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. 

Guerilla Roofs

Yesterday I was working from home when a pickup with five men, some timber and a corrugated plastic sheet parked by the kitchen. Out they piled, unloaded the timber, and hammering started upstairs outside the staff quarters..

?????  Not a usual problem this one.  I've heard of guerilla gardeners who sow colourful seeds to flower eyesore roundabout islands, but guerilla carpenters?  What were they doing? And how did they get past the guard?

'Hello, can you tell me what you're doing?'
'We're building a roof.' [cheerfully]. 

As indeed they were. Competently, proactively, building a roof across the courtyard in our staff quarters. With a sweet transparent corrugated plastic skylight to let in the sunlight.

I had thoughts of Candid Camera, where the hidden camera and tv viewers observe how you react to the unexpected.  Furtive glance over shoulder.

Remembered my arty, stylish Icelandic mates in London, whose friend's theatre troop catalysed Theatrical Happenings, such as erecting a tent in the middle of chichi London restaurants and waiting to see what happened. 

The Competent Carpenters didn't LOOK very Icelandic or theatrical though.  Or just very In Character?

On enquiry it turned out that this had been identified as the solution to our problem of floods and mould in the staff quarters.  Rain flows in under the bedroom door because the concrete floor was built backwards, flowing into the rooms, not out of them.  Solution, erect a roof over half the courtyard so the rain is kept out. Perfect.

Except no one let me know.

I'm pleased to congratulate innovative solutions. Contrary to appearances I'm not a control freak. But I would like to be in the loop - just a brief note maybe, 'Solution to mould - new roof' - before the contractors from Tom's work come and build an additional roof. 

Just another of those experiences in Kenya where things - even the open sky - isn't where you last left it.

Cross-Country Runs

As predictable as Christmas lights going up, as swallows returning home, comes another event, ringed black on the calender, and spoken of with bated breath in our household 'The school cross-country run.' 
'You'd have to do it if we were in UK too' I say in bracing tones to First and SecondBorn.  'We've all been there.'

But that's not quite true.  For here we are at altitude, 5500 foot up, where the running is harder. The runs are longer - 4k for nine-year old SecondBorn, 5k for twelve year old Firstborn. And while the littlies start racing in an 830am chill, by the later races, the tropical sun is full out. Not quite the same as my be-drizzled runs round Swansea's (sealevel) Singleton Park.

Like the London Marathon or the Tour de France, it is gripping to watch.  Inspirational, uplifting, to cheer lithe whippets on top of their game gliding home a lap ahead of the rest of the field.  Watching blythe, innocent year two girls, skipping in their first few paces, bunches bobbing in the breeze.  But like the Tour de France, by lap two you see the grim carnage etched on many faces.  The innocent year two faces, tears streaming, life hasn't been like this before. The plumper kid at the back of the pack - as she knows she will be from last year and the year before that - plodding onwards but singled out, despite everyone's best efforts.

I'm not against cross country per se. I'm not against pushing yourself. I'd even call myself a (very sporadic, lapsed) runner. But I am out there, on the barricades, shouting and tearing up paving stones, against competitive cross country in the third week of term, after an eight week winter break.  In First and Secondborn's first year here, this was the point where they pleaded, tears in eyes, streaming noses, PLEASE let us go back home. Secondborn, deer in the headlights from transition from one country to the next, didn't yet know the name of a single child in his class. Firstborn was eloquent and accurate that she was already being pushed to the limit struggling into school each day feeling this overexposed and insecure.  Why should she expose herself still further when she felt she had no safety nets of friends?  We wouldn't allow it in Maths, - annual ritual public immolation of the poorest performers.  Why is it acceptable in a physical setting?

The school would say - and do - but we need to have the school cross country now, so we can send the best runners to the Nairobi-wide and the national heats later in the week. I'm not against competition, but we all KNOW who the best runners are.  And we're proud to be associated with them, and wish them well.  But for the middle-ranking runners in my family, I'd rather they weren't put off running itself by public competition so early in the season.  Couldn't we send off the good runners to compete without a pre-test - and save the public cross country and parents and timings and medals and all for the end of term, when its more in the stride of the majority?

