Not yet alien

I had a somewhat frustrating time in Nairobi this morning and am, as yet, not yet fully an alien in Kenya. My registration card still isn’t ready. Even if it had been I would still have had a frustrating morning because of a paper work issue. In keeping with my positivity policy (outlined in yesterday’s blog) I will not dwell on the downside of the situation. The guy who issues the cards was very apologetic about the problem and said that he wished the process could be made more flexible.

I was able to make it to Kisumu this afternoon and am writing from St Anna’s guest house (a previously advertised establishment). I’ll be travelling to Kosele first thing tomorrow.

It’s been a fairly slow news day from my point of view today so I thought I would share a couple of snippets from The Standard, one of the national daily newspapers. This might take some time as there is a power outage locally following some recent work on an electricity pylon and the generator that the guest house is using keeps tripping in and out.

Snippet one is about a fairly common occurrence in Kenya and a cautionary tale for any would be thieves. This is from the Quick Point section of the paper.

The headline reads “Gucha Suspect burglar lynched. A suspected burglar was lynched by the public in Ogembo town, Kisii county, while two of his accomplices escaped narrowly. (Kisii is a town about 45 minutes drive from our place). The suspect had allegedly broken into a house belonging to a policeman in Ogembo town and stolen eight chicken, sugar and bulbs. The officer is said to have woken up the following morning only to find the poultry missing. Residents later recovered the chicken from the suspect’s house before setting him ablaze. Gucha OCPD (Officer Commanding Police Department) warned Gucha residents against taking the law into their hand.”

The second snippet is a spelling mistake that is probably an accurate reflection of the current graduate employment crisis that the world seems to be facing.

The headline reads “Coffee fund unveils new employment initiative for youth………..The idea entails establishing coffee shops in major urban centres. This will assist in expanding the local labour force market by targeting young people to work in the outlets. ………. The various jobs to be created in the coffee shops include coffee barristers who prepare and serve espresso based coffee drinks.”

If these young people can get away with charging the same hourly rate as lawyers they should be set up for life!

Looking forward ......

It’s good to be back in Kenya again. Post-election Kenya seems much the same as pre-election Kenya and I’m hoping that the work we have to do this year will go smoothly. Talking to our friend Sam (owner of the Rusam Villa where I am staying tonight) in the taxi to the Villa from the airport it sounds like there is a good deal of optimism about the prospects for the future. It remains to be seen how far the new government is prepared to go in advancing a new kind of democracy in Kenya but I feel it is important to be positive. It’s easy to dismiss politics in much of Africa as corrupt and ineffective but that would be to marginalise real potential for change. From the perspective of most of the rest of the world Western political practices don’t exactly look squeaky clean. The plank and the speck parable springs to mind.
 Anyway. I am determined that this year I will look for the good in everything and everybody and try as hard as I can to avoid dwelling on anything negative that would spoil my outlook. I’m booked on a return flight back to the UK on December 15^th and really want to make the most of the rest of this year. Having faced numerous challenges in my family circumstances last year I am upbeat about the task ahead of us. My wife Judi is thriving post-cancer treatment and is looking forward to joining me in Kenya in July at the end of the academic year in England. She will then retire from her paid employment and join me in ‘volunteering’ full time for Hope and Kindness. I can’t wait and neither can Judi.

I will be in Nairobi tomorrow hoping to obtain the alien registration card that I applied for last year. I’m praying that the procedure at the immigration office goes smoothly tomorrow so I can head for our place as quickly as possible and avoid being stuck in Nairobi for a few days. I will be interested to see how the card is presented – it will be something of a novelty being a legal alien. (First musical link of the current blog below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27gTrPPAyk

I hadn’t planned to write much tonight as I’m very tired. I always find it difficult to sleep on overnight flights so have been up for quite a long time. Those of you of the praying disposition might like to pray for Judi as she manages being in England on her own for a few months keeping home and family together. Being in Kenya always adds a sense of urgency to my own prayers. Depending completely on my own wit and sagacity out here is a spectacularly foolish thing to do.

