Part 5

I am writing this as a method of distraction having been eaten alive by mosquitos yesterday in my own home!! Little monkeys!! I was actually doing very well on the bite front– some might even say I was a little cocky having only had about 10 in total in 4 weeks; however the mosquitos must have caught wind of this and decided it was time to teach me a lesson – 28 bites in 1 day!!!! Today all I want to do is scratch them out unfortunately that would involve scratching 28 holes in my skin and therefore probably not a wise idea – instead I’m sitting with a wet flannel covering about 4 bites feeling very sorry for myself!!

Apart from the current close to death, dramatized bite issue everything is going great here, I continue to feel settled and meet new and interesting people. I have even had my first camping experience – much too many peoples amusement out here my organisational skills were second to none. We went to Kilifi for the weekend as there were quite a few people competing in a triathlon. I was sensible and went along as team photographer using having no bike as an excuse not to compete. The day was great fun, what’s not to like Lycra, sunshine and alcohol!!?.  There was then an after party at the boatyard with a tame jazz band followed by a surprisingly impressive DJ.  Well I say that but I think it has more to do with the fact I haven’t really heard music in 4 weeks, I found myself dancing and singing along to songs that normally in the UK I can’t stand but when you don’t heard music they suddenly become the best songs you’ve ever heard!.

One of the best things about Mombasa and the people I have met is that there is no judgement I found myself feeling really shy dancing on sand in bare feet without my 6inch heels and circle of 7 girlies to back me up, however anything goes here I was soon dancing my socks off and even been taught some rock and roll!! All in all a funny night until, that was we had to drive back to the campsite. I clearly chose the wrong car to travel in 1. We got lost 2. We got scared 3. We locked ourselves in the car!! The guy driving was worse than I was for thinking of the worst case scenario especially knowing we were then going to have to sleep in tents in the outdoors –not a good start!! Anyhow we had pitched our tents earlier and as most the guys that were camping had done the triathlon they were out for the count leaving me alone in my tent with my own thoughts!! Hence why I barely slept! We woke early and just caught the sun rising over the sea which was beautiful. I rocked out of my tent in my full length pjs (protecting me from mosquitos) which everyone seemed to find amusing considering the heat, one guy then mentioned a sleep mask and ear plugs to which I replied I had managed to hold off until about 3am but then they had come in handy – he laughed and then looked at me blankly this is when I had realised that he had actually been joking and I had actually been serious – I explained I had brought my doom and pre-sprayed my tent, brought toilet roll and a bottle of water to brush my teeth with!! I don’t think I’ve really got this whole camping thing down yet but hey ho!!! We then went to one of the guys houses for a cooked breakfast – Amazing!! His house is lovely and just made me feel like I was living in a squat!

Work is going well but every week is getting closer to the summer months so getting hotter and hotter. I have my first rounders fixtures next week including a Saturday fixtureL.  We had respect day on Friday which I had been asked to help organise with 5 others. Four periods off teaching where we mixed year groups and gave them six activities to rotate around – not a single moan, groan or complaint from any pupil about any activity – bliss!! We then have international day all day on Monday which is French day including French snacks and a French lunch!! Can’t complain!!  Still getting used to teaching the little ones I have a class of 3 year olds who take everything literally so I have to reign in my sarcasm and heighten my enthusiastic tones.

Pantomime rehearsals are also going well I have to do a lot of gazing into my princes eyes which isn’t easy but I’m starting to learn my lines and have a song rehearsal on Monday which could be tragic!! I just want to see what I have to wear!! If my previous experience has anything to go by I always had the worst costumes – well apart from the vegetable dance!! Surely little red riding hood has to have nice outfits??? We’ll see and I’m sure there will be pictures to follow at some point.

Thursday was an interesting evening after deciding to go for a “short run” with a marathon runner (we have differing ideas of short runs – however unfortunately I found this out during and not  before) which was actually really good apart from my right hip feeling like a 90 year olds. I returned home hoping to have a nice shower and chill out whilst researching some early years planning – however I returned home to no electricity – apparently power cuts out here a frequent but yet again I was getting cocky and hadn’t experienced anything more than 5 minutes – whilst shopping the other week I was advised to buy some more candles and some dishes to stand them on etc. – Me being me decided this was unnecessary, until Thurs when I had candle wax everywhere – maybe next time I will take note to kind advice!!!

Had my first proper night out on Friday I had just intended to go to la marina for a couple of drinks but ended at the local “club” Il Covo for some flaming Sambuca’s, dancing (including my typical dance off) and lots of sweaty people in quite a small place. Girls you’ll be pleased to know that despite the bar being small there is always room for a pole!!Amazing! I arrived home at some ungodly hour in the morning around 5am! But was all good fun again nice to hear some music, some of my old Uni friends will be pleased to hear that since been out here I have heard Peter Andre twice and I didn’t even have to request it!! These nights always bring a good mix of people, at La marina there’s 21 year olds – 90 year olds it’s great.  I even managed to meet someone who I can do a scuba diving course with and a pilot who takes people for sky diving so hopefully I can book both those things and tick them off my bucket list!!