So how is a school cross country different in Kenya?  Firstborn failed to finish yesterday. Came shuddering and supported by a friend to the steps where I was sitting, awaiting her plodding but triumphal finish. I assumed she was overheated, had gone too fast. Was surprised she'd managed 4.5k to then collapse without finishing.  Until she got her breath back, calmed down, some twenty minutes later.  Nearing the home straight she prepared for her sprint finish. To be told by the teacher counting laps
'You can't finish yet. You've got another lap (another kilometre) to do.' 
In vain to protest that she'd run with the same peers all through. That she - and I, an anxious spectator - had been counting.
'Didn't you argue the point?' I asked later.
'What's the point. You know him. He's never going to admit he might have been wrong, even if he knows he was.'
So Firstborn burst into floods of tears. Couldn't bear the thought of a sixth kilometre, alone. Of finishing, not midfield, but exposed at the tail, in full sight of all.  When she knew she'd run what she should have.  And when the Head of PE appeared, was offered the choice of withdrawing now, within 200 metres of the finish, or of running the sixth kilometre.

So she opted out.

Mistakes happen everywhere. Its a major operation to count 300 kids and their laps. Attention to detail isn't at its Germanic peak in Kenya.  Secondborn, a stronger but equally reluctant runner, reported with glee
'I won't need to go to the Nairobi-wide heats, because X and Y came tenth and eleventh because they'd each missed a lap, - so they have to go to Kenton now instead!'

But in Kenya, for many teachers, what the teacher says, goes. It's a power thing, a hierarchy. Mwalimu knows best, even on matters outside the subject curriculum.  No arguing. I think it matters to accept that on many things we only have a partial perspective. That we may be wrong. Science may yet prove different. On some things, shock horror, the child may know best. It doesn't impune your manhood to accept this. But I can see why Firstborn assessed this as a battle she wasn't going to win.  Rocks and hard places. Giving in gracefully.

But as a stroppy Mum its a hard lesson for me to learn. I can't get away from how things SHOULD be, aka, how I am used to things being, aka, how they once were, back home, back then. Firstborn has adapted, learned some of the lessons of happy survival in Kenya. And in this too I, her mother, am trailing behind, in the rear.

Poverty & Prison-visiting

If you open your eyes Kenya's poverty is evident all around, even in our prosperous Nairobi suburb.  The barefoot, tattered men with large sacks who come and sort through our rubbish before the binmen arrive.  The orphan asking passers-by to donate towards his school uniform so he too may go to school. The carrots stolen from our guineapigs to feed the children of our guards. But for me its in the throw-away comments in conversation that yawning chasms of circumstance are disclosed.

Things weren't working out with Bright-eyed, the part-time cook.  So on the eighth day of her trial, after several warnings, I sat her down and let her go. She was downcast but not all that surprised, and cheered to be paid to the end of the month and given matatu fare home.  So I was surprised to hear from her again three days later. 
'I left my other pair of underwear behind. Can I come and get it?'
Bright-eyed lives in Ngong, 15 miles away.  She doesn't have a post-box or means to receive post. So she's coming 15 miles, - walking? - back to a house from which she was sacked, to pick up her other pair of knickers which had been drying behind the door of her room.  Embarrassing. Time consuming. And a sign of how much it matters to have a change of underwear she otherwise wouldn't have.

Interviewing for Bright-eye's Replacement, feisty women let out details of their circumstances.
'And what about you, do you have children too?' I ask to try and equalise the conversation, rather than just talking about our lives. Of the six women interviewed, one had two children who had died, another's daughter in law had died, leaving her, the grandmother to adopt a further two younger children.  Simple icebreakers become tearful minefields.

The grandmother-cum-new mum had been unemployed for 15 months, since her last expat family departed.  'But I've been busy,' she noted. 'I've been visiting people in prison through my church.'
I brightened. Prison visiting is a big thing for Quakers too, since the historical inititatives by Elizabeth Fry and the like which led to UK prison reform.  I had fascinating conversations over the summer with a UK prison chaplain who spoke of her efforts to support bereaved, depressed prisoners on lockdown 23 hours of 24 through art and peer counselling, of how isolated and undersupported UK prisoners can be.
'So you and your church go and listen to the prisoners?'
'Oh no, we don't listen. We go and preach to them, tell them to repent, to mend their ways or else.'
Oh.

To have two pairs of knickers or a sole pair of shoes is a luxury in this world. To have children, healthy, for children to have parents, alive, is to know great good fortune.

