Carols from Kings and other Key Customs

Tom has just come into the steamy, biscuit-filled kitchen, and found me in tears, again, at the Carols from Kings. As regular as the annual Carols from Kings I'm to be found, 3pm GMT on Christmas Eve, half-filled glass of Baileys, wet drips plopping from my nose.  It sums up where I'm not, today. With whom I'm not, today. It evokes deep homesickness, even though my home, for now, is here.

Christmas has so many spliced through experiences, both now and then, multiple layers evoked in a flash. Unpacking the Christmas tree decorations. The curly haired chorister painted by SecondBorn, aged three, at his much-loved Preschool.  I love his exuberant hair, from a carefree time of innocence. I love that he's still with us, one of the yuletide family.  I'd save him in a fire. The Christmas decorations from different stages: the baubles with glitter inside, assembled at toddler group; the gingerbread men and women bought from the Lakeside Special School Fete; the Maasai beaded decorations and tin angels, bought from community projects here in Kenya. The vile flashing Santa broaches, bought in a moment of weakness many moons ago, - source of great peer envy at school - which lurch on, batteries undinted by my dislike.  Where we've had to leave much - so many - behind at (the other) home, somehow the Christmas tree decorations become a capsule experience, an intense standing in for much which matters at this time of year.

Our post can take up to six weeks to reach us at peak times. It arrives once a week, via Tom's work, if we're lucky, if there isn't a hitch.  We generally have a ceremonial opening of cards in early February. Yesterday a Christmas card arrived from our Quaker meeting in UK. The carefully signed names, the personal comments, it mattered as much as a leaving card when departing a job after many years.  Reminders of deep friendships which are still there, despite the distance. Which matter to us, but we are the ones who moved on. It's lovely to feel that our gap, our absence is noted too. Someone got organised to get a card, to get signatures, to get them long before the final posting date. Thank you.

Assembling the key dishes for Christmas, which again, for me are signature dishes, with deeper links. Trifle for my South Wales childhood, to my Mum's recipe in a glass bowl from her Mum. Cream, jelly, custard, tinned fruit on sponge fingers. I get it's not chic. But how could it be any other?  Braised red cabbage, apples, onion, with cloves. Mince pies with Nigella's stars on top. Always look considerably more battered than hers in the photos in the book, but oh well, stands in for a certain happy falling-short in the Domestic Goddess realm.  Iced biscuits - the same recipe as for each birthday - but different cutters at Christmas. This time we've got stars, bells and Christmas trees.

I love fresh encounters with old friends. Catching up, renewing friendships. But also with familiar words of old carols, exerpts from the St James Bible, the same language as when I was in infant school.  And fresh encounters with old realities. The visiting nativity scene from our toddler group, which would travel from volunteer house to house in the toddler group, one night each, brought by the previous night's hosts, who came in for a mincepie and a playdate. New friendships, meaningful symbols of inclusion and the meaning of Christmas for kids.

'It's beginning to look alot like Christmas' goes the song. We've just returned from the coast, a long, long drive away from Nairobi, and so the song has been sung more than once, more than ten times, by the over-excited hoardes on the back seat.  But it isn't looking much at all like Christmas, not as I know it, even though this is our third Christmas here. Blue skys, hot temperatures, mosquito bites. I need cold mornings, hope of snow, ice on puddles, for things to feel 'right'.

Shamefaced

It's the Christmas holidays. FirstBorn, SecondBorn and I had been to see a film - Johnny English Reborn - at our local mall, and to have a sly pizza afterwards.  And in typical Kenyan fashion, we'd taken a doggy bag of our left over pizza and cooling chips for sometime later.

Leaving the luxury mall at rushhour, we drove at snail's pace past the small children - aged around three, five and eight, - begging for money from the drivers.  SecondBorn gets it, that that's where they live, on the street. But was loth to part with his bit of the pizza, which is a rare and relished treat for us here.

But I passed over our doggy bag, and we all turned to look at the eight year old boy's face. And his little brother, bright shining cheeks, aged around four, racing as fast as his four year old legs could carry him, through the traffic towards the cooling chips. How it made me ashamed.  Children, younger than ours, who don't have enough to eat, in our bit of our town.

Food is domestic when you have it, yet political when its scarce.  Living in a land where there's hunger makes me far more conscious of this.  When we have leftovers from our evening meal we plate them up and pass them on to our guards. But if things get into the fridge, well they can linger there and be discovered a week later, wizened with traces of mould, a blight on our conscience when others around us would have welcomed them, but were too polite to ask. 

It's not simple.  My friends who grew up here handle it better. But we were at a dinner party recently, and I was chatting to an Ethiopian woman in her late twenties.
'I was in the butchers recently and saw the sign for 'staff meat'.  How awful.' she exclaimed. 'We'd never do that in my country.'
Staff meat is the really ropy old meat, which is sold to the middle classes who don't choose to feed their staff the same as they eat.  We give a food allowance so our staff can choose what they buy themselves. But intentionally buying for others worse than you'd buy for yourselves. Well that, to my mind, - and to that of my Ethiopian friend - is dire.
'In Ethiopia' she said, 'we lived rich and poor next to each other. We played together on the street. And the poorer family next door would come and eat with us each evening.  Eat the same food.'

But its what I close my mind to much of the time here. That most children here are less well fed than mine. That by prioritising how and when I give to others, I am part of the posse who buy good stuff for my nearest and dearest, and tolerate a regime of chance scraps from my table - staff meat - for the rest.


Other posts like this one:
http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/poverty-prison-visiting.html

http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/06/please-look-after-this-bear-thank-you.html

Shepherds, Kings and Donkeys

There is nothing which brings a tear to my eye more rapidly than a small boy, teatowel on head, beard drawn on with eyeliner, star of the Christmas nativity play.  Small girls in Disney Snow White costumes, complete with red hairband, used to do it too, but I seem to have become de-sensitised.  Tiny children dwarfed on the stage singing solo, gathered audience holding its bated breath as one, are another winner.  I guarantee, forty years from now, I shall be the granny with the inappropriate hat blocking the view of rows behind me, sobbing loudly, as the small striped shepherds in their dressing gowns troop onto the stage.  Lovely.

I state my softer Christmas credentials rapidly, as so much of the rest of the nativity play experience leaves me stressed and Scrooge-like, sullen on the sidelines. I KNOW its for the children. I understand its about deeper spiritual truths.  I KNOW they so love it. I understand how much it matters to perform, and to have an adoring audience cheering you on. I wouldn't miss it, I know these are once in a lifetime memories.  But why why why is so much of the process made so painful for a parent?

So here's my guide from the parent's perspective for successful nativity plays.

Speaking as a serial Innkeeper's Wife, who never herself scored high in the angel stakes, dear teachers, keep a list of who had the major parts in your year's nativity play.  Pass it on to the teacher of the following year. Don't always choose the same blond angelic child to be Gabriel, spread it round a little. No one knows that angels aren't lumpen, and tinsel works wonders for everyone.  YOU may not think Overactive is angelic, but maybe their parents too need reminding of their angelic qualities by this stage in the year. Be their advocate for a brighter future, go on.  You may think these things don't matter, but pick any mild-mannered parent from the playground and ask her to recite which of her child's peers had the leading roles in each year. Then try and stop her. Ancient Mariner watch out!

Nativity plays, by their nature, are held during advent. As are carol concerts, Christmas concerts, final assemblies and sports days (here in Kenya).  But for those in employment, so too are corporate retreats, major training sessions, and East African endeavours to spend end of year surplus.  In my eight active years of nativity plays for two children, I've attended two thirds of the two play performances alone, while Tom (and many of his mates) are unavoidably away doing something week-long, residential, compulsory and year end related.

I've moaned before how the expat school day presupposes a full-time driver, or a mother who loves nothing better than nose to tail traffic jams and a second home on some cold, hard step to the school cafeteria.  This trend reaches its peak at Christmas.  In an attempt to make late night performances more manageable for the small performers, my daily routine last week involved:  dropoff FirstBorn for registration at 750, dropoff SecondBorn for registration at 0900, pick up SecondBorn at 1315, pick up FirstBorn at 1600, return SecondBorn to school, fed and watered at 1800, play starts 1845 and finishes 2030.  Bar only opens at 1830 (sigh), and by the second night, had become a dry bar, as new Kenyan legislation prevents any sale of alcohol within 100 metres of any child. 'Go coral them over there and bring back the beer,' muttered a similarly un-festive Dad at one point!   Liftshares would be a solution. But our longstanding liftshare partner was also on a pre-year end work trip (to Somalia), - which in terms of complications and stresslevels, sure puts my petty moans into perspective.

As a short parent of shorter-than-average children I commend tiered levels to play producers. DON'T put the key action on the floor infront of the stage.  Only BeachTowelWieldingParents who staked out their front row seats 4 hours previously by volunteering to help with some key task in the inner enclave, will ever get to see the little darlings there.

