This week in the News...

In the 4 months we’ve been here, I’ve managed to read 2 Guardians, 3 Telegraphs, watch 1 Grand Prix (Go Jensen!) and watch one stage of the Tour de France (Get in!). Other than that I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world. I have heard about 2 plane crashes (in fact the one in the Indian Ocean resulted in us getting 2 days of ‘black rain’ contaminated with a black oily scum which floated on the surface of the water). But as for the news: I have no idea if credit is still crunchy: is Barack Obama still the darling of the ‘Good Ole US of A’: or have all MPs been asked to resign for claiming on 3 homes, a designer duckhouse, blue movies and a cab ride from one side of Parliament Square to the other. And do you know what…I really don’t care! I don’t miss it at all. I felt really out of touch for a few weeks when we first got here and trying to find out the news was a way of staying in contact with life in the UK. But the longer I’m here, the less it’s relevant and it makes me wonder really how relevant and ‘newsworthy’ it is anyway. When I have managed to get some news, or lay my hands of a newspaper, all I can usually muster is a ‘So what’, so what if someone fiddles their expenses? Come to sunny Kenya where the ex-president’s son is now the Minister for Finance (cosy) who recently blamed a 9,000,000,000 shilling (approx. 9,000,000GBP) ‘budget discrepancy’ on a “printer error” (cough/bullsh*t). Now THAT’s proper corruption for you ladies and gentlemen.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all preachy for the rest of this post about how tough life is for people here, nor will I rant at length about taking things for granted (although I reserve the right to do so at some point in the future), but in past posts I have highlighted some of the smaller more personal shortcomings of life here compared to back home. On the macro level, our MPs are a bit bent, are hospitals are a bit crowded and our schools could do with a few more quid and a few more teachers. But please take a moment just to compare some of that to somewhere else in the world: where fishermen paddle dugout canoes for 9 hours a day against the current just to earn 1GBP (and then spend 1/3 of that on fresh water alone): or adults who couldn’t afford to pay the fees for their secondary education when they were younger who come to free lessons, day after day to try and improve their English and learn a bit more about one of the most puzzling and impenetrable languages on the planet. (Sorry rant over).

But turning to the adult classes, which I’ve been busy on for the last week, I plan and run 3 x 2 hour lessons per week from 4pm to 6pm. I have between 5 and 9 students per lesson who come after they’ve finished their day jobs. I have a café owner (where a full meal with all the trimming costs 80 pence), a waitress from another café, a carpenter and a washerwoman amongst others. They all have one thing in common, they’re so keen they’d happily do 5 lessons a week if I could provide them. They always want homework and they all looked equally baffled when I gave them a 2 hour grammar introduction to ‘passive sentence construction’, no I didn’t know what it was until I started planning the lesson either. My classroom craft is coming along nicely and I enjoy both planning and giving lessons much more than when I started. Doing the intensive kiswhahili course a couple of weeks ago has really helped me appreciate how difficult foreign language learning is. English in particular is so full of irregular verbs, weird grammar rules that apply here, but not there (“Please Teacher why is that”, “Just because ok”) and a plethora of idioms (don’t worry I don’t use words like that in my lessons), that watching these guys puzzled faces crumple in frustration and confusion is a not uncommon experience. At least I have much more patience than I did before as I appreciate how difficult it is for them. I may have managed to get a photo of my class here [internet permitting]. The school we work in is also hopefully pictured. Kate and I are currently working on a project to get it plastered and fitted with windows and doors, using some of the money that we raised before we left. This will make the building secure and a much more welcoming place for the staff and students. Once plastered we’ll be arranging for some volunteers to help decorate the walls as we’ve done in some of the classrooms in Mkwiro (see pictures from previous posts). We’ll have further news about this and other projects were planning to use all the money we raised with the help of all of you in due course. Just in case you thought we’d gone completely ‘local’ and ‘printer-errorred’ the money into an offshore account.

Also, last weekend we spent the evening in one of the houses in Mkwiro learning some Swahili cooking. We cooked potato curry, coconut rice, samosas and chapattis. It’s amazing what these guys can create with just a washing up bowl for mixing and preparing and a small pan on an open fire. The 5 of us who’d attended the cooking lesson then enjoyed the fruits of our newly learnt labours with the 3 women who’d taught us. We sat cross-legged on the floor, without a knife or fork in sight. Eating chapattis with your fingers (easy), coconut rice (moderate difficulty level), potato curry (with a beard adding a distinct handicap) is not a pretty sight at all but it still tasted bloody good. For those of you’ll we’ll catch up with when we get back, we’ll be hosting a Swahili cooking night at some point so you’ll have the chance to enjoy some of the skills we’ve ‘mastered’ then.

This weekend just gone I, of course, got to see my lovely wife after we’d been apart for the week, which was lovely (seeing her I mean, not being apart!). We had loads to catch up on and gossip to swap so we spent some quality time sitting in the bar at Paradise, enjoying a cold beer (or two) and watching the sun go down. For the rest of the weekend I was on duty (sober driver…aaaarrrgghhh!), so I spent most of the weekend cooking and cleaning for more newly arrived volunteers which gave me a chance to try out my new chapatti making skills which were a resounding success (he notes modestly). Although, I did have enough time out to watch Saturday’s stage of the Tour de France which was great fun but did make me miss my cycling a lot. The only bike I’ve ridden since I’ve been here has been a local boneshaker hired for an afternoon. All the form I’ve worked so hard on for the last 2 years (stop laughing Alex) has all but disappeared along with about 5 or 6 kilos in weight as well, which I attribute to the high carb/low protein diet we have here. The only protein powder I’ve managed to find so far costs 60GBP per kilo so I’m still looking for an alternative to try and claw-back some meat onto my boney frame.

So, if anyone feels like sending a wee care package, bacon, chocolate etc to the Save the Jamie Benevolent Fund then the address is Global Vision International, PO Box 10, Shimoni, 80409, Kenya.

Until next week, take care and have fun and if anyone discovers how to email a Macdonalds you know where to send it.