Monday morning was an opportunity for Matthew to fill in the Dutch students who hadn’t yet been briefed on the goings on in this part of Africa, so I stayed back at the guesthouse leaving Matthew to an empty office for his meeting. I spent most of the morning hanging around, washing and sitting until lunch time then returned to the office for some time in the afternoon. Today I was particularly tired so towards the end of the day I left the office slightly early and returned home for an afternoon nap before dinner.
Back at the house I heard the piano going so I nipped into the house so see who was producing the nice sounds. On entry I saw Naomi sat working the keys and asked her to teach me a little more than I already knew. We spent some time trying to master a short tune, where I played the main tune whilst Naomi added extra notes to flower it up a bit. It was fun and I think I can still remember how to play it so maybe if I get myself a nice keyboard when I get home, I may have the foundations to learn a little more. I tried sleeping after this but I couldn’t really get to sleep with my mind racing over lots of little irrelevant things. I got up to watch television but as I switched on the box, the power suddenly failed on me.
We had our first evening devotion with Tony this evening and he was very clear and sent us a message that was short, precise and it meant a lot to us for his company.
Tuesday morning there was no power and with my schedule beginning to get less busy I had the opportunity to join in with other things going on around the compound such as the Holiday Club. John was leading the morning session and at about 9am he found himself at the front of the hall faced with many children all wanting to be entertained whilst the other main leaders finished their early morning meetings. I wouldn’t exactly say I came to the rescue but I helped aid John as he so wonderfully taught the children a song with actions, which was written on the blackboard behind him. The theme for this Holiday Club was “Step by step with Jesus”, so he had decided to teach the children a couple of verses from the song “I want to walk with Jesus Christ”. John very professionally had made up some actions to the song which found them doing all kinds of hand movements to represents words such as “joy” and “complete control” and I had even helped suggest one or two, involving some moves that looked very similar to something you would find in a typical boy band video. Throughout the morning, until the hall was split into groups which were taken to different classrooms, I stuck around and stood at the front of the hall feeling a bit like a silly presenter on an early morning children’s television show. It was good fun and would have been even more rewarding if I wasn’t still feeling tired, but never the less John seemed grateful for my company and his first morning was successful. 
I left John to teach some stories from the Bible and left to go back to the guesthouse to sleep as I felt that if I didn’t have some rest now I would probably go insane. I had a couple of hours rest until lunch and woke up feeling still very tired but soon recovered and felt a lot better. After lunch I met with John who was at this time teaching the children some games that they could play on the open grass areas of the compound. The first game they learnt and played was “Stuck in the mud” which is like a very similar game to “Tag”, where once you are tagged by the appropriate person, you have to stand still until someone relieves you by crawling under your legs.
After some time of playing this they moved to another area and began to play the game “40 40”. This game basically had one seeker who would stand by the “safe point”, count to possibly 20 and then go looking for the rest the players who have previously hidden. If someone is spotted by the seeker then the seeker will run to the “safe point” tree and say “40, 40, I see you” and then the name of the person they have spotted. The children had a lot of fun with this and some were better than others at hiding. Some hid far away and never peeked out once, whilst others always hung close by and were constantly spotted. As a result of poor hiding places and maybe a lack of understand of the game, the quote of this particular day had to be “40, 40 I see you John”. One boy who was much older and bigger than the majority of children playing was called John and he was forever being spotted in his bright yellow shirt. The poor guy was nearly always first to be spotted but luckily he was saved from captivity with some saviours making it to the tree before the seeker and announcing “40, 40, save all”.
Leaving the area in which we played we spotted a large toad hopping around towards an old shed. As John nearly trod on it, I decided I would take a picture and then leave it to continue its mission to wherever it was that it was going.
Back round with the children before they left for the day, I thought I would join in with some of the children and allow them to assist me as I skipped. They had a long rope with one child holding one end and another at the alternate side, and I stood in the middle jumping when the time was right. Everyone knows that white men can’t jump, but on this occasion I was determine to be successful at my task. Jumping higher and higher every time to avoid the rope sweeping my feet, I soon found myself trying even harder to succeed and after a while slightly hurt my back. 
