Taxi!

First of all apologies for not posting anything last night. I couldn't persuade our Internet connection to stay up for more than about a minute so couldn't even log into the blog.

Today I made a very quick trip to our nearest town, Oyugis. I've been trying to buy a pair of black shoes for a couple of weeks and our manager Mary told me that her contact in Oyugis had a pair that she thought would fit me. Oyugis is always very busy on Friday as it is the main market day. Driving to Oyugis we went past farmers driving sheep, goats and cows to the market and were frequently passed by motor bikes taking passengers and goods to and from the market. The road to Oyugis is dry at the moment but full of very large pot holes making it a very uncomfortable and fairly slow journey in our Landrover.

On market day Oyugis is everything you would expect from an African town – busy, noisy, chaotic and vibrant. Deals being made and bargains being struck. Ladies sitting by small piles of fruit hoping to pick up passing trade. 'Touts' from Matatus (mini bus taxis) hustling for passengers to fill the minibus so it can fly off before a competitor. Mary and I made our way to the shoe 'stall' (shoes displayed on a piece of tarpaulin) to inspect my 'new to me' shoes. The stall owner showed me the shoes – a nice light tan pair that were made in China. Very nice quality all things considered, sourced from Nairobi. “They are very nice shoes”, I said, “but I wanted black ones.” No problem. “I will die them black.” A couple of minutes later, after trying the shoes I left Mary haggling about the price (she's much better at driving a bargain than I am) and set off to finish off my shopping.

Not wanting to be stuck in Oyugis all day I decided to catch a taxi back to our place. The 'taxi rank' was doing brisk business. Public transport in Kenya is great. Passengers pile into a taxi (usually an estate car) or Matatu and the tout or conductor drums up business until the vehicle is full. Every inch of space is used. There were two adults and the driver in the front of my taxi, four adults in the back seat and three of us in the boot. I was the first one to get into the boot so got a good seat (cushion on the floor). Fortunately the two other guys who got in after me were quite thin so our ride back to Kosele wasn't too uncomfortable.

The journey back to Kosele took half the time that it did in the Landrover. I was slightly worried for the first couple of minutes when we drove past the junction onto our road but then realized that the driver was just going to fill up with enough petrol to do the next leg in his day's travel. It's a very simple system. Take on maximum number of passengers, then buy petrol, then do journey. We flew back up the road. The view out of the back window was spoiled by a rolled up mattress which wasn't secured to the roof properly. The taxi drivers don't hang about despite the poor road. The more journeys they make the more they get paid. The ride is more comfortable than our Landrover as the cars have better suspension systems and absorb the bumps better. Somebody, somewhere is making a good living from supplying shock absorbers to these guys.

It was good to have a bit of a look out this morning but I was glad to get back and get on with my work. Our year seven and eight pupils were taking exams today and I was keen to see how they were getting on. Good English composition papers by the look of things. I'll have to wait until Monday for the final results. The school day ended on a high note with the Technical School debate. Our Technical School students have a debate every Friday, modeled on the Kenyan Parliament. Today's motion was 'Parents should cane their children in order to discipline them'. Caning is a fairly emotive subject in Kenya (as, I suspect, it is England). Caning is not allowed in Kenyan schools despite many parents and teachers seeing this a retrograde step. Our students' debating skills are coming on very well and the debate was very enjoyable with good points made on both sides and a fair amount of humour in evidence. The motion was defeated (which was a bit of a relief) and everyone went home happy. We'll be seeing the Form Two students for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon for their week-end teaching. They are very, very keen to learn.

One Banana ......

Today has been a memorable day for the farm. My earlier posts this month commented on the over abundance of rain that our area has received and the bad effect this excessive amount of rain has had on future prospects this season. I was very pleased when Duncan, our farm manager, came to tell me that we had harvested our first three bunches of bananas from our banana 'plantation'. I immediately rushed to find my camera so that I could share this good news with my wife Judi.

Three bunches of bananas might not sound like very many bananas but it is encouraging because of the hopes we have placed in the farm for our future sustainability. I was reliably informed by Janet (our stores manager) that these three bunches of bananas have saved us 1,000 Kenyan Shillings (about £8 or $12). Every saving that we make from the farm helps to make our income go further. As we reach the full production level from the 120 banana trees that we have planted we should also be able to sell some of our crop. Some days you can feel that everything is an uphill struggle but a small victory helps you to keep on going with renewed determination.

I have up to now avoided putting pictures in the blog but can't resist this one. On the grounds that a picture paints a thousand words and being very proud of our guys on the farm, below is the first picture news in my blog. From left to right in the picture Duncan (Farm Manager), Mary (Home Manager), Janet (Stores Manager).

