Hallelujah Church

We had a really powerful church service this morning which gave everybody a good lift at the end of the week. It's very easy to get so caught up in the practical parts of the work out here and to stop paying attention to the inspiration that brought us out here in the first place. One of the great things about being in Kenya is that most people around here will say that they are Christians and a great number of them really mean it. This means that there is a culture that really doesn't think the Bible a book of nonsense verses and is ready to devote time to worship. That said there are still a large number of traditional beliefs and practices which are completely opposed to the teaching of the Bible. Many people do not find it difficult to hold both sets of beliefs at the same time. Witchcraft sounds very medieval put is is a very real evil around here.

Back to church. Our congregation has a good number of men in it, many children and a lot of ladies. We are slightly unusual as we have our church service on Sunday (The Seventh Day Adventist Church which is most common in our area meets on a Saturday). In churches in the west a great deal of time and effort goes into making sure there is a good worship band, sound system and presentation equipment. This creates a great atmosphere and is very obviously culturally relevant. Our church, for obvious reasons, does not have any of these facilities. The church has got a dirt floor (admittedly well packed down now) and we bring benches to sit on from our classrooms. The style of singing is very traditional. We have a number of songs that get sung most weeks and the style is very repetitive. We have a 'praise and worship team' who lead the singing and the congregation joins in with a 'call and response' style very often. We sing the same line of the chorus many times. You'd think it would be deadly dull but it is very moving. When the whole church gets going it's an amazing sound to hear and be part of.

Our pastor Dorine was preaching today and was on great form. She is a very devoted lady and a very passionate speaker. She spoke today on Jesus being the light of the world and called on us all to walk in that light all the time – no more slipping in and out of the shadows. By the end of her address nearly all of us were on our knees in prayer, compelled by the simple truth in her message. For me Dorine's words were very poignant. It is marvelous being ministered to in a church made out corrugated iron and feeling the dirt on your hands and knees. It doesn't come very much more real.

I realise that the Christian faith does not sit well with everybody. That Christianity and the Bible are, for many, a cause of strife and division. I hope that we can agree to differ without falling out with one another. I really wish you could all have been in church with us this morning though. It was awesome.

Log me on Scotty

Today has been one of those days when a fairly simple job turned into a long and protracted one. Now that I’ve found my feet I’ve been able to make some plans to get more actively involved in teaching again. I had a good meeting with the High School teachers yesterday and we re-arranged the timetable so that I can teach some Business Studies and ICT lessons. It will be good to get back in the classroom, though I am a little apprehensive about teaching without all the usual technical aids that I’m used to. It will be like being on teaching practice again for the first few lessons.

Back to the unraveling problem. I thought it would be a good idea if all of the students’ computer screens looked the same when they start using them and that they are set up so a novice user only has very limited options to do anything catastrophic. I’m used to having ICT technicians look after this kind of thing; it’s been a long time since I’ve had to do much about computer security. We currently have five laptops for the students to use so the first task was to make sure they were all running the same software. Time consuming but straightforward. Setting up a user name for each student on each laptop has been a bit more challenging. It’s not difficult to give them each a user name and password but it’s more complicated limiting their options the copying that over the five laptops. Trying to work out the best way to achieve this is a bit of a conundrum at the moment but I’m confident that I’ll achieve a breakthrough tomorrow.

As the rain happened this afternoon and hasn’t picked up again tonight the place is strangely quiet. Even the frogs seem to have called it a day. I think I’ll try and get my first early night so far. If I can avoid mulling over the computer problems I think I might succeed. Still. It’s a good problem to have. When I think about the first year we spent in Kenya it is incredible how much we are able to do now. I feel very privileged to be working so far ‘off the grid’ with such a good team of staff and very keen students. Victory over the technology is so much sweeter when it’s being used in a challenging environment.

Ants Marching

OK so the title tonight is a blatant plug for one of my favourite Dave Matthews Band songs (link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdidovCPhVM

On with the blog. I am really not an entomologist. That said Kenya is a fantastic place for anybody with a keen interest in the study of insects. Yesterday while I was doing the rounds of the lower school classrooms I was surprised to see the Year 2 pupils and their teacher running out of the classroom in a panic and making a lot of noise. The commotion was caused by a single wasp which was doing the wasp thing of terrorizing people in confined spaces by dive bombing them. I rushed into the classroom, armed myself with a text book and tried swatting it. I managed to kill it eventually but only after it had stung me. The class teacher, Madam Rose then pointed to the small wasp nest outside the window of her classroom which half a dozen of the deceased wasp’s brothers and sisters were buzzing around. I’d managed to brush the wasp off before it could get round to delivering a proper sting but I was still glad of the tube of anti-histamine I keep for such occasions.

