Jailbreak

31st December, 2008

This is the last day of the year and I know there should be reflective thoughts on the year that was and the planning of future resolutions that will not last the week, however, all I can think of is that lovely squat toilet scarcely 10m from my door. So near, yet so far. It's 6:30am and I've "opened" up the clinic. By opened, I mean unbolting the door from the inside. Of course, it is still firmly shut from the night before when some idiot jailed me in from the outside. There is a hole in the glass in the window. I work out the logistics of a partial jailbreak: standing on a chair, and directing a steady stream of urine across the 10m gap to the wall of the toilets. Near enough is good enough. However, given the mishap I've already had once with this door I don't really want to chance my luck. I've already been circumcised so that doesn't leave a lot of "margin for error" when placing one's dearest member in close proximity to a jagged piece of broken glass.

Back to bed to think of anything else. At 7:13am there is a knock on my window from the nurse. "Jordan, open the door". I say, "You open the door!". Knowing this won't get through, I get up and painfully walk towards the door. She's there pointing at the lock at the door. I mirror her movements pointing to the bolt on the outside. In Kenya, I've noticed that all the bolts are recessed behind curved bits of metal or within holes in the door. I can see no logical reason for this. It makes it a lot more difficult to open, is actually more difficult to manufacture, and you can't tell whether the door is locked or not. The charades game is not working, so I decide to go through the motions on my side of unbolting the door. I move the bolt back and forth and the nurse tries the door. It won't budge. No shit Sherlock. She eventually tries the bolt on her side and realises it is locked. She frees the bolt and door bursts open. I nearly knock over the mother with her sick baby trying to get in as I set a land speed record for the 10m dash in thongs from my jail to the squat toilets. Relief ensues.

The day is productive although I spend most of it inside. I'm leaving on Saturday and once I go there will be no opportunity to get to the records of the children. It's a task that I've been partially putting off. I have no problems entering all the factual information such as name, gender, guardian, etc. The thing I've been avoiding is writing the small background piece on each child. Most of the notes are in the files and after the exposure I had to Mercy's history the other day It's really not something I've been looking forward to. However, with my time here coming to a close this is really one of the important things that I have to do. If people knew what these children have been through and how little it costs to provide them with a less bleak future, we would be inundated with offers. My job is to tell their stories.

Unfortunately, my time here is so short and it is right in the middle of the holiday season. Ideally, I would have liked to have made contact with the guardians and got the whole story but I will have to suffice with the few notes attached to some of the files and piece it together.

I put the files on one side and slowly start going through them. I'm off to a good start. Edward. His mother at 23 years of age hangs herself leaving her ailing grandmother to look after the three kids. Unlucky start. John. His mother dies of AIDS when he was 3 leaving him with his grandmother. Shortly afterwards the grandmother dies and he is passed on to her disabled sister. The sister can barely look after herself. The local villagers donate food scraps to them, and the kids at school give him their old uniforms. This is all he has to wear and is caught washing the clothes himself at school standing naked next to them waiting for them to dry. He is severely malnourished and quite sick when he gets to the orphanage. Third time lucky. Another John. His father dies of AIDS when he is 9 days old. His mother dies of AIDS, 3 months later. He is handed off to his elderly grandmother who is unemployed and has to rely on the charity of others for food. This is going to be an emotional day. There are no happy stories here. If there were it wouldn't be an orphanage.

I spent the majority of the day reading files, piecing together stories and summarising it into a brief snapshot for the website. Every couple of hours I wander outside and play with the kids. I need the emotional break and it's uplifting to see the resilience of children. Not just from the physical injuries that they get when they roughly play with each other, but the deep emotional wounds that each of them have suffered. It's hard to imagine they could ever smile again but here they are laughing and playing. Edward is loud and boisterous. John is strong, healthy and compared to the others, surprisingly well groomed. The other John is healthy and loving. It's hard to imagine looking at them that these are the same children in the files. What's worse, is that there are hundreds of children here who don't have files yet. The orphanage can hold 150 kids but there are only 50 today because that is all they can afford.

In the afternoon I finish all the records. I'm emotionally drained. The coloured folders of the cruelty of life lay stacked up on the desk beside me. The children's stories are captured on the website. They've been toned down a fair bit but the messages are still there. I need to get out of my room in the clinic and spend some time with the kids. Mercy comes up to me with a small bracelet she has made me by stringing some beads taken off one of her dresses onto a piece of fishing line. I'm so touched when she puts it around my hand. It's a little big but I'll wear it as long as I can.

I play with them for a couple of hours. During that time I'm constantly peppered with questions about the trip tomorrow. It is so rare that they get out. "Will we be going on one big bus or two small ones?", "If it is a big bus, will it have stairs?", "Will we see a lion, a monkey, a snake, a crocodile?", "Will we take rice from here or will we have bought food?". The questions are endless.

At around 6:30pm, they have their dinner and I go back to my room and have mine. When they bring the plates over I follow them back to make sure they don't bolt me in again. I don't need a repeat of last nights episode.

I do some writing, tinker around with the website and for probably the first time in the last 30 years, am in bed before midnight on New Years Eve. I've got a lot done today and the ongoing effects of it will be very beneficial to the children. However, it's taken it's toll and I need to sleep and forget.

This was a good day.

Jam

30 December, 2008

Even though I went to bed reasonably late, I woke up at 6:29am with a start. I knew I was in a comfortable bed in a clean room but I remembered that my alarm was still set to open up the clinic. It's funny how the human body can do that. I turned it off and went back to bed.

It's always unsettling sleeping in a stranger's house for the first time. You don't really know the morning routines of others. Previously Mike and Evelyn had said get up when you feel like it, and when you get up just ask Elijah to make whatever it is you want for breakfast.

Now if I was at home in my own bed and I knew I didn't have too much planned, I'd be up at the crack of noon. However, I didn't want to appear too slovenly to my hosts so got up at 8:15am. I had another fantastic shower, although the lack of water pressure did irk me; not that I was complaining mind you. Dressed back in my Cura clothes I went downstairs to the wafting aroma of freshly cooked bacon. Shosha was up and having her breakfast. I said hello and stood around in uncomfortable silence until Elijah came to offer me my breakfast. He offered eggs but naturally I declined and instead had bacon and toast. I popped back upstairs and grabbed my laptop to catch up on things.

It really was paradise. Here I was sitting underneath a shady pergola looking out over the pool on one side that was being cleaned by the pool boy, behind that beautifully manicured gardens; whilst on the other side a landscaped terraced backyard tumbling down the hill with plenty of trees. It was all very green and lush. In a few moments, Elijah came out with my breakfast; some juice, fresh tea, heated milk, perfectly cooked bacon, fresh bread lightly toasted and jam.

They say that when you are deprived of all your normal home comforts, like when you are lost in a jungle or on a deserted desert island, or you land a stint in an Asian prison (I speak from experience on the latter), it is the little things that you miss the most. Sometimes it takes a while before you realise how much you miss them. This morning, for me it was jam. I'm not a religious jam connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. Although there is plenty of jam in my cupboard I will more often opt for the Vegemite (mainly out of patriotic pride) than a marmalade or conserve. However, when I know there is no chance of Vegemite, the thing I love the most about breakfast is jam. It's the one thing I always take in hotels in the morning. I frequently open two or three of the tiny little jars so that I can try them all. I think it's because, to me, jam represents decadence. Whether it be on a scone with clotted cream, or liberally spread over fresh white toast, jam just has a touch of class that you don't get with peanut butter or other spreads. When I make toast myself, Vegemite is fine. However, when I'm served toast made by someone else, then the situation positively demands jam. Beside my toasted bread sat a big jar of jam (well marmalade to be precise), and it was the good stuff. Heaps of bits of visible fruit that actually looked like the fruit it came from not some lumpy nondescript mulsh. I spread the toast with butter while it was still hot, then as the butter started to melt into the bread on went generous knife-fulls of jam. This was paradise.

I savoured breakfast, Elijah came and cleared my tray away, and then I went to work on my laptop. I had a bit of writing to catch up on and wanted to make a few changes to the website that Mike and I had discussed yesterday, so I made myself comfortable and went to work.

Around 12:00pm the battery started to go on my laptop. I had forgotten to charge it overnight. Looking around I couldn't see any power points outside so I had to take the laptop inside to plug it in. I wandered outside and was just sitting down when Evelyn came down. She was surprised that I was there and thought Mike and I had gone somewhere. I said I hadn't seem him. Scarcely a minute later he came downstairs. He had been working in his office oblivious to the fact that I was up.

We sat around and talked for a quite a while then Mike and I decided to go pick up the photos we had submitted yesterday. We jumped into his car and went to the Sarit Centre, collected the photos, picked up a present for a friend of theirs 60th birthday tonight and went back home.

I needed to get back to Cura but before I went, Mike insisted we have lunch. Thinking forward to the likely menu at Cura for the day, I didn't protest. We ordered the car to come and pick me up then sat down for a lovely light lunch. At about 2:45pm the car turned up, I bade my farewells and climbed into the same rust bucket that had dropped me off, for my journey back home.

