Family Resemblance

So, we spent half term in Rwanda, bowled over by family resemblances:

first with the darling toddler cousins, who look so much themselves and yet so much too like their parents, grandparents, and wider family;

second with the amazing mountain gorillas, who are just so familiar in their behaviour. So Rolfe Family sitting on the sofa, waiting for Life to happen. So boisterous 8 year old boy coming and bouncing on the stomach of his snoozing father, just because he wants the attention. So preoccupied mother checking her school age child for lice yet again, sigh.  So overladen mother staggering back from the (bamboo shoot) supermarket with enough for the tribe, without any thanks, just tuck in, why don't you. So playground mothers sitting on a drafty bench in a windswept playground keeping a wary eye on their kids and needing to heave themselves up every now and again to admonish an unruly child or cuff an ear.  We humans sure ain't no race apart.

But disturbing beyond was seeing the links with the Rwandan people.  Evidence of the 1994 genocide is everywhere. One in seven people were killed, some million people. 300,000 children. Killed at close quarters, with machetes by neighbours, by petrol bombs on crowded churches.  This happened all over - seemingly idyllic hillside villages have handpainted signs against genocide next to cemeteries of victims.  One person was killed every six minutes over a six month period.  I want to distance ourselves from those who lived with this reality. 'It couldn't happen to me ... where I live ... in my country' I think, 'Rwanda is somehow different'.  But the awful triumph of the Kigali Genocide Memorial is to explode this myth.

Alongside the context setting, the statistics, the explanation of how genocide was brought about in Rwanda, the final few rooms gave me a tiny sense of the human cost. One room displays photos of 2000 genocide victims, the last photos their families have of them, taken in happier times. First day at school, wedding photo, graduation, beaming with arms around a best friend. Celebrations, events we've all shared.  People from our generation, in colour photos, dressed in clothes we've all worn.  And in the final room, life sized photos of twelve of the children killed.  Aged seven months, smart white dress, bottle in hand; a toddler sitting on a green and red tricycle, like T&K used to have; a darling beaming shiny-cheeked five year old boy;  a gawky ten year old.  Each photo has details of the child's life: her name, his best friend, favourite food, favourite activity.  And how they were killed - dashed against a wall, burnt to death, hacked to death in mother's arms - and, where known, where witnesses survived, of their final words. 

It's simplistic, but I understood there for the first time that a million people killed is the death of a million individuals. A million individuals, each of whom had a best friend.  A child with a red trike whose head was dashed against a wall.  Children who shared experiences with our children, killed while we were preoccupied with our own lives, with everyday life in 1994.  People no different from us or from our children in the things that matter.

I fret in my head alot that 'things aren't fair'.  Who on earth am I to expect that it should be fair, when here, in Africa, evidence of just how unfair and inequitable life can be is all around.

The Right Clothes to Get Kidnapped In?

I've never been a confident dresser.  I get carried away on the spur of the moment in shops - I've worn hareem pants when no longer a student, even squeezed myself into leopard skin lycra trousers because I thought they looked fun. They did. Just not on me.  So Kenya, and its sophisticated sartorial situations have been a steep steep learning curve.

How do you tell the new arrival at the Nairobi evening drinks do?  They are the one with blue-tinged skin and goosebumps.  Our location at 5500 feet means that evenings are chilly no matter how hot the day, - but that deters no one from inviting to twilight drinks, sundowners, on the veranda, when in the UK you'd be inside, next to the central heating.  Old hands snuggle in poised pashminas. 

My mate Lisa tussled with 'What do you wear for a Sunday afternoon walk in Karua Forest with the dogs. And Prince Edward?'  Karua Forest is wildish. Muddy. Rough underfoot. A forest without a National Trust caff. Lake in the middle for dogs to jump in. Must be accompanied by rangers as risk of mugging not negligible.  So far I'm thinking running shoes, chinos and an old t-shirt.  But the Prince Edward factor is a real wildcard.  She opted for a flowery dress and high heels, and was very appropriate for the scones on white linen reception in front of the lake, - but I fear in her place I might have misread the signals!

Tom has spent the week at heavy duty security training on the Nairobi outskirts.  Industrial strength first aid in the field. What you do when a colleague is hit by an antipersonnel mine, how to triage casualties, then square that with real explosions to put you off. How to travel in convoy, simulations at road blocks, again with explosions and gunfire. Robbery at gunpoint, murder by rebels and group kidnappings.  Not a fun or calming time for him, or for the wife holding the anoraks back home.