I realise that choosing the Christmas play is probably one of the high stress benchmarks for any primary school teacher.  You aren't going to get it right. Not each Little Kevin CAN have a speaking part. Parents are not going to hold back from telling you how they see it. Tears before bedtime are a certainty.  But please, teacher, do think in choosing, what will it be like for the parents to engage with this play?  They aren't just going to see two performances, they will be living alongside a performance in loop for over a month.

Both First and SecondBorn have always entered with relish into linelearning.  By the end of the third week of rehearsals, we will have heard, repeatedly, not just their one line, but those of many others in the play. Again, and again.  Two years ago, SecondBorn had been allocated a non-speaking part to his disgust.  Then a biblical flu-bug cut a swathe through the cast, and understudy to star, in the final dress rehearsal, he was allocated a key speaking part.  Whose Rightful Owner managed to stagger back to school for the performance, demoting SecondBorn back to his place as ThirdSheep (nonspeaking).  WannabeStar managed to express his outrage at demotion. In the back row, possibly visible to only his doting mother, one sheep lipsynched the whole of the performance, often getting his version of the lines in before their true performer. Oh dear.

My last plea is a cultural one.  I get that nativity plays derive from a biblical faith story.  I think its good for children to know the stories of other faiths.  What I, as a Quaker who sees Christianity as helpful for me, but not as superior to other faiths, object to really strongly, is the nativity play chosen presenting the Christmas story as the only valid truth, with children and their parents being given no opt out clause.  It's one thing to act out the story and the verses. It's another to have to proclaim lines on its meaning, 'Jesus is our Good Shepherd',  'Jesus came to save us all', when your faith background is Islam, Hinduism, atheism or Jain.  Or even if you are an independently-minded child of Christian parents.  I'm not saying nativity plays should be about fairies and Santa with never a whiff of the outcast born in the stable.  But for me, school is about valuing where the child is at. Is about developping critical thinking. And so should be about presenting opinions as opinions, on which individuals may choose to differ.

Making a Difference for Jobseekers

Europe and US are in recession. It's an awful market for jobseekers. And worse still in Kenya, where official unemployment rates are 40%, where there's no formal social security, so if you have no job you - your family - have no income at all.

As a careers advisor I see some Kenyan jobseekers each month for free. Hear their stories: the sparky, feisty young woman with KCSE and a diploma with good IT skills, great communication skills, good exam results. A good candidate, whose education was paid for by her mum's former employer, who over the last six years has had a total of two months' paid work, on various temporary call centre contracts working for global brands you'd have heard of, - and then been retrenched as the passing demand passes.  She changed direction, set up a cafe in the slum, managed to get contracts to supply restaurants with her products. But then had to sell her one asset, her fridge, to tide the family over in their third year without any income at all. 

Or the man in his late twenties, a mechanic, whom I interviewed for my dissertation. He'd studied car mechanics on a Kenyan youth employment scheme some ten years ago. Had left the scheme with a qualification, but not a qualification at a high enough level to get a job, as it now becomes clear. When I interviewed him he had spent literally ten years, trudging daily, on foot, from garage to garage all over Nairobi, presenting his qualifications, trying to bypass gatekeepers, seeking to speak with employers, trying to get a job. He'd heard the feedback that his level two qualification wasn't at a high enough level to get work. Quoted it to me. But what can he do? He can't afford to return to college to build on it. He's now got so much invested in his search, he can't change direction now, though I fear, in his heart of hearts, he realises this might be what is needed.

Or the conversations with my expat mates with adult children.  The family home is in Kenya, for now. So their adult children, school leavers, newly graduated, not so newly graduated, have no free family base in UK while they seek work. It's harder to give supportive conversations, informal support, or the occasional bracing kick over skype.  And for the adult children who opt to be with the family for a while, its harder still to break into the Kenyan job market - not where they grew up or where they have contacts or school friends - but where they'll need to demonstrate they are better than Kenyan applicants to get a role to get a work permit.

So what can the rest of us do to help those seeking work at times of mass unemployment?

It's easy to get isolated when you're seeking work. It's easy to lose touch with who you are, with your strengths, with the anecdotes your friends tell about you, with the experiences that make you, you at your best. It's tempting to hide away under the duvet, feeling unacceptable.

Kenyan jobseekers tend to only have contact with other jobseekers. Just as expat partners seeking work tend to have contact with the other jobseeking mums on the playground, rather than with those who've spun off into the world of smart suits and someone else doing your school pickup.  But in jobseeking - as in Richard Wiseman's fascinating research on the tactics used by those who assess themselves as lucky, The Luck Factor, - broadbased contacts matter. The people who assess themselves as luckiest are those who would, for example, go to a party, and rather than huddling close to the friends they already knew, cast themselves onto the open ocean, make a commitment that they today will speak to each person wearing red.

So encouraging jobseekers to identify what - beyond a job - and towards a job - would help comes first. And then helping people to network, to seek information interviews, to see whether someone in employment might let them shadow them for the day, mentor them - all this helps. Who do you know through your church, your siblings friends, your parents colleagues, your community, your high school, professional body? And who do they know in turn?  And that we offer information interviews - 40 minutes of our time - to those who'd welcome it.   'Redescendre l'ascensceur' the French call it. 'To send the lift back down behind you', so others may follow in your footsteps.

The point of wider contacts isn't a clearcut route to a job, - you know me, you'll give me a job. It's about information gathering. Which are the key tasks in your role? How do you go about them? Which are the skills your organisation is seeking at the moment? What would you say is the best way to gain them? Might you be willing to refer me on to another of your contacts in this field for a potential information interview?  Yes and seeking to leave a professional impression and your contact details, lest the contact come across a job you might fit.  But it's building a body of professional knowledge and a base of contacts who might be on the lookout for opportunities to which you could add value.

Creating slices of a job helps too. Identifying that niggling bit of work you're too busy or too cackhanded to do, as actually a project, and writing up what it could involve, the skills needed, the possible benefits, - and advertising it. Just getting out of the house to have contacts with others can help when you feel you've been knocking on doors for two years, in vain. But ideally, it'll be offering more - a chance to learn something, to gain different experience, contacts with others, a wage.  Creating sliproads into mainstream employment, a day's ironing each week which might lead to some babysitting and a reference; help taking monthly payment to the Kenya Revenue Authority, which could lead to helping out with the accounts, and work as a financial assistant.

Security is one of the key issues on anyone's mind when employing in Kenya. Even my accountant won't take on new clients without an introduction from a former client. Yes people have ID, but if someone did a runner it would be nigh on impossible to find them again in this land without integrated databases. So good references from employers willing to give their own details, to stand surity with their own reputation as it were, matter inordinately. And that's a big barrier for many. 

Giving people new opportunities helps. I heard of one expat mum, knowing they were to be leaving in six months, who bought her housekeeper a copy of Jamie Oliver. And whose family ate a different Jamie Oliver recipe each evening for the next six months, so that, by the time of their departure they could write a glowing reference for their housekeeper/cook, 'who can cook all the recipes in Jamie Oliver' and comes with her own cookbook.  But its hard. Our gardener/handyman said as we arrived, licking his lips as he looked at our dent-free car.
'I've got a driving licence you know. Just haven't had much practice. I could drive you.'
A bit like letting your seventeen year old loose in your car, rather in the dual control car of the driving instructor, we decided to pass on that one. Thank you.

Access to cash is a major hurdle here in Kenya. Little bits can make a massive difference. A friend of ours gave a local newspaper seller (average daily earnings 250 KSh, around £1.50) a loan to buy a bike. He can deliver papers - maybe the sole delivery person in Nairobi - has massively expanded what he can charge and his potential buyers.  And helping people set up bank accounts. Equity Bank has a bank account where you can save as little as 10 KSh, incur charges only when you do something.

Marking 'distance travelled' is another big issue. Having a job is like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren't. You can be putting in marvellous applications, gaining fantastic experience, networking like crazy, doing everything right, hard. But still not finding a job with a paycheque.  So it matters that those around you help you see the distance you've travelled towards a job. The steps, big and small, the buying signals - even if they ultimately came to nothing. That others make concrete the successes which for the jobseeker seem so dwarfed by the deluge of rejection letters, or the disheartening silence of no rejection letter at all.

And finally helping people think what they offer in the labour market, and who would value this - and the rest of who they are.  Helping people think how they can reassure employers that this is a low-risk venture to hire them.  Some Kenyan jobseekers I've worked with seemed to see a job as something static, like a chair, that you occupy, rather than something dynamic, a need that you fill, which changes, where the requirements on you change too.  Not something where you make a difference, solve problems. More something which is bestowed on you, like blonde hair or freckles.  And while that could be the reality for some in the Kenyan job market, it doesn't really help if you're a normal jobseeker, and an uncle from your village isn't the chief executive of a major parastatal.

While knowing you're not alone doesn't help the key plight of the Kenyan jobseeker pounding the streets, I think it matters that the rest of us come out where we can. I've been made redundant. Sought work in 1980s South Wales when the only posts advertised in the Jobclub were as topless waitresses. Had periods between jobs. Been despairing that I'd ever get back to interesting work after having kids. And have been really grateful for the help I've received on the way. What goes around comes around. Over to you.

