Rain

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.