Tonnes to do

It’s been a very ‘educational’ day today. This week I’m going to be carrying out a school inspection, starting with a couple of days of lesson observations. It has been a bit of a rush setting it up thanks to my extended stay in Nairobi last week. Today was also busy due to interviews for a temporary teacher to work in our pre-school class. It’s always interesting meeting candidates for teaching posts and finding out about their varied experiences and aspirations for the future. We were able to appoint a lady who has shown great determination in attaining qualified teacher status after being unable to complete her secondary education due to a lack of fees, (an all too common problem in Kenya, especially for girls).

I’m looking forward to spending a couple of days in the classrooms. It will make a nice change from planning and preparing for the future. I feel like our new school initiatives are at the same stage as our farm at the moment. Fertile ground prepared but much sowing to do before reaping the benefits. I’ve been impressed so far with our teachers’ willingness to make the most of their classroom environments by improving their display work and am hoping that I will see evidence of the same approach to the tough business of teaching.

Duncan, our farm manager has travelled to Nairobi today so that he can attend a training course tomorrow, provided by Amiran, (the company we bought the greenhouse from). I hope that he doesn’t experience the same difficulties I did ‘escaping’ from Nairobi after the course has finished. Both Duncan and I have been very impressed with Amiran. This will be the third training session that Duncan has attended. It is Amiran’s first course on organic farming using their products. So far the courses Duncan has attended have been very informative and well presented. Whilst wishing to avoid counting our chickens before they hatch Duncan and I are very optimistic about the prospects for our greenhouse project. I can’t help feeling that if Amiran were responsible for running agriculture in Kenya the whole sector would be in better shape than it is currently.

Over the last couple of years I’ve read a lot of official position comments on the importance of agriculture to Kenya’s future health and prosperity. Until we started working with Amiran I had seen relatively little evidence of any competence or enthusiasm for promoting farmers locally. I received a visit today from Amiran’s adviser for our area. He arrived at about 3.30 p.m. on an Amiran motor bike, (and even had a crash helmet with Amiran written on it). Now that we are plugged into the Amiran loop we should receive regular visits from the adviser. He seems as keen as we are to make sure our project is successful. I’m looking forward to his next visit when he will be able to advise us on how to grow a tonne of tomatoes, (literally – we should be able to grow five hundred tomato plants in the greenhouse and each plant should produce twenty kilograms of tomatoes). One way or another we have a lot to look forward to on the farm this year.