Ladies of Leisure? Why such heavy weather?

It's the first day of the school term, after a long, long, long seven week school holiday. While the children trudge schoolwards in shiny new shoes, sharpened pencils in pencilcase, expat mums queue at 755am, noses pressed against the glass of the posh caff which serves frothy cappuccinos, waiting for an 8am opening.

But the conversation isn't of handbags and designer dresses. It's pent up release for seven weeks of pressure cooker steam. Essential for my mental health. Important too for my mates.  Because attempting to live a somewhat ethical expat life is something done in community, something where the input from peers, gentle steers from wiser souls are profoundly helpful.

'Oh you and your staff and your life of luxury in Kenya. Why are you making such heavy weather of it'  say my UK mates.  But things here just aren't so clearcut. So what then at our first coffee of the term?

Employing people, creating employment, but without the safety net of a welfare state, or the boundaries of an office relationship, is the biggest source of stress.

The friend who is funding the stay & treatment in hospital of the child with severe organ damage of a part-time temporary member of staff.  How much can she stump up? But how can she say no? 
'And the staff member, the dad, he's only with us for a month. He doesn't say thank you. That isn't a reason to say no in a case like this. But it adds to the strain.'

The sacked employees (2), given generous payoffs at the start of the holidays, who have now returned to ask for more money as the impact of unemployment in a land without social security bites.  Tensions between good employment practice 'walk away to make a clear break' and putting yourself in another's shoes. 

One former employee for whom 7000 KSh/worth of employment ads had been put up over the key month when new arrivals seek new staff. With his payoff he took himself away on holiday up-country while potential employers were phoning him. Money gone, adverts gone, potential new employer interest gone, he texts his former employer for an additional handout for busfare back to Nairobi. 

Former employees for whom very expensive (several thousand dollars worth of) emergency medical treatment had been paid, who write threatening letters, even threatening letters to colleagues of the former employer.  Former employees,  for whom expensive (six hundred dollars worth of ) medical treatment had been paid - but which, money in hand, they then decide to be less urgent. Refusing reimbursement to employer, 'Its my money now',  they get employers who refuse to comply summonsed to the local police station.

Tales of the recent interview candidate who paused mid-interview, got up, opened and inspected the contents of a few of the interviewer's living room drawers, sat down again and resumed her answer to the question.

Of the new employees offered work to cover childcare for a employer's short term contract, who then text on the day of arrival: 'I'm not coming'.  Who then, when phoned, clarify:
'Oh I am coming for the job, but not today, in three days time.'  [Just as well I didn't start reinterviewing then.] 
Who then on D-Day Plus Three, don't arrive. But this time have their phone switched off to fend off any inconvenient calls.

Of jobseekers who have wept salt tears over friendly unrelated expats:
'Please find me work, today is my last day in the job, I'm desperate.' 
But who when phoned next day, offered busfare and invited for interview the following day to fill an urgent and ongoing need say,
'Well I can't come tomorrow. Or this week. I'll come next Wednesday maybe.'

It sounds a moaning litany. By UK standards some of these, surely, must be dredged up memories from far distant times. Retold, rehashed on each occasion. But far from it. These were the stories that burst forth, that had to be told, boiling jets of water from a geyser, boils to be lanced, steam under pressure, before any could calm down and drink coffee. 

We weren't many -  five at the table.  We aren't Little England jingoists, we strive to be open to the culture we're in, to adapt our ways within it. We aren't newcomers to this expat lark or newcomers to Kenya. Not freshfaced spring chickens, but grizzled women of the world.  Between us we had lived before in Albania, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Madagascar, South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Uganda, France and UK.  We know we are so fortunate by comparison with those we live next to. That's why the boundaries are so porous.  But not rolling in money, truly not. And these pressures are massive and the contortion considerable.

And Kenya confounds expectations. Ruptures boundaries. Lays waste the identity we thought we had, the way we believed we'd behave, the person we wanted to be, even once was.  And picking yourself up, putting yourself back together, refashioning a self that you might on occasion choose to take coffee with, well for that you need friends.

Different People Do Things Differently: Employment Abroad

Living abroad, immersed in another culture, you learn different perspectives, different manners and mannerisms. Adapt. In some things more than others.  I remember as a 12 year old French exchange student with a temperature, being presented with a very large torpedo-shaped squidgy jelly pill.