The ants connection is inspired by my latest labour saving idea. As I am currently living on my own in the house and eating a lot of my meals with the children in our dining hall it really makes sense to do my washing up once a day. This arrangement saves gas and water. I’ve noticed that a colony of very small ants find the plates and cutlery that I leave stacked by the sink ready for washing very attractive as a source of food. They are very methodical as they go over the items in carefully regimented lines. They confine themselves to the sink area. I’m not really sure where they come and go from so I guess there is a danger that I could be harbouring a huge colony of these tiny creatures somewhere in the house. My guess is that they make their way in through a tiny gap in the window frame and are really outdoor ants. I haven’t put my theory fully to the test yet but I’m sure that the ants do quite an effective job of cleaning the worst bits of meal remains off the plates and cutlery. It’s fascinating watching them. They are, unfortunately, so small that it’s impossible to brush all of them off the washing up when I put it into the bowl so there is a bit of an attrition rate involved in their scavenging. I wonder if ants have any sense of legal redress for killing fairly large numbers of them over a period of time. If they did they would probably refer to my crime as anticide.

Maths horror

I remember finding fractions very difficult when I was at primary school. Our maths project is heading towards fractions very soon and it will, I’m sure, be one of the topics that really challenge some of the children. I was very fortunate in primary school. For nearly all of my primary education I was lucky enough to have good teachers. They were enthusiastic, encouraging and very caring (all except the head teacher of the first school that I attended in 1963 who cheerfully caned five year olds, self included). I’ve been collecting resources to help with our teacher training program and found the following quote in a really excellent book called “Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers”. I can only thank my teachers for helping me overcome the horrors of maths. Research would seem to suggest that many people were not so lucky. In the book it says:

“Findings indicate that many adults, in relation to mathematical tasks, admit to feelings of anxiety, helplessness, fear, dislike and even guilt”.

I hope that we can avoid creating the same feelings in any of our pupils. Now that the school term has started I’m getting into the swing of working with our youngsters at homework time in the evening. Having spent my teaching career in England working in High Schools teaching older students I am finding working with younger children a lot of fun. Playing maths games with the children and getting them to make resources that will help them understand key concepts creates all sorts of opportunities for creativity and entertainment. We started this evening by making some simple fraction lines so that the children can see what fractions really look like and can understand why two quarters are the same as a half. We’ll move on to putting the theory into practice by sharing out food and doing some shopping. One of the great (though sometimes overwhelming) things about teaching is the way that it gets the creative juices flowing. It’s difficult to obtain a lot of the resources that we take for granted in schools in the UK. We’ll need to make some money to make the shopping role play more interesting so the photocopier will be hard at work tomorrow. We don’t have the same foods to divide up that children in England are familiar with either. The humble pizza can be used to teach a great number of maths concepts. The nearest equivalent over here is the chapatti so I think we might have to do some cooking over the week-end.

School should, I think, be a place that children can’t wait to come to every day because it’s such a good place to be. Today the weather has been more like it be should be at this time of year, with the rain falling in the evening. This has meant that the children have, for the first time since term started, been able to enjoy playing on our field. We have just had the grass on the field slashed (as we don’t have a lawn mower). This is a bit like scything the grass down to a manageable length. Today the cut grass had dried sufficiently well to be gathered up to use as mulch on our farm. The youngest children had a great time at lunchtime rolling the grass up into big bundles using sticks (a bit like rolling snow to make a big snowball). Their teachers and I were impressed with their ‘work’ rate and their teamwork. Apart from their occasional lapses into throwing the grass over each other the children really worked hard. Some of them had races to see who could push their bundle of grass to the big heap the quickest. Four very small lads worked together to manhandle really big bundles of grass to the pile. They were very impressive. With the sun shining brightly for once, watching the children and chatting with their teachers was a lovely way to pass twenty minutes and a real encouragement. Left to their own devices children are a lot smarter and more inventive than we often give them credit for.

Pioneering

Living out in the wilds of rural Kosele continues to be a bit of a pioneer lifestyle, what with the DIY tooth care and current extreme weather. I’ve been a fan of westerns for as long as I can remember and always enjoyed films and books about the early settlers in the US as they pushed on into new lands and established new frontiers. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that living conditions out here in Kosele are remotely comparable to living in a covered wagon in winter. We do have fairly reliable electricity and it’s not difficult to stay in touch with my nearest and dearest back home. It is very different from back home though.