Back at the guesthouse on the balcony, Caspar was in the early stages of having his hair shaved off using both scissors and a beard trimmer to get the correct length. I watched as his hair went from quite long to almost as short as mine and then later assisted to tidy his back and sides up, being the professional I am. The blue bucket he used to collect the falling hair had a tidy amount stored in it in which he picked a piece that he would send to his girlfriend back home in a letter. The little romantic looked pretty cool with his new look and I’m sure he would now be much more comfortable when the sun decides to show its face.After Ughali for dinner we were joined by Tony for evening devotion and tonight he decided to bring two of his friends along. Lambert who I already knew and Sarah another lady from his group came to join in and sing and assist with the meeting. Lambert used the guitar and we sang a few songs and then Tony gave another one of his meaningful and well presented messages. As the meeting ended we lost our power so we sat around in the dark waiting for its return. I discussed a few things with Sarah where she told me her cousins who are now studying in the UK, attended the same church in Bradford as I have been attending. She told me how she enjoys singing and is involved in a group with Tony and Lambert and goes around with them spreading the word and using music and songs to encourage and entertain listeners. We soon broke into song and afterwards I took it upon myself to sing a few popular songs in which a few people joined in with. John strummed away on the guitar along to “As long as you love me” by the Backstreet Boys, “Flying without wings” by Westlife and also broke into “When you say nothing at all” by Ronan Keating. Lambert even involved himself in a little rendition of “Walking away” by Craig David, however as most of us didn’t know the words it wasn’t as successful as we would have liked. All in all this evening was great and it was lovely to sit around especially in the candle light singing and discussing many different topics. The guys eventually left from a lively session using a torch kindly lent by Merel.
The morning session for the Holiday Club on Wednesday again found me helping John with the actions and playing a few games of “Simon says” and “Heads shoulders, knees and toes”. The kids loved it and it was really nice to be involved enthusiastically with everyone. It’s very rewarding to see the children smiling as you are teaching them and the staff around watching were very impressed with the way things were unfolding with Johns teaching in the club.
After the morning session with John I skipped across to the office and did a little more work and wrote some blog. Not long passed and I was back with John assessing some drawings that the children had done to illustrate a story from the bible. We chose a winner whose piece was very detailed and had some good artistic skills and then sat discussing a few things. I spent the good part of an hour talking and walking with John back to the guesthouse for my lunch and it was really encouraging to be able to speak with someone who could appreciate what I had to say and who could respond in such a way that didn’t make me feel under educated and stupid. He is a top guy and once again I will miss his company but I'm sure there will be many more inspiring conversations to come.
After the morning session with John I skipped across to the office and did a little more work and wrote some blog. Not long passed and I was back with John assessing some drawings that the children had done to illustrate a story from the bible. We chose a winner whose piece was very detailed and had some good artistic skills and then sat discussing a few things. I spent the good part of an hour talking and walking with John back to the guesthouse for my lunch and it was really encouraging to be able to speak with someone who could appreciate what I had to say and who could respond in such a way that didn’t make me feel under educated and stupid. He is a top guy and once again I will miss his company but I'm sure there will be many more inspiring conversations to come.
After lunch I took an expedition down into town with Emily but not until we had first written out a list of ingredients we would need for our plan to prepare dinner. Emily and I had discussed that it would be a nice idea to show our appreciation to the staff that had worked so hard over the past weeks to ensure our stay was comfortable and that we were well catered for. We wanted to repay them and instead of them cooking a meal for us, we wanted to prepare something for them so that they could come along and eat with us. In town we first hit Risiki’s supermarket and got some ingredients for our meal. We had decided we were going to prepare a chicken curry, as we wanted to see how the Kuku was prepared and also wanted to have chapattis along side it to prove we could make them from the instructions Helen so kindly gave us. Grabbing curry powder, rice, flour and many more items we dashed around the supermarket and left for the small market at the junction where we collected our fruit and veg. Once we had got most of our items it was time to find the fun part of the whole process and collect two live kuku’s to take back to the guesthouse. We were sent back and forth to many different places as we asked where we could get Kuku. I think some people thought we wanted a meal so as a result we were directed to many restaurants and cafes. Eventually after finding a couple of places where they were trying to sell us the birds at a price associated with the colour of our skin, we found somewhere with reasonable prices that allowed us to have two Kuku’s put in a box for just short of 600 Shillings.Back in the kitchen of the guesthouse where the time was now approaching 4pm, we realised we weren’t going to have time to prepare the meal today as initially planned. Instead of trying to rush and probably not being successful in completing it on time, we thought it would be best to just prepare a pudding this evening instead. Cutting up two loafs of bread into quarters and removing the crusts; we added this to some raisins and milk and made some bread and butter pudding. I put and left this in the oven just before dinner and Emily removed it at the right time for us to eat it during our devotion. We shared the pudding which I admittedly wasn’t too keen on at first, but everyone seemed to enjoy it and the tray it was served on was completely finished.