So I giggled nervously when in the welcome home debrief on the sofa he described appropriate clothing for wear in Somalia in case of kidnap. 
???  Surely the kidnappers aren't that picky, I thought? 

But they'd been addressed by a veteran of a 10 day kidnapping in Somalia, and he'd noted how, kidnapped, you spend long periods lying on the ground in the bush with a paper bag on your head.  Ants everywhere, who bite, which you scratch, attracting more ants.  His suggestion: if ever invited to Somalia, alongside your helmet, flak jacket and ever-present first aid kit, don't wear shorts and a tshirt. You never know what's out there, but long sleeves and long trousers are your best bet.  Treat those ants with respect.

Simple pleasures

Life starts early in Kenya. Alarm at 550. Kids up by 620. Kids' departure with our school lift rota by 730.  And then, on my non-work days, there's a whole swathe of the day which I've only rarely encountered before. Certainly never before with pleasure.

Assisting Daffodil the hen in her morning escape from the coop.  Lily never did take to the coop, and still roosts in the shrubbery.  Fine at night, but at breakfast time, as I linger over a 650 am cup of coffee, Lily sneaks off to snack on any leftover maize while Daffodil is still incarcerated. You can hear the outrage from half a mile away.  How DARE she?

Once out, like a ceremonial guard, they flank me on either side and frogmarch me back to the kitchen. Don't forget the breakfast you can see them muttering.  Don't get caught up in locating a child's shoe and forget about us. Do it now!  Wheep, go the guinea pigs, wheep, wheep, and no more boring carrots. What about some apple today.    Damp grass underfoot, quiet road, lilac jacaranda petals strewn, no one about. Just me, the chickens and the guinea pigs.  Simple pleasures in the early morning garden.

And today too, L, the guard's pure delight at a few more books added to our 10 book 'library'. Books are expensive in Kenya and there are very very few public libraries.  We started off a tentative book shelf for the guards a month ago: Dick Francis, John Wyndham sci-fi, some Kenyan classics people would have read at school - Ngugi wa Thiongo, Chinua Achebe - and some up to the minute Kenyan books you can only get under the counter here - Our Turn to Eat, on the massive corruption scandals, and the literary & very weighty, Wizard of the Crow. (I got stuck on page 57.) Plus To Kill a Mockingbird, and Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry. 

While the guards were definitely pleased, for several it was a bit like being given a new toothbrush. Kind thought, bit perplexing, definitely underwhelming.

For L however it has been a tickertape parade of pleasure. He beamed, he jiggled from foot to foot at the sight of them. He got stuck in straightaway. At 830 am there he is, opening the gate with his thumb keeping his page. He yomped right through complex Wizard of the Crow in three days. He cried at To Kill a Mockingbird.  He disdained Dick Francis (to my sorrow, as I have lots of them).   He discussed, he recommended, he put in requests for more by favourite authors.  He noted that several of the guards didn't share his enthusiam: 'Well, they like it, but they are more sluggish about reading.'

Watching L sitting on a plastic chair by our guard hut, engrossed in a book, I feel as I do when T or K do something generous, thoughtful, unprompted and unanticipated. A sense of thankfulness at someone else's actions. A sense of things, in small small ways, going right with the world.  A sense of barriers coming down, of individuals venturing into the joys, pressures and realities of others' lives.

I remember taking K and friends to a reading by Jacqueline Wilson at University of Hertfordshire, when the girls were around 8.  Suddenly, as they entered the auditorium, full to capacity with bubbling girls and their parents in tow, there was a change in the atmosphere. A private, solitary, secret, almost furtive activity, reading, had become a cool preteen, group activity. This distant author on the book cover revealed herself as an interesting adult, keen to interact with children, wearer of artistic rings.  Reading and its pleasures became communal.

Blinkering ones eyes to unmet needs of others is much of the daily experience in Kenya.  Defining to oneself, I've been asked to do this, and I will do a and b, but not c, d or e.  Seeking to know one's boundaries, to model appropriately, to respect the individual even if not always responding to their need.  Feeling inadequate.  Embattled. Not the person that I believed I was, or that I wanted to be. 

So its so good to start the day with simple actions where you can do what is wanted. Where your input is enough. Where a handful of maize and dried fish is enough to prompt happy clucking and fluffed feathers. Where the loan of a book changes someone's memory bank, if not their daily reality.

