And all the Waters Gone…

29 01 2009

Day 9 of the school strike, which is lucky as we woke this morning in the town of Saikeri and would have been very late if school was in fact on! We decided not to stick around in Saikeri for too long, so after some breakfast and the morning chai tea we once again hit the dusty road for home.

The end of our time is coming so close now, and became apparent to us when we started talking about our next steps in our journey on the walk home. We both agreed that we could stay longer, but due to the school strike both feel slightly relieved to leave on Sunday as our jobs and aims at school are nearly complete. That said we returned home before lunch dripping in sweat from the hot Kenyan sun, but held off from having a shower until we had finished our jobs at school. This included making more desks, office work and a good general tidy up.

Before heading home we ducked off to our rock to relax, before returning home to our home, with our family of overactive kids! Finally it was time for a shower! But there was one problem…we had no water left in the tank. We were forced to use the rain water we had collected from the dirty tanks in the field, and upon putting this water in our clear water container found it already green and full of dirt! Its not a nice feeling but with no other choice we washed ourselves in the hopes of becoming slightly clean. Our thoughts wander, and we wonder what water Nini is using to cook our meals with, and after finding out its the same water, decide not to think about it again this evening!

That night we have a visitor in Wife Number 2′s house, so once again are forced to have 2 dinners! Two servings of Cha Pati is hard to get down! Even though its our favourite African meal, you do begin to get slightly sick of it with two helpings a night!





The most frustrating day so far…

8 01 2009

We awoke and started to get used to the new house and routine – the house is very simple and it seems as the family has a massive routine that they follow all day – wether its cooking, looking after goats, collecting firewood or water – they always looked as though they were doing something. Today was school day for us and the kids – so we packed our bags and headed down the 10 minute walk to school.

We got there just in time for the morning assembly and were forced to stand in front of the kids and give an impromptu speech before the kids headed to class…talk about nervous as you speak to a large group of kids (half of those couldnt understand a word we said though!!). Before we start with the day at school – we have to mention that the schooling system is VERY different from that at home (or anywhere that we have been). We did find this out over the course of the day as we decided to have a observation day (kind of like what Super Nanny does) before we started getting our hands dirty!

We spent the day following the teachers around the school with our school ‘tour’ and got to meet the kids in each class. We are the only volunteers in the school at the moment – which makes the kids eyes always focus on us!

After the tour was over – it seemed as though the day was over!! All of the classes that we visited didnt have a teacher present – as they are short on staff. We only have 4 teachers in today and about 8 classes – so the teachers are having a ‘self teaching’ day. This means the kids bum around class while the teachers have a sleep in the staff room. You think we are joking – but one teacher ACTUALLY slept! We felt as though we were running a education class on New Zeaand for the teachers – while the kids screamed around the school!

Every day we have 4 meals a day – Breakfast, Breakfast Number 2, Lunch and Dinner. So the constant trips home began to take there toll – but was a geat way to catch up on gossip that we couldn’t say in front of the other teachers!

We did decide to attempt to do some work today – as the office is a mess we decided to organize all the hundreds of school text books (why they were in the office and not in the kids hands we’ll never know!!) We called it a day and headed home….

That evening we joined our ‘Nini’ in gathering the wood for that evenings fire (with no power this is a MUST each day – or we wont eat!!) and Jax was showen how the women sling the wood together and carry the wood home on their heads….Jax did this and it was priceless! Soon it was time to head into the paddock in the compound to Milk the cows for our 4 times daily drink of ‘Chai’ tea which is a VERY sweet tea that we are sure will ruin our teeth before no time at all! Soon enough we were back in the kitchen helping the family prepare the evenings dinner and a African favourtie – Ugali and Cabbage! (A Corn Mazie Meal that fills you up fast!)

Later that evening the whole family joined us for dinner which gave us the best time to share some gifts that we had brought from home including some Jet Plane lollies, ‘Kiwi’ bracelets, badges and a Maori Doll. The lollies were eaten fast, the doll is still being played with and the badges straight onto the clothes.

We grabbed our torch and headed to bed for the night…








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