The Sixth Post

Classic Kite story: on Fridays I’m helping out as a teacher’s assistant at the local community centre. It’s only a ten minute walk so I have a bit more time in the mornings than I do the rest of the week when I have a 20-40 minute minibus ride to work. The variation in journey time is not due to traffic, which is generally very light; it’s some Kenyan thing I don’t understand where some days we will wait at various points for ten minutes or so, occasionally reversing ten metres and then rolling forward again, followed by much discussion in Luo. On other occasions, time will be taken up by three guys trying to strap a hundred kilo bag of grain to the roof or some such. And another thing: why do they wait until the minibus is full before driving the 50 metres back to the petrol station to fill up? Why can’t they do that before taking on passengers??

But I digress. I was telling a Kite story. So I’m up at my usual time of 7…ish this morning, and like a ninja I roll straight into my much-refined-and-now-almost-perfected morning routine whereby I go to the kitchen and put some coffee on the stove, and then, having already had my full bucket shower the night before (an innovation for me), I fill the bucket again with a smaller amount of water, give my face a good wash, get dressed and then head back to the kitchen where the coffee will now just be ready (actually this part is where the routine still needs a bit more refinement – at the moment I’m still getting back to the kitchen about 3 minutes after the coffee starts boiling. And you don’t want boiled coffee, believe me). Then I tuck in to my Weetabix and banana and my slightly burnt coffee, read a few pages of my book and I’m ready to go.

This morning I get all this done by about 8am – less than a one hour preparation time (if you don’t count the 10-20 minutes after 7am that I’m lying in bed thinking about getting up) which is pretty much a miracle by my standards at home. So I have this luxurious 50 minute stretch before I have to leave – unheard of! I settle in to check my emails. Predictably, this is where the wheels start to fall off because of course it takes me longer than 50 minutes to check my emails (internet is very slow here plus I haven’t checked for a few days so there are quite a few. Plus I’m just generally very slow at everything). It gets to 8:45, 8:50, 8:55 and I still haven’t quite finished. I start to be selective and just read the ones that look like they might be particularly interesting. Finally at about 8:57 I finish up, grab my bag and run out the door. I’ll just have to be seven minutes late, ah well.

I get about 50 metres down the road and remember that the class actually starts at 10am, not 9am.

Having magically transformed seven minutes late into 53 minutes early, I head back inside and decide I will use my bonus 43 minutes (plus the 10 minute walk) to write a new blog post.

Then I think “well, that’s an amusing story, why don’t I open the post with that?” Continuing in the classic Kite vein however, my introductory story has turned out to be as long as a whole post in itself. It’s also 9:42am now and this time I really will be late if I don’t finish up in the next few minutes. So instead I’ll try to give this post at least a bit of substantive content by closing with a few miscellaneous tidbits about things I’ve done and seen that won’t fit into a full post themselves. Here goes:

* A couple of days ago, I used a hoe for the first time (careful - that’s hoe with an e on the end – look it up). I sucked at it (remember – ‘e’ on the end) – the head kept spinning around every time I tried to hit the ground with it. The local women who were showing me how to do it killed themselves laughing.

* I was prepared for lots of dust here, but not for the mud (although if I’d thought about it I could have figured it out – it’s the rainy season and what happens to dust when it gets wet? Duh). After a big rain it doesn’t take too long walking around before you are a good couple of inches taller from the mud stuck to the bottom of your shoes. As a result, I am now the proud owner of a wicked pair of gumboots. Weather here has generally been surprising – for example, it’s baking hot during the day but gets quite cold at night. And I’ve seen real tropical rain for the first time.

* A few weekends ago I refereed a soccer game between the village kids and some kids from one of the nearby schools. I allowed a controversial goal which decided the game. Oops. I also watched Manchester Utd beat Manchester City in the last minute of injury time in a tin shed full of about 80 Kenyan men, on a small tv run off a generator whose petrol fumes were filling the room. Awesome.

* I’ve never lived in a rural area before. I was surprised to learn that roosters actually crow all day, not just first thing in the morning. I guess they start crowing first thing, which is where they get their reputation from.

Ok that will do for now, I have to get to the class. And guess what – it’s 9:54am. Late again!