Home life here at Ondati

I composed this blog several days ago but we have been without power since Sunday so haven't had a chance to tidy it up and publish it.
We rely on a car battery with a device called an inverter to charge our laptops, and first the battery ran out of juice and then the inverter gave up. It turned out to be just a fuse but it has taken us 4 days to sort it out.
I want to add some pictures to this but our internet connection is very slow so I shall try again another day.

I put a picture of our house in an earlier blog, but I want to share some of the facets of living here. 

The house was built specially for the TAMTF volunteers and is of a better standard than most local housing.  The house has 3 bedrooms, a main living room, a storeroom and a “bathroom”.  The floors are concrete - so can be kept fairly clean. The outer walls go right up to the roof – not always the case with local houses- but the inner walls go to where the ceiling would be if we had one.  The roof is corrugated iron, and does a pretty good job of keeping the rain out. It has been severely tested recently in some proper tropical thunderstorms, and only let through a few drips.  It is however, very noisy in the rain – something which I and my colleagues are familiar with working in Owen Block!

The bedrooms each have a single bed – actually surprisingly comfortable – and a metal chair to put “stuff” on.  We each have a mosquito net, a pillow, blanket and sheets.  Previous volunteers have left the sheets, but we just have one pair per bed so have to hope it doesn’t rain when they are washed.

Samina cooking

 There is no “kitchen” as we don’t have any of the equipment you would associate with such a room.  The cooking is done on a little charcoal burner which stands outside when it’s not raining or too dark. When I say little – it is no more than 20cm high and scarcely 30cm diameter so can only cook one pan at a time. Luckily both the TAMTF volunteers have learnt to cook on it, I haven’t tried yet. There is no running water so no sink, the washing up is done in a bowl of cold water, on the floor of the main room. The water is brought from a pump at the other side of the compound – 50 metres away. The water comes up from a borehole – rumour has it, it is water from Lake Victoria. The storeroom has a set of rickety shelves but otherwise everything is kept on the floor, in bags, boxes etc.  Keeping stuff cool is difficult, but the nights are quite cool so fruit and veg keep OK, but we tend not to keep “leftovers”. We eat vegetarian – Samina is vegetarian anyway – so we don’t even try to keep any meat.

The “bathroom” is a "wet room" with a drain hole in one corner that water will drain from. We use a system of two bowls – fresh water in one is scooped up with a jug and poured over oneself while standing in the other bowl.  The first jug of cold water is a shock but it is very refreshing. It is surprising how little water you need to wash all over including hair when you know every drop has been carried over here.  The toilet is about 40m away, I won’t describe it.

The central room in the house has a small wooden table and 3 plastic garden chairs.  We borrowed chairs from the school when we hosted lunch for the teachers the other day.  We have a hurricane lamp to use after dark – it gets dark by 7pm – and we use torches.  We are nearly always in bed before 10, often just after 9, as reading by torchlight is difficult and attracts moths and insects. We make up for it by getting up early.

The principal and me working on the budget

Breakfast is usually toast and coffee, and fruit –mango this morning, pineapple or papaya other days.

During term time we can eat with the teachers – ugali and kale, sometimes with meat broth, eaten with fingers. Ugali is hard to describe for anyone not familiar with native African food.  Made with maize, and cooked to a stodgy lump, it forms the basis of most meals.  I can’t say I have learned to love it but it is quite acceptable and I can eat enough of it not to offend anyone when we go visiting.

As the school is closed now we have to make our own lunch as well as evening meal.  

We were invited to lunch with one of the teachers last Saturday.  She had cooked a chicken for us (eggs for Samina) which helped the ugali and kale go down well. 

It’s a simple life but we keep well and have all the basics.  We have a better standard of living than the people around us so no complaints. 

Breaking News

Well actually, as the power and internet are so unreliable, this is a round-up of news items.

Last Sunday I went for a walk round the compound and bumped into Ben, the project co-ordinator, and while he was showing me the pineapples he picked one and gave it to me.  When I got home the girls were very excited – it is the first pineapple to be harvested!  Ondati’s first pineapple.

Samina excited about the pineapple

When I went to pay for it Ben had to start a new page in the record book – another excitement.

