Happy Easter

The rains are back, the may flies are out in force - apparently they are a tasty snack when fried but we are yet to test that - and the weather is distinctly cooler (although not a patch on the near freezing temperatures the kids and I are going to find in the UK next week when we pop back to see friends and family for the school holidays). The kids have had a very mellow start to the holidays, hanging out at home, playing a little cricket and badminton (only 2 shuttlecocks stuck in the mango tree just now), having an occasional swim and creating lots of mess with Lego and creative play - an erratic power supply has curtailed their efforts to sit in front of various screens.

We have had fun getting ready for Easter by dying eggs and then searching high and low for them in the garden today - swapping them for mini chocolate eggs with lots of heated debate about who should get most.....





Peter, our great eskari looked on in bewildered amusement as the kids raced round the garden in pyjamas this morning but took it all in and happily hid a second batch of eggs for an afternoon hunt with friends who came to lunch. And we have a third hunt at friends tomorrow afternoon, assuming my emergency supply of mini eggs holds out. It was hastily requisitioned from a friend who was back in the UK last week after Matthew and I failed in our attempts to find an adequate, affordable alternative here - I'm keeping quite about the carbon footprint of these particular chocolates.

Anne

F is for fire lighters, friends and fathers

When I started blogging I wasn't sure where it would take me, how long I would stick at it and how often I'd have something that I thought was interesting enough to write about. A year on I realise that I really enjoy some quiet time reflecting on what's happening in and around our lives. Jotting my thoughts and observations down in a blog has proved to be a good way of keeping our memories and of sharing news with friends, family and a few random strangers who (according to the blog stats) dip into my meanderings. As for wondering if I would have things to write about......I had obviously never lived in Africa.

This week is a great example. Nothing particular planned. Kids are back at school after half term and have final hockey matches of the term, homework and already looking forward to the Easter holidays in their minds. I have work to get on with and the traffic to re-acclimatise to after a week of election fuelled empty streets. The rains are on their way - a few weeks earlier than last year which may avoid milk and butter shortages and any last minute post election hot tempers. So a pretty normal week. And with Tim away I thought it the perfect time to catch up with some of my good female friends here (and ensure at least one evening of adult company). Nothing fancy, just some simple food, plenty of wine and good company with a mix of people I know through school playground, work, meeting on holiday, friends of friends etc.

It was all going really well. I'd planned the food, accepted very generous offers by a couple of people to sort puddings, commissioned the shopping and food preparation (some bits of my life are just soooo simple here), put the wine in the fridge, got the kids off to school and gone to work. I didn't really worry that there wasn't any power when I got home and that it had been off all day - our fridge is pretty insulated and stuff stays cold for a while and the power is often off in the day whilst Kenya power do something that looks lethal with electric cables along the roads near us. And its generally back on by about 530 when the guys pack up.

Anyway, all I had to do was make a white sauce, put the constituent parts of my friend Pat's entirely reliable moussaka recipe together, mix a salad, steam a few veg and we'd be there. So I placed candles and torches around the garden to look pretty, set a fire ready to light outside, sat down and did homework with Matthew, chatted to Jamie and watched Katie cut paper into tiny bits. By about 630, with increasingly hungry and grumpy kids and no sign of power I was a little less relaxed. The kids fished out more candles and spread them round the house for me to light. I changed my plan for a starter to guacamole (fresh from the tree in our garden) and crackers and decided that now was the time to find out quite how impressive my dad's old, huge, American gas BBQ is.





By the time people turned up just before 8 I was rummaging for a clean shirt that didn't smell of smoke with a head torch, had the boys in their pj's (and element as no hot water meant no showers) helping our guard on the gate and Katie trying to read by candlelight. My friends were a little perplexed by my choice of very low lighting but quickly took the lack of power in their stride. The apple pie arrived warm from the oven and we popped it into my Wonderbagto keep it that way. I opened lots of wine (most still chilled) and kept my fingers crossed.



It was a really fun evening, with some great friends - when we came inside to eat all 3 kids complained and asked us to keep the noise down (I'm recording that for future use). And I know that with this group of people it would have been like that whatever food I had served up. I also know that if my dad were still around he would have been thrilled to discover that you can of course bake moussaka on a BBQ, even if it has a certain smokey flavour and cleaning the dishes afterwards requires some pretty major effort (if not, on this occasion, by me).

Anne

Mothers' Day

Tim is back in the UK for a few days so its my turn to be home alone with the kids. And we decided that Sunday was the day we would finally get round to adopting an elephant (as you do when living only a few miles from a world renowned Elephant orphanage). So we set off to watch feeding time and choose our Ellie. The kids had some Christmas money explicitly for this and also to fund some sort of support for human orphans/ street kids. They haven't yet quite decided how best to do this latter giving in a way that properly involves them but at the moment their thinking centres on providing football gear to slumdwellers fc - the kids team from the slum that backs onto their school, which recently thrashed the U13 school team 7-0. My suggestion that these children might have more need of school books wasn't helpful.