I hesitate to make too many predictions about the next eight months. Our difficult year came full circle early in March this year when my Dad died very unexpectedly. The blog has one less follower now. Dad always encouraged me to do the right thing and was an indefatigable optimist. His spirited approach to life and belief in a better future rubbed off on me in many ways. When I was at school he cheered me and my team mates on from the sidelines of the rugby field. He continued cheering when Judi and I started Hope and Kindness and we were always able to count on his enthusiastic support and counsel.  He and I would stay up until the small hours of the morning sorting out the world's problems. It would be unbearably dull if the future was completely predictable. Faith and a spirit of adventure would be the first casualties of such a state of affairs. That said I do hope the road ahead is fairly straight and that any potholes are clearly signposted and are, ideally, avoidable.

Nairobi

As my time in Kenya rapidly draws to a close I’m sat in Nairobi airport watching the world go by and hoping that I can stay awake for another 3 hours when I catch my flight to Dubai. The airport seems very quiet. I made record time through the Emirates check in and am parked next to the departure gate just to be on the safe side.

Kisumu (my point of departure for Nairobi) did not show too many signs of election fever this morning. I was at the airport fairly early and managed to get a standby ticket on an earlier flight to Nairobi than I had booked originally. The media have been having a field day during this election reporting on the massive cost of the election campaigns by the main parties. The number of ‘fixed wing aircraft’ and helicopters in action has caused some excitement. I did see two small planes done out in the red and black livery of Uhuru Kenyatta (one of the presidential contenders) and a helicopter belonging to one of his competitors. A Landrover done out in the Kenyatta colours and sporting a loud speaker system on the roof was also in evidence in Kisumu.

I hope Kenya manages a peaceful election that is decisive at the first poll. There is a widespread view that there will probably be a run off between Kenyatta and Raila Odinga (the current Prime Minister). The sooner it’s all over the sooner I can get back to the job we have started this year.

Thanks to regular readers of the blog. I’ll be back in action again when I return to Kosele. As one of my favourite comedians from times past Dave Allen used to say “may your God go with you”. Those of you of the praying disposition please include Kenya in your prayers at this challenging time in the country’s history.

Reducing

The week has flown past and I’m, typing up my last post from Kosele. Tomorrow I’ll be on my way back to England. This will, unfortunately involve a lot of hanging around in airports. Still, thanks to the wonders of modern technology I can take my office with me and carry on working. There’s a very nice place called the Simba Restaurant in Nairobi airport where you can sit in comfy chairs all day and only have to buy a coke. It’s out of the heat, has nice toilets and power sockets. A perfect place to hang about.

I love the way the English language is used in Kenya. Like lots of places where English is spoken as a foreign language grammatical constructs and use of vocabulary can be very funny. I spent a bit of time this afternoon chatting to Collins who is currently teaching Geography, History and Kiswahili in our Secondary school. I’ve known Collins for a long time. He’s the about same age as my son Tom and lived with our family when we first came out to Kenya for a year from July 2002. We were chatting about the work in the school, some of the things that we’ve been doing for the last few weeks and the progress that we’ve made. The pace has been pretty non-stop for all of us. I’m sure everyone will breathe a small sigh of relief when I’m safely on the way back to England. Collins made a lovely remark about the effect that Kenya seems to have on me. “You have reduced”, he said. I haven’t got any shorter since I arrived but I think I’ve lost a bit of weight. Collins seemed to think so anyway. I think Collins ought to consider a career in advertising. With one liners like that he would be a great success. It’s a much bigger encouragement than just saying “You’ve lost weight.”

We had a final debrief on the maths project today and it was encouraging to hear the very positive feedback from the team of teachers. The best comment came from Mr Ayodo (John), who said that he had been very excited when he saw two of the girls he had been teaching stop on their way home from school to do the ‘hand jive’ action chant we have been working on to help the pupils remember their times tables. The look on John’s face as he told this story was priceless and, all on its own, made all of the preparation and planning involved worthwhile. I hope to hear many similar stories when I return to Kosele after the election.

Last lap

The week has careered along at a fast pace and I am now coming up to my last day in Kosele for this visit. It’s been a very busy five or so weeks and, like this time last year, I am optimistic about the coming months - despite the intrusion of the election. The most rewarding part of the visit has been seeing our primary school teachers and pupils really taking the maths project to heart and putting a lot of effort into the lessons. I’ve been teaching some of the groups to push the training a bit more and am looking forward to seeing the progress that will be made in the second half of term.