After morning devotion on Thursday morning with no Matthew as he had gone to collect new visitors in Kisumu, I came straight back to the guesthouse with Emily at 9am. This morning devotion was taken by Emily and was presented extremely well. She was so clear and her message was fresh and I think she did an amazing job of passing across the message that Jesus the same all over the world. Back at the guesthouse it was now time to prepare the Kuku which meant that we would have to kill them first where I was quite hesitant if I could actually do it. 
Mark began with the first Kuku, leaving me to hold the remaining one upside down by its legs. He sat on the chair and demonstrated how the whole killing process should be done. Watching his every move, I was beginning to question even more if I could actually perform as it looked slightly gruesome and challenging. After the first bird was down, it was my turn to be seated and step up. Encouraged by the fact that Matthew had done this once before and I wanted to be equally as brave, I calmly placed one foot on the Kuku’s wings, one on it’s two legs and held onto it neck avoiding getting pecked by its beak. All of a sudden the whole task became even more real as I began plucking some feathers from his neck where I would begin sawing with the knife I had gripped in my other hand. Once the feathers were removed I began to cut and felt so mean but had to be strong and confident. Slightly overwhelmed and wanting to finish as quickly as possible, I mistakably cut all the way through the neck taking off the head which rolled under my seat on the floor. Shocked and with nothing left to hold I released the Kuku which started to move with blood squirting out. Mark shouted to stand on it to contain the blood so I placed my foot firmly onto its body. Soon it was over and they were both dead ad we could now begin to prepare them in a form that we could use for our curry. 
Placing them in boiling water allowed us to remove the feathers from their body. Once they were stripped we started to remove their insides by taking off the back end and pulling out the organs with our hands. The first Kuku popped out a developed egg that unfortunately fell and smashed on the floor, but also had three other smaller eggs still left inside. We pulled out the smelly intestines that nearly made me sick and began cutting in appropriate places. We soon had a pan full of wings, legs and other parts to the Kuku that we left to later continue preparing.After cleaning the kitchen of blood and guts, I head across to the office to see how John was getting on. At this point he was no where to be seen as he was very busy with his tasks, so I continued working in the office on some letters and things. It was soon lunch time and I arrived back to find that we were having a slightly different, more tradition meal for lunch and found mashed banana’s, chestnut sauce and cabbage all presented on our plates. We waited for some other guests to arrive but as they took longer than expected, we began to eat at the table with more places laid out than usual. The quote for this particular afternoon was “We could hide it in the plants but they aren’t real”, so I’ll leave it to you to decide whether we all enjoyed all of our meal.
Towards the end of our lunch we were joined by Anne, Solomon, some visitors and other people from the Mission where Emily and I helped Mark prepare and serve the newly arrived guests. The visitors were only stopping for the day as they had come to Kenya for a wedding at the weekend and were on their last days here in Africa.I spent the afternoon kneading dough and separating and preparing chapatti. It took me a while but I got the whole process right at least and made some nice oily bases that would later be re-rolled and fried. Emily began mixing the Kuku with curry powder and other ingredients and left it to cook whilst she went for a walk. My afternoon was taken up mostly by the chapatti and I was successful in carrying them and placing them into the frying pan. I only made two square ones, which were intentional done and made some impressive round ones without any guidance by anyone.
This meal coincided nicely with it being the birthday of two of the Dutch students. Marlene was 21 and Ilken was 23 and the room in where we would eat was nicely decorated by Mark with some decorations provided by Caspar and Merel. There were balloons, heart shaped paper and small Holland flags pinned around the table and it looked very festively laid out. Unfortunately Matthew and Helen could not attend to see what we had done, however we did have the company of both Rose and Mark who made the evening a complete success. Even though we were sat with no power and only had the gas lamp lighting the room, it was nice to sit around talking and laughing whilst at the same time the birthday boy and girl received their presents. After dinner once the lights came back on, I sat with the guys and girls from Holland in the guesthouse. Caspar and I decided to play the stick game Mikado and we couldn’t stop laughing whenever a mistake was made. I think we believed the game was pretty pointless and the fact that we weren’t very good made us laugh and almost cry even more. I have such a fun time and laugh just being in the presence of Caspar and he always knows how to get an entertaining atmosphere. I don’t exactly what makes him so funny but think it’s possibly a mix between what he says and the accent he says it in. We sat around waiting for possibly some new arrivals but were pretty sure that we would be in bed before they came back.
