a rickety three legged ladder, and one of the bunk beds in the dorm. Balanced this way and working above my head I realised that the multi-gadget handy tool screwdriver weighed more than I had thought it would and wasn’t really very easy to manipulate. The Swiss army knife was lighter but the screwdriver blade that was the right width doubles up as a bottle opener so was a bit fat to locate on the screws in the bulb holder.
So I went in search of a small screwdriver and eventually found one hiding in an old toolbox in the stores. (Surprisingly good quality from the UK with multiple pieces stored in the handle for different types of screw – not Chinese as most tools out here are).

Armed with the right tool I made quick work of the bulb holder, then realised that it was very, very broke and needed fixing back a level in the set up. Eventually I had the whole thing dismantled and was in a position to work out which wire actually worked the light, (there were two and a half sets of red, black and green/yellow wires to choose from). It took a few minutes to work out that the whole system wasn’t switched on at the master switch in the girls’ dormitory. Once this problem was solved I was feeling quite pleased with myself and tried to remember all the things my Dad, (who is very good at DIY), had told me about working with wires and electricity. I soon had a test rig made up of the new bulb holder and new bulb and only got a few shocks as I conducted my process of elimination on the wires. This accomplished all that remained was to fix up the cable to the new light switch, re-attach the bulb holder and job done. Thing were going well. Or so I thought.

I hadn’t realised that the wiring the other side of the switch was part of the hybrid system so spent a bit more time disentangling and dismantling it. I eventually had a light switch, light bulb, cabling and light bulb holder in place ready for the moment of truth. Switch on and … nothing. Further investigation showed me how to wire the switch up properly and the light obligingly turned on. So I tidied up all the bits of wire that my, now blunter, pliers on the multi-gadget thing had stripped off and patted myself on the back. The switch, to be totally honest, will need to have a proper mounting made for it but it is secured onto the wall and works. Or so I thought.

The light in one of the girls’ dormitory bedrooms needed a new bulb, which turned into replacing the light bulb holder – a job I was now accomplished at. It took hardly any time at all. Wires properly stripped, twisted to right length and secure etc. Not anticipating any problems with switching on the light this time I went for the moment of truth and…. no light. A flash of inspiration, (God?), traced the problem back to the recently re-wired light switch in the small boys’ dorm – which is now a kind of master switch for all of the girls’ dorm and all but one room in the small boys’ dorm. (I did start off by saying they were small triumphs – not out and out victory).

At least we can make sure that the lights are out at the same time now!

It was all good experience – next week I think I’ll just have to rewire both dorms!

I think that Duncan has managed to drown and poison the stalk borers. We will investigate tomorrow.

8-4-4

2011-10-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a quiet day today, as Mary, Duncan. Ian and Hilda headed off to our local metropolis – Kisii, (pronounced kissee) in search of chemicals to kill the stalk borers, money to pay the staff and matoke, (green bananas), to feed the children with. I resisted the temptation to go with them and managed to have a very productive day pursuing the other mission that brought me out here – education.

The Kenyan education system follows an 8-4-4 pattern. That means eight years in primary school, four years at high school and 4 years at University. Kenya has only recently, (2003), begun to get near the goal of universal primary education. For a large number of Kenya’s young people their education is the 8 system – i.e. they just about mange to finish primary school. The National Council for Children’s Services in Kenya says that at least 40 percent of Kenyan children who completed their primary education did not proceed to high school. Of those who do many end up having to leave because they cannot keep up with the fees which are charged.

Part of our vision for Hope and Kindness is making sure that the children who come to our primary school manage to get at least the 8-4 or 3 part of their education – especially the girls. Plans for the Agriculture College curriculum are still coming together. I’m inclined more to a three-year course after primary school in the Agriculture College leading to five International GCSEs hence the 8-4 or 3 model.

The biggest challenges for us are making the children’s curriculum more relevant in primary school and helping the teachers to develop more interactive teaching methods. Our team of teachers is relatively young, and certainly not set in their ways. They know that things have to change in the future and recognise the problems in the Kenyan education system. (To be fair to them so does the Kenya Education department). We had an interesting discussion at lunchtime about staffing ratios in some Kenyan schools. Our top class size will be 30 pupils but some of our teachers have experience of teaching 60+ in a single class. I’ve seen this at work in some of the local primary schools and it is Dickensian. With this many children in a class the easiest method of teaching is chalk, talk and rote learning – it’s a question of crowd control.