'Too large to swallow' I thought. 'Huh?'

And then, by graphic demonstration, the French mum introduced me to a whole new procedure on how medicine may rapidly hit the spot. Arghhh.

On the same visit, a wobbling, yellow-ridged organic mass sitting in my soup plate, glowering at me. 

'La soupe a la cervelle', they said brightly.  'You don't eat that in Britain.' 

Gulp.  Brain soup. No, not a common dish in Seventies Swansea.

You come to learn how different things matter in different cultures.  How dropping by, on spec, on the off-chance was outlawed in Germany, even amongst liberal leftie students in 1980s Berlin.  How close friends, parched, drenched, passing by my door would phone from the phone box opposite my flat, would arrive hot-foot, a minute later, and present a giftwrapped box of chocolates Mitbringsel from their rucksack, which they'd pre-prepared for the eventuality six months ahead. Never arrive unannounced or emptyhanded, even in extemis or if just coming for a cuppa.

In poverty-stricken Madagascar where pot-bellied malnourished tots abounded, how I bridled at the sparkling cement 'wasted' in my eyes on upgraded tombs for the ancestors.  My friend took me gently to one side.
'I know that in Britain when you have a little extra money you buy a pension for your old age.  Here we know that any prosperity comes from the spirits of the ancestors, and so we try to treat the ancestors well, even when we ourselves have little.'
Admonished. Chastened.

But then, when I was younger, footloose, fancyfree, when the stresses of Abroad got too much you could, in extremis, retire to bed for the day with a pile of good escapist books. Equanimity renewed, back into the fray. But in Kenya, in midlife, Abroad enters the safehaven home. Crosses the drawbridge. Penetrates the inner citadel, in the form of our staff, or in this case, our newly hired part-time cook.  Number Three so far, if you join the blog at this point.

Bright-eyed, the new cook, has worked in restaurants before. German restaurants, I noted with glee. Has a whole host of culinary skills. Is keen, eager, enthusiastic.  I'd explained at interview and on Day One that we only needed a part-time cook. 3-7pm, part meal preparation, part being a responsible youth worker in the house while we trailed home from work, or even launched into the post-summer plans of a Fitness Regime. 

'The other meals, - and at weekends - we prepare ourselves.' I said clearly. 'We want the children to be confident cooking and clearing away for themselves - they need to, back in Britain. So it matters that they, and we, keep in practice now.' 

So the deal was struck, 3pm on Day Two, Bright-eyed would be back at work.

And she was.  In style. 

It is the DogDays of the holidays. Tom it was true, had driven off to work at 630am as usual. At 750am I was thinking about getting up.  Heard a loud clanging, clattering, banging in the kitchen.  Saucepans. Lids. Glass.  And some tutting. Unusual for a burglar to tut, surely.

By the time I'd showered, dressed, the clanging had reached forttissimo levels.

'Hello Bright-eyed, what are you doing so early?' 

'I'm cleaning the cupboards. Clearing out. Rearranging them, so the things are where they should be. Where I want them to be.'

Oh dear, 0-100 on the stressometer in three easy sentences. I don't think I'm particularly possessive.  Even think I'm fairly easygoing.   Hadn't realised I was bonded to my kitchenware.  To which saucepan goes where.  Suddenly realised a whole new minefield in my psyche.

I managed to bite my tongue on my outrage.  Somewhat.  Was a tad redfaced, highpitched, pre-caffinated.  Had a clear conversation, I thought, about me cooking too. For over half the time. Of the children, me, Tom needing to be able to find things where they expected.  Of the importance of discussing, consulting, asking permission before acting in someone else's space.  Rearranging their kitchen cupboards. Did touch on the thorny question of 'but why seven hours early Brighteyed?' 

'Well I can't possibly work in conditions like this. It needs cleaning. Sorting.'

Please don't criticise on Day Two. Bite tongue again.

Several hours of banging later I venture back into the kitchen to make sandwiches for lunch.  Yes it is spick and span. Better ordered even. But much of what is now filling the large bin had been formerly Being Saved. Washed, stacked yoghurt pots for food leftovers in the fridge or for transporting guineapig pellets to the hutch.  Empty cereal boxes for junk modelling or for guineapig playpens. Ginger marmelade, imported from UK, for eating. In solitary pleasure. Snarling at anyone else who ventured close.