Skills for Life

A friend chanced upon me this week in a nearby cafe with a long list before me, and hands running through dishevelled hair.
'What's up?'
'I'm trying to put together a list of the skills we need to make sure that twelve year old Firstborn has learned before she goes off to school in UK. The bits she's probably missed because we've been here since she was just ten. The bits you'd just dripfeed if you were in the same country, but we might miss. So we can aim to learn them together over Christmas.'
A long list, because then I thought nine year old SecondBorn shouldn't miss out either.

Reading bus timetables. Reading bank statements. Paying in cheques to the bank. Managing money.
Planning journeys. Booking train tickets online. Comparing routes and prices. Reading an A to Z.
Cooking simple meals and puddings.
Changing beds. Putting on duvet covers.
Mending punctures.
Enquiring politely and complaining politely. Returning goods.
Sewing on buttons. Sewing up hems. Sewing on nametapes. Mending tears.
Using a washing machine. Sorting washing. Ironing.
Personal safety.
Removing splinters.
Skyping.

Oh my. It's not that she's clueless. It's not that she can't do some of these anyhow. Would learn by error. But some of them, in a strange country, without an adult next to her, could be tricky. Could add to the strain.

But the list of basic skills for life in Kenya are different.  At school they run a life skills course for the thirteen year olds after exams, after they've returned from their expedition climbing Mount Kenya - already a major challenge.  Parents come in and share their skills for independent living in Kenya, where you're often too far from skilled support.

Setting a broken arm in a splint. Basic first aid. Heart massage.
Changing the wheel of a car
Yes, making a bed - 'But why would I need to do this?' queried one child last year. 'My maid does that.'
Cooking
and also I'd add
Unblocking a sewage pipe
Bargaining in a market
Making a fire
Putting up a tent. Building a longdrop toilet.
Sending money by mpesa
What to do in a power cut
What to do when the water runs out

We've been here before. Two years ago the school announced they'd be doing sex education with the year sixes in the following week. Great. Except of course prevalent attitudes in Kenya are very different from what I, we, believe at home. From what we'd like her to understand about sexuality, gay relationships, how we celebrate civil partnerships in UK, from how we'd like this introduced to her.  Buckle your helmet FirstBorn, we had a whistlestop tour through sexuality and sex education as we'd hope it would be taught. From the basics via contraception, oral sex and difficult choices like termination, to the twiddly bits.

Next week she comes home from school.
'Well MrT the Scienceteacher didn't go into half as much detail as you did Mum.  We just did about sperm and eggs.'
'Oh.'

So I don't want to overshoot by a mile again. What do you think are the essential skills for young people to learn as they become independent?  Answers in the comment box below very welcome. Thanks/

Colleagues & Spice and All Things Nice

It's not that I'm a Gina Ford Groupie. I'm happy to tear up the masterplans, revert to plan B or F, or to busk it for a while. But three months on from throwing my toys out of the pram with BigCorporate (see here http://www.onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-mum-turned-into-monster.html)  I do miss the structure of two days a week of being part of a team, the routine of arriving at the same office to action my bit of the project with the same gang.

It's not I'm being idle. I'm getting lots of individual clients and enjoy the work with them. I'm bidding for more corporate work, and think I'll be busy there too soon.  It wasn't that BigCorporate had the (minor) perks of UK offices - a kettle or a coffee machine, a printer, shared network or even a stationery cupboard from which to take a new sharp pencil when the rest of life seemed out of control.  I enjoyed the work, the clients, the clear signs of progress. But what I really miss are the colleagues and the structure of someone else's office.  Wouldn't want it full time if I can help it. But like a well-fitted supportive bra, you miss it when its gone.

Even when its head down, up to the wire multi-tasking pressurised stress, I prefer to have others alongside me. I enjoy two minute inconsequential chats with the security guards, with others in the lift. I liked trying to decipher Sheng, the cool yoof Swahili dialect. Being a fly on the wall as my Kenyan colleagues chatted together about life, and I learnt by osmosis the bits I didn't realise were different.  Being one of a team with whom to share successes, to chew over dilemmas, to reach group decisions. About whom to gripe in the evenings. Occasionally.

I grew up listening to the Archers, the long-running Radio Four radio soap.  Saw my life a bit in juxtaposition with my peers there. Well at least I'm not as smug as that Shula. Or as ditsy and feckless as Nigel of the Mr Whippy van. Sadly, not as much fun as Eddy, the ne'er do well country & western crooner and general cheeky chappie.  Liked trying on the realities of their fictional everyday life. And in the same way, my time next to the lives of my Kenyan colleagues and students added an extra dimension to my life here. New realities. New experiences.  New understandings. A more intense spicier reality than the blander more homogenous existence in the expat enclave.

Winning NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is about making a commitment to writing 50,000 words of a new novel during the month of November. Turning aspiring novelists to perspiring novelists.

OK I admit it, I cheated. Or as the NaNoWriMo gang call it, 'Became a rebel.' Because I was aiming to write more words to turn the blog to a book, not starting on something from scratch.

But yesterday I limped to the finish. For now. Printed off 78,000 words of what might, one day, become a book.  Printed off my certificate.

It's been a great process. Being part of a community of 300,000 worldwide all struggling with the same issues. Having a marvellous set of forums on which to procrastinate when you can't focus.  Reading the comments from the others worldwide writing autobiographical novels, those struggling with bereavement and big life issues. And then taking another 20 minute break in the Reference Forum, where stuck novelists post their information requests.

I hadn't realised I was an expert on so much. This month I've posted my opinions on the zany.
'Where in London would you place a portal to Faeryland?' I just love this question. On the embarrassing. 'Has anyone been on a Thames Dinner Dance Cruise? Details please.' Of the 300,000 members I was seemingly the only one who had.
'It was an office Christmas party!' she says defensively.
On the personal.
'What do Peace Corps volunteers import to Kenya?'
Well I'm not one, but I'd guess tampons, electrical kit, books, clothes, shoes and specialist food. And have pondered on the odd.
'What does brandy taste like?'
Well why not just try some?  Until you realise that this is maybe a writer on the Young Writers Programm, possibly some US fourteen year old, who has been old enough to embark on his novel, but is still many years below the licensing law in his state.

It's not that its all been fun. It's been a long haul. But for me its been the most effective way ever to get and to keep writing, to a purpose.

And yesterday, when I'd validated my novel, and got the winner's bar added under my name, and watched the video of the team cheering me, it still didn't feel quite such a rush as finishing my first 5K in Stanborough Park.  Until I read the screen:  'Congratulations, novelist.'

And its true. Whether I ever dis-enter it from the bottom drawer to edit it, or not. Whether it ever gets published. Whether anyone but me ever reads it.  'Congratulations novelist.'

The biggest journey starts with a single step.

Robin Hood Rides in Kenya

This weekend I met up with an old friend from university - over twenty years hence - in a busy cafe. We don't meet up that often, he lives in Switzerland, and I was also taking delivery from him of a season's supply of mince pies. Great excitement. Big bear hugs, focused filling in of updates in our lives since last we met.

Two hours later the bill arrived.
'I'll get this,'
magnanamously, feet kicking the pile of mincepies under the table. But where's my bag?  Gone.

Nairobi cafes all warn about bagsnatchers, have little hooks under the table for you to secure your bag. But this time I'd had my foot on my bag the whole time. Except maybe for the bearhug, and thereafter, when it was resting on the other treasure, the mincepies (boxed).

Our waitress told of the three smartly dressed men sitting next to us, who'd waved her away while they decided, then disappeared. No sign of them now. No sign of the bag.  With my ID, driving licence, health insurance, family's cards for the Flying Doctor Service, business cards, a cheque, pair of glasses and sunglasses, house keys, carkeys - and little ticket to get the car out of the carpark - and 8000 KSh - some £70 - in cash, ready to do the weekend shop.

Fortunately the car was still there, and after an hour's negotiations about the lost parking ticket (for 20 KSh) off I drove.  Cancelled the cards, fretted about the locks, moaned about needing to rearrange ID.

Went to the local police station today to fill out the formal report. And just as I'd finished, got a phonecall from a bank in the mall.
'We've found your bag in our branch. Come and get it.'
Opened it to discover my things were still there. Of the 8000 KSh there had been in the purse, most of it - 5000 KSh was still there! Carkeys, check. Housekeys, check. Even of the things you could easily sell or use - the phone top up vouchers - still in situ. Driving licence - a hot ticket on the black market here - untouched.  It hadn't just wandered off on its own, things had been moved, - it couldn't have got to the bank, on another floor, unaided, - but still, not half as bad as it could have been.

On the day of the theft I talked with the security guards in the carpark as we waited for an hour for the barrier to be opened so that I and the car might leave, though we hadn't paid the 20 KSh fee.  Resigned to my loss by then, annoyed, but thankful that the car hadn't gone too.
'Oh well, I just hope they use the money for something good, school fees maybe.'
'No,' the guards were of one mind, 'Nothing good can come from stolen money.'

