It's Christmas!

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Saturday 4th December

Well, Christmas has really started early here… I had a lovely evening on Wednesday at my friend Cherry’s, who runs the guest house I keep escaping to. She always puts her trees up on the 1st December and has a party at the same time. So quite a few glasses of mulled wine later, and crooning to all the Christmas songs and carols you can imagine, two trees were decorated, with the help of Ella and Dennis her two children. Decorating the Christmas tree was always one of my favourite ‘jobs’ back home, ever since I was a child (have I ever really grown up I ask myself?) and I really, really enjoyed myself.

In fact I enjoyed myself so much, I went to Nakamatt (local supermarket) the next day and bought a Christmas tree and decorations for the apartment. And decorated another one….not that it took too long as bought the cheapest one there so it isn’t very big….but at least we had a Christmas tree to put our secret santa presents under for our GVI Christmas dinner last night (a feast: chicken, stuffing, cranberry jelly, roast potatoes, lots of veg [but no sprouts] followed by jam sponge and custard – yum!). If you had seen me coming back from the supermarket on the back of a piki-piki (motorbike) with two bags of shopping and the Christmas tree – hilarious. Mind you, nearly got taken out on a piki-piki yesterday on way back from cinema…. very dangerous driving by a Kenyan Asian guy (on his phone) in a black estate car nearly took out three of us – my bike was up the front and we ended up missing the car by inches, big swerve off the road to avoid him and sharp braking, me grabbing hold of my driver, swearing a lot (which I apologised for later!). Only to find said black car parking up at the garage that is just near our apartment, so got off bike, and I’m afraid to say I was overcome with road rage, so told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of him and his driving – all watched in amazement by the mechanics and bike drivers. I then got told to ‘Go back to your own country, you’re not welcome here’ Mmmmm….. so I repeated what I thought of him, and then smiled sweetly and told him to ‘Have a nice day!’ Took me a while to stop shaking though afterwards – a close call.

So this week we had to say goodbye to Mr Nick who has been helping me with standard 4. It’s so difficult for the kids as they inevitably get attached to us, and then we go. The kids were visibly upset when I told them Mr Nick was going, and he was also very upset to leave. He’s done a really good job here, (pretty good as a teacher considering he’s an accountant in real life!) – don’t worry, have said that to his face! And frankly, if he can work with me for 6 weeks, and do all the marking from the exams, he’s a star!!

We’ve had a lot of fun with the kids this week, which was essential post exams. We had a Christmas party with them on Thursday followed by a trip to the cinema on Friday to see ‘The princess and the frog’. The party was great fun – each standard had rehearsed a song which they performed to each other, followed by a terrible performance by us volunteers, and then the Kenyan teachers did a turn. The kids had juice/coke, cake and sweets followed by a rare treat of pilau for lunch cooked by Madame Jane. The cinema trip was amazing. The kids were transported to the cinema by matatus – about 30-40 to each matatu and then to see their faces when they each got a popcorn and soda , and watch them completely mesmerised by the movie and laughing out loud throughout, applauding at the end – are we missing something back in the UK do you think?

So most volunteers leaving this weekend, which means I will be rattling around the apartment virtually on my own…..yippee. Off to the hairdressers in a minute, for some much needed attention to grey hairs and vastly out of control curls, which will be beautifully transformed in about 4 hours from now. Then back here to sort out  all my stuff out here and take advantage of being able to have more than one shelf for my entire belongings….(for a month at least until the next batch of volunteers arrive).