Anyway, back to the elephants, where we managed to sponsor both a mischievous rhino and a year old elephant called Barsalinga who was born just after we arrived in Kenya and was found next to his dying mother, who had been shot by poachers, when just a couple of weeks old.

The boys have been absorbing his bio data and learning lots of facts about ivory recoveries and poaching incidents last year. Katie says she would have preferred a girl. As we were leaving she announced that she could not believe we forgot the elephant - I had visions of putting it in the back of our land cruiser and bringing it home to trample down the maize and asked her if she really thought this would be wise. Turns out she had said adopted not forgot. Phew - don't think I could have coped with her determined efforts to take our new foster infant home!

Then off to lunch and as we got there, the kids wondered why Nairobi was suddenly feeling busy again. Partly that the election result was finally announced this weekend, 5 days after voting closed, so people are getting back to work and on with their lives again. Partly too that it was Mothering Sunday so people were going out to lunch together. Oooops. A delayed half term which meant school weren't filling art classes with Mother's Day cards last week and an absent dad meant the children weren't prepared for this revelation. Fantastic behaviour ensued over lunch followed by a suggestion we pop to the green grocer for a few things and by the way could they have a little money.......

Whilst I topped up on fruit and freshly squeezed juice they consulted "secretly", negotiated and then presented me with my lovely bunch of flowers.

Sometimes its good to be reminded that they love you really, particularly after a relatively housebound half term!


Anne

International women

Friday was my second International women's day in Kenya and like many things that come around annually it caused me to reflect on what the last year has brought. And it left me wondering if I am any more of an International woman than I was a year ago.

I certainly know lots more at first hand (rather than from the pages of my Guardian) about the challenges women from East Africa face - poverty for most, with running the house and feeding the family very much still seen as women's work - the guys at our local fruit and veg stall were amused and a bit perplexed when Jamie biked up there yesterday to get the ingredients he needed to cook family supper. Wasn't that my job? High birth rates are the norm, leaving lots of women bringing up at least 4 kids, stretching already low incomes with older children living "up country" with relatives so they can go to school whilst their parents try and earn more money in the city. It's a tough life and I'm so impressed by the women I know who keep smiling and just get on with it.

Then there are the very high levels of gender based violence, a tradition of female circumcision and an apparent acceptance that men will be unfaithful in relationships (if the daily slot on prime time radio designed to expose and laugh at male infidelity is any indicator). When I was election observing a woman asked if she could take a photo of her filled in ballot paper before casting her vote. This of course isn't allowed as its one way of cashing in on bribes offered if you vote a certain way. But my Kenyan colleague instantly assumed she wanted it to avoid being beaten up by her husband when she got home. And when I was interviewing for a nanny a Kenyan friend advised against employing a married woman on the grounds her husband would not be happy if she stayed over to babysit and in many households would use the threat of violence to get his way. I chose not to take her advice on who I employed but the description of domestic life for many has stayed with me.

A year ago I had high hopes of doing something during our time here to make life better for women like this. But I haven't really delivered on that and have already filled my life to the point that I'm pretty sure I wont now do so. I make myself feel better by thinking that we provide a livelihood for a couple of women in our home (and support more families) and that we are doing our best to make sure they are better able to get and keep good jobs when they leave us than when they started. And I baked (and ate my share of) cakes for our IWD cake sale at work yesterday helping to raise nearly £2k for a rape centre here in Nairobi. But I know I'm just kidding myself and this isn't helping sustainable change for women here.

The new Kenyan constitution recognises the need for more female voices in high places. And Monday's election included a vote for women's rep in each constituency (on a pink ballot paper of course!). The choice was generally more limited than in other categories but its a move in the right direction. And 2 of Somalia's relatively new Government are women, including the Foreign secretary. So there are some very prominent role models. And I've met impressive local business women, civil society activists and government employees here, for example a woman who I met in November when she was in the midst of running training for electronic voter registration. She was juggling being a mum of four with her high pressured high profile role trying to make these elections fairer and more transparent than any before them. And she was doing so with heaps of humanity, energy and humour.

And as well as the East African women whose stories I now know more about, I have got to know lots of other inspiring International women at work, in the school playground and through friends of friends. Their individual experiences and stories are all of course different, but much is universal - relationships, parenting, managing expectations (yours and others), building happy homes, the domestics of life......and whilst of course I miss my friends from London and further afield, I have found some great new friends in the last year who help me enjoy the highs and get through the lows of life.

I'm still not sure if the year has made me more of an International woman but looking at Katie enjoying her half term roller blading I get the sense that its helping to shape the girl power of the future



Anne

Big cat diary

Tim and I started the week before last with a reception sponsored by Save the elephants and hosted by the British High Commission here focussed on raising awareness of the huge increase in poaching in Kenya and across Africa over the last couple of years. And we ended it with a family weekend away in the Massai Mara to celebrate Jamie's birthday. So, a very wildlife focused week (with the inevitable elections backdrop).

