All Purpose Room

I'm here in Nairobi to help teach a literacy course, with two great people who's company I really enjoy.  I have a feeling we are going to spend a lot of time in our "office".  I think, however, the "office" is going to become more of an All Purpose Room.  For two days in a row now, it has become our meeting place, our snacking place, and, most importantly, our gym.

Today, we set up our exercize DVD, but because we have done that same DVD so many times when we were here all together in February, we're getting a bit bored by the woman's chatting through the whole thing, and we know the routine pretty well.  So we had a second computer, showing Season 1 of the "Big Bang Theory" at the same time.  The exercize routine and the episode are exactly the same length, so it works quite well.  And as long as I have Leonard and Sheldon to entertain me, exercizing ain't so bad!

There and back again

Im back here, and getting ready to leave again. From Monday, I'll be spending the next two months in Nairobi! Maybe once I get there I will get back to the blog. There are just too many other things to do, and not enough hours of electricity in which to do them. But I'm fine. And amp, rest assured that all the children are fine... At the expense of all the others :(

In case you don't see me for a few weeks...

... it's because I'm travelling to a country which blocks blogspot blogs.  I go there on Sunday and shall return in two weeks to the land of.. um... well, not sure what we are a land of at the moment.  If I get time tomorrow while the generator is on, though, I will post some picts of my adventure at a local school which took place today.  Or I will post pictures of the amazing transformation of the tiles in my shower, thanks to a little toilet bowl cleaner with hydrochloric acid.  Amazing, I tell you, amazing.

Meetings and Mossies

For the whole day today I was at a meeting with education partners (aka, other NGOs, including UNESCO) and the Ministry of Ed folks.  You'd think I'd know better after being in this country for so long, but the invitation letter that I got said that the meeting would start at 9am.  Since it was being organized by UNESCO and was mainly partners attending, I thought that it would start relatively close to on time.  Plus, on our side here, we're a bit short of vehicles on the compound, and it worked better for the guy who was driving me to the meeting to be back to the compound before 9:30am.

Anyway, I pitched up at the place a bit later than 9am, and I was the only one there.  The UNESCO folks who were hosting were slowly wandering in with various bits of stationary for the meeting.  I AM smart enough to have brought my computer with me, though, so at least I could work on something while I waited, and since I was the first one there, I was able to choose an ideal sit, under the A/C and next to an electric socket to plug in my computer.  Finally, at 10:45am.  Yes, 10:45am, the Director of the gov't department that was sponsoring the workshop pitched up, and he was able to "open" the workshop with a rather interesting speech.  Then he left.  And we started to talk about Functional Adult Literacy programs!

I was so pleased, though, that the educational advisor from UNESCO was preaching about the value of mother tongue, and really trying to pin people down to put their money where their mouths are, so to speak.  She was GREAT, saying all the right things and asking all the right questions.  She even spoke about the fact that "reading" means getting meaning from print, and not just pronouncing the words on a page.  I know, revolutionary idea, eh?  But it IS a revolutionary idea here, for people who have had all of their education in a foreign language.

The crazy thing, though, is that this woman from UNESCO had all the workshop participants eating out of the palm of her hand!  They ALL started preaching the gospel of the wonders of mother tongue education!  It was a beautiful thing.  And since I was the only person there from any organization that works with languages, I got a lot of "airtime".  I had a chance to answer a lot of questions and discuss a lot of the issues, sharing our experiences over the last several years in working with languages here.  It's just so encouraging to see people starting to listen and starting to think about language issues, after so many years of knocking on doors.

This UNESCO woman was getting me all excited today, too, and all day I was thinking of all the things we can work together on, and how I would love to invite her over for supper and really get to know her better.  So I asked the fateful question over tea... "How long are you going to be here?".  I think my eyes started to light up when she said, "Oh, I'm going to be here a really long time!"  And then I'm certain my face fell when she continued with, "I'll be here for a whole 6 months!"

It is difficult when there is so much coming and going - someone comes to start a wonderful program and understands the situation... and then they leave in 6 months... and you start all over again with the new person.  And that's just talking about the professional difficulties in trying to get any work done - not to mention the fact that it's hard to make friends with people in this sort of situation!

I did have a good chuckle at the meeting, though, when I went to greet someone that I met from the gov't a few years ago.  He was a participant in a workshop that I was facilitating.  The first thing he says to me is, "Oh, I didn't recognize you, because you've become so fat."  Now how is THAT for an opening line?!

So that's the meeting part of this post. The mossie part is just a bit of a complaint about the gizzilions of mosquitoes and flies in the house.  I don't know where all these flies are coming from, but they are everywhere today!  Thank the Lord for DEET :)

Holiday!

Around here, you never quite know when the holidays are coming.  I had an idea that today would be a holiday, because it is in the surrounding countries, and it has been in the past.  But honestly, I couldn't say for sure yesterday if it would be a public holiday or not.  Neither could anyone else. I asked SO many people yesterday if it was a holiday today, but no one seemed to know.  Then, to make matters worse, all my local colleagues started asking ME if today was a holiday!  Anyway, I woke up this morning, and the children were playing football in the field next to my house, instead of going to school, so that's a pretty key indicator that today is a holiday.

But I've still got lots to do - it's a bright sunny day today, so first thing on the agenda was laundry!  I missed my normal laundry day on the weekend, because it was raining!  But today, it's a gorgeous day out there, though I have a feeling it will get hot this afternoon again.  Anyway, now that the laundry is done, I have kicked Zane out of his, er, I mean, MY chair, and am about to get some work done.  Nice to have a day with fewer "interruptions" in order to get a few things completed :)  Tomorrow I get to go to an all day meeting to discuss adult literacy in this country.  We've been invited, together with a few other NGOs, to meet with the Ministry of Education.  So hopefully it will be a good meeting.  But that means I have a few things to get together for that meeting... not the least of which is to figure out where it is!

Everything is chugging along as usual here.  I ate some of the leaves from my latest planting in the garden!  That was exciting!  Yes, that's pretty much the most exciting thing that has happened over the past few weeks.