You Milk Like a Real Kikuyu!

I spent the weekend visiting Karanja's parents at their farm just at the base of the Aberdare mountains. It was a really cute little house, made of bricks, but with a few wooden sheds around it, then surrounded by vast fields of maize, beautiful colourful flowers, tall trees, and just generally vivid green weeds. Karanja's parents were very old and spoke mainly Kikuyu (their tribal language of which I know one greeting and the phrase for 'come here'), but were very friendly and loved feeding us and praying for our general wellbeing.

Whilst we were there, everyone (minus Amy and I who hid inside) killed a sheep as a sacrifice for Nick, who has had a lot of bad luck recently with bad men mugging him and holding machetes to his throat, as Karanja believed that if a sheep was killed and then a very entertaining ceremony undertaken, then the bad luck would go away. Nick was therefore sat on a little stool, had sheep's blood smeared on his cheeks, drank some sheep's blood, was danced around by a man who must have been clinically insane (he had crazy sticking out hair and enormous wide eyes) who dangled the entire sheep stomach in Nick's face and then proceeded to scatter the grass from the stomach around Nick. The whole ritual was then summed up by Nick downing a glass of sausage-tree-wine, this really strange stuff that comes from trees and is highly alcoholic. We half thought the entire thing was made up to make Nick look like a complete idiot, but on accusing Karanja of this, he protested "he's a witchdoctor! I would not make this up!"

I also milked a cow whilst I was there and was very proud to get lots of milk out of it very quickly, and be told that I milked 'like a real kikuyu' :) We went to a local pub in the evening, which was fun but had disgusting toilets that you could occasionally smell from the pub , and we encountered a man who told us ''I am made in Kenya" and started taking his shirt off in joy at meeting us. Wahey.

The next day we went for a long walk through a beautiful forest which reminded me a lot of one near the farm in Devon (you don't picture Kenya like that but it is sometimes), meeting a chameleon along the way,seeing some monkeys and collecting lots of enormous wildflowers. It was a really nice, relaxed, sunny weekend and we spent lots of time just sitting on the grass and talking, with random members of Karanja's family just milling around and relaxing with us.

On Monday I told my class when I would be leaving, which is the worst thing I've had to do here. They previously had no idea when I'd be going, and although I was glad to chat to them about it because they were able to ask lots of questions and I was able to explain to them why I had to leave, it was SO sad. When I told them the date of my last day, they all just stared at me in disbelief. They all fake-cried when I said I wanted to talk to them about it, but by the end quite a few of them were actually crying. It was horrible.

Tuesday was a happy day. I did a silly activity with them where I drew cartoons of people in the class, saying various stupid things, and got them to write what the people were saying as a practice of speech marks, and they found it hilarious. One of the things I drew was Miriam, the other class teacher, who I'm good friends with, saying "no, I will not dance for you!" and the class replying "dance, teacher!" because they're always asking us to dance, and this led into an enormous dancing session with them all singing in kikuyu, Miriam and I dressed in multi-coloured cloths, and laughing and dancing with them all. It was so much fun. I love them.

Boiled Eggs in Hot Springs

The weekend was awesome. Annie, Hannah and I went to Nairobi on Saturday. Nairobi has these appeals:

-- Cheap souvenirs (SUCCESS, we'd been told about a really cheap shop where everything was about half the price it is in Nakuru, and thus I bought way too many pretty soapstone items),
-- Good food. You have no idea how happy chocolate doughtnuts and pizzas just in a five mile vicinity make us.
-- The camera fixing shop with whom my first camera had a guarantee with. They told me they could fix it and send it back to me by Monday so I was well excited but after two phonecalls ("It has more problems", and "The lens is broken" - I knew that!) they are telling me it won't return home to me til next Wednesday.
-- Crazy men who hang out of matatus screaming "Give me visa!' at you. Ha.