Well I don't know.  To take 3000 KSh and to leave the rest restores my faith in human nature.  Maybe, on looking through the signs of affluence in my bag, the thieves felt they'd bitten off more than they could chew, fear of retribution. But stealing 3000 KSh in Kenya is enough that summary 'justice', lynchings, can take place - though not in our sedate mall, and not at my urging.  People are sentenced to two years hard labour for stealing less than this.  The head of the carpark noted officiously to me when I complained at the wait to be let out without a ticket:
'People will be sacked if they let out one customer owing 20 KSh.' 
Really?  Well they shouldn't be. Not for 20 KSh.
But I'm hoping, choosing to believe, that these thieves needed the money for something important. School fees? An operation? That they levied a Kenya tax for enough to meet their need. And left what they didn't need.  And that, I think, is impressive.

A KenyaOldTimer briefed me on carjackings soon after we arrived.

'Oh its not like it used to be even five years ago. Up in Tigoni - the rural flowerfarming area close to Nairobi - where we live, when the mungiki gang carjacked you, they'd take your money and your car, and then hand you back your matatu fare so you could get home.  No one does that any more.'

No indeed.
'Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen...'


Also on this topic:

http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/01/possession.html

Security Escort

There are several reasons why SecondBorn's music lesson (530-630 on a Friday night in farflung Langata) doesn't sit happily.  Chiefly that Fridays from 5 are reserved for meeting up with my mates for an end of week cocktail and raucous laughter. But also that a distant cello lesson which is meant to finish at 630, but often overruns to 645, involves a long drive back in the dark through potentially dodgy areas.

On the way there it takes 50 minutes drive on the shortcut through Kikuyu market, lots of people spilling onto the road, fine in daylight. But the way back is far less predictable.  Potential for and experience of early evening roadblocks by gangs and every car robbed.

Week One's lesson coincided with the Nairobi Intenational Trade Fair, also in that neck of the woods. I choose the safer, long way round, got caught in gridlock traffic, and didn't get home, with a boy asleep in the back till 930.  A fortnightly six hour round trip for a basic level music lesson? Not doing that again.

So in Week Two I booked a security escort vehicle to accompany us home.  Given the peaks and troughs of Nairobi's security, and the risk of carjackings, we're advised to do this after dark when we feel insecure. But usually this means late at night.  Coming home at 2am.  We don't tend to bother if we're returning from haunts in our neighbourhood, though the risk is there too. Or at 630pm.  And from the expressions of the escort car guards, nobody else does either.

My first time with a security escort we were a carful of women, returning home from a late night play and meal in Karen.  The play had been good. We'd laughed alot. Came out to the carpark to find a security car waiting with ours to accompany us from the door.  As we drove off at speed, security car behind, lights on hazard, it felt a good end to the evening. Like opting for a taxi rather than a wet journey and two connections on the tube. As we came up to the interchange points the security car would have radioed ahead to their colleagues. Would veer off the road, and their colleagues slide in behind us for the next bit of the relay.  A slick operation giving peace of mind to something insecure.  A whiff of presidential outriders, of fantasies of sharing a car with Jesiah Bartlett and maybe Sam Seeborn or Josh from West Wing.

630 returns from music lessons are very far from this in everyone's minds.

Kenyan major roads don't carry street names.  Most don't have street lights. There aren't handy signs pointing - Kikuyu or Nairobi. So while I knew I knew the way home in the light, in the dark I felt much less secure.
'Please can't you go in front and I'll follow you. I'm not so sure of the route in the dark.'
As we slid out of the built up area a car overtook me. The security escort (four in the car but no one looking out of the back window at the client) speed up, the interloper did too. Leaving me far behind, stuck behind a recalcitrant handcart.  By the time I caught up and got their attention (horn, flashing lights, hazard lights) we were nearly at the dangerous bit, and I was furious.

'I'm the car you're meant to be accompanying. You have to watch to make sure you're taking the right car home safely.'
'Oh.'

So then they opted to play safe. Hazard lights and 15 miles per hour, even she can't lose us then. 15 mph through the dodgy bits. Down the hell for leather dual carriageway, cars beeping us all the way. Radioing ahead to warn the next car that this odd fish would like to go at 15 mile per hour. Like being the Queen Mother on an illplaced stately ceremonial handwaving occasion, or a lumbering nuclear waste van. In the dark.

Once you've set off you have a judgement call. Do I try and get their attention and stop again - potentially insecure - to say:
'Oh come on, we could do a steady 40 here.'
Or just plod on, embarrassed, thankful its dark, inching our way home at snail's pace. But safely.

So yesterday, Week Three.  Lost my reticence, gave some clear instructions to the initial car.
'Please lets go as fast as we can safely. Say at 40? You go in front, - but make sure someone checks regularly that I'm the car behind you?'
But after a strong start this bit of the instructions doesn't get relayed as they radio ahead. Much of the journey made at 25 miles per hour. A final sprint to the finish at 40 with the last car. A safe journey home - thank you KK.  Quicker than gridlock, still not a speedy conclusion to the week.

'If music be the food of love, play on.'  Huh.

Rats and their Aftermath

Readers with delicate stomachs should maybe eat before reading today's blog.

What is worse than rats nesting in the roof?  Hmmmm.

Regular readers willl know we've had rats nesting in the roof for the last few weeks.  The first signs were innocent enough. Sitting having evening sundowners looking at out the garden, and noting either one very assiduous rat trotting back and forth across the step or, more likely, one rat and his friends and relations in single file maybe each carrying the wearwithall to build a nest.

Next door's dogs killed the local mongeese a few months ago, and these rats seemed smart enough to dodge the kites and any potential snakes. We sought for rats nests in the flower beds, hoping to persuade them away from the house. Found and evicted two nests.

Then as the rains started the everyday sounds at home changed.  The thundering of tiny feet wearing tap shoes overhead.  Rats had found a way into the roof, and were enjoying the dry.

The insect repellent people came. Rather ineffectually, bringing only three traps and no ladder to help set them. They were very keen to resort to poison.  And I was rather worried a rat would die in an inaccessible place.  So I won out, and we placed the traps.  And for two weeks of daily checks, those rats avoided them.

We rethought, I capitulated, we set poison away from the house (in the hope that a dying rat wouldn't make it up to the roof again.)  We started finding dead rats. Two in the roof of the garage. One on the roof of the house. Several in the garden. One even in the trap in the roof (plus a third and fourth nest there too).

And then a pungent smell in the living room.   Pungent, dead rat-like and inaccessible. We have a great metal sheet on the roof under the tiles to keep the rain out. And the rat had managed to die under this.  So we opened the windows and tried to ignore it.  Ronald the gardener reckoned it would be around three days before the smell went.  In the event it was really only one day.

Until today. When we came in to breakfast to find small white squirmy things on the floor.  I hoped they were more, smaller termite larvae. But was soon informed better. Maggots. From the dead rat in the roof. Now falling through the crack in the ceiling onto the living room floor.  Raining maggots. Hundreds of them by 11am.  And as the day got hotter, they got more active, squirming, wriggling their way along the parquet floor before we could sweep them up.  The stuff of nightmares.

Thank you thank you, by 2pm a host of four fundis came to take the tiles off the roof, to remove the metal sheet, to remove the rat. In fact two dead rats and a (fifth) nest in the roof.  And tonight though there's still the occasional gentle plop of a lone maggot falling, by and large they've gone. (And I've gone too, I'm not sitting in the living room till the last maggot is eradicated.)

As I gibbered at friends today, others have shared their stories. Of the rat which died in the car, and for which the charge to find, extract and put right the damage, came to over £1000.  Rats dead in drains, in wood piles, under floorboards.  Rats stealing chocolate from bedside tables. Uggghhh. But none worse than maggots raining into your living room.

Six Word Saturday

Pungent ex-rat inaccessible in roof. Nosepegs.

It's the rainy season. Self respecting rats who have lived outside quite happily for eight months of the year are seeking snugger berths in our roof.  Boy are they loud at night. 

We've removed two rats nests, have been checking various traps of different kinds in the roof daily to only catch one rat.  So we moved to poison laid away from the house, in the hope that any who died would die away from the roof.   Which has mainly been so, but now there's one, very dead, under the metal sheet which keeps out the rain, in the roof, completely inaccessible without major work.  Our gardener says that in this heat it'll probably only be three days before the worst of the smell goes.  Hmm.  Fling open those windows.  Cancellation of any social activities in our living room for near future.


This is part of Six Word Saturday, a haiku-like blog hop  - describe your life in six words - hosted by Show My Face.  To see the others, go here:  http://www.showmyface.com/

Underappreciated Music Teachers of the World, thank you

Supporting a child through the early stages of learning an instrument ain't fun. Even at the intermediate stages. There's chasing them to practice. Sitting impassive through painful renditions. Hovering strategically, reminding them to practice the tricky bits not just the easy bits. Ferrying to and fro. Sitting in dark carparks waiting for them to finish the lesson or the ensemble or the orchestra. Forking out for the lessons. Sitting through long, long teatime concerts of them and their peers at a still fairly basic level.  And then, one day, sunshine breaks through!