As the car rumbled into the property the kids came streaming out of the building. They were so happy to see me and I them. I dumped off my stuff and we all mucked around for a couple of hours. Word had got out that I was planning a trip for them so they wanted to know everything about it. Unfortunately, I didn't know exactly what was planned as I left Moses to sort out the details. I went to see him, gave him the photos I had developed and we arranged everything for the next day. We then went to order and pay for the soft drinks for the kids. This involved a 10 minute walk up the dirt road to a little hole in the wall that served as a local shop. The shopkeeper was behind fairly think iron mesh with a rough hole cut in it. We told him that we wanted two crates of soft drinks (48 bottles). Normally in Kenya you have to drink the soft drink at the shop as the bottles are heavily recycled. However, because of the long standing relationship with Moses we were permitted to take the bottles on the bus provided we promised to return them all.

We walked back to the home, I took the remaining files for the kids and Moses went on his way home. It was after 6:30pm. Moses like the house mothers, works seven days a week at the orphanage. I have a final muck around with the kids then head off to my room to finish working on the website. As is usual my dinner is brought over to me about 6:45pm. However, unlike normal nights, when the house mother leaves, she bolts the door from the outside. I discover this when I decide to have a bathroom break. Because this is a clinic, the door is fortified and there is no way I can get it open from the inside. The orphanage is also locked down at night. Me and my engorged bladder are locked in for the night. I contemplate urinating out of one of the windows, and to be honest, in this country that wouldn't be the most offensive thing I could do, but know that if I did, I would guarantee to be seen and the level of communication between us all was not good enough to explain the situation. I decide to think about something else and tough it out.

We have decided that we will like to capture all the children's school records in the website, so this is something I need to finish tonight as there is not much time until I go. I get everything working around midnight and go to bed. It takes a good deal of mental effort to think of non-liquid thoughts as I drift off to sleep.

This was a good day.

Jaunt

29 December, 2008

I woke up at 6:30am but went through the morning ritual of opening up the clinic. Although it has become ritual it does require me to be fully awake. The reason for this is that on about the second or third day I was opening the fairly stiff bolt with my eyes half shut and it suddenly decided to give very quickly jamming the top of my thumb in the housing for the bolt. This woke me up considerably. Not only did I get a massive blood blister on my thumb but managed to take the top of it off as well. It started bleeding profusely. Just what anyone needs at 6:30am. Despite being in a clinic I went to my own trusty travellers kit and dressed the wound applying liberal amounts of Betadine to it and two plasters for good measure. As I lay back in bed trying to sleep as my thumb throbbed with pain. I could actually feel each beat of my heart through a shooting pain in my thumb.

The thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is opposable thumbs. Having now lost the use of of the aforementioned thumbs I was left feeling only half human. Of course, the contributing factor to that could have been the removal of all the comforts that I also felt had separated us from the animal kingdom such as clean running water, refrigeration, electric cooking, television and broadband internet to name just a few.

Ensuring I was wide awake not to injure myself at 6:30am had the unfortunate consequence of making it more difficult for me to go back to sleep once the clinic had been opened. That being said my genetic predisposition to rapid sleep meant that it took 5 minutes instead of 2 - 3.

At about 7:30am the children got restless enough to want to come and see if I was awake. I could hear them talking in the loudest of whispers that only a child is able to make. The "curtain" (i.e. flimsy transparent piece of cloth probably a sheet) was drawn over my window yet I could see the silhouette of two small boys (Manyara and George) as they stood on the window sill trying to find a way to see if I was away but at the same time subtly wake me if I wasn't. I was staring at the window when they worked out how to move the curtain away and two smiling black faces were grinning back at me. "Uncle, you awake. I coming." they both said as they jumped down from the window sill, and I heard the rapid staccato of small bare feet on concrete as they sprinted round the outside of the clinic, through the entrance and down the concrete corridor into my room. Once there they was always at a loss as what to do. Their carefully constructed plan of waking me up as usual hadn't included what to do once I was awake. They carefully edged around the room grabbing articles and exclaiming, "this socks", "this torch", "this cup", "this thermonuclear flux capacitor" (a crucial element should I need to return back to present day).

I shooed them out which always ended with them uttering, "I go now. Good-bye", as if this was somehow their decision. I got dressed and started working on the website again. Today was a big day. I was heading to Nairobi. This meant showers, non-squat toilets and above all, internet access. There was a noticeable spring in my smelly unwashed step.

At about 8:30am I went over to see Moses to make arrangements for the day. He was busy doing the end of year accounts for the orphanage but I arranged to meet with him at 9am to go through the work I had done. I went back to make a few finishing touches and about 5 minutes later was joined by Mercy. Mercy is a delightful little girl that is so happy. She is around 9 years old and is constantly dancing. Whenever there is music she slips into a happy trance as she grooves her body around to the beat. She has uncanny timing and a sense of rhythm. She looks at the files on my small table and starts going through them squealing with delight at each picture. She works out that I'm doing something with the files as I move them from a pile on one side to a pile on the other. She ruffles through them until she finds hers and says "Do me next". I take the file from her and she is so happy even though she is completely oblivious as to what it is I'm doing. Her file is as scant as the rest. A photo, an application form, an acceptance form, and an HIV negative certificate. Additionally there are some school records. Her results are always between 94% and 100%. She is an incredibly intelligent young girl. I notice that her mother is alive which is unusual for the other orphans. As I'm flicking back through I notice some hand written notes on the back of her application form. They are by her grandfather. In this he explains that Mercy's mother suffers from mental illness. She is always taking Mercy out of school and doesn't want her to go, Mercy is heavily beaten whenever she tries to sneak off to school. Her mother also refuses to wash her or let anyone else wash her, regularly burns her school uniform and school books and frequently disappears with Mercy to be found days or weeks later living rough in the bush. Her grandfather pleads to have her accepted in the home without her mothers knowledge so that she can return to her studies and have a chance at making something of herself. As I look at Mercy I can see scars on her arms, legs and face, scars that I had previously attributed to normal childhood injuries in Kenya but now had a much more disturbing association. Unaware of what I was reading, she looked at me with the biggest smile that broke my heart.

It was 9 o'clock so I took a couple of files over to Moses along with my computer. He initially said that he didn't need to see this and was quite busy. Fear of the unknown. I told him it would only take 10 mins so he agreed. We had to start at the very beginning. Moses didn't know what a website was, or even what the internet is. Hardly surprising though. We all take for granted that less than two decades ago, 99% of the Western world was in the same position. Can you remember when you first saw the world wide web? If you weren't in a university chances are it would have been in the last decade and not the preceding one. Now it's hard to imagine life without it. Explaining to someone who has really never even used a computer what the internet is was proving to be quite challenging. But with the aid of a few roughly drawn diagrams I got the message across. Then I had to explain to him how his particular website was going to work. There are two sides to the website. An administration side and the public facing side. The admin side is to allow someone like Moses to very simply enter or update information on the kids through the use of simple forms. Part of this information is also displayed on the public website dynamically. It took me showing him several times before the light finely went on. Then there was no holding him back. He wanted to know more about this internet, how he could tell the world about the work they were doing in Cura and how they could get support from the world to continue the work. Before long we had been chatting animatedly for an hour. I glanced at the time and told Moses we should finish up. I promised to spend more time discussing this with him the next day but I needed to get ready for my jaunt to Nairobi.

At around 12:20pm my car turned up. This was a beat up old car driven by a friendly man called Peter. He had once been to Mike and Evelyn's place several months ago and thought he knew the way. We contacted Mike briefly to make sure. It was about a 45 minute trip and all he was required to do was drop me off. Moses asked him how much and Peter replied 1,000 shillings (€10). All to quickly I agreed completely destroying the bargaining position we had as Moses tried to argue it was a bit expensive. They spoke for a couple of minutes but the situation was futile thanks to my outburst and we got into the car. Peter offers me the seat-belt end to plug my seat-belt into. I think he was just doing this to impress rather than out of concern for my safety. While one end of the seat-belt was secured firmly in the centre of the vehicle, the other end was of a length that, in the event of an accident it would have fully restrained me about half way down the bonnet once I had smashed through the windscreen. Moses came along until we got to the tarmac road as he needed to get the accounts typed up. At the tarmac road an old gentlemen got in and continued along with us until Kikuyu. He was a poultry farmer and was off to buy some more chickens. I was glad we picked him up on the way there rather than the way back! I have noticed that in Kenya it is only the first person who pays the fare of the taxi. It is completely acceptable to pick up other people on the way and deposit them at various places so long as it's not out of the way. The old car lurches down the road onto the highway as we head to Nairobi. At one point Peter takes out a screwdriver and jams it into the innards of the car whilst we are driving. Even with my basic automotive knowledge I can see no reason for this activity.

We arrive at Mike Eldon's place and the guard lets us through the huge iron doors. I pay the driver and he's off back to Cura or Wangige. I never worked out where he came from.

Mike and Evelyn have waited until my arrival until they have lunch. We head through their house out to the sprawling backyard, up to the little pool house by the swimming pool. The area they live in is a particularly nice one and all the houses around are similar. Despite their idyllic comforts, all of them are encased in high electric fences. There are guards at every entrance point, and armed patrol vehicles circle the neighbourhood. Throughout the property are strategically placed panic buttons that once pressed divert all the patrol vehicles to that property. It's a harsh reminder that all is not always well here and the troubles of early in the year are still uncomfortably at the forefront of peoples minds.

We have a simple lunch that is peppered with conversation about what I've been doing in Cura and my observations. Mike and Evelyn ask me to stay with them tonight rather than a hotel. I'm extremely grateful for their hospitality although with no internet connection at their home I feel a pang of withdrawal from my life blood.

