Great team effort

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.