I'm not coming home!

Saturday 12th March

Crikey, hadn’t realised it’s nearly a month since I last wrote. Anyway, lots has been happening.

I’ve been thinking since January about ‘what next’ and it wasn’t hard for me to realise that I’m not yet ready to leave Mombasa, especially Precious Vision. I truly love it out here, and having talked to my boys and sister, none of them were surprised at all that I was considering staying for longer.

So… applied for a straight forward teaching job (absolutely no responsibilities whatsoever!) at one of the local international schools (yes, I know, the type of school I would never have worked at in the UK and have berated in the past!). Interviewed immediately even before cut off date, and offered the job of ……now don’t laugh….well must admit I have lots……. Year 6 teacher. Ha, ha….. ten kids in the class… oh my…. will I cope? The school has 200 kids altogether that’s primary and secondary), great facilities, including a swimming pool (that’s my lunch time sorted out!). And actually, everyone I met there, especially the headteacher were lovely…. might have to watch myself with the extremely well-to-do parents turning up in their 4X4’s so practising my poker face already.

My main purpose for staying however is so that I can still support the charity here with fundraising and the grammar programme (which I am still writing…will it ever end?) and also be able to get into Precious in the copious amount of holiday time I get by working at this type of school…. month at Christmas, month at Easter, two months in summer…. oh this is going to be tough! I am determined to see some of the Precious kids go to high school, which should be in two years time. My contract is for 2 years, and whilst the actual salary is shockingly low (about 1/10th of previous life salary!) it is sufficient to live on out here (as long I don’t aspire to become part of the ex-pat, white Kenyan, ex-colonial set!), but the real benefit is they sort out my visa, work permit, medical care and give me a housing allowance so I can get my own place…. Oh how wonderful that will be again!

And of course I can still dive most weekends!

Other than that, life is quite normal, work Monday to Friday, just had to have my eyes tested as they were becoming really sore and tired. Needed new glasses (well actually hadn’t brought my glasses out here anyway…never expected to be doing all the work that I am, especially on my computer!). Think I must have packed my glasses into storage as they are nowhere to be found at my sisters, so off I went into Mombasa town on Thursday to get my eyes tested. Frankly expected a ‘book shop’ experience (for those of you that have kept up to date with my blog you know exactly what I was dreading)…. Anyway, turned up at opticians, tested immediately, chose frames and picked them up this morning! That’s got to be the quickest thing I’ve ever seen done here in Kenya! And prices on a par with specsavers…without the free pair. Oh, and more importantly, spoke to the manager there about whether they would be willing to screen the kids eyes at the school as we are pretty sure many of them need glasses, and they said yes - brilliant! They will screen for free, and GVI are now talking to them about prices for lenses. We’re going to do a scrounge now for old glasses as if we can get frames out here, that will bring the cost down even more so don’t through any old frames away. Contact me and I’ll let you know who to send them to in the UK so we can get them out here.

Life at Precious is amazing at the moment. One of the volunteers from before Christmas has come back for another 9 weeks – Bekks, absolutely brilliant, full of energy (well she is 20+ years younger than me) and they’ve put her with me in standard 6 plus I get another volunteer in most of the English lessons. We have been able to really tailor the work to the different levels this past week and the kids are doing really well. GVI has also started a sports programme with dedicated volunteers to this. Mind you, the boys are still sulking as they think sport is just football, and they haven’t seen a ball all week in the sports lessons! But we did get a bit of team work going which is a breakthrough as working together is not something the kids are used to doing.

Really, really looking forward to my friend Anne coming out in 4 weeks time for 10 days – she’s going to come to work with me every day which will be fab. She’s already got a list of things to bring out for me…marmite, more knickers….. (Did I tell you there is a knicker thief here?) …oh, and gin no doubt, as in a previous life when we had our annual girlie holiday together, gin played a central and pivotal role in our activities! And of course she has a list of things for Precious – staying on the theme of knickers….. my UK hairdresser Anna (now doesn’t that sound posh!) and Jodie, Meg’s Mum are doing a collection via their kids schools/friends of children’s pants, vests, socks, bras etc for Anne to bring out as underwear is extremely lacking out here – most kids just only have one pair of pants. She will also be bringing out some more books for our library – my sister is doing a sterling job in the local charity shops picking up children’s non-fiction books for around 50p a go and the kids cannot get enough of them. Just this week when we had the new non-fiction books out the list of questions that they were asking was endless…What’s a ballet dancer? (No, they were none the wiser after Bekks and I trying to demonstrate!), Indian dancing? (even worse demonstration as we were still laughing after the ballet dancing demonstration) A volano? A hurricane? A grizzly bear? We are going to try and get some clips from the internet and take my lap top in so we can show them………..don’t we take a lot for granted about how much knowledge we are able to access in the western world?

So thank you Anne for being the latest ‘mule’ for me and Precious!

My, have written a lot…. Sorry you’ve had a months news all at once. XXX