With Firstborn there were special moments of helping her with viola practice, playing in harmony together in the early morning. Special moments, it became clear, which only I appreciated. As we were moving to Kenya the viola mysteriously appeared on the pile to be listed and sold on ebay.
'Pleeeeeease can't I give it up and just do the flute.'
Downcast mother. Oh well then.

But as she's moved up the school, the music concerts given by her year have become more pleasurable. Even far more pleasurable. And last night's one, given by their prep school and the successor high school, was truly enjoyable. An ethereal Kenyan boy soprano, solidly robust in statute, angelic voice. Watching sixteen and seventeen year individual singers, who have found the right song for them, who are so supremely themselves as they perform, who have found a platform to be themselves at their peak, to engage the audience in their interpretation.  Immensely moving.  As different in nature as slogging away at scales 'to pass grade two' as it can be.

These school concerts feel a little like time-series nature photography.  I remember these stars from last year. Engaging, confident, competent, but a tad more diffident then.  And now, wow, what a difference a year makes. What a difference these young people will make, whether as singers or elsewhere in the world.  I'll remember them. I relish being there to take pride in their success.

'Voice' is one of the big topics in NaNoWriMo, - National Novel Writing Month. Keeping on writing at that draft novel to find your voice, that tone and insight which is profoundly you.  It's also at the heart of career guidance for me. What the practitioner catches from the client's words, and reflects back to them, so the client hears it maybe for the first time at a deeper level and gains a deeper insight on themselves and their uniqueness.  And, I hadn't realised it till yesterday, at its best, its profoundly at the heart of music teaching too.  Helping a pupil find the right piece, the right song, the right technique which catches, embodies, magnifies where they are at. Conveys it to others. Creative, will of the wisp work.  Beautiful. Potentially life changing.
Thank you music teachers of the world. I'd guess many are caught in a cage of half hour lessons and grade one scales: 'Don't forget the F sharp', - as many of we careers advisors are caught in servitude of CV checks and duty appointments.  But sometimes the sun shines through.

'To listen another's soul to the condition of disclosure & discovery may be almost the greatest service a person can perform for another.'
Douglas Steer



  

Six Word Saturday

Clearly I'm longer winded than others doing this Six Word Saturday lark. (Sum up your life today in six words.)

'And another thing' I want to say. And shall, because its fun.

So first,
Homework stalks the family. Fireworks tonight.

As the children get older the demands of homework are taking over the weekend. But its Guy Fawkes tonight, and despite the firework ban in Kenya with the security alert we're going round to friends for a barbecue and sparklers.

Or

Sunburned soggy daughter returns. Own-bed gratitude.

FirstBorn has been on a school Science & Geography field trip in the Rift Valley. But its the short rains, which means days getting hotter and hotter and then torrential rains. They were camping. Two tents flooded.  Bedding sodden. Ended up with five of them in a four man tent.

Or
Mulish musician enthusiastic rock cellist. Langata ;{

SecondBorn is a mulish musician.  But his new cello teacher has just demonstrated rock cello to him, and all of a sudden he's a tad more enthusiastic. But cello lessons are in Langata, hours away, and probably the subject of another post soon.

Or
7111 words to paper. Nearly-novelist grins.

I'm really enjoying NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and making far more progress than I ever have in four days writing before.

Do take a look at what others have posted here:  http://www.showmyface.com/

Outed as a Dinosaur

The great excitement of this month has been signing up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Aiming to 'turn aspiring novelists into perspiring novelists', signing up commits you to writing 50,000 words of a novel, from scratch, between 1 November and 30 November.  It's the literary world's Lewa Marathon or IronManChallenge (so I like to think), since I ain't going to be signing up for them any time soon.
'The demands of my novel, you know', newly purple turban, cravat and smoking jacket-clad, I wave a limp, languid hand.

50,000 words in a month translates as 1,667 words a day. Do-able. Especially knowing that 250,000 others are registered over the world. There's a website, chat rooms, where you can chew the fat with others trying to write chick lit, seeking definitions of when is it chick lit and when romantic fiction?  Need to get authoritative information on undetectable types of poison, there's a forum for fact-checking. Wonder how to pace the narrative, which voice to use when, - the world's aspiring novelists are out there, and chewing the fat on some forum, rather than typing away at their work in progress (known as WIP I now discover.)

And it's happening in Kenya too. Big-time. There are 83 of us registered in Kenya, and some of us met up for a Kick-Off Party on Day One, in a beautiful open-plan pine furniture incubator unit for technology entrepreneurs in Nairobi. Get that!  I want to say it again, 'in a beautiful open-plan pine incubator unit for technology entrepreneurs in Nairobi.' This is a parallel universe we're entering here.

NaNoWriMo is about taking the plunge.  About saying:

'Well I'd rather try, and spend every weekend training, tear a hamstring and need to do an urgent wee infront of the world's cameras, than not.'

Hmmm, on the other hand....
But once committed, I'm finding it amazing. (Famous last words).  Just going to a Writers Group. Meeting others who've written several novels.  Sitting quietly, tongue-tied, amidst a conversation on how you get going, keep going. Taking on that identity for the first time. I'm no longer
'Just a Blogger'.
I'm Out and Proud, a Writer. Manquee maybe.  But my own, personal work-in-progress.

There's a whole new vocabulary and terminology to learn. 'Write-ins', where you and your laptop install yourself in the nearest caff with internet at a given time, and write companionably alongside others who've joined you.  Or rather prime them to say, at regular intervals:

'ThresholdMum, what are you doing? You've been gazing at that cinnamon croissant for the last twenty five minutes, are you going to touch the keyboard at all this write-in?'

WriterBuddies. Like facebook friends, except they can see how you're getting on, can see how many words you claim to have written since the start.  Stentorian tones of my much-hated PE teacher at school:

'What are you doing there at the back ThresholdMum? Get running!'

And 'word-sprints', my current nemesis, catalyst of my outing as dinosaur.  So a word-sprint is the fartlek of Nanowrimo.  It's a commitment to spend the next fifteen minutes typing.  But since interval training is best done in company, so too are word sprints. Enter twitter. If you type in the hashtag #nanosprints  you can tweet all those NaNo wannabes who are currently staring, vacantly at their keyboards, all over the world.  Can say, (or rather tweet)

'Anyone up for a wordsprint, 15 minutes from :30?'

and have novelists from Sao Paulo, from Clapham and from Silicon Valley join you.  A commitment to write for the given fifteen minutes, and then to tweet back to your inner circle training mates your number of words written in the time towards the big 50,000 total.

Well it sounds great. But writing at midday in Nairobi is 9am in UK, is middle of the night in the States (I think). No pre-set wordsprints when I chose to start. So I did my virgin tweet. Successfully. Invited the world to join me panting around the track. And waited. And waited. And eventually jogged off on my own. To discover, an hour later, two sorry little tweets from fellow running mates, saying roughly, in NaNoWriMo tones:

'We're still waiting for you in the rain under the lamp-post. Aren't you coming?'

For it took me another hour to find where responses to tweets come in. And they'd tweeted back, and I, poor sorry sap, hadn't bothered to fire the starting pistol, and it had all come to vain.

On the other hand, coming to vain infront of someone in South America and someone on the US West Coast isn't all that public when you're in Kenya. Unless you blog about it too.

Re-reading this blog it has all the eager fresh-faced enthusiasm of the recent convert and zealot. Maybe stand back if you also meet me on the playground. But I am bowled away. Fascinated by how much easier it is to write if there's no time for second thoughts. If you just want to keep going.  There's still time to join if you might be interested. Add me as a Writer Buddy if you do (I'm ThresholdMum.)  And watch this space. I'm at 5,400 words on Day Four. You won't be able to miss the ticker tape parade and loud brass band if I make it to the finishing line. And if you see me red-faced and panting in some Java caff in Nairobi just don't shout 'Word sprint' and then run off giggling.

Steamed-up glasses

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport - Nairobi's international airport - has been the site of some heady emotions for me.  Arriving with excitement, leaving with excitement, welcoming with excitement, keeping hold of handfuls of passports and email travel tickets, or of trying to maneouvre in suitcase after suitcase of Essentials (aka branston pickle, brandy butter and mincemeat.)  And when emotions run high, my glasses steam up.

Scientists have demonstrated that specific details learned during heightened emotions are less likely to be remembered.  That's my case, and I'm sticking to it. And it was proved conclusively today, one of my least successful during my time in Kenya.... Reader, read on.

I'd arranged to meet up with my start-up business's accountant at his offices, out at the airport. I've been with this accountancy firm for 18 months, and they are marvellous. Can explain tricky concepts so that, even if I don't understand them now, its clear from my notes I did understand them when we were face to face. Set up my company with no hassle. Took me through the Kenyan tax system. Explained the procedures for getting work permits (more than once) and lent support to my case. Most importantly, do it all without paying bribes, without ever paying bribes, a major major accomplishment for Kenyan fixers. 

