Patience required

My back seems to have recovered from the washing inflicted trauma that I wrote about yesterday. This has been helped by a few ‘limbering up’ exercises and a determined attempt to do as many of the good posture things as possible while working at my desk. My ‘workstation’ set up probably looks pretty bizarre to the outside observer. I’m keeping my laptop monitor at eye level by sitting it on top of a couple of boxes and have plugged in a keyboard and mouse. It’s not a pretty solution but it is ergonomically sound and very functional. Thinking about it that’s probably quite a good metaphor for many of the solutions to problems out here.

Quick update on the rat situation. I have been keeping a close eye on the rat poison that Janet put down for me a few days ago. The poison itself comes in the form of small, bright pink pellets clearly designed to be visually appealing to the average rat. They  probably have quite a nice smell too. (I haven’t risked getting close enough to test out this theory). For any readers in the coarse fishing fraternity it looks a bit like tiny boilies (an artificial bait for catching, ideally, very large carp). Anyway. The fairly large pile of poison that was laid out by the kitchen door has now disappeared, hopefully into the digestive system of a rat or rats. There has been no sign or pandemonium in the roof space of my house since the poison was put down so I’m optimistic that the problem is close to being resolved. I’ll have to check with Janet, who has been keeping the head count on dead rats.

Today has been frustrating for our teachers and for the pupils who sat their KCPE (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) exam at the end of last year. Because of a teachers strike the exams were delayed so the release of the results has been eagerly anticipated. These exams are a very big deal. When the results are released they are officially signed off by the Education Minister who announces them, and a potted breakdown of the headline trends of which areas have done well and which haven’t on the TV. The results also determine which of the country's (mostly boarding) High Schools the pupils are invited to attend. Like results days the world over the whole thing is very competitive.  Despite the Minister’s sign off we were unable to download our results from the internet. Each attempt so far has been met with an assurance on the web site that “We are uploading the KCPE result data. The website will be available once this is completed. Please try later.” It is definitely later as I type so I guess we and all the other schools in Kenya will just have to be patient.