'Well I didn't want them so I threw them away. They were rubbish.'

One person's rubbish is another person's carefully hoarded soon to be model cardboard lorry or frozen soup holder. OK if you now had visions of a hoarder's house with piles of teetering newspapers saved from the 1950s. It hadn't been like that. Had been perfectly clean, tidy, ordered - but prepared for summer holiday eventualities. Now shorn. Bereft. Denuded. Without consultation.

Because in Kenya, 'Different people do things differently' is not a widespread catchphrase, though of course they do. In school Kenyan pupils don't learn to analyse or to see things from another's perspective, but to give the officially endorsed answer, word for word, to the question.  Officially endorsed answers are of course, not open to tweaking, responding to research, feedback, audience response, customer comments.  To difference. Intuition. Shades of grey. Gradations. Or to out and out quirky eccentricity. They instead are standardised.  Mass produceable. But it's our home. My kitchen too. Not a restaurant. If I can't be odd, quirkily eccentric, a potentially creative mum, even off the scale a daffy hoarder in my own kitchen, where may I be?

And the difficulty with officially endorsed answers in cooking, is that taste matters.  Tastes differ. Nigella's guacamole is different from Nigel's from Jamie's from Gordon's from mine.  I said to Bright-eyed on Day One,
'Well its great you can do greek salad, and we like it alot. But with olives and not with aubergine or mushrooms like you used to do it in the restaurant.'

I said it again on Day Three, this time with more explanation:

'Mushrooms are expensive, and we like them better when they're cooked. Please can you leave them out of the salads as it's a waste.' 
But each day nice salads, tasty salads - but with added mushrooms. That's how they did it in the restaurant. Standardised. Thats how we - in a different context, with different priorities - have to have it. Unless I, my cookery books, different standard answers, can get through.

And the early morning starts?  Part-time working isn't common in Kenya, though it is more so for cooks. But we discussed hours at interview, agreed them at the pre-meeting. repeated them on Day One, for Day Two. But somehow, because Bright-eyed hasn't encountered it before,
'See you at 3pm tomorrow' became an 8am arrival. Three days running, despite corrections each day.  I get that, in a new job, you want to do your best. Show what you can do. Demonstrate you're indispensable.  Not be found slacking. But it makes me feel invisible that what I say clearly, several times, in different ways just gets disregarded as too new and too confusing. 

It isn't just Bright-eyed.   Last year we had family staying in the dry season. The Friday they arrived all water to the house failed. It's happened before, quite often. We live on a hill. There are airlocks when the water pressure falls. Sometimes it comes back when you drain the airlock. This time not. For four days we carried water, poured water to flush, tried various fiddling, stopcock twisting and draining techniques, explained and explained again. At the end of Day Four I spoke to our gardener, asked if he had any further suggestions. 'Oh I switched off the stopcock at the bottom of the garden on Friday.' 

?!?!

'Because????' Without saying? With no reason or note. And then went home for the weekend?'
As though the stopcock at the bottom of the garden was maybe looking untidy. Suddenly out of place?  Needful of a rest? Could be switched off at a whim with no impact. With no need for reason, report or communication. When we had a family of four coming to stay.  I cannot understand it.

Since then I've tried to train our staff on Major Changes. Carry on your job in the usual way, that's great. If you plan or see a major change you need to discuss it with me first. What is a major change? Cutting down a tree in the garden. [Thinks of the healthy tree which was cut down without consultation, next to the dead tree which is still standing.] Switching off the stopcock. [Bitter grin.] Letting workmen take the washing machine away without warning. [But I wrote it in the guard's book that someone had taken it. Did you get their car number plate or their name? No. But they said it was alright. But you are a guard. Your job is to protect people and property. Not to let unknown visitors into our house and take away the washing machine.]  Changing all the kitchen cupboards around. Spotting a workmate who is responsible for security smoking drugs while on duty.  All true examples in the last two years.

In Britain, in Europe, if you're given a  task by a boss you do it, or report back changes, delays, failure to do it. In Kenya I give a task, communicate it, I think clearly, anticipate that it has been done if not told otherwise.  In BigCorporate that's what people do too.  But not in FormerHoardersHaven, Nairobi, Kenya.  Or, at any rate, not yet.