Mike and I then leave to do a few errands at the local shopping centre. As we are heading to his country club tonight, decent attire will be required by me. He offers to lend me a jacket and tie but I will need a shirt and pants. I'd also like to get some photos developed for the kids and if time permits a haircut.

The first thing we do is head to the photo shop. I realise that this is going to be quite expensive. The photos are 30 shillings each and I want around 680 developed. This will be over €200 enough to support a child for about 6 months. I cut back on some of the copies and Mike negotiates a bit of discount but I'm still left paying around 14,000 shillings (€140) for the photos. There is a Woolworths in the shopping centre and given the disposable intention of the outfit is the perfect place to purchase what I need. A get a crisp white shirt and black slacks for around 5,000 shillings (€50). We then head up to the hairdresser. Mike used to have offices in this building so everyone knows him. The owner of the hairdresser comes out and offers to cut my hair herself. As in Japan, in hairdressers they wash your hair after they cut it. This makes a lot more sense then what happens in other countries. Having not had a shower for a week I'm embarrassed about the state of my hair. Mike explains what I'm doing in Kenya and the woman proudly tells us that four of the girls in the salon have all been rescued by her from orphanages, trained up as hairdressers or beauticians and given a huge start in life. The haircut and subsequent neck massage cost 1,000 shillings (€10).

We head back to Mike's place and get ready to go out. I have my first shower for the week and despite the low water pressure is one of the best in my life. Evelyn is taken back when she sees me groomed and properly dressed. Having not had the use of a mirror for over a week, with my dirty unkempt hair, and my crushed and filthy clothes, I must have looked a sight when I first turned up.

Mike, Evelyn, her mother (Shosha) and I climb into his car and we head off to the Mathago Club. This is an old colonial style club. Mobile phones are banned, jackets and ties mandatory in the dining room and a look and feel of a bygone era emanating throughout the entire establishment. We head to a private dining room which consists of an ante-room with comfortable chairs, coffee tables and a personal bar staffed by two impeccably dressed Kenyan men; and a large dining room with a long table, candelabras, silver service cutlery and a huge antique mirror on one of the walls.

Mike and I have the standard anti-malarial medicine (Gin & Tonic) in the ante-room as several other people join the gathering. Tonight is the surprise birthday party for Milicent, Evelyn's sister. Months of preparation have gone into trying to keep this a surprise. The whole thing has been arranged by Evelyn and Milicent's daughter, Tracy. Tracy is a fashion buyer living in New York who is currently studying in Monte Carlo with a view to changing industries and ultimately returning to Kenya. Tracy has arranged with Evelyn to be able to signal her when they arrive at the the club. The signal arrives and the lights are doused as we all fall into silence. For some unknown reason the two bar staff duck down behind the bar. Washoka (Evelyn's daughter) is talking to her grandmother (Shosha) and keeps laughing. She is shushed by Evelyn but the laughter continues. Tracy and Milicent seem to have got lost since arriving at the club and we all sit there in near silent darkness for a good ten minutes. The silence is sporadically punctured by bursts of laughter from Washoka. We later learn that because Shosha can't be trusted to keep a secret she has been kept in the dark about the whole affair. She is completely oblivious as to why we are there, why we are sitting in the dark and why we aren't allowed to talk. When the barmen ducked behind the bar, she panicked and thought something bad was happening. Washoka thought this was hilarious as she tried to explain to her that it was a surprise party for her daughter.

After sending one of the waiters out to retrieve the misplaced guest of honour, she finally arrived to a big burst of noise as we shouted surprise simultaneously as the lights came on. Milicent did her part of acting surprised but later revealed that she was suspicious when nobody called her to wish her happy birthday that day. (A trap for young players in organising surprise events!).

We had a lovely meal accompanied by some very emotional speeches from everyone. Gifts were given and I was completely surprised to have received two gifts from Mike and Evelyn. A t-shirt with Swahili phrases on it and a beautiful notepad decorated with African art. The evening went on until after midnight. Animated conversations were held including a particularly interesting one about when was the right time for parents to go into homes. With three generations at the table and the middle generation advancing towards that point it was interesting to see people views changing.

After a pleasant evening we came back to Mike and Evelyn's place and I was fast asleep in a normal comfortable bed around 1am.

This was a good day.

Jedi

28 December, 2008

There are six house mothers to look after the 50 children. And just in case some of you think that is completely manageable there are three on during the day and three on at night. That means they are looking after just over 16 kids each. Washing, cooking, refereeing fights, mending scraped knees, etc. These women truly are saints.

On top of that they also look after me. I eat and drink the same as the kids so it's not a huge additional burden but I do get my food served with cutlery (well, a spoon) whereas the kids eat with their hands. You too would have them eating with their hands if you had to wash up 50 sets of cutlery after every meal. The only special attention I get is that they bring the food over to my room in the clinic. This is because if I'm not with the kids I'm generally here working.

All of the house mothers are friendly although some are friendly than others. Whilst they all generally understand English some of them are more difficult to understand when they speak as they don't seem to speak that much. There is one house mother that is high on the friendly scale but low on the understand-ability scale. She is the oldest and smallest. She is sort of hunched over a bit and reminds me a lot of Yoda, the Jedi Master from Star Wars. Obviously she doesn't have the green skin but she does have the gruff voice and speaks using the same grammar. Her real name is Grace which of course is much holier than Yoda but I prefer to refer to her as Yoda.

Yoda brought me breakfast this morning. Because it was Sunday we get breakfast. First she brings over a warm chapati with the friendly comment, "Warm the chapati did I" spoken in her gruff little voice. Then she comes over with a plate with eggs in it. I explain that I'm allergic to eggs and can't eat them. "Alergic you are. Eat the eggs shall I." is the reply. I'm sure she is pretty chuffed at getting two helpings of eggs. I don't expect an alternative and none is offered.

I then decide to take a serious crack at getting all the orphanage records digitised today. I see Moses on his way to church and get a heap of records from him. All of these consist of folder, predominantly blue, with all the paperwork relating to each child. When I say, "all", it sort of implies there is a lot. There isn't. Unfortunately records are very thin on the ground in Kenya. Less than 10% of the kids know when their birthday is, and when I ask the ones that I actually have a copy of a birth record for, they always get it wrong usually by a year or two and never know the month. I'm not sure if this is a Kenyan thing or an orphan thing. Regardless, the way I have designed the system, they need a birth date so I issue them all birth dates if they are unknown. Who says I can't play God!

Entering the records takes much longer than I expected. Information is spread all over the place and you wouldn't have thought it would have been that hard when each file on average contains only 5 pieces of paper. As I go through the records I need to make a few design changes to the system to account for things such as; an orphan who has a mother but the mother is mentally retarded; the same grandparent taking care of two orphaned grandchildren from different sets of parents; and a family with more than 10 kids (previously had allowed for 9 as the maximum).

Progress is hampered by the constant interruptions from the kids. If they come in, they want to go through the files as each file contains a photo. Even though they don't understand what I'm doing, they want their file to be processed next when they find it. I also repair several cars while this is going on.

Lunch is served which is rice, red beans and potatoes. They still haven't heeded my request to serve less food. I explain to Yoda that I can't possibly eat all of this but she insists, "Eat all you must. Grow big and strong." I think she believes I'm just a slightly larger version of one of her other charges.

After lunch and with the kids all in their Sunday clothes I decide to try and take a few more photos of them. It's hard to do as they insist on being about 4cm away from the camera. As I move back, they advance forward. They also insist on doing stupid poses, or having stupid expressions on their faces. I have to shoot off over a hundred photos before they get tired of the faces and poses. I then retreat a little, take advantage of the zoom lens and get about 3 or 4 really good shots. After a couple of hours playing with the kids, I head back to work.

At around 5pm, Yoda comes to my room. "Come with me you will. My house we go." I'm not sure what this really means but I start to follow her. "Camera you bring" she commands so I duck back in to get it. We then proceed out of the orphanage, across the old school and down past the coffee fields on the dirt road. One of the orphan girls, Anne, is with us wearing her AXA cap proudly. I silently congratulate myself on some brilliant product placement. After about 15 minutes of walking we turn off the road and down a long driveway. There are a couple of sheep tied up and they look at me nervously. We pass the sheep without incident and we finally come to Yoda's house. Like Moses' place it is made of corrugated iron. There is an outside cook house made of dark brown wood with smoke and charcoal stained walls. The planks for the walls have small gaps between them probably deliberately to vent out the smoke. Yoda shows me around her garden. She has bananas, maize, potatoes, a young sugar cane plant, several large avocado trees, two different types of beans, sukuma wiki (green spinach type of thing), a green passion-fruit (with yellow pulp), a pumpkin vine and several other edible plants that I don't recognise. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of order into the arrangement of the crops. The potatoes and beans are interspersed with the beans and maize. It is typical subsistence farming. Yoda is fortunate to have some very large fruit bearing avocado trees and she informs me that she sells them in the market when they ripen.

Having had an extensive tour outside, we venture inside the dwelling pursued by a small white cat. There seems to be a main living or entertaining room with two doors off it. These doors are bolted shut not due to security but because that is the cheapest way to keep a door closed. There doesn't seem to be any lights or electricity throughout the place and an old kerosene lantern sits on a bench against the wall. There are several couches in here with a coffee table. All the furniture items are covered with clothes reminiscent of tea doilies, no two alike. She beckons me to sit on the couch. I'm about to sit when I notice there is something moving under one of the covers. I suspect another cat or given the surrounds, a rat, but when I lift the cover see it is a 7 week old baby girl. She seems surprised and flicks away the cover while I take a seat at another couch first very carefully checking it for new born children.