Over the 18 months I've only once been to their offices, right at the beginning. Out at the airport is a long way from home for me, and for most things they send the papers in to be signed with a staff member to a handy central Java cafe, and you do your business there.  But today I wanted to copy a spreadsheet, discuss procedures,  hand over a shoeboxful of receipts, get firm guidance. Take reliable notes. Needed to make my way back to their offices.

The road to the airport is tortuous. It runs through the industrial area and some major roadworks. It's the main road from the freight port at the coast through to Uganda and Rwanda. It's busy, with petrol tankers and freight lorries and shipping crates. Busier still when (as today) the rains are here. So I set off early. Allowed an hour and a half for a trip that, early morning, takes 20 minutes. And the monsoon rains started - great plump drops, heavy heavy rain.

I'm not a confident book-keeper. I know others do it better, consistently put the same article in the same column, log items chronologically. So when I look at my shoebox full of receipts, I get that hot flush under my collar, much as I would if someone were leafing through my knicker drawer.  Private, and should stay that way. So I'm already rather flustered about the journey.

But off I drive, through the rain and the massive potholes, and much later am nearing the airport. There's the fence. There's the sign. But which way is it?  In a very Kenyan way, the sign for the airport is in the middle of the road and doesn't point out which way the airport itself lies. I know I should know. Have been here often before. But remember the heightened emotions. And usually, if we are travelling, a driver brings us as there's no airport parking.  So I took the righthand lane, and whizzed over a flyover, through a post-industrial landscape reminiscent of scenes from the Sopranos, and far far away from the airport. NOT that way, go off road to turn round and zip between carriageways, back we go again.

THERE'S the airport, some 20 minutes later, still in the driving rain. Fumble with the map. Take the first turning before the airport barrier. Oh no here's the barrier. Here are the police bombchecks. Here's the bit you can't reverse out through. 
'Please can you tell me how to get to this bit?'
'But Madam, that's at Wilson airport not here....'

Oh my. So it is. Quite another airport, quite another bit of town.  Probably an hour away in the torrential rain. And I've been there before too. It's just, when you're paralysed by receipts and directions, when your glasses are steamed up, well it's hard being efficient and effective.

Phoned the accountant to apologise. He said he could hold on for me. And this is why you want him to be your accountant too, when I said,
'Well actually, I've just been to the wrong airport, am stuck in traffic in the rain and am now am too flustered to listen carefully when you explain, if I did reach you', he guffawed down the line, and gave me another appointment.
What a darling. Erastus CPA.  Moving next week to a more central location!

Risk Assessment

Kenya's at heightened security alert.  Kenyan troops are in neighbouring Somalia. There have been two grenade attacks in Nairobi this week, with loss of life, and a carbomb defused. And people are uneasily aware that - as they'd say in Spooks - this could be a prelude for worse.

I worked in London during the IRA bombing campaign. Lived in South Wimbledon, far, far at the end of the Northern Line. Remember my commuter reactions. Anxiety yes, on discovering that a Central London station was closed due to a bombscare. And then, next beat, calculating look in my eyes, swapping totty heels for trainers, ok, well then walk to Leicester Square, take the 19 bus to Clapham and... Contingency plans, joining the long trails of London commuters tramping the wet pavements homewards.

Once, caught in a scare at London's deepest station at Tottenham Court Road. An anxious five minute evacuation  from the final train to enter the station, stiff upper lip, no pushing on the upward escalator,  wanting to hold the hand of the kindly woman ahead, but not asking.  That duality, evacuating as if it could be true, but failing to act on the impulse for comfort and reassurance.

Lived there again at the time of 9/11 and 7/7.  Worked on the edge of the City. Did take toddler and babe on the tube across London and on the train to Wales on the day after 7/7. Risk assessment again.

So how is it in Nairobi now?  Big events being cancelled. Sales of fireworks banned.  Bomb checks galore. At shopping malls, hotels, even at some schools. Lots of checks, mirrors on poles under cars, boots opened, handbag checks, but maybe not maximum coverage or consistency.
'Is there anything in the boot? No?'
Waves on through.

At many of the malls there are male and female security guards conducting checks. The boys have the toys, the scanners. The girls don't. And peer from above into handbags, cursory, hardly a fingertip search.  And the boys with the scanners, when they get a alarm beep, say
'Is that your phone?' and don't check what triggered the alarm.

The prestige malls are empty. Individuals conducting their own risk assessments.  We went out for Sunday lunch yesterday. Were amazed to find that the small back-street restaurant we'd chosen, usually deserted on Sundays, was packed with families who'd decided to veto the formerly very popular - overly popular for current times - upmarket caff a block away.

Nine year old SecondBorn reported that his friends, fellow nine year old boys, had told him:
'Not to go to the supermarket on Saturday or Sunday. Or if you do go, don't stay longer than 20 minutes.'
We'd concur, and don't. Go to smaller shops to buy our milk or coathangers at present. But otherwise public life goes on. Just at less busy times, in less popular places, in houses not in cafes. And with my trombone, in its case, removed from the boot of the car.

Six Word Saturday



Today I'm joining in with Show my Face's Six Word Saturday blog hop. Haiku-like you describe your life in six words, no need to explain further.


So here's my first:

Rains started. Inside: termite wings litter, puddles.



Or the second, maybe cheating:

5am, wake pale resentful daughter, orchestra-course-wards.

If you're interested, go to http://www.showmyface.com/ to see the others - or post your own.

School visits

Tom and I both went to our local comprehensives, great hulking 1500-student schools. I don't remember a school visit beforehand. The choice then, for me, was the local comprehensive, or learning Welsh, my mother's mother tongue but not mine, from scratch and opting for the Welsh-medium comp, a bus-ride away.  Those comprehensives then did well by us, though maybe less so by others. They gave us some inspirational teachers and helped us to good exam results. I do remember feeling scared, overwhelmed and dwarfed for much of the first two years there. It wasn't human scale, but it met many needs. It's what we imagined for our children too.

I did visit schools for sixth form. An only child, I'd decided I'd like to board if possible. Visited five liberal leftie boarding schools, was offered a scholarship to one.  Remember the school visits, all over the country, as an interesting, exhilerating experience. Not threatening. But it's different as a parent. Or different now.

Since then I've visited many prospective schools at different transitions for our kids. UK state primaries and secondaries, Kenyan private prep schools and high schools. And this week, UK boarding schools. Oh my. Recap of last year's installment here. http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2010/10/dreaming-spires-sweaty-fantasies.html


It was all simpler when the kids were little. Suburban small towns don't offer that many primary schools your child might get into. I was enthusiastic, EagerBeaver Personified, visited all the possibles the toddler group suggested. Eliminated one candidate because of spelling mistakes on the teacher's displays in the reception classroom.  Steered clear of another where Ofsted said a third of the children were on Social Services's at risk list, anxious yes about how we would manage carefree playdates in the supervision of other parents. Was bowled over by a tiny village school, academically less stunning, in which the inspirational head bade year 6 volunteers take prospective parents on a tour of the school. What confidence in your ten year old pupils. What a willingness to take risks. What great exposure and experience for your pupils. THIS is what we want. Please.  (One prospective parent told me with relish how she had been taken round by a lad fascinated by fire extinguishers. How her tour had led uphill and downdale in search of the full complement of fire extinguishers. Possibly frustrating if you had clear, adult-focused objectives you wanted answered. But a beautiful testimony to a loving creative school.)

Then six years later, last year, we toured Kenyan British curriculum high schools for FirstBorn's transition.   Felt keen on the options. Picked a first choice. Relaxed.  And then realised with a parental doubletake around six months later that actually, while that was the preferred choice for lots of her mates too, of course we wouldn't be here then. We are here in Kenya for Tom's work. And before FirstBorn finishes GCSE we'll be elsewhere, also abroad, in a yet to be defined location, but most likely, mid-GCSEs, in a country where the schools are not a patch on those in Kenya or UK.  Oooeeer.

So over the summer I researched UK boarding schools. Received snooty emails back from Registrars called Priscilla, informing that my (nicely spelled, appropriately apostrophied) correspondance sent a year and three months before FirstBorn's potential entry was in fact three years too late, and that the list for her yeargroup had been closed for the last year.  There are different stratospheres of parental organisation I discover, again.

I combed through prospectuses. Weighed up reports from the Good Schools Guide. As a family we spent a Sunday afternoon perched in a row on the sofa watching promotional DVDs from different schools.  Bland. Largely uniform. But so telling in the minor details.  One focussed mainly on the boys and the boys' sport, with scant female airtime or focus on parity of provision for the fairer sex.  Another was packed full of young men wearing cityboy ties in their freetime, drawling confidently in upper class accents.  Compulsory cadet corps. Is this what we want? Can't we just find a setting where Firstborn, we, might be acceptable as we are, with the beliefs, accent, class we have? Honeystoned buildings. Polished, practised orchestras in olde worlde chapels.  Jangly jarring feelings on the sofa.

Fellow expats in Kenya were going through the same process. The bits which seem so alien from a Kenyan reality:
'We watched a school DVD where the pupils were wearing thirteenth century costume. How interesting. Must be for a special festival or celebration, we thought. But after twenty minutes we realised this WAS the uniform. Oh dear, not for us.'

