So much to learn......

I have now been living in Africa for just over a year. Of course thats no time at all. But the arrival of a bunch of new people to coincide with the school term in September and the sad departure of some older hands means I am seen by some (in the very transient school community at least) as close to being a relatively established Nairobi inhabitant. I don't feel like that at all and whilst I've learnt lots - like how to tell when bananas are ready to pick, how to tuck the kids up at night under a mosquito net, that Nairobi is Massai for "very cold", not to be surprised by cars coming straight at you on the wrong side of the road and that an irregular power supply seriously reduces rows over screen time - each day I realise that I still have so much to learn about life in Nairobi, Kenya and the wider region.

Picking up the car from a service a few months ago. I checked that they had given me a full invoice. I checked that they had dealt with the overheating engine and slow puncture - yes, with the old, broken bit of the radiator as proof and no, with the flakey tyre just repumped and the bulge still obvious but no charge on the invoice. But I didn't check whether they had decided to take apart the rear door and then not to put it back together. I realised my mistake when I came to put a bit of shopping in the boot an hour later and found the inner bit of the door taking up the space. Turns out they were planning to fix our window but didn't have the part so just left it till they could get the part. Fair enough. But next time I will look more closely both at the things I've asked for and then at all the things I haven't and try and avoid the extra journey back to get it sorted - an early lesson here was that things just take longer and more attempts to get done.

I'm also learning lots at work, about working across multiple cultures, about how to make sure my home working time is productive despite occasionally being without power or Internet coverage - I keep my laptop charged and have found a few good coffee shops between home and school with wifi and power sockets (and good latte). And about the politics, opportunities and challenges for Kenya and the wider region. I'm getting to travel round a bit and have met some fascinating people from all walks of life with lots of interesting things to say - and alongside some of these people I've learnt that its unwise to base a pitch for funding solely on a power point presentation and a projector when your office has a very unreliable electricity supply.

I think we are all also learning to be more adaptable here whether it's changing our shopping list because the thing that's wanted isn't on the shelf, or changing our plans because some unexpected traffic makes them unrealistic, or changing the evening meal because there is no power, or understanding that cafes don't always have everything that's on their menu - although it was a bit surprising to find one the other day that didn't have anything on its extensive menu unless you wanted a burger with coffee. I can see why long term planning isn't really a feature of life here. As a good friend observed its more a case of learning that if you plan early you plan twice. And as someone who has tended to rely on a fair bit of careful planning to juggle the various things in my life that has taken a little bit of adjustment.



Anne

Supermarket sweep

Having made 2 visits to the UK in April, and with a trip later this month I thought I'd share a little insight into the oddities of my UK shopping lists. Play ground chats with other UK mums here and the various postings on work's social network page show I'm not alone in cramming bags with a few home treats and things that are hard to get here (at affordable prices at least). And all of us have received odd looks at the till as we make our last minute purchases of strong wood glue, cheddar cheese and chocolate chips.
We are very lucky and can shop on line for books and toys and new scaletrix control handles (clearly an essential item, not a toy) and get them delivered through my work but there are restrictions - no food, no liquids and no nerf guns. It takes a bit of time to arrive, which makes it hard to return clothes that don't fit quite the way the picture suggested they would. And also means the kids don't get the immediacy of shopping they enjoy. So I have a running list which everyone adds to between visits (ours to the UK and those of our visitors who we think we can prevail upon to stock up ). On my last trip I had 20 minutes at Tesco express on my way to Heathrow and got pretty much everything I needed apart from the wood glue or match attax cards and then had a productive tube journey trying to pack it all into my bag which I think kept my fellow passengers amused.
Along with the above items, my usual list includes strong sun cream, jelly, ant powder to deal with the thousands of ants and termites who seek to move in whenever they spot a chance, good quality chocolate, European wine, Parmesan, chorizo, nerf guns and bullets, lunch box snacks, wine gums, angel delights, mango pickle (which is madness when we have so many fresh mangos but there is a particular brand the kids like), good shampoo, toothpaste and bubble bath, swimming stuff as ours gets worn through at a fair rate, footballs, rugby balls, shoes of all varieties, marmite and some magazines and newspapers. No wonder I get funny looks!

Anne

Clocking up the air miles

After my flying visit to London in early February for work and Tim's trip back in March the kids have been really keen to cross continents and spend a little time with friends and family. So on Monday night I found myself sitting at JKIA in Nairobi with three kids waiting for a late night flight back to the UK. Tim is staying put - he has read the weather reports from the UK (and has work to do).
Just over 2 Years ago we went to a family wedding in India. I flew first with the kids and I remember being a little daunted at the prospect of a long haul over night flight navigating 3 small people, our bags, their travel sickness, our arrival in the early hours etc. I was struck on Monday by how much more straightforward this now feels. Of course they are a couple of years older and we are now mainly flying between known destinations. But we are all just much more familiar with the whole experience and it is much calmer all round. I've managed to reduce hand luggage to passports, a pen for the endless form filling and electronic goods too precious and tempting for others to go in the hold. The kids pack their own bags (with a quick once over from Tim or me to check underwear quantities, shoes and appropriate clothing and so we know what must not be left behind in the return pack). And they know what to expect at the airport so take the searches and queues in their stride (with the occasional bickering and assault on each other when it takes too long).
Now they confidently tell the driver taking us to the airport which airline we are taking and the benefits of BA over KQ. They ask for the bill at the airport coffee shop, knowing that it takes a while to appear at this particular cafe.

And they fall asleep when they can rather than try and keep awake for the movies and plane food - helped on this flight by a busy afternoon of egg hunting and swimming with some families from work.

Cool as they are about international travel, I am still not quite ready for them to be Flying alone so after quality time with family, celebrating turning 7 and spotting a few signs of English spring from behind the snow we are heading home together on Thursday for the start of school and I then pop back to the UK for a 2 day course the following week. I tried to combine it more efficiently but in the end decided that an extra 17 hours flying time for me, with movie watching and book reading was the best option domestically if not in carbon offsetting.

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