Harvest time

I’ve hit that time in a Kosele trip where the amount of work still remaining and the amount of time left to do it in seem to be heading off in different directions. Each time I come to this point there is a greater urgency to each day which, when managed properly, is a very positive pressure. Tomorrow is day one of our ambitious training programme and I’m looking forward to getting started. Once the planning has been done I hate hanging about. Patience is a virtue that I don’t always think I’ve fully cultivated.

The remainder of the week promises to be a very hectic time on the farm. At our Senior Managers’ meeting today we set out the timetable for harvesting our maize. We are hoping to have gathered it all in by Friday. Duncan, our farm manager, is still optimistic that we will pull in a good harvest. If this is the case it will test our storage facilities and post-harvest management. This is usually a major challenge in Kenya. As we are planning to eat the maize ourselves we won’t have the problems associated with transporting the crops to market that larger producers experience. It will be interesting to see how we manage the drying and bagging up of our crop. Ten sacks of maize kernels is quite a lot of produce, given that each sack of finished maize comes from the process of drying cobs of corn and stripping off the kernels by hand. It looks like being an all hands on deck operation with help from the Agriculture College students, the older school pupils and our day staff. Still, it’s a nice problem to have.

New friend

My daughter Ellie and her boyfriend Andy should, as I type, be somewhere over the United Arab Emirates. I’m sure I’m becoming more paranoid about flight schedules as I grow older. Having experienced a series of delayed flights in and out of Kenya in the course of our most recent visitors’ schedules it gets increasingly difficult to build enough of a margin of error into departure times without losing whole days. It was a little unnerving arriving at Kisumu airport this morning and seeing no evidence of Ellie and Andy’s flight on the departure board. I did manage to see them board the plane and take off, (ten minutes early!)

I had a little time to kill at the airport before my appointment to see the Principal at one of the High Schools in Kisumu. Whenever you sit down for long outside an airport in Kenya you attract taxi drivers touting for business. This is occasionally annoying but they normally back off with good grace if you politely decline their offer. This morning I made a really useful new friend called Bright. Just as I was thinking “I ought to go and find a taxi now”, she approached me and asked if I needed a ride to town. I was surprised, as every other taxi driver I have used has been a guy. She offered to take me to Kisumu for significantly less than the usual fare. Chatting to her on the way to my appointment it turned out that she had been a taxi driver since the year 2000 having previously been employed by a bank. Being an enterprising woman she decided to set up in her own taxi business when she finished working for the bank and now has a number of regular clients who prefer her to the other taxi drivers in Kisumu. I can understand why. She is the politest driver I have driven with in all of our time in Kenya, showing great courtesy to other road users and making a point of driving carefully. In Kenya that gives her at least two USPs, (Unique Selling Points). I’ve booked her for my next ride to the airport when I travel back to the UK on August 9^th.

Kisumu musings

So it’s a hot night in Kisumu. My daughter Ellie and her boyfriend Andy are starting their journey home tomorrow so we’re staying in our favourite guest house, (St. Anna’s), and have just eaten. Having survived all of the dietary challenges of our place at Kosele Andy is feeling a bit provisional in the tummy department tonight. We’ve prayed for safe deliverance before they travel tomorrow. It’s still quite early so the howl hasn’t started yet and the church service that kicked off just before midnight last time we were here is probably still waiting for a congregation.

It’s been fun spending time in Kisumu. Ellie, my son Tom and I lived in Kisumu for a short time during the year we lived in Kenya and Ellie always enjoys retracing her steps around town when she is over here. The centre of town hasn’t really changed all that much. A few more buildings, some additions to the local tourist attraction called Impala Park. Most Kisumu residents are hoping that the new airport terminal that was opened this year will make a significant difference to the fortunes of the town. Compared to the old airport building the new one is a significant improvement. It has the capacity to handle international flights and there is clearly a desire to open up tourism in a big way. Reading a local business magazine this afternoon I learnt that a new tourist resort has opened in a ‘secluded’ location by the lake. From the pictures in the magazine it looks very impressive. I hope the tourism initiative is successful. Lake Victoria could be developed in a number of ways and Kisumu certainly needs the jobs that tourism could create.

Tomorrow I will be visiting a High School in Kisumu that teaches IGCSE, (International GCSE), qualifications. It will be helpful visiting a school that has experience of doing these qualifications as our Agriculture College students will be taking them in November next year for the first time. My wife Judi sent me a text this afternoon to say that she was reading a Sunday newspaper article in the UK which was extolling the rigor of the IGCSE. It’s encouraging to know that our trail blazing initiative in Kosele is part of a wider international movement. I can’t wait to tell the guys back in Kosele.

The 8th Habit

I’m reading a book by Stephen Covey at the moment called “The 8th Habit”. It’s part of my preparation for our forthcoming training days. I admire Stephen Covey. His writing is both wise and accessible. In particular I enjoy his selection of illustrations. I though I’d share two of them, as they seem especially pertinent to our situation.

There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday
There are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to you by God
The Beloved does not mind repeating
“Everything I have is also yours”
There are so many gifts, my dear
Still unopened from your birthday
Hafiz

And

All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently, degeniusized by grownups.
Buckminster Fuller

We would really like to get into the business of unwrapping presents and encouraging genius.