Well now I have bought some antihistamines so hopefully my itching will stop soon! I will leave part 5 here and hope that I have some more exciting experiences soon rather than the mundane mosquito and work stories that have filled this blog.

Oh and my house girl is getting on very well- I love the fact she makes my bed don’t think my bed’s been properly made since 2004 when I left home to go to Uni!!

Final thought:

‘You know you’re in a great place when you’re travelling dangerously, in a Matatu, in the dark listening to ace of base full volume!’

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Steph xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Part 4

For those people who only read this blog to hear tales of my misfortune you are going to be very disappointed with part 4 I’m afraid!! The most traumatic thing to happen over the last few days is being rudely awoken at 4am on a sat with excruciating cramp in my calf after a nice evening run. I have never woken up so quickly in my life!! FACT! Apart from that and been accosted by the same guy on the way to the supermarket again – just so he could tell me he found a nice German girl who would have her photo taken (more fool her), and that he had been paid £50 by someone and wanted to know how much that was (I’m sure he must think I work in some kind of post office and know all about currency exchange rates!) Being the cunning girl I am I managed to sneak past him on the opposite side of the road and on the way back! (Although I don’t know how inconspicuous a musungu (white person) wearing bright purple, amongst a lot of black people wearing pretty dark colours is but I managed it!! But that’s about as traumatic as it had got until this Wednesday – I will reveal more later!

I spent most of my second week in school prepping for the start of term, Monday was pretty surreal, no real direction –rather than whole school meetings staff just pretty much get on with their own thing, there’s no signing in or out and everything appears quite relaxed and informal. We found ourselves locked out of every PE area, which wasn’t such a great start and meant Monday was pretty unproductive. Tuesday I spent the day in blazing heat emptying the entire store cupboard after seeing it was a complete tip! I find it so frustrating that people don’t like throwing things out even when totally broken and unusable! But we managed to get it looking ship shape, but it meant I was covered in dust, sweaty and burnt my hands picking up javelins that had lain on the grass for an hour!!! Wednesday was Eid so was a public holiday – bonus – but in true holiday form it rained pretty much all day!! But I did attend ‘volleyball’ again which was good, getting to know people a little bit better!

I took a trip to the mutumba market at the weekend which is an experience, very busy, very dirty, and very smelly and apparently I have a lot of Kenyan brothers that I wasn’t aware of, but some absolute bargains to be had. I got some nice throws to brighten up my living room and you can buy pretty much anything you need from there – unfortunately I didn’t need very much as I had had a phone call informing me my freight had arrived – very exciting times, so I jumped on a tuk tuk (A little shed on 3 wheels, with a lawn mower for an engine) and headed home for my delivery.  I had some exciting surprises’ in my freight in the form of a picture calendar of me and all my friends and sisters etc. on different months and a good luck teddy courtesy of Mrs East which was great and has really made my flat look more lived in!

I then had the most perfect evening – I mean in the UK I wouldn’t even sit in MacDonald’s on my own but here is so non-judgemental and it’s more acceptable to do things on your own so I took a stroll down to la marina, a local restaurant on the creek, got my table for one overlooking the Creek, read my book whilst waiting for my food and watched the sunset!! It was so peaceful and relaxing.

I then took my first trip south and went to Kilifi on Sunday to another Creek area, which is gorgeous and has a floating boathouse!!! Think I’m heading there again this weekend but unfortunately not to lie on the beach but to do a 5k run and a swim round some boats – joyful!

As it has taken me a while to write this blog I have now officially started work and completed my first week of teaching! So as I write this I am laying on my sofa preparing for an afternoon nap!! This week has been great the secondary pupils are amazing so enthusiastic, inquisitive and welcoming it is very refreshing to feel respected and appreciated by all pupils rather than just a handful!! The primary and early year’s kids are going to take some getting used to – I spent 15 mins explaining what standing next to something meant and trying to get them to understand that that is different to standing behind something! They just look at you blankly!! But sure I’ll get used to it!!  Just as they’ll have to get used to my accent!!! I rocked up to my first lesson – year 3/4 – starting taking the register – first name – Luck – I called out her name, repeated it then asked if she was absent – all the pupils were pointing at one girl when I asked her if she was Luck she responded with ‘no my names Luck’ (pronounced Lack – posh for luck in my opinion!! I’m sure she’d pronounce muck – mack!!) I kindly explained that where I’m from its Luck! So tough luck!!! Don’t think she got it!!!