In the morning I woke up extra early to continue learning how to be more productive in the kitchen and assisted Mark making pancakes. I helped mix the dough and placed it in the pan to cook. I was preparing for new visitors this morning and was keen to do a good job. John, the newest arrival who is a professor here to teach many communities about agriculture, was the first be seated for breakfast. Emma, another new visitor, was still very tired so didn’t make it up for breakfast but never the less still had a good atmosphere with it being John and Emily’s final breakfast with us.
I walked with John and Emily quickly to morning devotion as it was their last one and they didn’t want to be too late. During the devotion the couple were prayed for and it was told that they would be dearly missed. It was quite emotionally really even though they had only been here a couple of weeks and I was beginning to worry how I would feel when it was finally my turn to come back.
Back at the guesthouse I found Merel and Caspar working on their analysis stage for their project. Their project whilst being here is to design and develop a wheelchair that will be suitable for the Kenyan conditions but most importantly had to be hand powered. They sketched up some designs and also began to write, in English, the problems with the current system. They asked me to check over their English and I suggested where changes needed to be made. Overall what they had written was very good and I'm pretty sure if I was in their position, even with training my Dutch wouldn’t be half as good.Soon after I was done chatting and helping Caspar and Merel, I left with Matthew and Dennis into town before proceeding to the office to look over a few notes. In town Dennis went to have his hair cut at an African barber shop just across from Risiki’s, where the shop occupied posters of famous black people with cool and crazy hair styles. It cost him 20 shillings to have a sharp shaven cut then he agreed to help me with my notes on the education system here in Kenya. At the office it was hard to keep focussed as the office I am based is in now beginning to become the same old and I'm way too familiar with my surroundings. Packing up my laptop I was about to leave when I was called into the main hall to set up a projector for a seminar that was just about to be held.
Back at the guesthouse I sat in the corner of the balcony with Dennis where he read over my previous notes and marked where changes needed to be made. We talked over how the system is and changed my notes to make a better account of exactly how the system works. Once I had finished I began to discuss a few of my notes with John.
At this time Emma had arrived from wandering around on day one of her stay and I had my first encounter with her. First impressions are that she is a nice, sweet, pretty girl that will definitely work well with the other guests along the three weeks of her stay. Today we had an extra lively lunch filling Matthew and the new arrivals in on the previous day about the killing of the chicken and the meal.
After lunch I sat with John and Emily on the balcony as they made phone calls trying to arrange some accommodation for their remaining days travelling. They managed to find somewhere and we had a laugh about what they could find when they got there. I soon left them to get on with their packing and left for the office to continue with some work.
At the office the power was on and off so it was quite hard to do anything on the computer. After some time I decided I would go for a ride on the bike maybe into town and then back again. On the way I bumped into Dennis who was on his way back from seeing his cousin off on a bus to visit some people and we decided to drop my bike off and take a walk into town for one last snack at Kim’s Dishes before he left for Kakamega on Monday. On the way we spotted the Dutch group sat outside Mount Crest having a drink waiting for another shop to draft up some details they needed for their project. Dennis and I had a nice chat at Kim’s and ate some good food then returned back to the guesthouse around 4pm.
Back at the guesthouse I sat talking with Caspar and Emma whilst the other committed Dutch students did some exercises using skipping ropes and also doing press ups. The girls were better than the boys and with Merel being a footballer, she was very determine to keep fit over her 11 weeks here in Kimilili.
This evening John and Emily were eating at the house so they hung around showing off their new attire as we tucked into our Friday dinner. Once we had finished all of us went and sat in the guesthouse talking before John and Emily left for the family house. They didn’t know what time they would be back from the house but we promised them we would stay up and talk with them when they returned, as they would be off early in the morning so none of us would have said a proper goodbye. We lounged around watching Extreme Makeover programmes on the television whilst waiting for the couple to return. Eventually after a couple of hours of eating and fellowship with the family they returned ready to say their goodbyes.
It was really sad to know that in the morning they would have left for their trip across Africa and that they would be no longer entertaining us with their company here at the guesthouse. They presented me with a card they had wrote which I am saving to read at a later date, maybe on the plane, and we hugged and wished each other a safe and enjoyable journey. There wasn’t very much to say apart from that they would be dearly missed and every second spent with them way appreciated, then we all departed our separate ways and left for bed.
I had mentioned I would get up in the morning early to see them off but they insisted otherwise. Maybe ill just wish them a quick farewell in the morning if I am successful in catching them.
1 week left x
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