Yoda tells me "Baby belong to the girl". The only other girl I've seen is the small orphan girl that came with us and she is only about 8 years old. Moments later an older girl comes in with a fairly ample bosom, and other telltale signs of someone having given birth 7 weeks ago. She is introduced as "The girl, of the girl and the baby". I later work out that this girl is Yoda's granddaughter and the infant her great-granddaughter. We shake hands, a very customary Kenyan tradition even for women, and she proceeds back out to the cookhouse. Meanwhile, Yoda makes me a cup of tea. In a large thermos she puts tea leaves, hot water, milk and about 5 tablespoons of sugar. She then pours this into chipped metal mugs and hands them too us whilst putting a bowl of sugar on the rocking coffee table. She is surprised that I don't take sugar with my tea. Apparently the 5 tablespoons she put in doesn't count. She gives herself another two generously heaped teaspoons of sugar and we drink our tea.

There is a long uncomfortable silence. Around the wall are cheesy signs about values or God that have been laminated with cling film. There is a calendar from 2006 and a few photos. She proudly points out a certificate that she got for being a house mother from a bishop. It is a photo copy on blue paper with her name written in with messy writing and several corrections to the spelling. She also shows me a photo of her husband, "Dead he is". Seeing a slight expression of interest on my face as I look at the photo, she rushes off behind one of the bolted doors to return moments later with a red photo album.

This really is a different world. The album is a cheap plastic one with a puffed up cushioned cover where each page folds out. A folded out page is supposed to contain four photos but many of the pages have other photos stuffed behind them. Several times a photos is in upside down but rather than correct it she turns the album around. Some of the photos have dates stamped on them going back into the early 70s. Each photo is generally something to do with the church. Either a death, a wedding, a baptism or a confirmation. I'm guessing that Yoda doesn't own a camera herself and this is the only time she actually gets photos. As we slowly go through each photo she points out which of the people are dead. It's most of them.

The mother of the baby comes back in and after a few words in Kikuyu Yoda goes out to the cookhouse. She comes back in with a big bowl of rice and another bowl containing what looks to be cabbage and a lentil type vegetable. Before I can protest she has dropped three plastic plates on the table and is serving out the food. As always she puts too much food on my plate - more so than the two other plates combined. I try to stop her but she says "Tonight no Ugali for you. Eat then bed you must." I think this is her telling me that this is the only meal for me tonight and I won't be getting fed back at the orphanage.

She plonks the plates in front of the mother, who begins breast feeding, Anne, and me, then instructs us to eat as she heads out of the room. We all silently eat. I try to eat as much as i can but half way through I"m full. Fortunately, Anne doesn't do much better. The cat is wandering around our legs meowing as we eat. The mother calls over the cat and take a spoon of her food and dumps it straight on the floor. The cat starts to eat it.

After more than 10 minutes, Yoda comes back in with arms full of dry washing. She drops it onto an empty chair then gets another plate. I assume this is for her, but she then puts it on the floor for the cat. I tell her I can't eat anymore as does Anne. I offer to take a photo of her and her great-granddaughter and she is delighted. Then she don's a green shawl (making her look even more like Yoda) and we head out of the house back towards the orphanage. All the while she is happily repeating things to herself in her gruff little voice.

When we hit the main road I tell her that she needn't walk us back and we will be okay. I thank her for dinner and she huddles off back down the road still chatting to herself. The sun is just starting to set as we enter the compound again. The watchman is there to greet us and hurries us inside. I chat with the kids for a bit, then I head back to the clinic to do some work then finally get some sleep.

This was a good day.

Jugular

27th December, 2008

As per normal, I'm up at 6:30 to unlock the clinic and back asleep by 6:35. In what is also becoming habit, the boys, Peter and Manyara, are in my room about 7:45am. We play the normal guessing game and I ask them to get me some tea so I can get ready.

I have one unworn shirt and as I'm due to head out today choose to wear it. I finish off a few things for the website. It's still not complete but there is enough there to show Mike and get his input.

I pop over to see Moses and we have a bit of a chat. Whilst we are chatting his phone rings and it is Mike for me. Mike tells me that Daniel is not able to have his party today so it will have to be cancelled. He does invite me to his club on Monday night to celebrate his sister-in-laws 60th birthday. He asks if I have a jacket and tie. Of course I don't however, I had previously asked him when I was packing if I would need something like this and he had said no. I arrange to meet him earlier in the day on Monday and we will do something. As the dinner doesn't start until 7:30pm I will stay in Nairobi overnight. It will be good to get a real shower and use a real toilet again!

I head back to do some more work on the website. After about half an hour Moses comes over and asks me if I want to join him and a few friends for a party.

The few friends turn into about 20 of the elders from the village who have formed a kama. A kama is a community group of men that look out for each other and their community. They have a chairman, secretary and treasurer. They each put in money every month (around €0.50) and the money is used to do projects throughout the year, help out members who might be in trouble, and have an end of year feast. Today is the day of the feast.

As Moses and I walk to the little hill near the old school, I can see a heap of men gathered in little groups. To one side are about 10 sheep grazing on the grass near the school. They looked so peaceful standing there helping to keep down the grass. Some were standing others were lying down. Off to one side, one was on it's back with three men holding it down. Had this been New Zealand I knew exactly what was going on and I would have been more than a little nervous about what was to follow. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for the sheep, at that point a man plunged a knife into it's jugular and bright red blood flowed into a metal bucket conveniently placed under it's neck. The sheep was surprisingly quiet. In the same situation (either three Kenyans standing over me with knives, or three Kiwis standing over me with lust), I'd be screaming bloody murder however it just lay there quietly and very quickly passed away.

With the foreplay over the real dirty work began. Over the next 20 mins, the men removed the skin (which was discarded and not to be used for a rug or any other useful purpose) and butchered the sheep into various parts. With the exception of the skin, nothing was wasted. The head and feet were placed on a wire grill over a fire where they cooked for the next hour or so.

The entrails were removed and sorted into various piles. Within moments a second luckless sheep happened to wander a little too close and it met the same fate as it's late comrade.

The small groups of men set about doing their bit in the feast. Four really old men with weathered faces, jackets and hats were sitting in one corner chatting as they chopped up bits of meat into quiet small pieces. It seemed to be a two man affair. One would hold the meat and stretch it whilst the other used his knife to cut little pieces off it.

Next to them was another group of men making a traditional Kenyan salad with tomatoes, onions, coriander and avocado. I joined this group for a bit to watch them. One guy, who was the size of Michael Clarke Duncan (the enormous black fellow from The Green Mile - not to be confused with either the cricketer shagging Lara Bingle or my best mate Clarkie), was using an large worn knife to chop the onions and tomatoes. The knife didn't look sharp but it sliced through the vegetables with ease. There were no chopping boards though and they did it all in their hands. After a while, the big guy plunged his knife into the mixture, scooped some out and put it into my hand. I quickly ate it more out of fear of him than desire to taste it. It was really good. It's certainly going to be a feature at my next BBQ.

I wandered back up to the butchers making sure to let them know I was approaching lest they mistake me for another sheep. They were now sorting out the bits of entrails. One guy was using his fingers to squeeze out the contents of the intestines and stomach. I'd like to say that hygiene was paramount here but I'd be lying. There was a bucket of water that had some intestines in it, which also served as hand washing water. Every now and then, a piece of raw or cooked sheep (generally intestines, stomach or something else unrecognisable) would be brought up to them and they would shove it into their mouths and get back to whatever task they were doing.

I went back down to the third group of men who were in charge of the fire. On it, I could see a nicely charred couple of sheep heads as well as some joints. There was also a big pot bubbling away predominantly filled with off-cuts although there were a couple of things in there that could have been vegetables or bits of vegetables.. To one side was a smaller pot that contained all the fat that was being rendered.

The salad group had finished creating the salad and were now whittling bits of wood. I figured this was something I could help with so joined them again. They were creating small wooden spikes. I asked if I could help and they said that I needed a knife. I pulled out my trusty Leatherman. They laughed and in what was an uncanny impersonation of Paul Hogan they claimed “That's not a knife”. I showed them that it was indeed a knife, albeit a small one, and was also a screwdriver, pliers, file, and a host of other useful tools. They feigned reverence. One of the group lent me his knife which was given to him by his father-in-law who happened to be a Masai warrior. There was no need for me to feign reverence at all. I managed to craft a highly respectable sharpened stick in about the time they did four of them and then the job was done.

The sticks were taken over to the fourth group of men. This was just a group of two so I joined them. The large pot of bubbling stuff was brought over to them. One man plunged his tea cup into it and took a sip. He offered it to me and I politely took the smallest of sips possible. It tasted very strong and much like offal which I suppose it was. The guy then took a small piece of twine and tied the end off a piece of stomach. Then whilst one man held the top bit open, the other used his tea cup to get cups of the mixture and liquid out and fill the stomach. Then they used one of the sharpened sticks to thread through the end and seal it off. My knowledge of sheep anatomy isn't that good but there appeared to be more than one stomach type organ per sheep. I know cows have two stomachs but I'm not sure about sheep. In any case, there were four of these things. After the first two were filled, the offal mixture was poured into the blood that had been collected and all stirred around. Then this mixture was put into the remaining two “stomachy” things and then the intestines were filled with this bloody offal mixture. The intestines were sealed with twine. Then these bags of goodies were tossed into a large metal pot on the fire.