I am definitely over the whole monkeys at school thing, I find myself walking around with my hands up looking like I’m surrendering to the police just to prove I have no food in my hands!! It’s pathetic, much to the amusement of the staff and kids, I actually jumped out of my seat the other day when someone nudged the bench in the Banda, where everyone eats lunch, and I was convinced it was a monkey coming for my water melon!!

A definite plus of moving here is the lifestyle change, I’m used to devouring a share bag of Galaxy minstrels every 2 days and eating endless biscuits in the staffroom at work, before returning home to watch TV for the whole evening whilst eating some more junk food! Whereas here all snacks are fruit, and I’m so much more motivated to do exercise so I run 2/3 times a week and stayed behind after school to do some lengths in the pool!

So we finally arrive to Wednesday just when I thought I had seen the last of totally random and surreal events. I again attended volleyball, however was told a heap of us (including me apparently) were going along to a pantomime meeting – there’s a strong sense of community here and a lot of people are involved in these types of thing, so on my way there I was discussing how I could be involved, maybe help with any dance choreography, costumes etc. However with everything in Africa we were late (you hear pole pole a lot here which means slowly!! And it sure is) Anyhow we arrived at the venue and everyone was sat in a circle with scripts!!! By then it was too late to turn around and scarper so we sat quietly hoping not to be noticed too much – I was reassured that a lot of the older people are experienced and do the plays a lot so they’ll take up the main roles and then we can discuss our interests in backstage duties!!! Unfortunately not getting noticed didn’t happen and we soon found ourselves reading parts and singing along to Abba!!! All was well until they started going around the group getting people to sing solo! NOOOOOOOO!! Seriously I haven’t sung in public since I was 14 and sang The Corrs runaway on karaoke whilst on holiday wearing age 4/5 bright yellow dungaree shorts!! (Yep I was cool) I left the mic feeling proud only to hear my dad utter “oh well that was a hard song!” Translating into “oh my god that was terrible it sounded like you were killing cats”. Anyhow after the entire room had sang I felt pressurised to squawk out ‘Gimme gimme gimme’ whilst feeling my face turn crimson!! They did that horrible thing when you sing in groups and someone walks behind you listening to you sing a song which is far too high pitched. Which then just makes you more nervous so then you end up squeaky with a certain nervous shake to you voice! We continued with the “audition” whilst also ordering food and praying it would finish soon so we could eat!! We were informed we would receive a text message (very 21^st century) letting us know if/what part we got, I felt we we’re safe. That was until during our meal Ann (one of the organisers) bounced over with scripts!! Members of NADA or NADS (don’t actually ever think it was abbreviated like that and probably for good reason) Northallerton Amateur Dramatics Association/Society will be proud to know, that all that time with Mo and Alan and the rest of the crew has paid off, as for some ridiculous crazy reason after 2 and a half weeks of been here I have landed myself the lead role in little red riding hood!!! Ha-ha RIDICULOUS!! I didn’t even need my mum to come along and pay them as a kind of child minding service! All that can be said is they must have very low expectations and the pantomime obviously doesn’t pull in too much of a crowd!! If only Daddy Creel was here to show me the ways!

Well times are definitely changing from spending my first evening petrified of bugs to now realising that I had boiled one inside my pasta – which may of laid eggs but realising I’d gone too far too much effort and was too hungry to throw it away so just removed the bug infested piece and carried on regardless!! I also now have a house girl – which makes me feel really guilty but I have to keep reminding myself I’m putting back into the economy and giving someone some income, but then I feel like I’m robbing her blind when she is coming to my flat 2 afternoons a week to wash clothes, mop floors and generally clean up and I’m paying her 600Ksh which is less than £5!

I am also trying to learn the lingo so I have included just a few useful Swahili terms – obviously I’m all about education so a lesson had to come in at some point!!! Swahili is actually a language that kind of makes sense – its phonetic which is great and every word ends in a vowel, also the emphasis is always on the 2^nd to last syllable!  

Jambo – Hello

Asante Sana – Thank you very much (which means the lion kings – “asante sana squashed banana” doesn’t make much sense)

Sina Pessa – I have no money

Tafadhali – Please

Sowa – ok

Lala salama – sweet dreams

Habari Gani – how are you?

Mzuri – fine

Final thought …..

I have spoken with someone in terms of getting involved with a charity that works with a local school to help provide equipment etc. – so anyone looking for a worthy charity bear me in mind please (especially you Raincliffe lot) as I can actually guarantee and oversee the work that will be going on.  They are grateful of any equipment, textbooks; stationary etc. so doesn’t have to be money. So any of you teachers if your school are ever getting rid of old textbooks please don’t let them throw them out!! – Check me out Mother Theresa after 3 weeks – it was always going to happen!!

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Steph xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX