Improvisation

One of the things I really like about working out here is the variety of activities that I get involved in during a typical week. Every once in a while I find an opportunity to abandon the planning, management and execution details of running our schools and indulge in some much more basic practical work.

Giving students opportunities to carry out science experiments is a major challenge in many schools in Kenya. Funding difficulties, lack of resources and lack of training conspire to make many of the experiments and demonstrations that students typically experience in schools in the UK and the US uncommon for our young people over here. I walked in on a science lesson on electro-magnets this morning and felt compelled to spend a few hours assembling one for demonstration purposes. I had to scavenge round a bit for the materials and experimented with a number of nails, wires, batteries and windings before I found the best design but I ended up with a convincing piece of demonstration equipment. This then set me thinking about constructing some more basic electrical training equipment. Its certainly not 'rocket science' but it would make quite a difference to our children and teachers. We start our half -term holiday next week so it should be possible to find some time to experiment with a basic design for our 'electricity lab'.

On a completely different note we were mildly encouraged this evening by the first rain for a couple of weeks. Compared to the biblical scale of the rain earlier in the year tonight's shower was hardly enough to give our crops much of a watering. We're really hoping that the heavens will open soon. If they don't we probably have enough water stored in our irrigation tanks to last about three weeks. After that we'll have to resort to using water from our borehole. We've only really used the borehole in absolute emergencies so far. Its been a very reliable source of water for us but we had been concerned that it was slightly salty, which could cause problems in the long term for the fertility of our land. We had a visit from 'the man from the ministry' (Water Management Board) yesterday evening and he told me that our water salinity level was 0. (It was written down on his inspection form). This was something of an answer to prayer. After discussing the water situation with Duncan, our farm manager, I'd been planning to find out the best way of testing the water in the borehole. Right on cue our friend from the water board turned up with the answer to my question. Its good to know that if the worse comes to the worse our borehole is a good source of water for the farm. However, on the grounds that we'd like to continue irrigating with the water stored in our tanks from our 'roof harvest' we'll continuing praying for rain.