Growing up straight

I’m continuing to plot and scheme for a 5 day training program for our teachers starting next Wednesday. This means that I’ve spent a lot of my time glued to the laptop sourcing information and inspirational material to make the training go well. I remember my own experiences as a teacher when ‘the management’ announced some new initiative that everybody needed to be trained up on. In poacher turned gamekeeper mode I find myself in the challenging, (but none the less enjoyable), position of trying to develop motivational and inspirational professional development for our team. Our overall aim is to make sure that the children in the school reach their full potential and are equipped and motivated to become outstanding members of their community– no mean feat when you consider the home backgrounds that most of them come from. For a school it’s not a particularly unusual aim but when you start to dive into the detail of what it really involves it’s a real challenge. I’ve been reading some recent books from the USA about schools that have achieved extremely good results with children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds. The Bible tells us that if you “Point your kids in the right direction - when they're old they won't be lost.” (Message version). A simple but profound truth. Challenging enough in the modern nuclear family. A huge task for the average school but hugely rewarding when you get it right.

In the real world of the great outdoors it’s been an encouraging day on the self-sufficiency front today. Our goats are now so tame that they jump up to greet you when you enter the pen. They are also growing noticeably fatter. We postponed a management team meeting this afternoon so that we could have an all hands on deck attack on harvesting the last of our green grams, (mung beans). Net result was two and a half sacks of pods to extract the green grams from. The tomatoes in the greenhouse are also coming on well – we have about five hundred tomato plants and nearly all of them have tomatoes growing on them. Duncan, our farm manager, is typically understated when talking about them. He doesn’t think they have grown that much this week. He did point out that he is in the greenhouse everyday so probably doesn’t notice the growth as much as the rest of us. We also have an impressive looking butternut squash patch. Thanks to the keen attention of Duncan and our Agriculture College students and teachers our farm is rapidly turning into a great celebration of all things that grow. Watching nature in action at such close quarters and, for me, on such a relatively large scale really is an amazing experience.

Endangered Species

Today has had a bit of a wildlife flavour to it. Our part of Kenya does not boast any of the Big Five safari beasts to lure tourists, though there was a rumour of hyenas in the hills when we first came here. We were told that they had all been poisoned because of their anti-social diet of goats and occasional babies. This may all be rumour of course. It makes a good story though.

During this visit I have noticed an increased variety of bird life around our compound. This may have something to do with our farming activities or, possibly, the apparent change in climate, (it has been very wet for the last 12 months). Whatever the reason the birds are a welcome addition to the scenery, (until they start eating our crops).

Snakes are less welcome visitors to our place. East Africa is home to the decidedly unfriendly mamba family of snakes. Both green and black mambas are common in our area. The Black Mamba has a well deserved reputation as a fearsome beast. The less well known Green Mamba is highly venomous but less aggressive than its black cousin. I’ve had the usual busy day working on school issues today so haven’t been out much. This afternoon my daughter Ellie told me that our daytime security guard had killed a Green Mamba that had been hiding out in one of the two traditional houses that we use as storage areas. She said it wasn’t very big, (about eighteen inches long), but it was a timely reminder of the need to be vigilant. Kill on sight seems to be the usual rule over here as far as snakes go. It seems a shame. The Green Mambas are very bright green and are very pretty snakes.

We had a much more amazing wildlife encounter early this evening. The children play football on the field after supper. Beldine, one of our older girls, came hurrying over to our house after supper with something to show Ellie, (she and Ellie are very close). It wasn’t clear at first what Beldine had brought with her. It was pretty amazing when all became clear. In England it is, I think, illegal to buy tortoises as pets. Over here the tortoise is a native resident. You don’t see many of them but they are around. Beldine is obviously very observant as she had managed to find a baby tortoise. It looked like a bite sized pie with little legs and was very cute. We briefly considered starting our children’s zoo with it but decided, on reflection, that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. We returned it to ‘the wild’ in a secret location that we hoped the children wouldn’t find. Baby tortoises have a lot of enemies so we are all rooting for its survival. As long as they maintain their allegedly docile disposition I’m quite happy to co-exist with Green Mambas too.

Where there is no laminator

I’ve been in the classroom for the last three evenings with our older children doing some study skills and encouraging them to get more serious about planning. We will be running some training for our teachers next week so my evening teaching slots have been a good opportunity to try out some of the resources and techniques that we will be training on. To support this endeavour I have spent a very pleasurable day today in Primary school teacher mode creating classroom resources. This included using sellotape as a cheap version of laminating to create a set of prompts for one of my activities tonight. Having spent my teaching career in secondary education I have never really had many opportunities to work with younger pupils. I think I would have enjoyed life in a primary school classroom.

One of the biggest challenges to teachers over here is the lack of basic reprographic and ICT resources. Just about every teacher I know, in any sector, takes the school photocopier, computer network and whiteboard for granted, (and rightly so). I am old enough to remember life in the classroom before ICT and colour copying. Running off your own worksheets using a very simple spirit duplicating machine, (a Banda machine as I remember), was a headache – literally. The smell of the meths or white spirit that it used could be quite overpowering if you had lot of copying to do.

Even a Banda machine would be a luxury for many Kenyan teachers. It is possible to get photocopying done but very rarely at school. When we need to do copying in any quantity we send it up to Kosele where it we are able to arrange for relatively cheap copying, binding and laminating. This is obviously convenient when copying is planned well in advance but it does make it difficult to service inspired bursts of creativity. Despite having a small number of laptops and a projector the cost/reliability issue of mains power over here make it very difficult to use the ubiquitous PowerPoint as a routine teaching tool. Servicing the requirements of a computer and projector in every classroom is currently beyond us. This may change in the future but for now we have to be creative and use what’s to hand to make lessons more interesting.

One of my favourite reference books over here is called "Where There Is No Doctor". It’s designed to make healthcare possible for people living in poor communities like ours, where most people can’t access even the most basic health services. I’m sure somebody, somewhere must have written the equivalent book for teachers. "Where there is no Laminator, Photocopier, Projector or Whiteboard" would, I’m sure, be an instant best seller in a place like Kosele. We’re working on our version of it. Any pointers to online sources of suitable inspiration would be most welcome.