About the same time, the joints were looking quite nice (of course this in comparatively speaking!). They were put into a huge pot, some of the bloody hand washing water was thrown in, a lid put on top and a very large rock on the lid. I'm not sure why the rock needed to be so large. Although there were a lot of sheep legs in there they were hardly going to make a run for it.

I wandered into the old school house and saw that the student tables had been arranged with banana leaves on top. I was invited to sit down (as the old men already had) and did so. The other men started to filing in and took their places. Then one of the fire guys came in with hunks of meat on a lid and he roughly distributed the bits onto the tables. We all sat down, the man beside me got up and said grace (in Kikuyu) and then the meal started. At each table one man armed with a particularly sharp knife carved off bits of meat from the joints. It had been about 2 hours since I saw the sheep happily wandering around in the paddock and now here it was on a banana leaf in front of me. That is certainly fresh. I must say though that it was mutton we were eating and not lamb. It tasted okay but was a bit tough. They kept putting bits of meat in front of me urging me to eat up. Shoulder, hip and ribs all went down quickly. Intestines took longer to eat though.

Also on the table were two plates. One contained the salad and the other a mixture of potato, maize, a chick pea type of vegetable and a spinach type of vegetable called sukuma wiki all mashed up. We all just dug our hands into the plates when we wanted some. I tend to use it to wash down bits of meat that were slightly questionable to my normal refined palate.

After the joints were all eaten, out came the heads. They were cut in half and each table got a half a head. The meat and skin were pulled off the skull leaving the white jellied eye gazing out of the socket. It was all chopped up and deposited in front of us. I tried to say I was full, but they said, there was still heaps to go and we would be eating all day. I sighed and for the first time in my life had a “near-Kiwi experience” as a sheep's lips touched mine before being chewed up and swallowed.

With the head devoured it was time for the real treats. Out came the stomach and intestines. They were quickly divided, all to equally for my liking, between us. The stomach's were jam packed with other bits of offal and the now cooked blood. As I looked at it closely I could see bits of sheep hair and other off-cuts sticking out of it. I put half of it in my mouth and had to bite down quite hard to cut through the stomach. The offal slipped around in my mouth as I gnawed at the stomach trying to break it off. Actually, I'm making it sound much better than it actually was. I swallowed the contents of my mouth and finished off the other half. I have had black and white pudding before and even haggis whilst I was in the UK. Those were decidedly better than what I was now consuming. The intestine sausages came out next. These were actually slightly better than the stomachs… only very slightly though.

Finally all the meat was eaten. I was then told it was now time for the soup. The heads, offal and a lot of other throw away bits had spent time cooking in a pot of liquid before being removed and served. Now we got to drink that liquid. I couldn't wait. Into this liquid were thrown some bitter leaves. I was by one of the men at my table that the soup was the best bit and would stop me from getting sick. I started to wonder whether it would be worthwhile explaining to him that if we didn't eat all that offal in the first place we needn't worry about getting sick but thought better of it. In what was truly a stroke of luck though, the guy in charge of the soup put too many of the bitter leaves in it. Everyone complained that it was too bitter to drink. After having a small sip myself, I wholeheartedly and vocally agreed with them although I admit I was heavily biased by the non-bitter contents of the soup too.

After the feast is over, the place is quickly cleared up which merely consists of throwing out the banana leaves. Then the men arrange their seats around the outside of the room and the official meeting begins. It's all in Kikuyu but fortunately the man beside me translates most of it for me. The budgets and expenses for the year are distributed to all. I can see that the feast we have just had for 23 men including myself came to €130 (around €5.65 per head). The meeting is like any other general meeting of this type. There are arguments, voting, resolutions and everyone needs to get up and have their say about something. However, it is a very good thing to see. These men look after the community and although they are older, have started a young Kama group which is encouraging the next generation to start to look after their community. There is a speech from a guy who is on crutches thanking the group for visiting him and supporting him when he had to have his hip replaced and a kidney replaced (both operations took place in India!). He still drives a tour bus though and is still an active member of the community. There is also some talk about doubling the monthly fee so there is a reserve should someone in the community need it but then this was drowned out by a whole debate around entitlement such as should a widow be entitled to help. With my insurance background it was fascinating to watch as effectively they were creating their own income protection policy.

Eventually the meeting was over. I'm not sure how much got resolved but the meeting ended. Everyone got up and started to pay their dues to the treasurer. I spoke quietly to the chairman saying that I wanted to make a donation to the group of 1,000 shillings (€10) (almost the equivalent of two persons yearly contributions). He was amazed and despite the fact that I tried to keep it quiet he made another speech to the group (this time in English) and they all gave me a standing ovation. I was quite embarrassed as it was they that had shown me hospitality all day and given me what is likely to be one of the most memorable culinary experiences of my life.

I went back to the orphanage and played with the kids for a while who had missed me as I hadn't been with them all day. The house mothers tried to feed me again but I knocked it back too full to stomach anything. After a few hours with the kids, I went to my room to work on the website and then go to sleep.

I was in bed around midnight but at 2am woke up with pains in my stomach. I didn't have the energy or motivation to attempt to struggle with the big metal door on the clinic or the squats at that hour of the morning so blocked it out and tried to go back to sleep. I guess I should have had more of the soup.

This was a good day.

Jostling

26th December, 2008

After a fairly busy Christmas day I was determined to chill out on Boxing Day.

I got up at 6:30am as I now do every morning to open up the Clinic. I then went back to bed.

I surfaced again at 8:00 as two little faces were peering in my door. It was Manyara (my shadow) and Peter (his shadow). The two boys were so excited to see me in the morning. As soon as they saw I was awake they came in and proceeded to grab everything in the room and say "This?" to me. That is there way of asking how do you say this in English. When I say it they repeat it. This "game" goes on for about 30 mins.

I get up, get dressed and head outside to see who else is around. Most of the kids are playing in little groups amusing themselves with their Christmas presents from the day before.

Tomorrow I will be seeing Mike and Evelyn so I need to get cracking on the website. I head back into my room to start working on it. I get about 30 mins done before the kids come in again. I try to ignore them but it is no use. If I'm typing they lean right over and put their little heads between my fingers and the screen as they watch the cursor move or the letters appear. They are pretty good readers and often will read out what I'm typing.

This is not the most conducive environment for coding so I shoo them away and lock the door. I get about another 30 mins done when they are at my window. They are showing me the cars I gave them yesterday. Manyara has already broken his with his destructive curiosity. I see what the problem is so take it apart with my Leatherman and fix it. The four boys who are watching from the window are completely enthralled. Once the car is repaired, I ignore them for a bit and they go away.

Ten minutes later they are back with more broken cars. I spend the next 30 mins repairing the cars that I can. I'm just about to start working again when lunch is served. Today it is sukuma iki and ugali again. I guess the house mothers have never heard the saying that "variety is the spice of life". Then again, if you are having to cook 2 meals a day for 50 children you'd get pretty bored of trying to be creative.

After lunch I manage to get a couple of hours work done. The website is progressing well.

About 2:30pm, the kids are back asking me to come out and play with them. I give up working for the day and head over to their courtyard where most of them are playing.

They are spread out in little pockets. Several of the boys are building houses/garages for their cars. The quality of some of them are amazing especially with the scarcity of materials. I take a seat up near the swings where several of the girls are calling out to me. Last night the kids were chastised by the house mother for calling me mathango (meaning white man). She said that I was there uncle and should be treated with respect. Now they all call me uncle. Near the swings is a small tree. Peter and Manyara race up it. Peter is particularly dextrous leaping from limb to limb, sometimes holding on with just one hand as he swings his legs up to grab another branch. They are both going so high and so fast. At one point, Manyara somersaults down a branch but he just latches on to another and does a miraculous recovery. I was sure he was going to fall. Some of the other kids aren't as good at scaling trees so they ask me to lift them up to lower branches. I do so and this starts off a wave of kids asking to go next. Even Peter and Manyara come down and ask to be lifted up. It must have looked funny as I pick up kids and suspend them from all the different low hanging branches.

Of course, when Manyara and Peter are hanging they proceed to try and kick the shit out of each other. They are always jostling each other but as soon as someone else picks on one of them they gang up and can turn away even the biggest of the other kids. Their ability to send flying kicks at each other and to take them is incredible.

Three hours later they are being served dinner. I eat with them and after that, head back to my room to get some work done on the site. I spend about 6 hours working and go to bed after midnight.

This was a good day.

Joy to the World

25th December, 2008

Pants around my ankles, standing in urine, the stench of faecal matter rising up my nostrils, and squatting over a roughly cut hole in a concrete floor whilst trying not to fall over as I lay a Yule log. Yes, I'm sure this how many of you also spent your Christmas morning. Merry Christmas one and all!

I have spent more than 17 years living in countries where the privy of choice was the squat. I was extremely proud of the fact that I've always been able to avoid using one even if it meant ducking into a local hotel or in many cases holding it all in. On December 25th, 2008 in the middle of Kenya at 37 years of age, that proud record has been broken. Anyway, this post is not going to be about shitting although like the others it is likely to be full of crap.