Dreaming Spires & Sweaty Fantasies

Educational choices have dominated many chats with mates over the last eight years. Before the kids were at pre-school, we agonised together about primary schools, who got in where, and weighed up how many of the similar-sized kids on the playground would live closer to PrimeChoicesOne, Two & Three.  Then came the long slow burn to secondary school. Faith school, closest comprehensive, exercising furtherflung choice, running the risk of falling short and getting SinkSchool, single sex lottery, or the high wire exams and auditions to PreDreamingSpires?  But then we dodged the secondary bullet by leaving UK at the end of year 5, for the land of prep schools (ages 7-13), and a heady year of naive bliss.

Uh oh, but now, part way through year 7, when UK mates are leaning back, feet under - or even on the table, here, brows are ever more furrowed, conversations heated, and we're back into the fray. And here the dilemmas are more complex still: stay with British curriculum (work towards GCSEs to make transfer back to UK easier, continuation of lots of sports, but either 90 minute commutes each way plus a very long day or weekly boarding); switch to the international school (close, well resourced, but on American system till International Bacc, so no pre-GCSE preparation, and no chance to strut those hockey skills so honed over the last year. American accents and misspellings. And completely completely different holidays, so in the summer ChildOne would be off from Labour Day till mid August and ChildTwo from end July till mid September). Or, Apocalypse Now, out from the nest, boarding in another country - South Africa, UK.

Each camp has its advocates and groupies. And there, like a pinball between them all, I bounce, bewildered by the terrifying implications, which go beyond the colour of the uniform and what-did-you-think-of-the-Head? to our babe-in-arms having compulsory Monday-Friday sleepovers each week.

Get a grip, I thought. Get school visiting again. Why not start smallscale and scope the issues with a talk on Boarding School: the UK perspective run by a visiting marketing director from UK public school at a nearby hotel? We KNOW we're all staying in the same country, so it won't startle the horses in the way the more realistic options might.

But at the posher end of the market choosing a secondary school can become a Lifestyle Choice for Parents, the stuff of glossy magazines and unlived aspirations. Kick off: sushi and smart canapes by the lit swimming pool of DesignerHotel. And I grew spellbound by the pitch and the opportunities. Not that this had been the stuff of my dreams, nor those of FirstBorn: 'we have two shooting ranges, one for claypigeons, one for rifles'... How much can termly extras run to? 'Well, it all depends. Some children bring their own horses, so of course the additional charge of livery on site can be considerable.' But wow, 20 music ensembles. 26 pupils competing at national level in a sport. Truly personalised teaching: a semi-pro icehockey star who is shipped all round the country for his matches and has his timetable fitted around his availability. Stellar exam results for a student body that doesn't take entrance exams. Whopping fees of course. And children leaving home at 13 to spend those weekends when the school is closed with for-profit guardians.  But a pandora's box of a pitch, which opened my mind to lurid never-before-dreamed-dreams of an addled & dangerous kind.

Next morning at work, our highflying students present themselves en masse. They've come to Nairobi from all over the country for the first of their two SAT tests. They've each come top in their district in the Kenyan exams, but high SAT scores would increase their chances of a scholarship to a US university.  Where US students would have been doing practice tests over the last two years, where schools hire SAT coaches and send students on summer workshops to improve scores, many of ours have pushed the boat out to club together in threes to buy one practice manual. Tensions are high. You have to mark your SAT paper with the colleges to which you want your results sent.  It costs 800 KSh - around £6 to add each extra name after the test - a sizeable amount for the students, so in reality today is the last day to change their choices. But without access to internet, reference guides, prospectuses or guidance, for most, today is the first chance they've had to discuss their choices, and the realism of their choices with anyone.

70 students, 5 networked computers, one with access to a printer, some statistical handouts we'd compiled and 3 reference guides, one from 2000 and two I bought on amazon and shipped in from abroad.  Half an hour on the computer per student to research a bit further. The students attended workshops we ran in the summer, where Kenya's Harvard grads spoke of their experiences, and so we fear a massive spike in applications to Harvard. Last year they accepted 4 Kenyan applicants. What if we can't persuade a spread of applications to maximise success for all?  What about fallback choices?  If it's all a punt in the dark anyway, why not go with four dream scenarios, - Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Cornell - the so-called Ring of Death option, who take 1 in 10 applicants. Or do you dare to break away from the crowd, wildly enhance your chances of entry, but possibly end up as one of 5 international students at a small college in the Mid West?  How would YOU go about prioritising universities in a foreign country in a few pressurised hours?