The poaching figures are pretty grim, with ivory from elephants and rhino horn the two most sought after items. Recent research suggests illegal killing of elephants has more than doubled in the last three years and its an equally sad story for Rhinos. Prices of ivory and horn are soaring and a culture of corruption and impunity mean the profits are high and the risks low for want to be poachers. But alongside these salutary figures and some horrible video footage of dead and mutilated elephants, the reception did give Tim the chance to chat to Saba Douglas-Hamilton again and put him in the right big cat frame of mind for the Mara....

After a year in Kenya we still hadn't made it to this world famous spot and as soon as I told the kids they could each choose a birthday destination Jamie was very clear he wanted to go to the Mara. It's between a 6 and 9 hour drive from Nairobi or just under an hour in a small plane - no contest I thought, despite a pretty significant price difference. The fun of a small plane, the speed of travel, the "free" air safari over Kenya including a fab view into a volcano just outside Naivasha.....but I hadn't quite factored in the impact on travel sick kids (even after lashings of stugeron all round). And by the time we arrived at our tranquil camp on the river (seeing elephants from the window as we came into land) there was a family consensus that we would drive next time.

Having recovered from the flight and had an evening chilling on the veranda by our tent and eating a delicious (and in Jamie's case huge) supper we were all restored and ready for our 6am wake up call complete with tea, hot chocolate and biscuits. And then it was a pattern of game drives, leg stretching and jumping in a pool, more drives, recharging camera batteries and eating lunch, more safari and then a cold beer or soda, a slide show about the animals and dinner before doing it all again on Sunday. And it was great.........

New folder View photos    Download all You are invited to view anne's album. This album has 31 files.

We saw so much, relaxed completely and had fun planing for a return trip with granny in October when its the migration. Luckily a combination of early starts, long days and plying the kids with larger doses of anti sickness drugs on the way back meant they slept rather than threw up. And Tim got the seat next to the pilot so it looks like a short flight is on the cards again for our next trip.






Anne

Ready, steady......

As Kenyans get ready to go to the polls tomorrow there's a nervous tension in Nairobi. It's broadly optimistic, with no one thinking there will be a repeat of the terrible, unexpected violence of 2008. But no one knows quite what it will be like. The Kenyans we know hope that their country is more mature than 5 years ago and has the confidence to sort its problems in court and not on the streets. But they are not quite sure and whilst they are hoping for the best everyone is getting ready in case it doesn't quite work out like that.
This being prepared just in case....is obvious in all sorts of ways. People who were here last time know that it was difficult to get to the shops and once there they were pretty empty. And it was difficult to get cash too and the mobile phone networks weren't robust. So there are longer than normal queues at the supermarket and the stall at the end of our road, as people take advantage of having February's pay cheque to stock up, just in case. The eggs had pretty much sold out from the main supermarket when Jamie and I went to get the ingredients for his birthday cake and post sleepover fry up yesterday. And people had at least 2 trolleys each - in a society where 95% of spend in supermarkets is with cash that is some pretty major stocking up. According to our guard there is no charcoal for sale in Kibera, one of Nairobi's main high density population area, and as that's the major source of cooking fuel tensions are already a bit higher than ideal.
On the money side, the Mpesa (mobile money) system here which has revolutionised how people send money home, pay bills, and generally manage their cash is showing a bit of strain. The network was down for most of Friday and its been difficult to deposit money into the system (which works on an assumption of cash in equalling cash out most of the time and is currently being swamped by people depositing much more than they are withdrawing).
For us, we have got in extra drinking water and beer, plenty of dry goods and tea, a supply of dollars (just in case we need to head for Tanzania and get visas on the border), a stocked freezer (balancing the risk of no power with the need to eat) and fullish fuel tanks. We have learnt how to use the new radios provided by my work and have had test sms messages from school and my work to check their emergency systems. The kids have had all sorts of emergency drills at school - jamie is most excited by the "lock down" which has all the kids diving under their desks whilst teachers lock doors and shut blinds - I suspect this is pretty routine training in schools in the US but its way beyond the usual fire drills I knew as a girl. They are on half term now (moved to coincide with elections) and lots of their friends have headed out of Kenya, with a fair few opting not to bother to return for the 2 week second half of term but to stay away till mid April and so avoid a Presidential run off. Those of us staying around are looking forward to using all those arts and crafts, word searches and board games that are stored away for rainy days. And we are planning a kids fun day for Thursday to avert the inevitable cabin fever (for both kids and parents) on the assumption that there should be a bit less uncertainty by then.
And against all this just in case planning there is real excitement. A great hope for Kenya's fairest and most credible elections yet, heralding its new constitution and real enthusiasm amongst many Kenyans for the elections, with lots of people I talk to planning to be at the polling stations for 5am to make sure they get to vote. But its a funny mix of hope and fear and certainly something to play by ear over the next few days.
Anne