As I sit in my office in the early evening it’s lovely to hear the girls singing while they take their showers (my ‘office’ shares a wall with one of the sets of shower cubicles). The rain and cloudy weather doesn’t deter the children from bathing so I thought that I ought to pucker up and brave the elements (in the interests of sociability if nothing else). It wasn’t actually raining while I showered but it is very cold. I have had to resort to wearing a fleece today for the first time ever. As I looked up at the grey clouds, wondering when the heavens would open, I began to think about how tough it would have been for those early pioneers in America and how hard life is for our neighbours. In the west we have elevated the fairly simple act of staying clean to something almost religious. A huge industry has been built around satisfying people’s bathing requirements. Over here soap and rainwater are all that’s available at the moment. I’m not complaining. One of the best things about living in Kosele is the way that it simplifies living and helps you to appreciate fairly basic creature comforts. I’d recommend it to anybody.

I’m writing up the blog a little earlier than usual tonight. I can hear the sound of singing coming from the classrooms so it’s time to head over for a short time of worship and a message from one of the children. You can’t beat it.

Things we take for granted

I think being a teacher in a place like Kosele must be one of the ultimate challenges in the teaching profession. Despite our ten year long experience of living and working in Kenya I’m always learning about the reality of growing up in ‘the rurals’ and the challenges that young people face.

I’ve had a really enjoyable day today – walking round the farm and talking to Duncan, our farm manager, about the prospects for the current growing season, meeting the teachers after school, plotting and scheming and trying out my new gumboots (the correct phrase in Kenya for Wellington Boots). This evening I spent the first of what I hope will be many happy evenings helping some of our older children with their homework. Sharon, Ephy Faith and I covered a lot of ground as we worked through business studies, RE and social studies questions. Our discussions helped me to appreciate how easy it is to take a western understanding of the world and the way it works for granted, and how difficult it is for our youngsters to understand big world issues like the environment, climate change, consumerism and peak oil. Our young people’s commitment to learning is really admirable. Their frame of reference and personal experience is a barrier to learning and understanding that I find very challenging. It’s a challenge to find and develop examples that help them to connect to the world issues that they will be expected to write about and comment on in their exams. It’s a bigger challenge to understand why one part of the world should have so much of everything and another should have so little. The complex web of inequalities and injustice that effectively limit our young people’s horizons make me angry.

Having the rest of the year to work with the youngsters and a computer full of good resources to help them gives me hope that we will be able to make considerable progress in the months ahead. As one of life’s optimists I am unwilling to believe that there is nothing that can be done and am looking forward to getting to grips with the challenges.

Back to school

It feels a bit more normal over here now that all of the children are back at school. I arrived during the last week of the school holiday so it was a bit quiet. The start of term in Kenya is a significant event. Rather than talking about “going back to school” we are opening for the new term. It's good to add a bit of gravitas to the first day back. It always gives us an opportunity to encourage the pupils with a pep talk.  The children looked keen this morning and I was pleased to see that they are still enthusiastic about the maths project that we started last term. Josephine and Rose (the two teachers who have been coordinating the project) gave me some very encouraging feedback about progress so far.

We had our monthly visit from the guys from the water management department this morning. They arrived in a very nice four wheel drive pickup and carried out their usual tests (water table level and quality of our water). The rains this year have pushed the water table up to the point where the floors of some of our neighbours' houses are very damp now. Just before travelling out to Kenya I received an email from our management team informing me that we will have to pay a small 'water extraction' fee from now on and that the first payment would be back dated for some years. It wasn't a huge amount of money but it's never very good hearing about new expenses. The guy who was in charge this morning was very helpful and advised us that we should write a letter to claim exemption from the charge. It's good to know that we have someone on our side.

We are going to have to replace our trusty Landrover very soon. The water management team's driver seemed quite knowledgeable about second hand vehicle costs and said that he would see if he could find a suitable vehicle for us. He was a very nice guy and took my number so that he could contact me with any news. I guess the more people we have looking out for a vehicle for us the more likely we are to find one.

We do need to buy it fairly urgently. Parked next to the government pickup our Landrover looked in a bit of a sorry state. It wasn't new when we bought it and it has seen some miles in the last ten years. Getting stuck in the mud last night didn't add much to it's appearance. Every once in a while we are asked to carry a 'patient' to one of the local hospitals. This is usually OK but it's a bit of a difficult request to respond to very late at night, as happened yesterday. One of our neighbours came to the gate at about eleven pm last night, obviously very worried because his elderly relative (one of our children's grandmother) had 'fainted' and was very sick. The nearest hospital that provides affordable care is not very far away but it isn't on the main 'road'. One of our night guards was willing to drive the lady and her carers to the hospital so they set off to pick her up.

It's hard to appreciate how difficult it is for members of the community when a serious medical problem strikes. The lady's home is not easily accessible so she had to be carried to the nearest point of the main road to be picked up by Leonard in the Landrover. Once the vehicle had departed I went back to bed. When I got up this morning I noticed that the Landrover was still missing. The road was so bad that it didn't quite make it to the hospital and had to be towed out of the mud this morning. Poor Leonard spent the night guarding it for us. We heard later that the lady had pneumonia. I hope she makes a good recovery.