'Sweaty' is the word used by US admissions tutors for applications with too desperate a yearning tone. And the day was a sweaty, though a very moving, one. A day to seek to manage expectations. To remind students that whatever happens now, study abroad could remain an option for later, for postgraduate level. Telling students, seemingly for the first time, how much they have to be proud of. Yes, for their exam success, but more that they achieved them from a low-rated, low-resourced district school. To encourage them that their time as a peer counsellor working with other students with HIV is an application essay well worth writing. The student who kept chickens and ran a market stall selling his eggs after school to pay his secondary school fees. Students speaking of how their teachers were scared and reluctant to write them references, fearing that they wouldn't be able to do it well enough, that admissions tutors in the US would laugh at them. We'll be phoning reluctant referees next week to talk them through the process. Coaching applicants through the hidden heffalump traps of the questions. How 'why do you want to go to Yale? means 'Why (that isn't cliched) and what do you offer to us?' 

Its the stuff of dreams. Will we get Cinderella to the ball?  Our students are brilliant, determined in a way very few in the UK need to be, committed, and such impressive individuals. But the forms require sophistication, polish, and an ability to package your story. Here's hoping that native wit, determination and the best possible try with the resources you have might just win through for a few.

Why I'm a Feminist



I was a student in 1980s Manchester, hotbed of student activism. And at West Berlin's Free University, incubator of student radicalism. Feminism was a cool lifestyle choice, though of course there was far more behind it. A rapist terrorised female students in my first year at Manchester. Women refugees spoke of their persecution in their home countries. But we marched together to reclaim the night, I volunteered on student helplines, and there was a palpable shared sense of injustice and of community acting to redress wrongs.

Noughties life as a new Mum in small town Hertfordshire was a Big Shock. And yes, feminism still mattered, and yes the issues were just as present as a first time Mum, but it fossilised to a private belief, without the community - or probably my volition - to move to action.

And now 2010 in Nairobi, and I weep at the stories that Kenyan women in my life share with me. The mother who interrupted the rape of her eleven year old daughter by a family member. How the police wouldn't get involved. How the family had to move districts for security.  Of the lack of any support services. The woman who tells of her rape by a family member who was paying her school fees. How she ran away just before A levels, but still hasn't told her mother.  The girls who tell of gatekeepers demanding sex to introduce you to a possible employer.  My friend, a single mum, who works as a prostitute when she can't raise the school fees for her children. The young girl who tells of the nighttime cries of her sister, being raped by her father. 

These aren't well worn stories which have been wrung dry in the telling and retelling. These are painful explanations of why something didn't happen as it might have. In my friends' minds they aren't the point of the story, but a contributing factor to be endured, a thread in the pattern of their lives. They are the stories of the powerlessness of poverty. Of the impotence of the vulnerable when a justice system doesn't do justice. The stories of why feminism matters, why we women need to listen and to advocate, and why feminism can't be allowed to be a dirty word, even in the cocoon of Small Town UK.  Take time today to pray for the women of Kenya.

In praise of Tesco's Finest

It's not that I'm a Little Wales-er. I've lived abroad before, - 4 years in Brussels, 2 years in Germany, 8 months in Madagascar, 6 months in France, 4 months in Italy.  I eat adventurously. I don't stick solely to the known bits of the menu, or only to the caffs which have menus. I partake too from mysterious pots bubbling by the side of the road.  And yes, food in Kenya is for many about naked survival with fuller bellies. Sukuma wiki - the Swahili name for spinach - literally means 'push you through the week' - the food to be eaten from the side of the road when there's nothing else.   But I'm realising too, in my first extended stay abroad as a Mum, that food is about culture. Its about shared memories. Its about recipes and tastes handed down from parent to child, and about family solutions for different situations. 'You know Mum, the hazelnut meringue that Nain brings to shared lunches at Quaker meeting.' 'Those tortillas we used to have when friends came to tea, and you each choose what you want to put in and then wrap them up yourselves.' Chilli con carne after bonfires and fireworks.

And so this is a blog about times past, and in praise of the on-tap regimented consistency and variety of Tescos, Tesco's Finest, and for a special push-the-boat-out Sunday afternoon treat, Waitrose.  Less Proust's madeleine, than the chicken tikka masala from Taste of India in Hatfield. Delivered to your doorstep at 8pm on a Friday night by the same doleful deliveryman.  To the glory of the humble fish finger, (just stick it in the oven on a baking tray), Sunday afternoon treacle tarts with evaporated milk, oozing golden syrup in just the right consistency, corner shops open till late, hummus, pita bread and those refined ingredients recommended by Nigel & Nigella for which creative substitutes are needed in the Kenyan context. Thai lemon grass. Semolina. Gelatine. Marscapone. Dry sherry. Jelly.

