Been poorly....

Monday 4th October

Sorry no posting for a while, but been out of circulation…read on…..


Apparently every volunteer picks up something in their first couple of weeks in Africa, bad cough, heavy cold, stomach upset etc. As ever I was expecting the Williams ‘iron guts’ constitution that sees most of our family immune to picking up stomach bugs to be strong enough to provide resistance, however I have succumbed to agonising stomach cramps and diarrhoea since the early hours of last Wednesday. I got to the doctors on Thursday and got prescribed antibiotics but nothing made a difference and by Saturday I was in a wretched state…..I will spare you from the graphic details but suffice to say, it has probably the been the most horrendous experience ever for me! So ended up at the medical centre this morning, sample given for diagnosis (yugh), and more medication prescribed to try and stop the cramps (and flow!), which hopefully will make a difference soon!!

Needless to say, I have not been in school as risk of passing things onto kids is high, and also, with only one toilet there (that is non-flushing and not a pleasant experience at the best of times) there is no way I can survive!

So am sat here at base, creating schemes of work for English and maths so that we can create a structure for volunteers to work from as well as a way of tracking the skills that the kids are learning and understanding.

Missing my standard 4 kids as we were doing so well together. Their confidence in their ability to learn is growing daily, and they are really doing well on things like manners which is a big thing I emphasise in my teaching….. you’d do the same if you were here, as in their language the use of ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’ is rare. And for things like having their pencil sharpened they will just say ‘sharpen’ in a very authoritative tone! So we have some sentences on the wall now which they are all getting used to using, and which make me smile every time they remember to use them…

Madam, please can you….


• sharpen my pencil.

• look at my book.


• help me.

We have a daily rota for my lesson helpers as they all fight to ‘help’ so they are having to learn to take their turn, and a star chart to reward excellent work in class. Simple things that are making such a big, big difference to these kids. They now all have a pen in their equipment bag as every single one of them managed to look after all of their equipment for the whole of the first week. Mind you, worried it might not all be there when I eventually get back to work.

My last lesson last week with them before I got poorly made me so proud of them – we created our first mindmap together - all about Shauriyako, and they did so, so well and were so proud of themselves for what they’d managed to achieve. Special moment!

There are many moments that stop me dead both good and not so good. I've shared with you before about their reaction to me reading to them, and this continues daily.  I read to them at least one story every day, and they remain completely enthralled.  This is despite the fact that I know that most of them will not be understanding everything I say, but from the pictures in the book, and my bad attempts at dramatising the story as I read it sees 15 kids laughing, smiling, scowling and applauding every story.  And they continue to love just having the time to look and 'read' books themselves - which again I do with them every day (and yes I sneaked a photo of them [also note the new table which I can just about get them all around!).

A not so good moment last week was when one of my girls, doing some guided reading on the story of the Ugly Duckling, when talking about the story and the ‘beautiful’ swan at the end of the story said “It’s beautiful because it’s gone from being black to white, and white is beautiful, being black is ugly”. Stops you dead – what do you say? Well, Madam Rachel who was doing the reading with her did the perfect thing….she got a pencil and coloured in the swan right in front of the girl, and told here there were black swans as well as white ones and they were all equally beautiful.

The chasm between ‘black’ and ‘white’ runs very deep, and I can understand why given the history of Kenya and the poverty that exists here. Mzunga which you hear being called out at you all the time as you walk around here, is said in the same context as a 6 letter word beginning with ‘n’ that used to be used in a derogatory way at coloured people in the western world. All I do when I hear ‘mzunga’ is to smile broadly at the person who’s called it, so they know I know what they’ve said, and answer ‘Habari yako’ (hello, how are you) which kind of throws them a bit in a non-confrontational way. Seeing as we are the first white people to be working in Shauriyako it is hardly surprising that we are stared out, sometimes in a hostile manner, but hopefully in time things will start to thaw. Certainly they know me and some of the other volunteers now in the local café and they are getting used to us now.

By the way, the container idea seems to be becoming an absolute nightmare.  No matter what I try to sort, there doesn't seem to be any firm way of guaranteeing that I can get the contents through Mombasa without random (and excessive) amounts of 'tax' being added.  I will pursue this idea for another week, but if it's a non-starter then I will use the money raised by FCA kids and staff to directly fund sets of text books and teaching resources which I will purchase out here (assortment not brilliant but better than nothing).  Sadly the message is to everyone who is saying they would like to send things out here, there is absolutely no guarantee anything will actually get here, and if it does, when you collect it from the post office, they make you open it on the spot and then seemingly make up a charge that you have to pay if you want to take the parcel away.  Yes, corruption everywhere.