Renewing Connections

Today has been somewhat frustrating, spent mostly at a meeting of local headteachers in a school in Oyugis, the nearest town to us. I have blogged before about the state of the road that runs outside our place but I don't think I have ever seen it as bad as it is at the moment. The potholes are now more like craters and the powerful surges of water crossing the road during the recent very heavy rain have narrowed the carriageway to the point where it could soon be impassable in some places. Fortunately the rain has eased up since Tuesday and is now back to the more normal pattern of lighter rain, mostly at night. I'm sure I am not alone in hoping that some repairs will be carried out on the road very soon. That said I don't think anybody is really holding their breath that they will happen.

This is a very interesting time to be in Kenya as a younger generation of politicians start to steer the country towards a more digital future. The ubiquitous mobile phone makes it very much easier for people to keep in contact and increased Internet speeds are making the goal of e-government more realistic. At present all of these plans are in their very early stages. It's still difficult to make sure that large groups of connected people (like the head teachers in our area) all receive the same information at the same time, hence the need for meetings. The meetings can be frustrating because they usually take a while to get started and it is sometimes difficult to hear all the information that is given out when people are still arriving because they have had to travel from some distance.

Despite the administrative difficulties the meeting was helpful in putting me in touch with a local teacher who is an IT Ambassador for a very forward looking project jointly sponsored by the British Council and Microsoft. His school has been chosen as a local hub for an Innovative Teaching and Learning program and has a computer room with 20 computers installed. I'm planning to pay a visit to his school next Monday. Having downloaded some of the software that Microsoft is making available free to schools on returning from the meeting it will be very interesting to see how it is being used locally.

It was also good to see some of the other headteachers and education officers who I have met at previous meetings. I find it very hard remembering names but I am beginning to recognise more of the faces now. I'm hoping that I will get to know them much better in the course of the coming year. My next meeting with the heads in our immediate vicinity will be at the de-worming training that I and one of our teachers will be attending next week. The schedule for the de-worming program in our area was the main reason for calling the meeting this morning. It was very encouraging to see how comprehensively the local education department and ministry of health are dealing with this important health issue. A small number of schools will also be treating their children to protect them against bilharzia (a water borne parasitic disease). According to Wikipedia bilharzia is a " chronic illness that can damage internal organs and, in children, impair growth and cognitive development. The urinary form of bilharzia is associated with increased risks for bladder cancer in adults. Schistosomiasis (the proper name for bilharzia) is the second most socio-economically devastating parasitic disease after malaria".

As the year goes on its becoming obvious that I'll be seeing a lot more of the local heads and education officers. I'm hoping that my memory for names and places will improve. I don't think my colleagues will have the same problem. Being the only white guy at the meeting makes me fairly unique.

So many children

I guess that the problem of neglected, abandoned, unloved or mistreated children and young people is a worldwide issue. In the west there are more sophisticated responses to it that in many countries in the developing world. Interventions by care workers, social workers, charities and churches provide many resources designed to help these young people put the pieces of their variously broken lives together so that they can fulfill their potential and have a good quality of life. Jesus would have recognised them as being among "the least of these". Young people out on the margins of their communities. 

Every once in a while I come across stories of children who are going through a very tough time and, like children the world over, respond to it by making bad choices. Out here in Kosele there are many broken families and complicated family relationships caused by the death of one or both parents from HIV and related illnesses. If you add the practice of polygamy to the picture it isn't difficult to understand why many young people find themselves in almost impossible situations.

Since we first started our work in Kenya the Kenyan government has made great progress in providing places for children in primary school. Despite this many children find themselves out of school for one reason or another. These include not having enough money to buy required items of uniform, having to work to support the 'family' and bunking off school because of inadequate parental supervision. The work that they find is very hard and poorly paid. Exploiting child labour is a practice that dates back for centuries. In our area, which is predominantly rural, children can find employment slashing (cutting down) grass, digging, weeding and loading bricks onto lorries at the local 'brick works'. The Children's Officer (a government official) has the job of stamping out these bad practices but is woefully underfunded and really on a hiding to nothing. You can't blame the youngsters for undertaking this kind of work in preference to going to school.

Living conditions for many people in the community are like something out of the middle ages. With employment practices that could be taken straight from the pages of Dickens and family circumstances that make Thomas Hardy's worst cases look positively idyllic it's not really surprising children's lives can be so disturbed. We do what we can to support the young people that we care for and educate. With a wealth of experience between us we have been able to get to the bottom of a number of quite complicated and distressing problems that our youngsters have experienced. It is, never the less, always heartbreaking each time we hear about a new problem. The only thing we can do is to show them the kind of love that Paul describes in the bible:

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance".

Sounds a bit preachy but when you really look at the words it's incredibly powerful and very challenging.