Fast forward to the visits themselves. A frenetic tour of five schools in five days, all over the UK.
'Where have you come from today?' a kindly icebreaker.
Blank dazed unresponsive expressions from the whole party - another day, another cutprice Travelinn (£19 the room!) reached by satnav on another identical industrial park or service area of another motorway.

What do you wear to visit these schools, when you're coming from Kenya where the seasons are precisely opposite to those in UK? Where fashion lags a good five years behind, where new clothes are bought via the mitumba market - leftover secondhand castoffs from UK charity shops - and where here completely acceptable floaty cotton blouses and skirts would, as FrankFriend noted:
'label you as a real country hick with straws in your hair, love. Better not.'
Wintercoats dumped as we moved to Kenya, we'd opted not to fork out £400 on warmish coats for the three of us to wear during this week alone. But as we shivered, bejacketed but coatless, in the drizzle, round Northern split sites, we'd guess they wondered quite why we were so idiotic. Martyrs to fashion if not to commonsense.

We met some brilliant, listening, thoughtful and thought provoking, inspirational headteachers.  Signs of sparky teaching. Mannered pupils. Robust houseparents who've been round the block many times before. Some schools which we loved, but which had so few full-time boarders one knew Firstborn would be rattling around alone at the weekend, one lone isolated gooseberry while others returned to the bosum of their families. And then some schools in a premier superleague. Sparkling amazingly resourced teaching facilities, with super expensive kit, for which the well-resourced nationally renowned UK new university at which I recently worked would have given eye teeth. Wind tunnel. Electron microscope. Observatory. Multiple drama studios. Recording studios. Design & technology studios with professional kit, professional spec welding equipment which pupils may use in free time, for example, to build their own cars from wasteyard scrap.  Amazing extra curricular activities. Pupils who canoe 125 miles in competitive races down the Thames.  Beekeeping clubs, cryptic crosswords, computer animation, codebreaking, Model United Nations. Pupils, considering studying Chinese, who are supported to do work experience in China. Or those interested in Drama who do work experience in the West End.  It's what we'd hope for for our children.

Or is it?  We hadn't thought we were small-minded parents of narrow vision. But doubts emerged. How would a child for whom every stimulating educational luxury has been afforded cope with the realities of first jobs or of no jobs? With the mundanity of filing, with necessary but repetitive tasks, or with getting up in the middle of the night, again, sleepless, again, to change a filled nappy? Brilliant, life-enhancing opportunities, but leading to a sense of unrealistic entitlement? Who knows.

The pupils we met were uniformly great. Enthusiastic, informed, thoughtful, kindly ambassadors, well aware of their good fortune. Well educated. And its not that we don't believe in excellence. But some schools seemed so aware they were grooming for excellence that if your - the child's - vision of what you might want from life differed from theirs, and they thought you could get them brownie points, an Oxbridge place maybe, well it would be hard to stand out against it. Conformity. We know best. And I'm sure, in many things, they did.

For Firstborn, coming from Nairobi's restrictive security where she's not allowed to a mall alone for fear of potential bombs, the thought of occasional Saturday afternoons in NewLook is a major plus point of returning to UK. But it turned out to be a acid test question.
'It isn't safe for her to do it in Kenya. Would she be allowed into town with friends on free Saturday afternoons?'
At one school our adult tour guide's lips curled at the question. As if we'd asked whether recreational drugs were on offer in the storecupboard, whether noserings were permissible at High Table.
'She won't have free Saturday afternoons.  All the teams, down to the H team, have fixtures each Saturday. If you're not in a match, you're expected to be there to show your support.'

But being a teenager, for us, is also about the freedom to make mistakes and to learn from them. About space to hang out with friends - yes in NewLook or to lounge on a streetcorner or in a busstop - not about having every minute of every day organised, CV building though this may be. About downtime, space for reflection, experimentation with clothes and hairstyles and identity, and mistakes and recalibration.  About a diversity of pathways to a happy, satisfied life, not about one sole pathway, Endorsed by Authority, acclaimed by allcomers.  And while some schools seemed to see it like that too, others, particularly the very high achieving ones, were clear that they begged to differ.  If education is about good results alone, it was clear which schools were TheBest. Why then don't we want TheBest for our babe?

Wandering in tears round Bath after our final visit, clutching FirstBorn's hand in a way I hadn't in public since she was old enough to tell me not to, thoughts crystalised.  If she has to go, we want her to feel valued for her individuality, the way we value her at home.  We want a place where she'll be valued for her quirkiness not just for her officially endorsed and sanctioned prowess on the oboe.  Yes, teaching and educational stimulation matters. A lot. But so too does willingness to follow a child's lead, to support them to explore what matters to them, blind alley or potential money-spinning endeavour alike.  It's not we're shy of success. But that success, in life, has many facets. We want to support our children to be self motivated, to follow their own leanings, to prioritise according to their bent. To help them to become who they want to be, whether high-achieving conformist or quirky misfits like their parents. And the way you learn to do that, is by giving them some space, not by following a high protein, high altitude diet, defined by Olympic coaches though it may be.

So we've chosen together. Reached unanimity. Are yet to submit the forms. Feel reassured by our choice. Hope she'll yet pass the tests. And are conscious that this is another rite of passage in parenting, premature in our case, but which I'd guess most go through. Preparing as best you can. Trying to do the best you can in the situation in which you find yourself. Being clear that the child knows, whatever happens, you are there for them. Rehearsing scenarios, together.  And then, tearfully, fearfully, standing back, and letting them take control.

Distraction Tactics

Nine year old SecondBorn is a keen drummer, and a coerced, conscript cellist.  The dynamics have been difficult.

Year One in Kenya, when the only cello teacher in the whole country had just departed. Continue your lessons with your mother (a one-time, lapsed violinist). Not popular with mother or son.

Year Two in Kenya, when a highly respected teacher of woodwind at the conservatoire had himself reached the benchmark level in cello to teach (?probably around grade three).  Take cello lessons in school, but bear in mind the teacher is a little diffident about performing himself. Not popular.

Year Three in Kenya, ThresholdMum's networking ability has developed to necessary Kenyan standards.  A US cello teacher has moved to Nairobi from up-country. He's dynamic, skilled, enthusiastic. He has a gap. But he works in Langata - an hour's drive from us using the short-cuts - fine in daylight hours. But the lesson is 530 to 630, and its not safe to drive back through the slums after dark.  And the night of the lesson is the night of my weekly Girls Night Out at which pims are drunk and the giggles are raucous. Sigh. And the first lesson coincided with the Nairobi International Trade Show, notorious for dire traffic, and even worse when the Presidential cavalcade and outriders snarl the route.

'Oooh look, what are those cars with flashing lights?'  Sigh. 

We left the cello lesson at 630. We got home at 910 pm, having adopted the Kenyan response to traffic snarl ups, driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway, and off-road, the car straddling the drainage ditch between the wheels.  (Get you, ThresholdMum, you're adapting!)  Our GradeOne Musical Genius asleep in the back.  Not popular.

So we're back in the UK for a whistlestop tour around potential schools for FirstBorn. Which will be the subject of many posts to come.
'Lets rethink.'

So this weekend, think of a small, well-filled, black hire car driving back, over the Severn Bridge, along the M4 to Heathrow. Cadbury Christmas advent calendars for a well-organised expat friend. Waitrose Christmas cake for us. Lego. Books.

Think of FirstBorn, in on the secret, primed with a list of well-chosen jokes, apt to tickle the humour of a nine year old boy and to distract in extremis.  And think of SecondBorn wedged alongside a large cardboard box.  Will we distract his attention sufficiently, all the way along the M4, enough that he doesn't wonder:

'Why this big box?' Even
'What does this big box say on its side?' 

Join us in hoping that the customs officers don't require that ThresholdMum and Tom unpack the electronic drumkit (and headphones) before the pre-Christmas boy.

'I say I say I say...'

When Mum Turned into a Monster

When the children were small, storytime was my favourite bit of the day.  Hopefully a 20 minute respite when high-energy chasing-his-tail-in-circles SecondBorn would come and snuggle on a lap, when three year older FirstBorn would huddle up on the other side. When, if not peace, then a cessation in hostilities, would fall.  And some books depicted the reality we, the family, were living.  'When Mum turned into a Monster' by Joanna Harris stands out.

In it cousins in freshly ironed dresses give an hour's notice of an unanticipated visit. The family has been press-ganged into tidying up. Fairy cakes and jam sandwiches have been made. Piles of papers have been stuffed into cupboards, bedrooms have been hoovered. Ten minutes till they arrive, and the son and daughter are let off the leash 'To do something quiet.'  Which they interpret as setting up a muddy assault course in the garden using duvets, cushions and tablecloths and taking random bites out of fairy cakes.

