Gor Blimey We're Staff

So where have we been? In brief running about like a pair of ants near a split sugar bowl. So there you have it. Finish here, read no more…

Nah, it’s not possible for me not to ramble on for at least a page or two so here we go. So since Martin and Stephanie left us the other weekend we returned to Shimoni feeling pretty flat and dispirited. It’d been so nice to have them here and spend time with them that saying Goodbye on the Sunday morning as they headed off for Nairobi was no fun at all. We then had to haul ourselves and a pile of baggage to the Likoni ferry which links Mombasa to the mainland (no I didn’t know it was an island until I got here either). The ferry involves waiting in a crowd of people in a cattle shed affair until the ferry docks then it’s a mad scramble as everyone barges on to every nook and cranny on the ferry. In this instance made worse by the fact that the rain was pouring down and everyone wanted to get under cover as quickly as possible. Within the half a km ferry journey we got absolutely soaked but by the time we’d docked the rain had passed…arrgghh you gotta love the tropics!

At least we were looking forward to seeing everyone when we got back to Shimoni after the week apart doing our own thing and swapping news about what adventures we’d got up to. There was a real sense whilst we travelled back to Shimoni that we were heading back home which was really nice to realise. To feel that a place is familiar and that you can associate it with homely feelings is really important when we are so far away from everyone. It helps build a sense of security, which is particularly important given the constantly changing group composition and dynamics as people come and go.

But moving on, enough of the deep and mawkish, more about the mundane and meaningless. Monday to Thursday we had an intensive kiswahili course scheduled, just 4 hours a day split into morning and afternoon but even after our first session (which overran to 4 ½ hours), my head felt like it was ready to burst . I haven’t studied languages since I was 16 and even then I was no king of linguistics. Motivation ran low as frustration ran high and at times I felt like throwing my notebook against the wall and be damned with it. This was made worse by both Kate and Matt (another of the interns) soaking up words like sponges. Matt is half French and half English and speaks a ‘smattering’ of Italian and Spanish (aka is fluent in both). Kate has her Spanish and also some knowledge of Italian and as they’ve both taught English they had a fearsome grasp of grammar. On the flipside, my grammar would make an English teacher wince and that’s the better half of my language learning. I struggle to find the right words in my native language at times but in kiswahili you’d need the patience of Mother Teresa to hold a conversation with me whilst I ‘Ummm’ and ‘Ahhhh’ and stutter and stumble through such forgettable phrases as “Tuna mke na wangu Kate. Wana sina watoto.” [lit. “We have wife she mine Kate. They have I don’t children.”]…yes, quite!

In between the lessons were frantic sessions of cleaning, setting up, fixing, digging, building and getting things ready for the arrival of the new set of volunteers. By Thursday I was ready to collapse, but instead all the staff piled into a matatu and headed up to Mombasa for a party together at the new house GVI have for the new project at the Olive Children’s Rehabilitation Centre. This was our one chance for all staff to get together for the entire duration of the expedition, what with different weekends off and busy schedules. We made the most of it until the small wee hours which made our early start the next day to get our visas registered at the Dept. of Immigration all the more painful. But we are both now official aliens in Kenya with the right to remain until the 2nd October …I’ve even got a receipt to prove it. Not the actual Alien Card we get issued with, we get that about 2 weeks before it expires. Boy, you gotta love bureaucracy!

The exciting news though is that I am typing this on our brand spanking new laptop. We’re using someone else’s broadband stick at the moment and it’s a bit slow to say the least but it’s still so nice to have our own computer and access to the internet…so Hurrah!

Friday night and into Saturday, after our return from Mombasa, was more frantic scrubbing, sweeping, cleaning and clearing and as Kate and I peeled spuds and made salad for 32 the first few pale-faced and slightly apprehensive new volunteers arrived on the island, hauling rucksacks the size of hay bales and looking bewildered and slightly unbelieving that they were here at last, on the coast of Kenya on a small island in the Indian Ocean. Crikey, it still catches me unawares at times!

So we spent the weekend making these guys feel welcome, doing all the cooking and chores which was bloody hard work after the week we’d already had. In addition to which (exciting news) Kate and I now have our own room…TaDaaaaaah! Which is awesome news but we had to do a fair bit of work, more cleaning and tidying it as it’d been unoccupied and used as the First Aid Room for ages. Hopefully, here’s a photo. But most importantly, this week on Community…Kate and I are the new Community Interns. For the next 4 weeks we’ll alternate between the school in Mkwiro and the Base Academy in Shimoni with one of us on the island and one of us on the mainland each week. So we’ll be split fort the next 4 weeks apart from at weekends which’ll be tough, but will also be nice in a way as we’ll have some different experiences from each other.
This week I’ve been running the Nursery classes. Nursery Comprises 2 elements. Firstly, 2 classes of Kindergarten (ages 3-6), totaling almost 90 children. We take them for 2 outdoor activity lessons (utter chaos) and 2 music and movement lessons (complete bedlam) each week. Then we have the other side of Nursery which is Standards 1, 2 and 3, about 25 in each class and we teach them English (getting them to complete an exercise I like herding cats) and Creative Arts (‘No Omar! The crayon will NOT fit up your nose and it goes on the paper not on Mwanaisha, thank you.’). As we troop into the classroom the kids, especially Kindergarten, go absolutely mental. We timetable 10 minutes of every 1 hour lesson just to say ‘Good Morning’ and get them settled into their tutor groups, all named after either animals or Premiership football teams. The remainder of the lesson is a mixture of crowd control and guarding the coffee tin of pens and pencils which each tutor holds. I reckon these kids would put Ol’ Fagin and the Artful Dodger to shame when it comes to palming pencils and swiping crayons, so next time you are in the work stationery cupboard and you open a pack of pens please pinch a couple of them for me and post them over. M favourite lesson has to be Outdoor Activities and Music and Movement. 90 kids all chorusing ‘5 Little Ducks’ (actions included) is enough to make even the hardest soul smile. In fact as I write this in our kitchen banda on Base I can hear the 3 volunteers on Nursery and the Kindergarten chorusing “wooooOOOOOOooooo, the Hokey Cokey Cokey”, from over 500 metres away. I let them take this one on their own hee hee.
Attached (again hopefully), are some action shots of the kids playing Cat Cat Rat. If anyone has some good games, nursery rhymes or songs (preferably with actions) please feel free to post them in the Comments section of the Blog, I’d be eternally grateful. We’re woefully short of equipment but high on enthusiasm here so all inspiration would be very welcome.
So until next week, take care and enjoy the weather you all seem to be basking in over there. Here it’s been cold, wet and windy would you believe. I even had to wear a jumper on Wednesday; this is supposed to be bloody Africa for Goodness Sake!

Ps. I’m typing this at 4pm our time on Saturday, so many congratulations to Kate and Mackie who are getting married at 2pm UK time. Our thoughts are with you and we really wish we could be there to celebrate with you. We both hope you have an amazing day and wish you both the very best for your future together.

But at least the sunsets are nice and the beer is cold…

CHEERS!