Time management

All the typing yesterday paid off today. The teachers and I had a good training day and I think we took another step closer towards improving our performance in maths. The training sessions were very intensive. We had a lot of ground to cover today and the classroom got hotter as the day progressed. Even after turning the air conditioning up to the maximum setting (opening all the windows and the door) we were very hot and sticky by the end of the day. The teachers’ evaluations were very positive and we had some fun experimenting with new approaches to teaching maths in the classroom.

While we trained the children in our upper classes helped to prepare the plots on our farm for planting. The weather is still predominantly hot and dry at the moment. We have had very little rain so our water storage tanks are a great help in making sure that all of the crops we currently have on the go (peppers, tomatoes, water melons and Kale) don’t dry up and wither away. The new students in our secondary school are, according to Duncan our farm manager, as enthusiastic in the fields as they are in the classroom which is very encouraging. We may see our first serious agri-business entrepreneurs out of this group.

As ever at this stage in a visit to Kenya the time is racing away again. I guess it’s the same in any situation when you have a limited amount of time and a lot to do. Time management isn’t really a strong point in our neck of the woods. Mr Isaiah (our High School Principal) and I attended a head teachers’ meeting a couple of weeks ago where the ideas was mooted that there will be a three day management workshop for head teachers in Kisumu (our nearest city about an hour and three quarter’s drive away) sometime soon. We received notification today that it will take place on the first three days of next week and that we are all expected to show up on Sunday 24^th to be ready for it. I’m sure the other details like where the meeting will be held will arrive in due course. Given the commitments that we have over the next week and a half this timetable creates a bit of a problem for us. Still, we have a few days to think it over. I’m sure we won’t be the only ones weighing up the pros and cons of attending.