Unfortunately, it isn’t quite ripe enough to eat. It is still sitting on the shelf.  I have been putting it out in the sun to ripen but it’s not very sunny.  In fact it keeps raining.

Yesterday, Wednesday we woke up to find a new arrival! A calf arrived the night before.  Unfortunately, it is a male – not very useful when you are trying to build up a dairy herd.  They seem to be unable to produce female calves – can anyone out there suggest how they could remedy this?

Leslie at 12 hours old

In the past, calves have been named after TAMTF volunteers, but they have run out of boy’s names, so I suggested they could call him Leslie.  They may keep him and sell the other bull calves, so Leslie (or Les) could be here for a while.

Work-wise we have broken the back of the budget for 2012 and I have been working on updating the cash book and various other spreadsheets.  I have spent some time with the Principal, showing him excel techniques and some basic accounting principles.

We discussed depreciation – and after the easy option, straight-line, we got on to reducing balance calculations.  I even explained the basics of current cost accounting.

Today is now Friday and we woke to the sound of rain – quite unusual in the morning – so it looks like this evening’s little outing to the nearby village of Oria will not happen.  We were going to go to the Friday market, it is bigger than Ondati and just a 45 minute walk away.  But the roads will be rivers of mud.

Zoe and I with the pineapple

We were planning to go out for the day tomorrow – a proper small town – have lunch out, see the sights but this rain is making the roads very difficult. Meanwhile, we are sitting in our little house, trying to work.  We are dependent on battery power (a car battery that has to be taken away to be charged) so working on computers is limited.  It’s a long time since I wrote so much by hand. The internet is very intermittent and the signal is weak so it has been difficult to update this blog very often. 

Ondati School

Ondati School was started in 2009, by 2011 there were about 100 students in three classes.  Next year when school restarts in January there will be a fourth class.  It is hoped that most of the girls in year 3 will progress to the final year – the new form is likely to be fully subscribed at 50 students as the school is gaining a very good reputation.

Half the girls are boarders – they live too far away to walk every day.  There is very little provision for secondary education for girls in the surrounding area.  The nearest mixed secondary school is still predominantly boys.

There are now 5 teachers – which seems a good proportion for 100 students - but they have to teach a very wide curriculum, the Kenyan school curriculum has a great many subjects.

The school is supported by UK charity called Teach a Man to Fish. Their ethos is to create self-sufficient schools so that student fees can be kept to a minimum and the students also learn to support themselves with life skills and business skills.  The model they use is to create businesses run by the schools that bring in sufficient income to enable the school to be self-supporting. To find out more about them visit their website www.teachamantofish.org.uk

At Ondati they have a dairy business which is quite profitable and other projects which are still in development. There is a tree nursery, a pineapple plantation (just a patch really), several bee hives for honey, and a phone charging business run on solar power. There are a few more ideas in the planning stages.

There are 2 project officers here (Zoe and Samina) – they have been here for several months – to assist the school building up the businesses. They support the principal with many aspects of the work here. Zoe was my main contact here before I came out, but they both work with the Principal and staff, and I will be working with them both.    

This morning was the last day at school so we had prizegiving and speeches.  When we arrived at the classroom the girls were singing enthusiastically, the speeches were interminable, with much “Appreciating” and clapping. Many girls were named and singled out – unfortunately, from an English point of view, the bottom 10 in each class got as much attention as the top 10 with a lecture on trying harder next term. The top 3 in each class got prizes. Then the girls who had contributed most to the projects got certificates and prizes.

After the students had dispersed I was supposed to be giving “class” to the teachers: the plan was that I would “teach them some Accountancy”.  In the end only 3 of the teachers came along, the Principal also arrived half-way through. I went through an example P&L account then looked in more detail at the “Cost of Sales” ie product costing.  Part of the reason for the session was to show the teachers how interactive classes usually are in England – the system in Kenya is very much rote-learning still.  I tried hard to get them to ask questions, join in with a discussion rather than just take notes.  I think it went OK, hard to tell, the culture is so different.

The teachers then joined us for a late lunch – the rice, potatoes and cabbage went down well but they were a bit suspicious of the scrambled egg that Samina had cooked.