The next picture is of a mother transformed with green spikes, monster head, green crocodile tail and snake gorgon hair. Screaming. And though mollified eventually by the children pulling together, as the freshly ironed cousins sit round the tea-table, we see the mother's tail poking out from under the tablecloth, gone but not forgotten.  A satisfying read, which the kids loved as much as I did.
September has been an angry month. That Mum has been a frequent alter ego.  But why, I wonder.  Why do I feel so stretched, arid and inflexible, when in many ways I am so much more settled?  No one factor is the killer. Together they break the camel's back.

* Our one day on, one day off powercuts are continuing.  It feels to have been over a year at this frequency, without warning.  Several blocks of flats are being built on our road and it seems that no sooner has the cabling been upgraded and installed to one lot, then it all comes down to add capacity for the next.

* The AccessKenya email transmitter is on another electricity spur to ours. So either we have a powercut (ie no radio mast) or the transmitter does (no internet access). If you log on at 625 am you get heady access to the internet - but within a maximum of 3 minutes, off it goes again.  I've phoned, pleaded, been logged, pushed, requested credit for our lack of access, in vain.  Today the engineers turned up.
'Give us your largest spanner and pliers so we can sort this job out.'
Engineers regularly arrive without the basic bits in the toolkit - or indeed any toolkit - and disappear off again, tutting the while, when you inform them you don't have an industrial size spanner for removing bolts from aerial masts either.

* SecondBorn has moved up the school to year five. Keys on a chain round his neck and the need for organisational skills to have the right exercise book and equipment in the right room at the right time. Not a happy transition. And the homework after a long, long day. A plague on all your houses.

The Kenyan school system is not a child-centred one. What the teacher says, goes.  And while our kids, in a British curriculum school, are taught by many inspirational, creative, caring teachers, they also have far too much to do with several who shirk responsibilities, rule by fear, push blame onto children rather than acknowledging minor misdemeanours, enforce rigid regulations while failing to apply them to themselves, and even who fail to teach at all.  I don't mind supporting with homework. See it as part of a parent's job description some of the time.  But object, massively, to large chunks of the weekend being taken up teaching SecondBorn the lessons his exercise book suggests he was to be taught in school, - except that the teacher, specialist and being paid for the job, has handed out photocopies, failed to explain them, handed out a worksheet, insisted on silence, and ignored any troublesome, messy requests for support or explanation.

* My career guidance business has taken off.  Lots of individual clients, and from them, individual cheques to the business account. Hurrah - even she can't moan at that can she? 

But the Kenyan banking system have adopted a new system with cheques. Any minor amendment or inaccuracy, - 'thousand' spelt wrongly, any crossing out or overriding the date e.g. changing 23 to 24 September, - misspelling the company name - and the cheque is refused.  My bank isn't far away. 10 minutes drive. But there is never any parking within half a mile, and if there is, you have to pay 140 KSh. You queue for over an hour in over-intimate queues to reach the counter.  Have the cheques accepted, receive a receipt. Breathe a sigh of relief. And a day or two later receive a phone call.

'Your cheque is rejected.  The system does not accept it. They have spelt 'thousand' wrongly.' Or
'It is not made out to your company.'  (Well it is, but the client has added the word Kenya to the account - correctly - its just your bank staff set up the bank account in the wrong name....)
Of the four cheques I have paid in this month three have been rejected.

Accuracy in banking matters. But this accuracy isn't seen as a two way pact. Last visit to the bank I picked up my new ATM card. Drawn on a company account, instead it is made out to a new identity (?maybe MonsterMum) consisting of my first name and my wildly misspelt middle name.  No sniff of a surname.  I'm not complaining.  Doubtless vendors will check it against my ID card (made out in a different, more accurate, name - and despite the discrepancy, accept it nonetheless.)

* Botched haircuts (http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/haircuts.html), uninvited new roofs (http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/guerilla-roofs.html), staff turnover, sackings & retirement.

* And it's taken me three weeks to calm down enough to write about the final fireworks with BigCorporate.

I worked for them at their marble headquarters two days a week for a year. Had my successes lauded - the students I supported to get full fees scholarships to US elite colleges were featured on tv, presented to the President, the subject of double page features in influential broadsheets.  True my hand in this wasn't acknowledged. Well as the only non-Kenyan, - as only the second non-Kenyan to ever work in BigCorporate - that's maybe understandable. But irking.

And once my work permit was agreed, afixed in my passport, I presented my invoices at the rate we'd agreed. Waited. Reminded, represented. Submitted the next too.  Secured written agreement that all was in hand, invoices with Finance, agreed. Went on leave.  Returned five days short of a year that I'd been working for BigCorporate, to discover that my bank account was bare.  Emailed a calm but persistent email to all my managers (attaching further copies of the invoices) noting that I'd welcome immediate payment and an explanation.  Two days, no response.

I saw red. 'Leave it with us,' they'd said. But really. It had been left with them for a year. Still no sense of urgency. Now no sense of collegiality. That even if it wasn't their priority, if it was mine, and I'd waited a year, bust a gut for them, been successful, was a scarce skilled resource, even if a deadweight member of the team, maybe they should act, today.

Recalled the tale of an OldKenyaHand waiting for key paperwork, when in her case bribes were what was wanted. How she'd prepared the way by going to the toilet. Brought a flask of tea, several packs of sandwiches, a weighty tome to read. Arrived as the office opened, was clear, persistent, and refused to budge.  And eventually, ten hours later, as the office manager wanted to go home too, her finalised paperwork was produced, without a bribe.

So in my case I gatecrashed two meetings.  Popped to the toilet, then placed myself in the UberBigBoss's executive office. Showed him the email chain. Re-presented the invoices. Repeated, again and again, that it had now been a year without payment and that that was more than enough. 

It was rude in a Kenyan context where status, gender and seniority really matter.  It would have been rude in a UK context too.  The security guard was alarmed, unclear what to do with this red-faced middle-aged angry mzungu woman. But to treat someone who had (till then) been a key and integrated member of the team like that is beyond the pale - at least in my culture. 

But it worked. The electronic payment was in my bank account that afternoon. A miracle in Kenya.

I get that accidents happen. I get that, in Kenya, multiple accidents happen. Multiple invoices, payment orders, direct requests, urgent emails get shelved, or lost, or sat on and wilfully suppressed. Over twelve months. The job doesn't necessarily receive the wage you negotiated.  Clients try and bargain you down once you've finished the job to their satisfaction. Down to nothing in some cases.  People don't say thank you. The attitude is that staff are two a penny.
'There are far more where you came from.' 
But I also think its a sign of a culture where with seniority comes not needing to dirty your hands, or to demonstrate mastery, to chase, or to oversee implementation, to be responsible for the performance of your staff or yourself. Seniority just Is.  No further requirements. Where attention to detail isn't valued. Where the difference between ill-focused going through the motions and performing a good job isn't valued.  Where what is valued is to come up with a rousing vision rather than to follow through on it, or to look back and identify what went wrong or could be done better.  And that's actually why they needed me, because in US college applications, spinning an empty line without analysis, evidence, articulation, coaching or grounded attention to detail just isn't enough.

Well it feels better to get that rant off my chest! Here's to a brighter, monster-free, tomorrow.

Haircuts

What is the dividing line between a visitor and a resident?  For different people, different things. For me a haircut. 

When you know you can't traipse back to your age-old hairdresser, - when Changes on Handside Lane is 5000 miles away - then you have to adapt and to explain your quirks to a new confessor.

When I was little I had pudding basin cuts. Maybe only a few. They've given me a long-lasting deepseated anxiety about fringes above my eyebrows. There be dragons. Don't go there.
'ON the eyebrows' [gesticulates a la language teacher] to show her eyebrows. 'Please.'

I'm easygoing about the rest of my hair. Used to go for cutprice haircuts in expensive London at the Vidal Sassoon student salon. As the then wearer of a bob (=very simple) you'd get the terrified students on their first week in training. Not always good for self esteem as the more experienced trainer would saunter over.
'What shape is her face?'
'Round.'
'What else do you need to think about?'
'I need to compensate for where her ears stick out, here and here.'
But never a disaster. And only a fiver.

A Kenya OldHand advised me when I'd had a successful haircut:
'Take a photo of it now on your phone. Then you can show the hairdresser how you want it, next time.'  Foolishly, I forgot. Or didn't bother. Thought I'd busk it.

And for almost two years I squeaked under the wire. Then three days before running a major training course I went for a haircut. And emerged with The Fringe, a monk-like tonsure circling in the stratosphere above my eyebrows. Raged.  Cried. Asked for explanation. Demonstrated, again, my eyebrows. Resolved never to return.

But it was a convenient salon. The wounds heal. Yes I wanted to run the training course wearing a balaclava, but I faced it out.  And the hair grew longer, and now five months on, after a summer trim in UK I ventured back again.

Gesticulated again to the most pointed-to eyebrows in Nairobi. Explained. Gave reasons. Sought assurances. But made the mistake of shutting my eyes for the fringe bit.

They did it again. 

In what parallel universe is that a fringe on the eyebrows?

It even has a gentle slant upwards I now notice.

So if you see a short dark middle-aged woman, wearing a balaclava round Nairobi, treat her kindly. Affect not to notice. And treat your hairdresser with care.