Business Partners

Over about the last nine months we have had a recurring problem with our neighbours' chickens trespassing on our farm. The chickens are attracted by the prospect of free food. For a number of years the chickens had been quite scrawny and had only been able to eat the relatively small amount of scraps left over from lunch. The new 'invaders' are a completely different proposition. Since we started developing our farm we have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for foraging chickens. In addition to the leftovers from lunch (which have increased as we have added to the number of children in school) there is a farm full of green shoots and crops to feed on. Since January these fowl (sorry) pests have managed to eat all of the water melon seedlings that we planted and have made inroads on our kale crop and other seedlings. Because of the rich pickings the chickens are now huge. The mother hens range over our land with chicks in tow, no doubt teaching them all the prime spots for food.

The problem has now become so serious that we have had to have a word with the neighbours who own the chickens. Duncan, our farm manager, told me that one of our neighbours no longer has any chickens. They had been causing another neighbour the same problems so Duncan reckons the other neighbour poisoned all of them. Not the most neighbourly way to deal with the issue but now no longer a problem for us. Our other neighbour was a bit harder to track down but we managed to speak t her this morning.

We had, at one point, thought we might 'impound' the chickens if they strayed onto our land then take them up to the Agriculture Officer's office up the road in Kosele where the neighbour would have had to pay to have them returned to her. Until this morning this seemed the best option. At the start of our meeting a chance remark about the value of chickens once full grown got me thinking about another solution.

The most common way to restrict the movement of chickens and other livestock around here is to tether them. It's quite effective but tedious for the owner of the animals so it's not really very effective. Our neighbour offered to tether her chickens for a month "until they learn not to come on the land", but none of us thought this was at all feasible. I'm sure even chickens would remember where the food is for some time. The best solution would be to put them in a chicken coop. The only problem is that the neighbour a) hasn't really considered this and b) couldn't afford it anyway.

To create a more permanent solution to the problem we have gone into a business partnership with her. We'll build a fairly small chicken coop and supply her with scraps and greens from from our kitchen so that she can feed the chickens. In return she will give us two of the chicks from each brood once they are full grown (which takes six to eight months). We should be able to sell them for about three to four hundred shillings each. The neighbour keeps up to five hens at a time so it could be a nice little earner. Plus we won't have chickens destroying valuable crops by eating the seedlings.

Duncan was given the job of writing up the contract for the arrangement and we will invite our local chief to witness the transaction. The agreement will be reviewed annually. We will almost certainly start rearing our own chickens this year and would not want to give away too much free food to our neighbour. If she is able to make a success of her end of the business she should be able to buy her own feed from the profit she makes. Each hen hatches about a dozen chicks at the moment but the number reduces in the course of their growing up because of the natural hazards and predators they encounter in their wanderings. We will have to see how it works out but at the moment it looks like a fairly 'cheep' solution to what had been a costly problem.

Ghost in the machine

Sorry – another dodgy music plug. (When this Police album came out I was actually working at one of the record pressing plants that they produce the CDs in, pumping water out of a big hole in their grounds). Link is below. The album title wasn't actually a track but this is a great song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aENX1Sf3fgQ

Anyway. The reason for the link is the predictable glitch that hit one of the laptops that I have been blogging about over the last few days. I'm pleased to say that my lessons went well today. I made a conscious effort to slow down my talking and the teachers who witnessed me in action thought that it went OK. It was great to be teaching well motivated students. During the the ICT lesson all the students managed the activities that I'd set up and the laptops stayed powered up. So far so good.

After school I did some ICT training with the High School teachers. There are five of them and five laptops so I was optimistic that we had the makings of a good session. Unfortunately one of the computers decided to go into 'can't start' mode and an on screen message reported that it was fixing problems which might take some time. It did – about two hours. Once it finally reached a screen that suggested it might start up there was an error report saying that a camera or similar device had been attached to the computer recently which had caused the problem. There hadn't. I was even more puzzled when I found that all of the users that I had set up on the machine had vanished and that the computer had been reset to a previous life! Most bizarre but, I guess, ultimately predictable. The laptop is now out of the critical care unti and running normally. Until the next time.

Long shots and short circuits

It's been a long day for all of us today. I think I have finally finished setting up our laptops for use in my ICT lessons. The first lesson is tomorrow afternoon so it won't take long to find out. I'm looking forward to it.

Mary, our manager, and Duncan our farm manager have done some travelling today to find out whether or not sugar cane will be a viable crop for our farm. They made a fairly long journey to sugar cane country to find out what varieties of sugar cane are available and to find out whether or not the market is close enough to us. The good news was that sugar cane is a profitable crop. The Sony sugar factory in our region is a good customer for sugar cane and helps growers by picking up the cut crop. The bad news is that we are a bit too far away from the 'sugar belt' to be considered a good bet. It looks like we may have to modify our 'get rich' sustainability plans. Duncan did mention an alternative use for the sugar cane in the wine making industry but we aren't really sure how that would work out. We haven't ruled it out but it looks like a bit of a long shot. I really admire the pair of them. They didn't return until very late this evening and I can't imagine the journey being very pleasant.