We happily travelled back on our lovely cheap matatu (no more shuttles for an extra 100/- each for us), laden with awfully touristy things, and then spent a really funny evening out, where we finally returned to Summit after the shame and hilarity that was my birthday. Strangely, the only comment I got from the doorwoman, who definately knows us after so long, was 'you look smart tonight!', so I think they missed us and the crazy number of drinks our group buys. It was so good to be back at Summit again, we danced tons and got lots of free drinks from our rich and generous friend, Ozzy.

Then on Sunday I went to Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria, both about two hours away from Nakuru. It was AMAZING. We zoomed along in our hired van singing along to the cheesy music the driver was providing us with, stopping quickly at the equator for some pictures, watching all the sloping hills and millions of honey sellers lining the roads. We went on a boat ride onto Lake Baringo, which was so peaceful, and saw an island on which lives a 70-year-old man with 5 wives and 28 children. Livvy and I spent about half an hour discussing how horrific this must be for the wives and children, only to be told that one of the Kenyans in the boat with us was one of the 28. ARGH. "Does he speak English?" "Of course!" Oh dear.Lake Baringo also had crocodiles, hippos, and enormous lizards roaming its shores, but that didn't stop us from leaping off the boat, into the middle of the lake. It was a baking hot day and the water was lovely, plus there was the added excitement that in the murky brown water a giant long crocodile could easily creep up on us and nibble our toes. We were told that area of the lake was safe, and thankfully the only screaming that was done was when a big fish scared the life out of Anna.After the lake, we went to a reptile park on the shore, which was creepy because of an enormous python that we held (the texture was HORRIBLE, I hadn't expected to be afraid of it but I hated how it felt on my shoulders) and lots of snakes and crocodiles in small cages, which felt very cruel after having just seen them in the wild.From there we went to Lake Bogoria, stopping quickly for bread, butter and eggs for a bumpy lunch in the matatu. Lake Bogoria must've been one of the most beautiful places I've been in Kenya. The lake stretched out in a strangely long, elongated shape, green and shimmery, mountains coated in trees on the opposite side, and pools of violently bubbling, boiling water on the shores. There were geysers spurting water into the air, creating tiny rainbows everywhere, and a steamy mist floated around all the water. We found a long stick and attached a plastic bag onto the end of it, placed our eggs into it and then dangled them into the boiling water. It was like fishing with eggs. Within 8 minutes I was eating the best boiled egg I've ever had. I felt like I could happily stay there forever and just live looking at the amazing view in the late afternoon light.Schoolness:
The classroom has foundations and a floor and by tomorrow they will have started building the actual walls. I LOVE it. They're moving so fast that we have to literally go and look every hour to keep up. We had a really emotional staff meeting on Wednesday morning, where the headmaster officially told all the teachers where the money from the classroom had come from. He told us that they'd reached the end of the road, and all they could do was hope, before we came, and that we'd saved Nakuru Workers. Of course the words 'God has come' were mentioned many many times, but it was really moving and I'd like to pass on another massive thank you to everyone who's given money, especially those who, completely unexpectedly, gave more after my last blog entry. I love you all, as does everyone at Nakuru Workers. They're all so grateful, as am I.

I've had a lot of fun with my class this week, just being silly with them, drawing bad pictures of cows on the blackboard in science and getting them to draw some very interesting 'ghosts' as part of an English lesson. I've been to Pistis this week and had yet another great conversation with a boy named Allouise who is fourteen, extremely sweet, and interested in absolutely everything. I found out that he's good at drawing so I'm taking him a drawing book next week, and he's promised to teach me some kiswahili.

And then last night Amy and I slept on a dusty mattress, in a tiny room with about ten children in, at the orphanage. It was lovely :) We stargazed and they had immense fun doing silly things with our hair, and laughing at us eating ugali with them, and then at 6am this morning we waved them all off to school in the half-light, with the moon still shining over us. It was really nice to see them all running, excitedly, out of the gate to school.

Just one more thing to say: I have no phone. The story is long and complicated so I won't get into it, but I'm hoping to get it back. If not, I'll let you all know my new number.