Enterprise

It's been a very stimulating day today. Tuesday is my major teaching day so I've been doing my best to think up creative ways to connect with our business studies and computer studies classes. It's getting a little easier to pitch my approach at a level that the students can relate to and they are very accommodating in getting used to my style of teaching. It's a funny situation. I'm effectively teaching using English as a foreign language and the students are being taught in what is a second language to them. It's the most enjoyable teaching I've done for a long time.

We are trying very hard to adopt more active and creative approaches to teaching in both the Primary School and the Technical School. I'm teaching entrepreneurship to our Form One students in the Technical School as one of their business studies topics. This evening I've made a really good start on designing a board game to help them understand and later revise the topic more fully. It's very exciting. I love it when an idea starts to come together and am hoping that the board game will have genuine potential as a commercial product. We could do with generating some income from home grown enterprises and it would be a good example to the students. Still, it is very much at the 'little acorns' stage at the moment. That said if you don't think big ….......

Our Technical School Principal is on his way to Rwanda now. We are praying that he will reach his destination safely and that he will be able to keep in touch with us once he's outside Kenya. I know that he has found it very frustrating trying to keep in contact with his wife Rosaline due to network failures between Kenya and Rwanda. His last contact with us was from a Kenyan town called El Doret. Prayer protection for Isaiah would be much appreciated.

Young Leaders

One of the really rewarding aspects of our work is watching our young people growing as young leaders. I'm working with four of our youngsters at the moment to help them develop leadership skills. They are very receptive to all of the aspects of our program.

At the moment we are in a very practical phase following a period of looking at biblical principles of leadership and personal development. Many of the members of our local community face problems caused by poverty and poor health. This is especially true for elderly people who have no relatives or children to help support them in their old age. It is a sad fact that in our community many of the old people have outlived their sons and daughters (and in many cases some of their grandchildren) because of the effects of HIV/AIDS, malaria and typhoid which badly affect our community.

We are in the process of reviewing and improving the community assistance that we give to a number of old people who live close to our home. Some of them receive food assistance from us and have, in the past, also received extra help from groups of our children. The children take clean water from our borehole, fetch firewood and do washing for these elderly neighbours. Sadly some of the elderly people that we have assisted have died in the last twelve months and other, new cases, have been brought to our attention.

Our young leaders group and I met a week ago to discuss a new approach to providing this help in the community and were given the task of liaising with Dorine (one of our church pastors) to identify elderly people who need this practical help. This evening the group and I met together and they gave a report on what Dorine had told them. We went on to re-organise the groups of children who will provide the help and set up a provisional outline of the timetable for the groups' activities. We'll have a meeting on Wednesday night to finalise the details before sending the groups out, led by two of our young leaders.

I was impressed by the way these young people got on with our work tonight and very pleased that they came up with a well planned proposal in a short time. I've been to meetings with adults in Kenya and England that dragged on forever and achieved very little. I'm really hoping that giving these young people more opportunities to provide leadership and solve real practical problems will help them to get more involved in meeting the large number of needs that exist in our local community. They've certainly got off to a promising start.

On a different but equally practical note I would be very grateful if those of the praying persuasion could pray for our Technical School Principal Isaiah and his wife Rosaline. Isaiah is setting off tomorrow morning on what sounds like a horrendous journey by road to visit Rosaline who is in hospital in Rwanda. She had a fall while on a training course in Rwanda over a month ago. As a result of this her baby boy Emmanuel was born prematurely and is still receiving treatment in a special baby unit in Rwanda. Prayers for Isaiah, Rosaline and Emmanuel would be much appreciated.

Signs and wonders

Matters of faith can be very difficult to talk about and share with people. If you don't have a religious faith at all people who do may seem misguided or deluded. If you do have a faith the same thing applies to those who don't. Polite society discourages talking about politics or religion because they are such potentially divisive and explosive subjects. Being a Christian sometimes feels like being a member of a selective club with quite strict rules for membership and I'm sure many people would view churches that way looking in from the outside. Being a Christian is sometimes quite confusing. A source of doubt in one's life. One thing I am sure of though is that Jesus didn't intend the church to be narrow minded, exclusive or inaccessible. The Good News that he proclaimed was for everyone. It was (and still is) supposed to transform the world. How far many of us Christians have fallen short.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the very moving service we had in our tin shack church with it's dirt floor. Dorine, one of our pastors, is a powerful and gifted minister. She speaks with passion and has a deep commitment to bringing our church members closer to God. If you don't believe in this kind of 'mumbo jumbo' I guess it 's hard, if not impossible to understand the power of God to change people's lives. I can only speak for what I see and what I experience. Lives were changed in our church this morning because of the deep love that God has for all the people who come to him for healing and deliverance. Those are strong words – for many people part of the 'holy roller' lexicon. I don't use them lightly.