So today I got down to some serious desk tidying, room tidying, metal box, (where I keep all my valuables), tidying and laptop tidying as part of my inspired thinking process. I don’t like to think about the psychology behind this too much, but it works for me. Next week is half term for our school, giving the teachers a bit if a break, (apart from our Standard 8 teacher who will be doing revision lessons for the week – the real KCPE exam is now only two weeks away). It gives me an opportunity to put some flesh on the bones of our ‘big picture’ plans.

Our class 3 pupils were a great help to my efforts at learning Kiswahili today. The office is right next to their classroom and they were going through the names of different relatives in Kiswahili. I recognised them from the book I’m using so I quite enjoyed the lesson. I’m not sure what they’d think about be joining their class but I wouldn’t be the oldest adult to learn in primary school in Kenya. In 2003, education in public schools became free and universal in Kenya. On learning that primary education had once again become free in Kenya, Kimani Maruge, a Kenyan illiterate farmer and the world's oldest person to enrol in primary school, joined Kapkenduiywo primary school in Eldoret at the age of 84. He was elected head boy at the age of 86 in 2005.

Duncan managed to buy the chemicals today so we are going after the stalk borers tomorrow!

Don't stop the weeding, (hold on to that seedling).

2011-10-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Today was a public holiday so we didn’t have many of the children in school. It turned out to be a great day for weeding. Following our farm walks this week Mary, Duncan and I have drawn up a work plan to make sure we stay on top of our mission to feed ourselves after the next harvest. The kids were amazing. We split them up into three groups and took them off to the maize plots that needed weeding. The older pupils, (Standard 7 and 8), had the toughest job – pretty much having to rescue their maize plot from being overrun by grass. The plot looked fantastic after they finished.

Working on a plot at the bottom of our land with the younger children was great fun. Once we had established how we wanted to sweep across the field they got into the weeds with a vengeance. Unlike the older children, who had to weed with hoes because the grass was so well established my team was weeding by hand. Until you actually try the “Kenya stance” for jobs like weeding and washing clothes it is difficult to appreciate how hard it is to do. The stance basically means you bend at the waist and stand in an upside down V shape. It looks like the kind of thing physiotherapists would line up to outlaw. The kids can keep it up for ages. I ‘m building up to sustained five minute bursts. I’m up to about two at the moment.

As well as being contortionists the kids seem to have no feeling in their feet as they all work barefoot. The ground we were working today was quite wet, (as, you guessed, it rained quite a bit yesterday). The kids didn’t seem at all bothered by it. They probably thought I was crazy weeding in my work boots, as they turned into moon boots after a couple of steps through the mud in the field. It felt like I had divers boots on eventually – they weighed a ton. It’s odd the things that run through your mind. I started humming the Journey song Don’t Stop Believing as I was working and soon had the alternative farm work lyric “Don’t stop the weeding, hold on to that seedling” stuck in my head.

I’ve been mulling over the striga and stalk borer problem today and did some research into ways of dealing with it. (Stalk borers are basically caterpillars that can destroy a maize crop - striga is a parasitic weed that does the same thing). I’m sure many people have a list of things they would like to ask God. Reasons for the existence of striga and stalk borers are pretty close to the top of mine at the moment, (close runners up to the mosquito question). They add to the burdens of the maize growers in our part of Kenya. People on the margins of sustainability can lose a whole crop to this deadly combination of pests. Research suggests that they are guaranteed to lose about 15% of their crop at least.

I would like our farm to be organic for many reasons. Mostly really because my research suggests that there are natural ways of achieving high yields and looking after the land and other natural resources at the same time. Something along the lines of reaping what you sow – exploiting the land beyond what it can stand reaps poor harvests. Anyway. There isn’t a lot we can do about the problem using natural defences for this crop. Unless we can find some pesticides for the stalk borers tomorrow we might just have to do what we can to physically remove them, (that child labour force comes in very handy), and employ our natural defence in the next growing season. The natural defence is very clever. It involves planting a small plant called desmodium and Napier grass together with the maize. The desmodium produces a smell that drives away stalk borer moths and also a chemical that prevents striga from attaching to maize roots. The Napier grass attracts the moths and they lay their eggs on the Napier grass and not the maize. When the eggs hatch, the Napier grass produces sticky glue that kills young stalk borers. What a combination! As if that wasn’t enough you can also use the desmodium and Napier grass for fodder, so the goats we plan to raise can eat tasty grass fortified with extra protein. Nature is a wonderful thing.

War on pests

2011-10-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

The bees are still in the chimney, (though not as many as there were yesterday). It rained this afternoon so we had to postpone our smoking out operation. Gives them a chance to make more honey I guess.