Transition to life in a new country is always about The Unexpected. Unanticipated sights, world views, encounters and dilemmas.  When I worked in a German hospital with Protestant deaconesses I was roundly told off for washing my underwear by hand on a Sunday, breaking the Sabbath. In Belgium letters may only be sent in one consistent size of envelope. Truculent muttering & hasty repackaging at the post office. In Madagascar, where the ancestors are revered as co-decisionmakers in our lives and the source of all good things, I was berated for placing my trust (and finances) in a pension scheme rather than hosting a party for the dead ancestors to ensure they bestowed good fortune on me and mine.  And one year into life in Kenya, the unexpected is encountered predominantly at mealtimes, a trojan horse dish which LOOKS as anticipated, but tastes very different.

As with many situations in Kenya, we first stumbled into employing a part-time cook to generate employment for someone who needed it. And in this land without convenience foods, I did initially relish a new one night on, one night off arrangement. But cooking, you start to realise, is a complex task, and CookOne had not had much formal education. Cooking requires forward planning (Have you GOT all the ingredients before Catrin leaves for the school run? Last minute phonecalls demanding ingredients from three different shops, each miles from the other, are not welcome.) It draws on basic maths (ability to double recipe quantities. And then to double all recipe quanitities).  And builds on ability to forecast (if D is not home till 630, and this recipe takes 30 minutes in the oven, I shouldn't PUT it in the oven till 6pm). And yes, I work in training, and in developping critical thinking, and isn't capacity building all about what living in developping countries is about? But eventually, after much agonising, enough was enough and I sacked her. Family mealtimes reverted to my predictable & age-old Monday spaghetti bolognaise, Tuesday risotto model.

If you can't beat them, join them, I thought, and put effort into mastery of my favourites from the Tesco Finest range. Chicken and mushroom pie. Treacle tart. Steak and kidney pie.  Certainly not bad, tasty even. But lacking in the flowing ease of the original as I snarled at any family member unable to finish their portion of the steak and kidney (sourced in two shops, toiled over for four hours of patchy electricity), dispensing stress-related indigestion with liberal hand. 

Months later, disgruntled at spending two hours daily on a split time school run from the same school, I launched into recruitment of CookTwo with vim and vigour.  I tested on doubling and tripling ingredients at interview.  I probed on typical meals and ability to follow recipes. And we netted a paragon of virtue, B, cookshare with another family, cooker of pancake healthy snacks for ravening after school children, and willing babysitter so ChildTwo doesn't have to do the second school run of the day. Hurrah.

And B is a good cook. But it isn't easy cooking for a family of another culture. First we had far, far too much cooked each day, until D explained that many Kenyan families rarely have food left in the larder at the end of the day. If its there, you eat it, as who knows what tomorrow holds.  And then there isn't a culture of using leftovers. If its there, you've eaten it. And then meals were peppered to within an inch of their life. 'Add salt and pepper to taste'.  But not to Kenyan taste. Cultural difference number 472: you eat less of a peppery meal than a non peppered one. Use of pepper, now banned in our kitchen.

Amidst the vast majority of very acceptable meals there are the unanticipated complete clangers. Like the gap year student in a foreign clime, the unimaginable gaff which host families titter about for years to come. The fruit salad resplendent with a new red fruit. 'It looks like red pepper, I wonder what it is,' said D. 'It IS red pepper,' said K's friend, worldly-wise and better versed in the ways of Kenyan cooks.  Yesterday's pork and apple stew. Pungent aroma. Not a pleasant one. As we backtracked we realised that B, teetotal, had mistaken the 10 fluid oz of cider in the recipe for a generous cupful of cider vinegar (used to deworm our chickens if added to drinking water.) Oh dear.  Bananas all round then?

But best of the bunch, my American friend, K, was hankering for aioli, the garlic dip, after too long away from home. She showed her cook the recipe with pictures - any questions?  No, no, I've made this before, he said. Fantastic. Mouthwatering, she returned later, to some beautifully chopped crudites around a ceremonial dish of piping hot mashed potato. No need to read the recipe if you know what you're cooking.

Bon appetit!