Reducing

The week has flown past and I’m, typing up my last post from Kosele. Tomorrow I’ll be on my way back to England. This will, unfortunately involve a lot of hanging around in airports. Still, thanks to the wonders of modern technology I can take my office with me and carry on working. There’s a very nice place called the Simba Restaurant in Nairobi airport where you can sit in comfy chairs all day and only have to buy a coke. It’s out of the heat, has nice toilets and power sockets. A perfect place to hang about.

I love the way the English language is used in Kenya. Like lots of places where English is spoken as a foreign language grammatical constructs and use of vocabulary can be very funny. I spent a bit of time this afternoon chatting to Collins who is currently teaching Geography, History and Kiswahili in our Secondary school. I’ve known Collins for a long time. He’s the about same age as my son Tom and lived with our family when we first came out to Kenya for a year from July 2002. We were chatting about the work in the school, some of the things that we’ve been doing for the last few weeks and the progress that we’ve made. The pace has been pretty non-stop for all of us. I’m sure everyone will breathe a small sigh of relief when I’m safely on the way back to England. Collins made a lovely remark about the effect that Kenya seems to have on me. “You have reduced”, he said. I haven’t got any shorter since I arrived but I think I’ve lost a bit of weight. Collins seemed to think so anyway. I think Collins ought to consider a career in advertising. With one liners like that he would be a great success. It’s a much bigger encouragement than just saying “You’ve lost weight.”

We had a final debrief on the maths project today and it was encouraging to hear the very positive feedback from the team of teachers. The best comment came from Mr Ayodo (John), who said that he had been very excited when he saw two of the girls he had been teaching stop on their way home from school to do the ‘hand jive’ action chant we have been working on to help the pupils remember their times tables. The look on John’s face as he told this story was priceless and, all on its own, made all of the preparation and planning involved worthwhile. I hope to hear many similar stories when I return to Kosele after the election.