After my early morning excrement experience, I went back to bed to sleep in a bit. At 7:30 there was a knock on the door and half a dozen kids came in. They brought a large thermos full of tea with them. I shooed them away, drank some tea and got up and ready. They were all still dirty and in their normal clothes but were excited that it was Christmas. I went back to my room to work on the website for the home. After a couple of hours Moses came in. He was wearing a suit and tie. I wished him Merry Christmas and we went over to the Board Room where I met Kenneth and another guy from the village who I had previously seen herding goats. They were both dressed impeccably with suits and ties. Although I had new clothes on I wasn't in the same league and here in the heart of Africa surrounded by locals I felt woefully underdressed.

By the time we finished a hot chocolate, it was time to go to church. As the service was going to be in Kikuyu I excused myself and continued working on the website. Whilst working, I could hear the kids singing at Sunday School (even though it is a Thursday), and the adults singing in the church. Occasionally I recognise the melody of a song but the words are always either Kikuyu or Swahili.

I make some good progress on the website over the next 2 hours. Then there is a knock at the door, and a delightful, clean little boy in a purple jumper comes in. It takes me a moment to recognise it is Manyara. He is in his Sunday best and looks very cute. I grab my camera and head out to see the rest of the children. The normal rag tag bunch, with dirty hands and faces, wearing the same ripped clothing day in and day out have been magically transformed into a bunch of pleasant clean little children. I take lots of photos of them.

One of the house mothers comes over and chastises the kids for not singing to me. She revs them up and I have 30+ children singing songs to me in front of the orphanage. It is quite touching.

Moses comes over and suggests that we hand out the presents now. We make the kids line up in two lines, one for boys and one for girls. Moses asks me if I'd like to give them the presents but I'd rather take photos so let him do it. They are all so excited. I do feel bad that they are all shamelessly promoting AXA in their branded caps, balloons, and little nylon backpacks. The kids don't seem to mind though. As I watch them bursting with excitement about the contents of their backpacks, I well up not for the last time today. To see such joy from a plastic car, a lollipop and some company give-aways has been the highlight of my trip so far.

After spending nearly 45 mins watching the kids who are still so excited about their gifts, the food turns up. A lovely lady called Judy, who owns a couple of restaurants in Nairobi has donated some food for the kids. No ugali today! One of the restaurants she owns is a Chinese restaurant so each kid gets a plastic container full of friend rice, with some chicken and chapati bread. They busily devour it with their hands. There is a lovely Kenyan tradition at this time of year that says that the children should be served before the adults. They all line up in order of height with the smallest at the front and lunch is served. Then the adults are served. The fried rice is fairly decent but the chicken is the toughest I've ever tried to eat. Reminds me a bit of scrub turkey. (Legend has it that you put a scrub turkey and a stone in a pot of water and boil it. When the stone melts throw away the scrub turkey and drink the soup.)

Lunch was finally over and the children are being entertained by the friends and relatives of Judy who have come to help. They sing lots of songs and play some games. One of the funniest one is called balloon busting. They put a balloon between two kids and they have to hug each other until the balloon breaks. Most of the time, the balloon didn't break as they kids just didn't have the strength so they adapted it by having them sit on the balloons. The kids were squealing with delight.

When the games had concluded, the adults sang to the kids, then the kids sang for the adults again. There really was so much love and joy in the courtyard. Rather than all that religious shit, this is what Christmas is supposed to be about.

At about 4pm, Moses was heading back to his house. He asked me if I wanted to go and see his place. We head off with Kenneth and I saw Manyara trailing behind us. We had to tell him several times to go back. He's really become my little shadow. Having already been to a few people's places in Kenya including Daniel's which is right next to Moses' place I think I'll be prepared for this visit. I'm not. Moses lives in a roughly built corrugated iron place that is painted green. There is a concrete slab on the floor but that is about it for creature comforts. A tiny television sits in the corner of the only room that I see with a busted antenna that constantly needs to be moved around. The remote control is covered in cling film. Moses introduces me to his two daughters, two sons and nephew. The nephew and one of the sons are busily roughly chopping up some meat between them. One holds either side and pulls while the other cuts.

I sit down and we talk a little at first but then Moses puts on the TV and the talking ceases. The TV is in Swahili so I'm not getting a lot out of it. The older daughter says she wants to go for a soda and asks me if I want to go with her. Given the choices I agree, and the two daughters and I head up the dirt road to the nearest kiosk. Along the way we run into a few of their friends and so onwards we continue. We get to the first shop and it's shut, as is the second. They say that we will have no choice but to go to Wangige. It is about 4:45pm and I know Wangige is a hike from here. They say we should be back by 6pm so I agree to go.

I'm not sure exactly why the girls invited me. It could be my rugged good looks and charm but it is probably more likely that they wanted to show their friends the latest freak their father has brought home. We head off to the tarmac road and I am the object of much attention for each house we pass.

When we get to the road, we flag down a small minibus and all pile in. Five minutes later we are at Wangige. It is still busy but nowhere near as busy as on previous visits. We head over to the far side, down a dirt hill and into what looks like a bar. Going inside we take the stairs up to the first floor balcony and grab a table. The youngest girl is 14 but the other two are probably around 20-22. They ask me if I drink beer saying that they like it. Sensing danger, I ask for a coke and having set the tone, the others follow suit.

We chat about what they want to do, how their older sister just missed out on a Green Card (for the US), and what it is like to drive a car. One of the girls says her career ambition is to be a driver. She plans on going to driving school next year. With the cokes finished and the sun starting to set, we make a move back. They try to pay for the drinks but I refuse to let them. Even though it is only about €1.50 for the four drinks, none of them are employed. I also pay the €0.40 for the four of us to catch the minibus back.

We finally get to Moses' place again at around 6:30pm. He shows me around the rest of the property including some of his cows which the two boys are busily milking and then I head back to the home. As I approach the outside gates of the home, the watchman and two of the house mothers are there waiting for me. They escort me in and I go straight down into the home itself and the doors are bolted behind us. I join the kids in one of the small bedrooms that has been labelled a common room. There is a TV bolted to the wall and lots of little chairs with two small coffee tables. The house mothers and I eat dinner together in front of the children. Tonight's meal is rice, cabbage and potato. As always they serve me way too much food and I can't eat it all. We play with the kids until about 8pm when I excuse myself and head back to the clinic which is where my room is.

This ends probably one of the most different Christmas days I've ever spent in my life but certainly it is the most rewarding.

This was a good day.

Jalopy

24th December, 2008

It is Christmas Eve, I'm in the middle of Kenya and we have no power and I can only type until the battery runs out on my laptop. Actually, we haven't had power all day.

I slept much better last night probably due to the fact that I felt safe and secure but it could have been more to do with the fact I didn't sleep the night before and was dog tired. The alarm went off at 6:30am and I got up and unlocked the door of the Clinic. It was bright outside but very quiet. The calm before the storm!

I went back to sleep and got up again at around 7:30am. The kids came over to bring me my tea which pretty much forces me to leave my room. Otherwise, one child turns into 50 and I can't stop them all playing with my stuff. They are curiously destructive. They don't mean to be, but they are just so inquisitive that they need to see how something works. Case in point being the light bulb yesterday.

I played around with the kids for a bit then met up with Moses. I talked to him about modernising a few things and growing the revenues of the facility. He enthusiastically agreed with me but I could tell he didn't quite get it. Still it is a better attitude than the French who will disagree and resist with any change even if they understand it and can appreciate the value of it.

I showed him the website that I had created for keeping track of children's records. I think he started to get it but it's going to take a bit more work. At about 9:30am Joe Jenga turned up. Joe is an IT guy introduced by Mike. He actually grew up in Cura and went to the old school. Joe is a booming man in terms of personality. He is average size, average height but his enthusiasm makes you think he is bigger. Joe had come out to work with me on laying the ground work for the installation of 30 donated computers later in January. We talk about how we will get the facility connected to the internet which to be honest is very limited. The only real option is satellite which is going to be expensive.

Joe and I examine the room next to mine in the Clinic which is planned to be the temporary site for some of the computers until the new one is finished. We work out that we can probably get six computers in this room. With only one power point though, it's going to be a challenge.

We need the keys for the new building so while Moses is getting those, we examine the old Church. Joe had originally proposed that they put the computers in part of this. I look around the place and can certainly agree with him. There are nice high ceilings and three big flat walls that can be used for projection if needed. This would be ideal as it is also quite secure. Whilst we are examining this we are joined by the local pastor George. George technically controls this building so we talk to him about our idea and he is okay with it. It will need a new wall built but George says this can be done in less than two weeks. You've gotta love Africa. In France the pre-meeting to discuss the organisation of a meeting for preliminary planning of the idea couldn't be done in two months let alone two weeks.

The organisation is building a multi-purpose hall that will house the computers. I'm concerned that the hall actually more closely resembles a prison with thick concrete walls, small and infrequent barred windows and low ceilings. While you can slop on some brightly coloured paint to make it a bit less penal, the thing that concerns me the most is the low ceilings. Putting 30 old computers with 17 inch monitors is going to generate a fair bit of heat. As much as I'm concerned about the comfort of the students and teachers, I'm more concerned about the computers. Running at high temperatures is a sure way to cause them to break down and IT support is a little further away here than it is for about 99% of the rest of the world.

We toss around the pro's and con's and one of the main things going for the new building is the abundance of power points. We decide that it's best to make use of this and if worse comes to worse we can add in some extractors to suck the heat out. (If we make the solar powered that will be even better!)