I had to make a trip in our Landrover to the Gendia hospital this afternoon. The Gendia is the best hospital within easy distance. It is operated by the Seventh Day Adventist, (SDA), church and has been going for about 100 years. Hilda and one of our church leaders were accompanying a member of staff for some treatment. (Moral support as much as anything – a trip to the hospital can be quite daunting). The journey provided another chance for some spinal re-alignment – the road just seems to get worse. Thinking about it this is a down side to the rain. The rain comes hammering down off the hills and runs across the road. This creates lots of ridges, (a bit like a beach when the tides gone out), and makes it hard to drive in a straight line. The water on the road does, at least, make the potholes easier to see, (though avoiding them is still a real problem).

Kosele, our local town/village is a regular “one horse town”. I stopped at Jakanyango’s, (the main shop), on the way back from the hospital to buy some squash and took the chance to just sit and watch life pass by for five minutes. All the local taxis stop outside Jakanyango’s to drop off passengers and squeeze new ones in. A Kenyan taxi can hold an astonishing number of people. I watched in disbelief as three large ladies emerged from the tailgate of a medium sized estate car, while a very wide guy tried to squeeze in to share the front seat with another passenger. The back seat passengers stayed put – all four of them. The vehicle was festooned with water containers, tied onto the roof rack. After getting out of the car the ladies each took a huge bundle off the roof and walked away with them on their heads. Their places in the car were taken by three more passengers, forcing the lady who was left in the boot to squeeze over a bit more!

I really enjoy driving the Landrover. It’s very old and has developed a few new noises since I was last in Kosele but it is really the only way to travel. There is currently a shortage of Regular, (as opposed to Super), petrol in our part of Kenya, which meant that a couple of days ago we ran out of fuel for the generator we use to pump our borehole. This became a problem today as our main water tank ran out this evening. I had to make another trip down our bumpy road to Oyugis, (the closest “two horse town” to our place). When I set out the sun was going down and it was dark when I drove back. Driving at night up our road is quite challenging but good fun. I hit the “rush hour” on the way back, (about 7 p.m.), There seem to be more and more motor bike taxis on the road this year. At one point a convoy of them were winding their way downhill towards me, in and out of the potholes. It must have been quite a ride for their passengers. The suicidal bicycle riders who suddenly loom out of the dark at you, or veer across the road are a more worrying hazard at night. None of them have any lights so they are really hard to spot. It’s good for your reflexes but potentially bad for your car insurance.

It’s a public holiday in Kenya tomorrow so most of the school pupils will be at home. Our Standard 8 ‘candidates’, (for the Kenya Certificate of Education exam), sat the last of their divisional exams today so they can take a bit of a break from tests until November, when they sit the real thing. The exam preparation continues though – despite the holiday tomorrow they will still be coming in for revision lessons for half the day. We have three fields of maize to weed tomorrow so they will be having a busy day.

Things on the farm a looking good but we have a few emerging challenges. We’ve found a weed called Striga, (pronounced Streega), in some of the maize plots and have the first signs of stalk borers in the emerging maize tassels, (the male part of the plant that looks like a wheat stalk sticking out of the top). Both of these pests are at an early stage at the moment but we will need to act swiftly as they can significantly affect yields. It’s amazing how quickly you get to feel very protective towards your crops. It’s a war with nature out there! More from the front line later in the week.

Help - Please send Mongooses!

2011-10-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Today the farm management team has been formally convened and our aims have been decided. Following our trip to Kisumu yesterday Duncan, Mary and I have agreed that our farm should be able to provide food for us, provide income to buy food items that we can’t grow ourselves and provide the children and Agriculture College students with training opportunities.We also plan to carry out research into the farming techniques and crop types that do best in our area. We are hoping that our successes will encourage members of the local community to become more willing to risk trying new techniques to achieve higher yields from their land.

We had a very practical morning going over all of our land and planning what we will grow on it next year and what we need to do to get it ready. It was great being outdoors, imagining what the land will look like when we have brought it under full cultivation. Working with Duncan and Mary is very satisfying. They are both very keen to see our farming project succeed and have a lot of good ideas. This work is new for all of us and we are determined to do it well. Tomorrow we plan to start collecting data about growth rates, germination rates and the effectiveness of the fertiliser inputs that we have used on the Well Watered Garden, (WWG), plots that were prepared and planted in August.

It is interesting to see the differences between the plots that were planted with organic fertiliser from our composting latrine and the plots that used chemical fertiliser. At the moment the chemicals are winning on the WWG plots. One section of the field was planted using the traditional method of ploughing and no fertiliser. This is an experiment to see how well our Farming God’s Way plots perform compared to the more usual approach in our area. I thought we had planted the “traditional” plot without using fertiliser but it turns out that one edge of it was used as a “dump site” for a largish amount of the Ecosan latrine compost about 9 months ago. Growth in this part of the field is amazing! This gives us confidence in building up the soil’s fertility over the coming years by farming organically.