OUR CLASSROOM!!!

SO EXCITED :D

On Monday a group of builders will come to our school and they will start digging the foundations for a brand new classroom. It means that next year Standard 7 will have a classroom to move into as they become Standard 8, and the school will be able to admit a new Standard One. And this is all from the money that Annie, Rebecca and I have raised so far.

We have less than half of what's needed to complete the classroom, but we have enough to get all of the brickwork finished before Annie and I leave (real walls!), and then by the end of the summer we are DETERMINED that we will, between us, have the money to send over to finish it.

THANK YOU SO MUCH

to everyone who donated money - to all my family, half of whom I didn't even know were following what I've been doing, and to my friends (especially to Byatt, who donated more than a poor student should).
It's going to make such a difference and I cannot wait to tell Standard 7 that they'll have a new classroom.

THERE'S ACTUALLY GOING TO BE A NEW CLASSROOM!!!

Rainbow Clouds Mean God Is Coming

There was a cloud at lunch at school today, floating over the dusty yellow crater, changing colour from green to blue to orange to yellow. It was amazing! The children told us it meant that God was coming, but sadly we weren't intending to stay in school for the afternoon so if he did arrive at Nakuru Workers Primary School at 2pm today, we missed him.

Ellen and I took strawberry ice cream, cones, mango and bananas to St. Stevens last Thursday - they loved it :) I'm not sure if some of them had had ice cream before! We dolloped it out with a metal spoon that kept bending every time I scooped, and the kids sat in a big semicircle licking away. They were so happy but now we get requests for ice cream every day, as there were 2 litres left (we overestimated the amount that would fit onto one cone) and we've promised to bring them back another time.

Talking of St. Stevens, I'm not sure if I've mentioned to many people that we're rebuilding it - at the moment they're in a rented building in a horrific area, filled literally with the rubbish from the entire of Nakuru (the sign on the top of the matatu going there reads 'sewage'), and full of houses that smell very strongly of sausage-tree-wine every time you pass them. Gemma, one of the other volunteers, managed to raise A LOT of money from schools back home, and so that's enabled us to start building a permanent home for them, right next to Nakuru Workers Primary School, where I teach. It's looking SO good - the walls are about my height already and construction only started in May. It's so much bigger for them, and such a beautiful area, compared to their current one :) At the moment construction's stopped because Gemma's money's run out, but some more from other volunteers should be coming soon.

I wish I could give something towards it, but currently my plans for the money all you lovely lovely FANTASTIC people have given me is to put it towards a new classroom for Nakuru Workers, as without it they won't be able to admit a new Standard 1 next year because there simply won't be space for them. By the autumn Rebecca, Annie and I are determined that we'll have the money to send to them and say 'start building', in time for the new school year in January.

We had a pretty dramatic weekend, as

a) Our relationship with the manager of St. Stevens blew up in our faces as Becky had some money stolen, and the manager is claiming that one of the children stole some of it, then returned the rest to him. The rest has now mysteriously gone missing and he's refusing to give it back. We are all very reluctant to believe that any of the children took it, as I would honestly trust those children with absolutely anything, and from the first day they've been trusted with our cameras and phones everytime we visit, and Gemma ended up in a massive argument with the manager about everything, culminating in him saying that there are too many volunteers visiting and he wants half of us to go away. Its ridiculous. He is NEVER there and we care far more about the children than he does.

b) Gemma left on Monday afternoon, meaning another depressing goodbye at the shuttle bus station, which is rapidly becoming the saddest place in Nakuru. This was not helped by the fact that we knew the next time we would be doing this was when WE would be on the shuttle.

c) To top everything off, four children ran away from Pistis at the weekend to become street kids. NIGHTMARE. Chasing four children around town and convincing them to stay once you've got them back is proving pretty impossible. They've left because they want to be able to eat bananas, and all they eat at Pistis is ugali.