Tomorrow the pupils will be staying at home as part of an extended half-term caused by the imminent election. It gives us a nice opportunity to conduct a detailed review of this term’s work in both schools as well as a chance to do some training with the secondary school teachers. This will be a particularly welcome chance to get to know them a bit better as a team. Having focused on the primary school for the last few weeks I am looking forward to getting the low down on our new students and sharing some new resources with their teachers.

Bright Spark

Every so often something happens that makes you realise how close to the margins we live out here. I've just finished reading The Flame Trees of Thika and was struck by the close similarities between the writer’s experiences of living in Kenya in 1914 and mine today. She wrote about the same battles against nature that all farmers face and the cultural differences between Europeans and native Kenyans. The same challenges and differences are still close to the surface in 2013. I was struck overall by the slim margin between living in relative comfort and life on the edge.

I have always enjoyed the early evening in Kenya. It’s usually a bit cooler than the heat of the day and the sunset is never disappointing. It’s a nice time to take a shower and wash away the dust of the day. Our showers are, at the moment, supplied by our bore hole. Whenever the shower tanks run dry a couple of lads roll out the hose and man the pump. It’s a very smooth routine now. Except when the generator packs up!

One of my recurring nightmares is that the powerful generator we use to pump our bore-hole or the gear at the business end of the bore-hole pack up. Without the water which we pump up from ninety metres below the ground we would very quickly come to a halt. It would be impossible to keep the children’s home going, let alone meet the needs of nearly two hundred pupils, students and staff every day.

Half way through pumping water for the showers the generator ground to a halt and wouldn't start. The oil was checked, petrol topped up and the whole thing left for twenty minutes to give it a chance to stop sulking and get going again. Still no joy. I would not really describe myself as a mechanic. I have a basic understanding of how a generator works and can check the most obvious mechanical faults. The only one remaining in our case was the spark plug. After a quick brushing with a tooth brush dipped in petrol the spark plug was replaced in the engine block and …… thank goodness ….. the generator roared into life. Great relief all round.

Small victories like this are all the sweeter for knowing the consequences of a more serious equipment failure. As we worked through the problem check list my heart had begun to sink. It is not easy to find a reliable mechanic out here and the prospect of being without the generator for any amount of time did not bear thinking about. Our minor glitch did provide a useful opportunity to do a quick reminder about the importance of routine maintenance on the generator. When you reduce life to the basics it is, in lots of ways, much simpler. Being so close to major challenges certainly makes you appreciate the luxury of good old fashioned infrastructure. 

Off to a good start

Our maths project is up and running now and seems to have got off to a good start. I was a little nervous as the pupils split up into their new groups after assembly this morning but was very pleased with the organisation and prompt start that was evident  thanks to the two teachers leading everything. We are starting the day with a long maths lesson and finishing with a shorter one. One of our main focuses during the project is to get the children more actively involved in their learning. This was certainly evident in the lesson I popped into this afternoon where there was a lot of noise and participation. So far so good.

We are at a very nervous time of the year as far as our farm is concerned. We have been busy preparing our plots for planting for the last couple of weeks. Duncan, our farm manger, was planning to plant the first seeds today so we really need to see some evidence of rain soon. In our teacher training days I found out more about the ‘dry winds’ and the ‘rainy winds’ that blow and have been trying to decide which we have been experiencing over the last two or three days. As we were working in the classrooms with the children this evening we enjoyed a short flurry of rain. Just enough to make conversation difficult for about ten minutes and encouraging enough to believe that the real deal may not be too long in arriving. This would be a welcome development. Our water supplies are holding up well so far but could be stretched a bit if we have to wait much more than two weeks for rain. Rain would come as a welcome relief to the children as they are having to fetch and carry water in buckets and watering cans to make sure that the tomatoes, peppers and water melons in the greenhouse receive enough water.

Election Day looms closer now. One week today the nation will go to the polls to elect the new president. It’s a very keenly contested race to State House and there is serious chance that a run-off election will have to be held in April. The papers are full of speculation and electioneering is gathering pace – especially in the larger towns. The political pace has picked up a little in our community but could hardly be described as frantic just yet. Yesterday evening a pick up carrying a number of obviously drunk and quite raucous guys drove past our place then turned round and went back up the road again. Today a pickup with a very loud speaker system strapped to the roof drove past extolling the virtues of a local candidate. Nobody took very much notice. As Election Day draws closer we might see a few more candidates on the stump. Like the rest of Kenya we are praying for a speedy resolution to the poll without any problems.