Having worked out what needs to be done in the short and medium term, we have deserved the cup of milky sweet tea that is provided when we get back to the Board Room. (i.e. the room next to Moses' office). We chat a bit more about Kenya, the internet and some of the things we can do to promote this place. George is very enthusiastic about my ideas and seems to get it so we will definitely have a supporter here.

Joe needs to go to Wangige and Moses wants to do some banking and I want to do some shopping. We catch a lift with Joe and then head into the bank. Unlike the other day when we went, there are two soldiers out the front with machine guns. It takes about 20 mins for Moses to get served and once he's done we head back out to the main section of Wangige. Now we need to get to Kikuyu, the big smoke. Moses directs me over to a small mini-bus that would normally seat about 8 people in it back home. This jalopy is old, rusty and beat up. It certainly wouldn't pass any safety criteria in Australia or even France. I cram in with the 18 other passengers. Considering how hot it is, and how jammed in we all are it is surprisingly free of body odour. I'm pretty sure though that this has more to do with the carbon monoxide and exhaust fumes that seem to be vented back into the vehicle and out the windows rather than the customary tailpipe method. When I think we can't get anymore people in, two conductors step onto the running board, bang on the roof and then simultaneously wedge themselves in whilst closing the door, all as the driver grinds the gear lever into the gears and we jerk off down the road.

About 15-20 mins later we have arrived in Kikuyu. Moses heads to another bank, this time an impressively clean Barclays bank with two female soldiers out the front armed with machine guns. Never underestimate what power the female touch has to making a place more inviting...

After banking, we head to Moses' favourite fish restaurant. To be honest, I'm more than a little apprehensive but will try anything once. The fish is surprisingly good. Moses is served Ugali while I'm served chips. I think we are each happy with our side dishes. We then head off to an internet cafe as Moses needs to send an email (I suspect his first ever), and I need an internet fix.

There are around 12 computers jammed into the smallest of spaces each with a tiny carol around it. The lovely young lady working in the place who is a friend of Moses' and a Cura resident herself is very helpful. She helps Moses with his email and also helps me plug my laptop into an empty desk at the back. After struggling to get connected we eventually work out that the DHCP settings are not pushing out DNS entries (that actually means something which less than 0.01% of my readers will understand) so once I manually configure those, we are right to go. The internet is surprisingly fast.

I upload and download a few emails, publish the first few episodes of this blog and then I'm ready to leave. As much as I'd love to stay there for a couple of hours, Moses has finished so I need to leave. We buy a few more supplies for me, mainly toiletries, on the way back, plus some lollies for the kids (Alan Liddle you owe me €2.26).

We come back and Moses and I create the little gift bags for each of the kids. A red AXA nylon bag, AXA cap, AXA balloon, AXA pen, lollipop and a toy car, are probably not on the top of most kids Christmas lists but I think the little ones will be happy when we give it to them tomorrow.

I then go outside an play with the kids. The two smallest ones, Munyara and Peter constantly climb on me. They are joined by others. We play a few games including a Kenyan version of dodgeball and I do a few magic tricks for them. Okay, they are not real magic tricks but they call them that. Their favourite is when I put a stone in one hand and get them to guess which hand it is in. I then have 30 Kenyan children screaming "this one" as they point to a hand only to have them roar with delight when they get it right or wrong. We play this for more than 15 mins and I can't believe they are still excited by it. By the end of it, I'm completely filthy. The kids are just covered in dust all the time, and having them climb over me pretty much left me in the same state.

I guess I must show it a bit more than they do, as when Moses saw me he instructed one of the house mothers to fetch me a large bucket of hot water. He's subtle like that.

I have just about perfected the art of washing from a bucket of water without getting any on the floor. It feels great to get all the grime off me. I do regret bringing a white washcloth though as it is a dirty red by the time I'm finished. After my "bath" Mike calls and we have a brief discussion on what I've been up to. He was worried that he hadn't heard from me since dropping me off. I should have told him the same thing I tell my parents, no news is good news.

I'm then presented with yet another appetising meal of Ugali and Sukuma Wiki (White clay type of paste with green spinach type vegetable). Hopefully, the image will appear below in all it's glory...

Whilst I'm eating my dinner outside in the dark, a friendly young man in a white cowboy hat comes by and we start chatting. He informs me that there is a service on tonight at the church from 10pm - midnight. I tell him I probably won't go. He asks why and I tell him because I don't believe in god. Probably not the right thing to say in a population that is more than 90% Christian but I do so anyway. For the next 15 minutes we are both engaged in a deeply philosophical discussion about life and religion. He is not offended just curious. It's an extremely mature and level conversation that is unlikely to happen even in less Christian countries like the US.

At the end, he says, "Well come on over anyway as there will be lots of Christmas carols". I decide that I will go over as I do like Christmas carols and I'd love to hear them sung by an African choir. I suppose I can sit through an hour of god-bothering for that. (I'm taking my iPhone though...)

This was a good day.

Jesus

24 December 2008

I had to write a second entry today after the church service I went to tonight. It was supposed to start at 10:00pm but at 9:30, the house mothers were knocking on my door telling me it was time to go.

I walked in there and there were only about half a dozen people. Two of them were struggling to set up a drum kit. Fortunately again, my Leatherman came to the rescue and I was able to fix the crash symbol for them. Later on I would regret my resourcefulness.

It looked like they were trying to test the microphones when they gave them to the two house mothers that escorted me over there. They immediately burst into song. Normally I love African music but this was loud, monotonous and was conflicting horribly with the guy practising on the drum kit. Neither were in time with each other.

To get some peace, I wondered over to the door and Tobias was there. We went outside the church and sat on a bench. We didn't talk about religion this time but he quizzed me extensively about Australia. He asked who the Prime Minister was and I said that he didn't want to know. When pressed, I told him Mr Dudd. Meanwhile the girls were singing up a storm in the church. Many people came up, looked through the windows and went away.

It got to about 10:15pm and I could hear a different voice wailing. I assumed though that they were still testing the microphones. I asked Tobias when it started and he replied, "15 minutes ago". I suggested we go in. I entered into the church which would seat probably around 300 and there were 12 people there. There was a woman wailing at the front and I sat down embarrassed to have been late.I needn't have been though as people trickled in and out over the next 2 hours.

I probably think I got more from this church service than I've got from any around the world. Of course, it being half in Kikuyu and half in Swahili meant that I didn't have to pay attention to any of the words. I just enjoyed watching the people.

Everyone was dressed in assorted clothes. Actually, I think they were wearing all the clothes they owned as according to the house mothers it was freezing. People had beanies, jumpers, scarves and gloves on, and in some cases multiple layers of the same clothing. I checked the temperature on my iPhone to confirm it was 20 degrees. Finally, a country that hates cold as much as me!

The closest I could describe the whole affair to is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. (Not that I've attended one my self but hundreds of my friends have.) Someone gets up out of the audience and says in English, "My name is Mary and Jesus Christ is my lord and personal saviour". Everyone else says, "Welcome Mary". They then proceed to tell a story in Kikuyu about why they are BFF's with their imaginary friend. After that, they sit down and everyone looked at the floor in embarrassed silence until someone else decides to out themselves. When the silence got too long, some people went up a second or third time. I'm not sure if they knew that the audience would cotton on to this, and see that it was really just the same people talking about their imaginary friends.

After about a 5 minute silence where nobody was willing to go up for a fourth time, one of the house mothers grabbed me and said I should go up. I now had to exercise all the diplomacy within me. I was thinking of reading a few verses from the sacred book, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, or maybe sing a hymn from Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; but seeing how vastly outnumbered I was and I was in their temple to their celestial dictator, I thought otherwise. Instead I told them why I was there and what I was doing. I gave the shorter cleaner version though. At the end I got applause and a heap of "God Bless You's" which was weird as I hadn't sneezed.

Then someone who had been up at least three times, thought she could fool more people by going up and speaking in English (plus borrowing a scarf and fake moustache from the person beside her). She told a story about a poor Kenyan man who bought a boat ticked to the US without realising that all the food was included. He sat by himself in the corner eating the nuts and snacks he had packed in his suitcase every day and night. On the last night, someone came over and said, why don't you have the food like the rest of us. He said he couldn't afford it as he was poor. They told him that the food was included in the ticket price and he felt bad. Apparently this story reminds her of her God. I couldn't work out whether it was because you sacrifice yourself your whole life under his dictatorship and in the end find out that you could have done what you wanted, or because he is just a cruel bastard that takes advantage of the poor. I think there was a message in there but it escaped me.

Over the two hours, people came and went and after about an hour I noticed that we had close to 100 people in the church.

Throughout all the anecdotes there was lots of singing. Again this was not like the singing I remembered from church as a child. The hymns were incredibly long. I mean 7- 10 minutes long. There was no organ or other melodical instrument, just the guy bashing away on the drum. The verses seemed to consist of the same line said in Kikuyu about 100 - 200 times. When ever it looked like it was about to finish, one lone singer would keep going (probably by mistake) but that would be enough to have the whole crowd continue on again. The one hymn that was done really well was Silent Night which was sung in Swahili. Without any practising and they had to get a hymn book to read the words, four women got up and sung a perfectly harmonised version of this song. It really was quite moving.

Twice during the evening, the singing and story telling stopped and then somebody turned on some rap music. Four guys came out of the audience and started rapping. They were trying really hard but they had clearly only decided to do this about two hours before the service. It was sort of like watching a school play. You are really proud when your kid is performing and think he has heaps of talent but all the others are just crap.