Loughborough's also being awful. My only accomodation option is to share a room with someone in halls I didn't want to be in, and hope I can move in the first few weeks, because they told me I wasn't allowed to apply til June and are now telling me all the places are gone because I didn't apply earlier. HATE.

I have to go and have tea with Leah, age 10, from my class, and visit her newborn baby sister now!

600 Small Children and 600 Enormous Knives

This week has been 'bring your panga into school' week. A panga is this enormous, sharp, metal farming tool, used for cutting crops, and the entire school has been running around with them, the pangas at least half as big as the children, all week. The football field is full of weeds and so it's the task of the children to eliminate them, everyday between 3.10 and 4.00pm.

It's hilarious! I've just been sitting there watching all these children piling their giant weapons in the corner every morning before starting work, trying not to burst out laughing at how ridiculously dangerous it is, and jumped quite a few times today when I turned around to see a crowd of ten-year-olds standing behind me, peering over my shoulder to see what I was drawing, all holding long metal swords.

I love the insanity that goes on in this country.

Flying Without Wings Could Lead to a Painful Fall

I'm yet again in the internet cafe (obviously) and I've just finished writing my fifth English exam (I'm doing it on Wednesday today in an attempt to free up my time on Thursday and give me another day to visit the orphanage). It might sound stupid and exaggerated but it broke my heart a little to write 'ENGLISH EXAM - WEEK 5' at the top of the exam. When I started the weekly exams I had nine weeks of teaching left and I'm on week five and I have no idea how time went so fast. I'm flying back exactly five weeks today and although I am so looking forward to seeing all my family and friends, and eating my Nan's apple pie and playing with her dog, I don't know how I'm going to be able to leave. The kids are like my children. To have to go and know that if they get into trouble of any kind then we'll be powerless to help is horrible.

Teaching's still going well; the teachers are frustrating me slightly in making my lessons completely unpredictable by taking the ones I'd prepared to teach and giving me ones I'm completed unprepared for, but everything's working well. They actually seem to be improving, and I'm so proud to say that the worst students in the class are getting better because they know they can come to me for individual help, which the Kenyan teachers never give. I did a lovely creative arts lesson with Standard 7 today - they cheered when I came in the classroom and we sat outside in the sun for an hour, piled up with colouring pencils and paper, and drew the hilly crater with the school in the foreground. Quite aside from the kids, it was a brilliant way to sit and draw for an hour! It felt like things couldn't really get anymore perfect, with my toes in the grass and the kids laughing at the chicken that wandered through the middle of us.

Dave's been at school with me everyday, and managed to pick up some maths and P.E. lessons. I was impressed at how quickly he worked out how you need to speak to the kids to get them to understand and he did really well. Then on Saturday, we piled all nineteen of the St. Stevens children into a matatu, dressed them in adorable little swimming costumes, and took them swimming for the first time at Gracelands. It was amazing to see their faces - I think it was the poshest place they'd ever been and they couldn't quite believe it. They loved the water, constantly splashing each other and laughing, and the playground too - I'm not sure they'd seen swings or a roundabout before and they were SO excited. We bought them all chips for lunch and had brought along brightly decorated biscuits from the bakery for them :) You could tell how grateful they were because the next time we went to the orphanage they were even happier than usual to see us, and even more keen to spend time with us. I lay on their bunkbeds with them talking in kiswahili and making them laugh by the fact that I could tell what they were saying about me!

Other good things were Annie and I wandering around our area on Sunday and bumping into loads of kids from school, all dressed in their Sunday best and looking so smart and lovely, and chatting to them whilst on our giant circular walk, and also talking to a 14-year-old boy at Pistis who was insanely intelligent and knowing, talking to me about everything from God to Kenyan politics to the film industry. The kids here are immensely clever - this boy is only allowed to watch T.V. once a week and has no access to newspapers or anything like that yet knows so much about what goes on in the world.

Dave left this morning and I've spent the day at school, then running many many errands in town. And now I'm going to go, and buy a mango, and be happy in the chaos and smiles-despite-everything that is Kenya.