On a completely different note we had a buzz of excitement today, (literally), when the wild bees that have been living in the chimney of Ian and Hilda’s house decided to swarm – into Ian and Hilda’s kitchen and bedroom. It’s actually quite a scary experience – the bees are very fierce and were, (according to two of our staff), made more excited by having a hive full of honey. All this happened while I was out being a farmer, but the empty Doom cans, (the aptly named insect spray that we use in Kenya), and pile of dead bees in the kitchen spoke of a serious problem. I remember it happening during the year that Judi, Tom, Ellie and I lived in Kenya. I think the mosquito netting that was put over the chimney to solve the problem stopped being bee proof some time ago so the bees returned to their old home. After blocking the fireplace in the kitchen a bit more effectively the bees had no choice but to swarm out of the top of the chimney before clearing off. I’m not sure how many bees are left in the hive, (the chimney is quiet at the moment but you never know with bees).

If there is honey in the chimney it would be good to harvest it. We need some Mongooses, (or naked Masai)! – (see previous entry from Sunday October 16th). Unfortunately they are both in short supply around Kosele. We do have a fair number of small children but I’m fairly sure the Kenyan child protection laws aren’t keen on that kind of thing. It looks like we’ll just have to smoke them out then draw straws to see who goes up the ladder to the chimney. I'll let you know how it goes.

Who is/was the Duke of Breeze?

2011-10-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

Up at the crack of dawn today for a bone jarring ride to Kisumu, (at least the first twenty-five minutes anyway). Kisumu is the third largest city in Kenya and about an hour and a half drive away from our place in Kosele. The first part of the journey, towards Lake Victoria, is down a very poor road, (officially a tarmac road but actually just a bumpy track full of rocks and maniacs in vehicles). Six of us, (myself, Mary our manager, Mr Dedans – head teacher, Duncan farm manager and Ian and Hilda - volunteers) took part in a workshop organised by Teach a Man to Fish, ( UK based organisation), in Kisumu.

Lake Victoria looked very beautiful as the sun came up – very little water hyacinth, (the aquatic equivalent of Rhododendrons), to be seen. This vegetative pest has been choking the life out of the lake for a number of years and causes the fishermen awful problems getting their boats out to deep enough water to fish in and bringing their, (dwindling), catches to shore. It is difficult to comprehend the real size of Lake Victoria. It’s the second largest stretch of freshwater in the world. The bit of it that we travel past is only really a small inlet but looks huge – like being at the seaside. From the window of the Matatu, (minibus), that we have hired for the day looking out at the fishing boats on the lake looks almost biblical.

Kisumu is very different. Packed full of people, tuc-tucs, (three wheeler taxis), motor bikes, cars, bicycle taxis and people. Poverty next to prosperity. The biggest shopping centre in Kisumu is opposite one of the slums. Along the side of the road billboards promote a lifestyle that most Kenyans can only really dream of, (80% of them are farmers, mostly living at subsistence level). I cannot help feeling sad that poor Kenyans are being sold the aspirations of a globalised world economy. They can’t afford it and don’t need it. One of our neighbours in Kosele has a little boy called Robin. He was admitted to the local District Hospital with typhoid a couple of days ago. His Mum can’t find clean water anywhere close to her home, (which is only about 8 km away from the second largest source of fresh water in the world), but could buy him a bottle of coke from the nearest kiosk to her house.

We are looking for a hotel/conference centre called the Duke of Breeze. It is up a side street off the main road into the centre of Kisumu. Doesn’t look very encouraging from the outside but the conference room on the third floor is pretty good. Having seen a number of workshops in progress in various locations in Kisumu but never taken part in one I was looking forward to the day. Self sufficient or self-financing schools are a bit of a development holy grail. In principle setting up viable businesses in schools run by students and teachers should be an easily achievable goal. In practice the constraints of the Kenyan curriculum, lack of capital, land and markets for products make it a real challenge. Fortunately the delegates at the workshop are a determined group and keen to overcome these barriers. Challenges were identified, solutions proposed and a good deal of networking happened. This was probably the most useful aspect of the workshop for me – it’s great to catch up with Kenyans who are actively pursuing development in their schools and communities and willing to share their successes, frustrations and contact details. It was even more rewarding to exchange experiences without being asked for help in finding outside donors or sponsors.