We've been trying to get to the bottom of a mystery with the solar power system on our classrooms over the last couple of weeks. It has been very frustrating but I think we may be closer to solving the problem after today's observations. We had been worried that the very cloudy weather has been interfering with the charging process or that one of the charge controllers on the major part of the system is faulty. We've been 'resting' the system for about the last week to give all of the batteries a chance to charge properly. As we haven't had this kind of problem for some time it seemed like the best thing to do. Today I noticed that the charge indicator had crept up to the green light level for the first time in ages by ten o'clock this morning and was becoming more hopeful that it would charge fully by this afternoon. I was disappointed to notice the light had slipped back down to orange by the end of school. A very quick investigation identified the problem. Two outside light switches left on, (but not actually lighting any bulbs as far as I could see). As soon as they were switched off the indicator flipped to green again. Looks like it could be an electrical engineering day tomorrow.

I've been thinking a lot about my son Tom and daughter Ellie in the course of today. They both have exams at university this week and I'm feeling a bit anxious for them as you do. Ellie's taking end of first year medicine exams and Tom has a combination of an English exam and a performance piece for his music course. I can't believe how quickly the academic year has passed. Judi and I would appreciate the prayers of the praying community for the two of them.

Hallelujah Church

We had a really powerful church service this morning which gave everybody a good lift at the end of the week. It's very easy to get so caught up in the practical parts of the work out here and to stop paying attention to the inspiration that brought us out here in the first place. One of the great things about being in Kenya is that most people around here will say that they are Christians and a great number of them really mean it. This means that there is a culture that really doesn't think the Bible a book of nonsense verses and is ready to devote time to worship. That said there are still a large number of traditional beliefs and practices which are completely opposed to the teaching of the Bible. Many people do not find it difficult to hold both sets of beliefs at the same time. Witchcraft sounds very medieval put is is a very real evil around here.

Back to church. Our congregation has a good number of men in it, many children and a lot of ladies. We are slightly unusual as we have our church service on Sunday (The Seventh Day Adventist Church which is most common in our area meets on a Saturday). In churches in the west a great deal of time and effort goes into making sure there is a good worship band, sound system and presentation equipment. This creates a great atmosphere and is very obviously culturally relevant. Our church, for obvious reasons, does not have any of these facilities. The church has got a dirt floor (admittedly well packed down now) and we bring benches to sit on from our classrooms. The style of singing is very traditional. We have a number of songs that get sung most weeks and the style is very repetitive. We have a 'praise and worship team' who lead the singing and the congregation joins in with a 'call and response' style very often. We sing the same line of the chorus many times. You'd think it would be deadly dull but it is very moving. When the whole church gets going it's an amazing sound to hear and be part of.

Our pastor Dorine was preaching today and was on great form. She is a very devoted lady and a very passionate speaker. She spoke today on Jesus being the light of the world and called on us all to walk in that light all the time – no more slipping in and out of the shadows. By the end of her address nearly all of us were on our knees in prayer, compelled by the simple truth in her message. For me Dorine's words were very poignant. It is marvelous being ministered to in a church made out corrugated iron and feeling the dirt on your hands and knees. It doesn't come very much more real.

I realise that the Christian faith does not sit well with everybody. That Christianity and the Bible are, for many, a cause of strife and division. I hope that we can agree to differ without falling out with one another. I really wish you could all have been in church with us this morning though. It was awesome.

Log me on Scotty

Today has been one of those days when a fairly simple job turned into a long and protracted one. Now that I’ve found my feet I’ve been able to make some plans to get more actively involved in teaching again. I had a good meeting with the High School teachers yesterday and we re-arranged the timetable so that I can teach some Business Studies and ICT lessons. It will be good to get back in the classroom, though I am a little apprehensive about teaching without all the usual technical aids that I’m used to. It will be like being on teaching practice again for the first few lessons.

Back to the unraveling problem. I thought it would be a good idea if all of the students’ computer screens looked the same when they start using them and that they are set up so a novice user only has very limited options to do anything catastrophic. I’m used to having ICT technicians look after this kind of thing; it’s been a long time since I’ve had to do much about computer security. We currently have five laptops for the students to use so the first task was to make sure they were all running the same software. Time consuming but straightforward. Setting up a user name for each student on each laptop has been a bit more challenging. It’s not difficult to give them each a user name and password but it’s more complicated limiting their options the copying that over the five laptops. Trying to work out the best way to achieve this is a bit of a conundrum at the moment but I’m confident that I’ll achieve a breakthrough tomorrow.

As the rain happened this afternoon and hasn’t picked up again tonight the place is strangely quiet. Even the frogs seem to have called it a day. I think I’ll try and get my first early night so far. If I can avoid mulling over the computer problems I think I might succeed. Still. It’s a good problem to have. When I think about the first year we spent in Kenya it is incredible how much we are able to do now. I feel very privileged to be working so far ‘off the grid’ with such a good team of staff and very keen students. Victory over the technology is so much sweeter when it’s being used in a challenging environment.