I've been reading a book by an evangelist called Reinhard Bonnke. He has brought the Gospel to millions in Africa and strongly believes that signs of God's power accompany the preaching of the Gospel. Many people would dismiss the miraculous things that happen in his mass meetings as some kind of crowd mass hysteria. It's an easy way of understanding phenomena that we can't easily explain. I've seen Reinhard Bonnke speak recently and he isn't that kind of man. He is passionate, committed and powerful. He speaks a plain Gospel message and people respond to it. Just like they did to Dorine's message this morning. Dorine could no more whip up frenzied mass hysteria than I could fly. This morning, after we'd prayed and been prayed for three members of our small congregation experienced a very deep encounter with God and were delivered of serious spiritual problems in their lives. I know they were real because I was stood next to them. I knew they were real because I'd prayed, before church, that God would be with us in a very powerful way today. The bible says that signs and wonders accompany the preaching of the gospel. They did when Jesus preached it and they still do now.

Back in the groove

Today has been an object lesson in putting your money where your mouth is and using the gifts that God gives you.

I have written before about the horrendous experiences that members of the community have when they are sick. In the absence of a properly functioning health service they are subject to all sorts of bad advice or inadequate treatment. Two cases presented themselves today one very straightforward (dehydrated baby) and one more life threatening (complications following teenager having first baby). These situations are always really hard to deal with on a number of levels. As it's the week-end there's no guarantee that some of the available local hospitals will have doctors on duty. Even if they do there's no guarantee that the doctors or surgeons will be able to deal with a complicated gynaecology case. On top of that we always need to think about the cost of treatment. Although there is a National Health scheme similar to most contributory systems in the west it's not always possible to get private hospitals to provide treatment under this scheme so the patient ends up paying a lot for a major procedure. As we aren't a bank or a large organisation with unlimited funds its always hard to know what to do for the best when we face this kind of request. Looking at each case on its merits each time is the best that we can do. It's like playing at being God sometimes. Very challenging.

On a completely different note our new Saturday evening sessions with the children are going well. As I wrote last Saturday it's been some time since I was actively involved in running an evening 'youth club' but getting back into it has been great fun. I dropped my ambitions for rock stardom many years ago but still enjoy playing the guitar and singing. It sounds cringingly stereotypical for a Christian organisation but we had good fun tonight singing dancing and having a good time playing games. Over the years I've found that not neglecting the talents that you develop during a life time is a good idea. I've decided that I'd like to get back into making music again as a tonic for the very busy work life that we all have over here. Stepping out and singing songs with the kids might not sound like a very big step in this direction but I did write the first song I've written for many years this evening after our Livewires session. It's probably not very good and I'm not planning to share it with anybody in a hurry but it was an important first step which I got a lot of pleasure and encouragement from.

Order, Order

Our older students have been encouraging me again today. I've been trying to spend time with them to teach them some new games designed to stretch their thinking. Having benefited from a very stimulating childhood its sometimes difficult to appreciate how much we take for granted from a western lifestyle. I think that most of our secondary school students had a stimulating afternoon today.

We have just started having a debate in the Technical School on Friday afternoon. I missed the first one last week but sat in on this week's. The debate is set up to mirror the arrangements in parliament, complete with Mr. Speaker presiding over the proceedings, Sergeant at Arms, an assortment of Ministers and MPs standing for or against the motion. Today's motion was that Boarding Schools are better than Day Schools. This is a big deal for our youngsters. A lot of High Schools in Kenya are boarding schools. Most students aspire to going to one of the better boarding schools. The arguments for the motion were interesting. The best thing going for boarding schools is that they usually have electricity so students can study easily in the evening. They also make it less likely that students are in contact with 'bad influences' in the community. The case against focuses on the quality of family life and the importance of contributing to family obligations.

The argument was conducted very vigorously. It's easy to spot the students with a real gift for presenting their case and trying to outsmart their opposition with good questions. In a lull in the debate the 'Ministers' were called on to give a report about their achievements since the parliament has opened. This was very amusing as the MPs were mostly hostile to the ministers and they didn't really have any good comebacks to criticism. The spirit of democracy and accountability is alive and well in our school. The speaker ruled that the motion was lost at the end of the debate. After the discussion and proceedings were over one of the first year students provided a very good analysis/critique of the vocabulary and grammar used during the debate and we finished with a prayer. It was a great ending to the school day.

After a rather late start to our evening activities I spent an equally enjoyable hour and a half teaching the older children how to play chess as part of our developing 'brain gym' program. The delay in starting was caused by the late return of our primary school pupils from the second day of ball games at the 'stadium' (large field) just up the road. We surprised the opposition by putting up a couple of good teams. The girls outperformed the boys by winning two of their matches. The boys somewhat unfortunately lost their games (I suspect to bigger and heavier sides). They all seemed very happy (though very tired) when they eventually got back. There was a short but quite heavy downpour of rain at about 5.30 this evening which delayed the players from starting back. Good for the farm but not quite so much fun for the ball game players.