A key part of our plans for the Agriculture College that we will be opening in January next year involves becoming a Cambridge examination centre and entering the students for International GCSE exams. Our plan received a good response from a group of head teachers I talked to. They said that IGCSEs are usually only offered by the most expensive fee paying schools in Kenya and largely taken by students from Asian families in preparation for studying in the UK at university level. Our team was fired up by the workshop and we will have a lot to talk about and plan for in the coming weeks.

Whole body massage courtesy of the last 8 km of our journey home followed by further plotting and scheming with Ian and Hilda brought the day to a good conclusion. We have set ambitious goals for the coming year but have been reassured by the workshop experience that we are on the right track.

Many thanks to Lindsey, Samina and Zoe from Teach a Man to Fish.

How do you say this in Kiswahili?

2011-10-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Day of rest today so I started off well by having a lie in. We usually get up at around 6.30 to be in time for a short time of prayer and an encouragement from the bible. It’s a nice way to start the day and greet people. Attendance varies but the small living room in the house Ian and Hilda are staying in is usually full. We’ve decided that we’ll pray in church on Sundays and savour some extra time in bed.

Unfortunately I’m not very good at doing rest. It feels wrong so I tend to carry on being busy. I’ve been debating which Kenyan language to learn and have decided that I am going to try very hard to learn Kiswahili. It's widely spoken across East Africa and according to my research today is widely used in High School. Kenya is a complicated country linguistically. The British did a great job of carving up Africa, (along with their European counterparts), in the Scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century and happily drew straightish lines across any number of tribal divisions. This does little to foster national unity in many African countries, (including Kenya). Anyway, I digress. Based on evidence from an admittedly small sample of our staff, I have been advised that learning Kiswahili would be better than learning Luo, our local language. In an ideal world I guess learning both would be preferable but I’m not sure my ageing brain cells could take in two new languages at the same time. I know that the teachers in our school would like the children to improve in Kiswahili so I’m going to step up to the challenge of being a good role model. I’m sure it will cause much amusement to start with, (a bit like talking French in France) but I am determined to try. Apart from anything else I think it is a very beautiful language. So, Inawezekana? (Is it possible?) – Bila yashaka (Of course).

I love the early evening in Kenya – from about 5.30 to 7.00 p.m. It’s usually fairly cool and the sun sets beautifully, lighting up the whole sky. The sky seems a lot bigger in Kosele. It’s a lovely time to sit and pass time with the children after they have had supper. There’s always a football match going on and someone to talk to. The kids love reading the newspaper so I sat with a few of them and we read the Sunday Standard. They couldn’t believe one of the pictures on the second page, which showed a European lady seeming to kiss a lion that she had brought to her animal sanctuary some years ago.

There’s nothing like a warm shower to finish off the day so I had nothing like a warm shower but still felt really good after it. Water for the showers comes from the roof harvest system so when it rains the showers are full of lovely cold rainwater. We had yet more rain today so the showers are full, (and so is the 1,000 litre water tank I wrote about previously). Our showers are outdoors and open to the big African sky. The stars often look spectacular. I hadn’t seen the Milky Way before I came to Kenya!

We have an even earlier start than usual tomorrow as we have to travel to Kisumu for the self sufficient school workshop in Kisumu, (about an hour and a half away). I’m hoping that everyone will come back fired up with enthusiasm for making our place as self sufficient as possible.

I hope our staff and children will not mind my new catch phrase too much – Unasemaje kwa Kiswahili, (how do you say this in Kiswahili), and that I won’t have to resort to Unazungumza Kiingereza? (Do you speak English), this time next year

Chickens and smelly mongooses

2011-10-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some farming research today - it's very therapeutic and inspires me on to even greater schemes for our farm. I recently came across a Kenyan farming magazine called Farmers Pride. It is very informative and also unintentionally funny.

In an article called Smallholder Prospers in Mixed Farming the author writes…”Apart from breeding dogs, the couple rears eight hybrid dairy cows which produces between 20-30 litres of milk daily. The milk is sold to a milk-processing factory while some is sold in the neighbourhood. The farm is also the home of 86 children, some of which are imported indigenous children. Out of the number, 13 of them are cocks for breeding purposes…” (Don't count your chickens!!!!!)

In another issue of the magazine I learnt something new about the problems faced by Masai beekeepers. The Masai are most famous for being cattlemen, so bee keeping is a significant departure for them. Given the problems of being stung by bees and the anti-social behaviour of mongooses, (or should that be mongeese?), I’d be tempted to stick to cattle.

“… When the hives were initially started the honey harvesters had to brave the angry bees without any protective clothing. “They used to go there very early in the morning, naked,” explains Johnson Kuntayo, one of the Masais involved in bee keeping.

“The bees at that time cannot see the harvester properly but they still sting his hands when going for the honey…”

Mongooses are also a problem

“… the Masai honey harvesters do face some stiff competition – from mongooses. They raid the beehives at night and steal all the honey. “The mongooses are very clever animals. They climb up the trees where the beehives are,” says Mr Matampash, who runs Neighbours Initiative Alliance, an NGO backing the beekeepers. “Once up there, they pass wind – forcing the bees to flee from the foul smell and then they knock down the beehive and eat the honey.”

(Makes you wonder why the Masai didn’t copy the strategy during their early morning sessions. I hope burglars don’t read Farmers Pride).

We had yet more rain today, (sorry, but it’s such great news).

Our friends Ian and Hilda McMillan from Paisley in Scotland have joined our work in Kosele and will be in Kenya with me until next February. They have started a number of initiatives with our church, including a men’s meeting which is held on Saturday afternoon. This is led by Ian and Kennedy, (one of the church leaders). The meeting today was well attended. It was great to be with the guys as they took further steps of faith together and shared each other’s problems. One of the group explained a problem that he had obtaining enough ‘poles’, (trees), to continue building his house. 15 minutes later the guys had worked out how many poles they could each give him and he was well on the way to solving the problem.

At the end of the meeting the heavens opened and we all shuffled our benches to the corner of the corrugated iron church building that doesn’t leak. This gave Kennedy an opportunity to finalise the details of the pole donations. I started a conversation with one our longest standing and most faithful church members, (a guy called Hakim). With one of the other guys interpreting we established that Hakim’s farm was doing OK but he needed some top dressing fertiliser, which is expensive. I told him that if he reminded me after church on Sunday he can have some of the urine that we store from our Ecosan latrine, (we have got gallons of it). Not the kind of offer you get at every church meeting. Hakim was pleased.

During a lull in the rain, (when it slowed to a steady drizzle), four of us made a visit to our Farming God’s Way, (FGW), plots. I’m very keen to promote this method of farming and the guys, (including Hakim), were very interested. We inspected the maize and bean plants and had a good Q&A session. I think I have at least four confirmed attendees at the first FGW training that we do.

One small step ………………..

The economy of little items

2011-10-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

I will try very hard not to write about rain again for a while after this but I have to mention the rain today. It has rained for most of the afternoon and evening - very hard at times. This either means that I am very righteous, (James 5:16), or that somebody else is praying for rain as well. The 1,000 litre water tank outside our office was pretty much empty yesterday and it is now a third full. Our crops are now well watered and our slave labour force can have a few days off from the bucket irrigation.

Before it started raining I had a great morning measuring up the land we have recently bought and then drawing out a farm plan. It was great working in the fresh air. I can't believe how fortunate I am to be working in this place. I never imagined becoming a farmer of any sort but it is a great job. I reckon we have just over a hectare of land for farming and our Agriculture College so there is plent of scope for experimentation. Mary, Duncan and I will get down to the serious business of planning out next year's farm calender in the next couple of days.

On a completely different note - I am a news addict when I am in the UK, and turn into a recovering news addict in Kenya. This is mostly because there is so much to do that I don't have time to follow the news, (and also because we can't get CNN!). The news free lifestyle is highly recommended.

That said I do,occasionally read the daily paper. Yesterday The Standard, (which I prefer to Kenya's other daily paper The Daily Nation) ran a series of stories about the Hard Times that people are currently experiencing in Kenya. The Kenyan Shilling is tanking against most of the world's currencies at the moment and inflation is at 17%. This is making life very tough for most Kenyans and especially the poor, (who make up over 50% of the population. It is sobering reading about the daily grind of feeding a family on about £1 per day.

I was particularly struck by a story about how "Kenyans turn to 'kadogo' shopping". The story was about Kenyan shopkeepers and kiosk owners packing staples like tea, sugar and ugali, (maize) in very small amounts and still not being able to sell them because people cannot afford them. Sugar is especially expensive at the moment and is being sold in amounts as small as an eigth of a kilogramme. The newspaper story says:

"In Kisian Village, Kisumu County, the packet is retailing at 28 shillings, (about 18 pence in the UK), the epitome of the 'Kadogo economy' (economy of little items)."

Despite this attempt at making sugar affordable a shopkeeper complained that "Since Monday I have only sold two packets of Kobole - the quarter kilogramme packets are not being bought."

Another trader, Gladys Achieng, 26 "struggles to sell cooking fat that she has packaged into sizes of about 10 grammes which she sells for 5 shillings per packet. Locals aptly refer to this packet as oloyo non (it is better than nothing)." The language of poverty is poignantly ironic.

The final indignity of this level of poverty is reflected in the economies that the poor make to keep body and soul together. Gerald Wafula lives in a slum and earns 200 shillings a day (£1.30 or $1.86) working as a labourer on a building site. The rocketing price of staple foods hits the poorest the hardest. Gerald's solution to the problem is heartbreakingly simple - "We have been forced to have one meal a day and do away with some items." Gerald, his wife and three children will certainly be going to bed hungry most days.

The economy of little items may become a global phenomenon. I don't know how the developed world would cope with it. Living in Kenya you get used to the stories of poverty - but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with. It makes me all the more determined that our team at Hope and Kindness will do all they can to develop solutions to the basic problems of food and water in our community. I really do thank God for the rain.

Rain

2011-10-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

I love the weather in Kenya. Apart from occasional lapses the pattern of sunshine and rain is usually fairly predictable. I don't know why the United Kingdom can't follow the Kenya weather norm. During the day the sun shines. In the evening and during the night it rains. What a fantastic arrangement. Having prayed for rain yesterday it arrived on cue this evening - nice and gentle but as as I type (9.15 p.m.) it's kept up for about an hour and a bit and is just getting a little heavier. (Actually quite a lot heavier!).

This is a good thing. Having got the buckets out for watering yesterday we decided to water the other half of the field the same way this afternoon. As we are well into the science of farming, (as well as the philosophy that you can't manage what you don't measure), Duncan, our farm manager and I decided we would tally up the number of 10 litre buckefuls that got poured on the farm today. Came to a total of 138 so we poured out 1380 litres of water. As the rain is definitely picking up a bit now we should get some of it replaced tonight. The rain is also very good news for our neighbours who have ploughed and planted and will now be well into the "will it won't it?" dilemma of Kenyan rainfall and their families' survival after the next harvest.

We are looking forward to taking a small team to a workshop about self sufficient schools. This will be held in Kisumu, (3rd biggest city in Kenya about and hour and a half drive away), on Monday 17th October. Hosted by the aptly named Teach a Man to Fish organisation, (http://www.teachamantofish.org.uk/) we are hoping it will help us to make the most of our farming efforts in generating income as well as food.

The zonal exams that I wrote about yesterday caused some minor chaos this morning as classrooms were re-arranged and classes moved to accomodate the exam rules for candidates. A teacher from a school up the road came to invigilate for our oldest class, (Standard 8) who are "candidates" now - (they are taking their primary school leaving exam - The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education or KCPE in November). I hadn't realised that the invigilator marks the papers immediately after they have been taken. It seems to have been a tough maths paper - (our pupils' mean score is 58%). The kids are coping with the exams very well and working very hard - all credit to them.

Bucket irrigation and zonal exams

2011-10-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

The sun has shone, the clouds have been few and it has been hot today - and it hasn't rained This would be great if I was working on my tan or suffering from a sunshine deficiency. It's not such good news for our crops, which are at a critical point of growth and need both sunshine and rain. Fortunately there is a solution to this problem - bucket irrigation!

Bucket irrigation is watering at it's most basic. In an ideal world we would have set up some kind of drip irrigation system for times of no rain. We will be able to do this next January once our new classrooms have been built and we have water storage tanks on the end of them. For now we are having to resort to exploiting our young workforce - the pupils in the school. They don't seem to mind and so set to work carrying 10 litre buckets of water, mostly on their heads. It's amazing how much water even the younger pupils can carry.

The walk from the water tank to the field is about 400 metres and the children have to make a number of trips - we are hand watering 18 6 metre by 6 metre plots, 250 tree seedlings and our vegetable garden containing kale and onions. The plan is to become self sufficient in basic food crops, (beans, maize, potatoes, tomatoes, onions etc), and to make the most of the land that we have. So far the results are encouraging. Mary, (our manager), is predicting a maize harvest at the end of November so I should, I hope, get to be part of the harvest crew as well as the watering crew.

Our irrigation method has a serious underlying principle. We have a borehole on our land, so we can, if all else fails, crank up the generator and irrigate the crops with water from a depth of about 90 metres. This is not an option for our neighbours, so it seems like cheating. I have a theory that we should be able to collect enough rain water from the roofs of our buildings to keep the crops watered during the dry spells that our part of Kenya suffers from. When it rains it throws it down so we are able to collect a lot of water in our tanks. Every roof is put to use in this way. So much water gets wasted because people don't have good roof harvesting systems. We aim to farm sustainably, so don't want to become reliant on borehole water for irrigation. Having been part of the bucket brigade today I am keeping up my confidence in our strategy. The water will last longer on the plots that we have covered in God's Blanket, (mulch). Being people of faith we will also pray for rain!

Tomorrow is a big day for our older pupils in Classes 7 and8 as they will be sitting zonal mock exams. This smacks of the UK disease of school performance tables - the schools in our zone are very competitive. There seems to be an element of trust lacking in the exam process - our headteacher Mr Dedans told me that our teachers will have to travel to other schools in the zone to invigilate and we will have teachers from other schools doing the same for us. It should be an interesting couple of days!

Back from Lesotho

2011-10-11T03:35:00.001-07:00

Having determined that I would try to blog most days I have been off the Internet for the last 10 days or so. The best laid plans ......

I spent last week camping in Lesotho learning about Farming God's Way, (a biblically based conservation farming approach which has the potential to absolutely revolutionise farming in Africa and the rest of the world). Had the most fantastic week. I had been very concerned about the logistics of the trip to Lesotho but thanks to Ray and Suzanna and Gilly and Martin my time in Lesotho was very special and worry free. I must publicly say my thanks to Ray and Suzanna for making it possible to get to and from the training in Lesotho, (two very long drives - especially the return journey when we were delayed for an hour by a bad car smash). It was a privilege to be part of Gilly's food group. Finally thanks to Nikki Dryden for managing all the emails between us.

The tragedy of African farming is immense. So many people in such a richly endowed continent go to bed hungry because they are unable to feed themselves adequately. The Farming God's Way team were inspiring. Their commitment to ending hunger and poverty in Africa is absolute and the tools that they have developed are very powerful.

Visit the website, (http://www.farming-gods-way.org), to find out more. There is a whole load of downloadable material to get into.

Flew back from South Africa on Monday and spent the day travelling. It is good to be back in Kenya with a lot to look forward to. Arriving back in Kosele it is very encouraging to see our first attempts at Farming God's way are making great progress. The crops we planted in August are doing very well and, up to now, rainfall has been adequate.

(To see what was involved go to http://www.hopeandkindness.org/ProjectFarming.htm).

We seem to have a minor problem with local wildlife eating some of the maize shoots and bean plants at night so we will have to step up our security. Mary, our manager, thinks they are some kind of deer which come down from the hill at night. I'm not sure but you never know. I wonder if you can eat them.

We have a team from Cisco coming out to visit us at the end of November. Had a conference call with them tonight as part of the planning. I still find it amazing that it is possible to talk to a group of people in the UK at the same time from a mobile phone in Kenya. The technology has moved on so rapidly...... When we first came out to Kenya in 2002 we could only find a strong enough signal to call anyone from a very small spot underneath a banana tree outside one of the houses on our compound. It almost feels like cheating being able to blog from here now but I'm not that much of a purist. The communications revolution is so good for Africa in so many ways.

Have much planned for the next few weeks - continuing setting up our Agriculture College for January, Farming God's Way training with teachers and church leaders, land clearance in preparation for next planting season, (end of February 2013), and keeping an eye on the building work, (new classrooms and visitors' centre). I can't believe I am out here doing this some days - it sounds cheesy but it really is an immense privilege. I feel very lucky.

For those of you who read this blog who are up for praying your prayers for my wife Judi, son Tom and daughter Ellie would be much appreciated. Despite knowing that I am in the right place doing the right thing it's still quite tough on us as a family sometimes.

Taking the next steps

2011-09-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

I'm now starting the first bit of the rest of my life! I left paid work as a teacher on July 22nd and am now a fully paid up member of the volunteering classes - excited about living by faith.

I'm back in the UK for a brief visit to catch my breath and catch up with my lovely family, church and friends. I spent the last bit of July and all of August in Kenya and got off to a very good start on the next part of the journey with Hope and Kindness. For those of you that are new to Hope and Kindness follow the link to our website (www.hopeandkindness.org) where you will find information about our history and the work that we are doing in the west of Kenya. For those of you who have supported or followed our work for any length of time I hope that you will find this blog interesting, inspirational and occasionally irritating. (Because I hope that some of the things that you read about will get under your skin and leave you with no option other than to scratch!).

I'm now planning our next steps. It looks like being an exciting time with a visit to Lesotho to train with the Farming God's Way team for 9 days. I can't wait! For those of you who don't know about Farming God's Way, (FGW), follow the link to http://www.farming-gods-way.org/ and be inspired! I was. I really believe that FGW holds important keys to the future of farming in at least our part of Kenya.