Sunday, 1 July 2012

Back on the chain gang

I can hear the sound of Pretenders fans struggling to remember the words already!

Follow the link for a reminder.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzWNY1zwrjY

As I have blogged previously Sundays tend to be a fairly relaxed affair in Kosele. Despite the imminent district mock exams for our oldest primary school pupils next week (Tuesday and Wednesday), all of the children in our home seem relaxed and in good spirits. The district mocks are, unfortunately, a necessary evil as part of the year long run up to the real KCPE, (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education), exam in November. We will be joined by two other schools’ Standard 8 pupils. Exams will be sat. District statistics will be compiled and I am fairly sure chaos will break out at regular intervals as the mock exam process unfolds.

We enjoyed a couple of nostalgic moments today. Moses, an old friend who was with us when we first started our work ten years ago, came to the church service this morning and was, I think, surprised how much the children have grown since he last saw them a couple of years ago. It was nice for the children to catch up with him again and he spent a few hours with them teaching them some new songs to sing in church. He has known nearly all of them since they were very little and they were very happy to see him. We wish him well as he heads back to Uganda to, hopefully, drum up some trade for his vehicle servicing work there next week.

Our second look back to the past reminded us of the hard work involved in making sure of an adequate water supply before we had a bore-hole. The technician did not turn up yesterday to repair the control panel for our bore-hole pump and we did not have much rain last night. This resulted in empty water tanks for our showers and for our drinking and cooking water. Before we had a bore-hole our water was delivered by a very old tractor pulling a bowser and we had to put it into the main water tank by hand in buckets. This job took our well practised team about forty five minutes. We filled the tanks today by setting up a bucket chain with all of the children. Buckets were filled from the large water tanks on the end of the classrooms and the visitors’ centre and passed down a long line of initially puzzled, then very willing helpers. It took us about an hour to put enough water into the tanks to make sure all the children could have showers and empty about sixty five buckets full, (about six hundred and fifty litres of water), into the drinking water and cooking tank. We had to dash for cover a couple of times to avoid short sharp bursts of rain but should, at least, have enough water to make sure everybody can eat and drink tomorrow. If the technician doesn’t arrive in the morning we will have to do the same thing all over again. An influx of at least fifty more pupils to sit the district mock exams on Tuesday and Wednesday could make the situation a bit more challenging. Still, on today’s evidence the kids are up for it and, as I type, I can hear the start of heavy rainfall on the roof. Reassuring evidence that God does listen to our prayers.

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