The power and internet access here is really poor - not sure when the next update will be.

Arrived safe and sound (shaken and stirred)

The 8 hour flight from Heathrow to Nairobi was uneventful – probably the best one can hope for The from a long flight.  Exciting is not necessarily good when flying.  The flight on to Kisumu was more interesting – there was quite a cloud cover at first but when we dropped below the cloud I could see a huge area of fields – obviously this part of Kenya is good farming land. The land appears to be fairly intensively occupied as we could see many shiny rooftops (corrugated iron being the roof of choice as income increases).

The bus journey was very hot and uncomfortable – the roads are poor of course but the “bus” was a minivan stuffed to 130% capacity.  The final part of the journey was by motorbike.  Zoe had come to meet me so we had all my bags plus her overnight backpack and shopping on the back of two bikes.

This picture is my driver – John – he was very good, and although I wouldn’t say I was comfortable the journey hasn’t left me a jittering wreck.  Whether I can do it again before I go home remains to be seen – I guess it depends on how desperate I get to get out of here!

The school is still quite small – only 100 girls in 3 classes – and has no mains electricity, water or sanitation.  I share a house with the two workers from Teach a Man to Fish (more about TaMtF another time). I have a room with a bed (with mosquito net) and luckily the other two have mastered the art of cooking on a small charcoal burner. 

The setting of the school is very peaceful and when school breaks up later this week it will be very quiet.

I have met the Principal and most of the School Management committee, the staff and students. The students will be leaving soon so I won’t see much of them in the next three weeks. A few of them just popped in to see me and asked to see the pictures – they were very happy with the picture of some students playing volleyball.

 

Last minute stuff

Saturday evening - I've been rushing about all day, finishing packing and sorting out stuff at home. Now at 6pm I'll just take a break for a quick coffee and make a few notes.
I have bought a bag of the cat's favourite biscuits, checked my malaria tablets, made sure my notebook and phone are fully charged, what can go wrong?
I have remembered my headtorch (thanks Sanjay), and packed some quality dark chocolate (Hope's suggestion) and some Marmite.
We are going out to a party tonight, which will stop me panicking for a few hours. We catch a coach to heathrow tomorrow morning, then I fly out 7pm.  Flying via Nairobi, I should arrive at Kisumu before noon on Monday, then I embark on the last leg.  I have been told that the last stage of the journey will be by motorbike taxi - another new experience - 40 minutes clinging on for dear life!

Getting ready

I am using this site to share my experiences in Kenya over the next few weeks. 

Previously in Malawi ...

I have never written a blog before so bear with me, it is just the first of several new experiences I expect to have over the next few weeks.

First things first – what am I doing and why? (or rather, why now? and why this?)

I am going to Kenya to work for a few weeks at a school in Western Kenya, as a volunteer.

Last year I visited my son Chris, and his partner Hope, in Malawi, and as my friends and family know, they have both worked in Africa for some time, primarily in the NGO/charity sector. Hope mentioned having heard of an organisation that sent professional Accountants to assist charities and how she felt it would be helpful to her organisation. So, on my return home I did some research and found references to AfID via the CIMA website. It looked just what I was looking for – an opportunity to offer my professional skills to support the development grass-roots development work.  I contacted them a few months ago, and here I am ready to set off next Sunday.

Why now? I am nearing retirement but still looking for useful work to do. I am not looking for promotion nor thinking of re-training for a new career, (I did that 15 years ago) but I am always looking for new experiences and like to challenge my personal comfort zone.  I know it's a cliche but I wanted to give something back, make a contribution, support those less fortunate than myself.

Why this? I know from my own personal experience that bookkeeping and accountancy can appear like a “dark art” to the uninitiated but it is vital that charities and NGOs can keep good records and explain what they have done with the money that their donors have provided.  AfID are especially keen to stress the “capacity building” side of the support offered to organisations, and this chimes with my own passions.  I had a previous career as a teacher and believe strongly in lifelong teaching and learning.
Accountancy and business skills are in great demand in developing countries - and I hope to be able to be of real use to the school.

I still have so much to do -packing and tidying up at home, and tidying up loose ends at work - before I leave! So, that's all for now.