Towards the end a guy came out from the back of the room, grabbed a massive bible from the side and ready out a few versus in Swahili. This was the fire and brimstone bit. His speech was in Kikuyu but peppered frequently with the English phrase "Are you together?" but he never once waited for a response and kept going. Towards the end, he was trying to get people to out themselves in public. This I could tell because there were quite a few English words mixed in with the Kikuyu. It may have been directed at me but I chose to ignore it.

Finally, the fire and brimstone guy went back to his place, and another guy got up. He seamed to be a comedian as he had everyone laughing in the aisles. As soon as he was finished the house mothers quickly stood up and said, "We go home now". I guess there was no milling around after church to exchange pleasantries. We went straight back to the home and to bed.

As I lay in bed I was glad to have experienced something new but it has done nothing to change me from my anti-theist belief.

This was a good day.

Juveniles

23rd December, 2008

I didn't sleep well last night which is unusual for me. I kept waking up thinking that I heard things.

However, I finally got up at 7:30am and got dressed. Around 8:00am one of the house mothers came over with a thermos of milky tea for me. This is breakfast.

One of the main things that I've been asked to do is create a website for the project to not only inform people about what is going here, but to also try and raise awareness and ultimately money to continue the work. Of course, one of the normal prerequisites for creating an internet site is a connection to the internet. They are hoping to get one in the next few months so in the mean time I'm creating everything off line which is really testing my skills as I can't do the normal practice of looking at someone else's site who has done what I want and copying it.

I grabbed a few of the records from Moses to start reading them and working out what information is captured and what should be captured. The first one I grabbed was for a 4 year old boy called Manyara. The file has a picture and I can see he is a tiny little boy with no mention of a father and a death certificate from his mother. He is the fourth of five children. His mother died at 27. The next file is for Mary. Both her parents died of AIDS, her father at 33 and her mother at 28. In both files, as in all the files I look at, there is a certificate saying that the child is HIV negative.

It's incredibly hard to read these files each one a story of loss and misery. I start making notes and after a short while I've got the basic structure of what details should be kept and how best to arrange them. I fire up my Mac and start to create the database to store all these records.

About 20 mins into this exercise, Peter, Duncan, John and Ciro come into my room. They bring with them a tiny little boy who they introduce as Manyara. I quickly turn over the file documenting the misery of his childhood. Manyara is probably the smallest boy in the orphanage and I think he gets picked on a bit. He is quite physical when he plays and is constantly being pushed over by the other kids.

Whilst I try to work, the kids are exploring my room. They squeal with delight when they set off my electric toothbrush. They've clearly never seen anything like this before. Next they find the electric razor. I take both of these things away from them as I don't want the batteries running down or my toothbrush being used to dust the floor.

They start to open some of the other bags and when I see them near the camera bag I stop them. Now that they have worked out there is a camera in there, they want me to take photos of them. I put down the computer, grab the camera, lock the door and we wander around the grounds taking photos of them in various poses.

I head back to do some work and before long, a few more faces have appeared. Over the next hour or so another 10 children arrive. The house mothers bring me over some lunch. It is a chopped up and boiled green vegetable that I have seen them picking in the garden in the morning (sukuma wiki). It is sort of like a spinach texture and taste. Served with that is ugari. I'm not sure exactly what this is but it is white and stodgy. I'm guessing it is a mixture of maize and a yam like substance. It's edible but I don't expect to see it on the menus of any Michelin star restaurants anytime soon.

After lunch I speak to Moses and he suggests I go see Daniel. I had met Daniel at the party on Sunday. He is Evelyn's older brother. Naturally I have an escort of five boys, Peter, Duncan, John, Simon and Edward. They try to teach me a few words of Kikuyu on the way over but they are going so fast I only catch one or two. They constantly pepper me with questions like; Do I have a car? Can I drive a car? Can I fly an aeroplane? and Have I met Barack Obama. Obama is a legend in Kenya (as his father was Kenyan). Even little 3 year old Ciro who saw a photo of Obama in the newspaper I was reading, pointed and squeaked, Barack Obama.

When we got to Daniel's, the boys were all given a banana and Daniel showed me around his 6 acre property. By Kenyan standards this is quite large. He has pioneered the tissue culture bananas which are a disease resistant species. Bananas were not typically grown around here but the tissue culture bananas have been a huge success bringing prosperity to those farmers willing to try something new. Daniel was one of the original demonstration farms for this and now has hundreds of plants. He also shows me his bee hives. Again, this is a relatively new venture that is proving to be profitable for many.

After the demonstration, we sit in Daniel's living room and he puts on an African wildlife video. The kids quickly lose interest in the lions hunting down a giraffe and head outside to explore. When it's time to go, I round them up and we head back. On the way back they proudly show me that they have found 3 old light bulbs.

We get back to the home and are met by even more children. There must be about 25 by now. (Halfway there!!!) The boys go to the concrete edge of the building and taking a rock they carefully bash at the base of the light bulb until it has been loosened. They pull of the metal cap, then they have the bulb, the glass filament inside and the cap. I watch as they wipe all the white powder coating off the inside of the bulb. The filament and the cap become playthings for other boys. Meanwhile, they have taken some water and washed out the bulb until it's clean. Then they put water in the bulb and using the suns rays turn it into a magnifying glass concentrating the rays into a bright white light. Being boys they take turns in seeing how long they can hold their hands underneath it. I'm fascinated at their ingenuity.

Normally I would take things like this away from children of this age, but I'm not sure of the culture here so let them play for a while. They seem to be pretty rough with each other anyway and are constantly pushing each other over and tripping each other up. It's a very physical sort of existence. Even with 24 other kids around, Manyara is still the runt of the litter but gives as good as he gets. After a while, one of the house mothers comes out decides that they shouldn't play with this and makes them throw it down the toilet. I don't really feel guilty as yesterday, one of the house mothers gave Ciro a broken glass thermometer to play with. At that point I did take it off her and gave it to Moses who agreed she shouldn't play with it.

I wrestle with the kids a bit, play on the swings with them and kick around a soccer ball for a while. Then it's coming up to 6pm and they head off for their dinner. Margaret, the nurse, comes over and says for my own safety I shouldn't leave the doors of the clinic unlocked at night. This worries me a little. Although there is a watchman on all night, I'm still sleeping in a clinic that has drugs likely to be sought after by undesirables. I misunderstood when I asked her about the doors last night and thought she would close them.

She tells me to lock them from the inside at 7pm and open them again at 6:30am. They are big heavy doors so I feel a lot safer with them closed. She also says I should padlock them from the inside but when I look at the way they are constructed I decide against this. Nothing is coming through these doors.

Dinner arrives at about 6:55pm and Moses comes over to say good-bye for the day. He too comments on the unlocked doors the night before and we go again through the procedure. He does acknowledge that it's his fault as h didn't advise me correctly. I lock up Fort Knox after he leaves and finish off my rice, cabbage and potato.

I then spend the next few hours working on the website before finally heading to bed. Hopefully I will sleep a lot better tonight.

This was a good day.

Jackaroo

22nd December, 2008

I set the alarm on my new €17 watch that I purchased for this trip, electing to leave behind my Omega. It turns out that although my Omega doesn't have an alarm, that is infinitely better than a watch saying it has an alarm and the alarm not working. Come 8am (my self designated wake up time), both I and my €17 watch were sound asleep. In fact, we continued that way until 9:13am when the maid knocked on the door of the hotel to make up the room. I jumped up with a start, and rushed to the door opening it before even realising my attire. Fortunately, I learnt my lesson several years ago about sleeping naked in hotels through a stress induced sleepwalking episode that had me on the front lawn of a hotel at 4am in all my glory. Still, no one should have to see an overweight white man in boxers first thing in the morning. I told her to come back later, and she handed me the morning paper. Thus ended the conversation.

I had arranged previously for Mike to pick me up at 9:30am and take me to Cura. This gave me 17mins to get showered, dressed, packed and checked out. After years of staying in hotels, I'm a master at precisely this feat but I was angry at myself (well - more at my €17 watch) for sleeping in and having to cut short the last hot shower I was likely to have for 2 weeks. Still, all the morning ablutions were performed and I was lining up at the hotel cashier to check out at 9:28. It took a little longer than expected but by 9:40 Mike and I were heading out of Nairobi on our way to Cura.

We passed several slums and villages on the way out as we weaved in and out of the large buses belching thick black smoke from their exhausts, whilst people stared at the two white men in the red Mercedes slipping by them. Most of the journey was on the tarmac, and as Mike described some of the initiatives that were being undertaken at Cura, I followed our progress on my iPhone noting that Google Maps wasn't nearly as accurate in outer Nairobi as it is in downtown Paris. Many roads were unmarked and the small blue dot representing our position from the GPS frequently was several hundred metres from the yellow line representing the road.

After about 40 mins we were in Kiambu district and we left the tarmac and headed down a dirt road. Mike pointed out a sign with foliage growing in front of most of it, that said that the Cura House was some 1.25km away. The road was unsealed and as bad as many of the roads I remembered in PNG and Indonesia as a child. The soil a rich red earth was bone dry and clouds of red dust billowed from our vehicle as we jostled down the road.

Off the road, the land was surprisingly green and fertile. I could see Maize, Banana Trees and Coffee being grown in the plots of land on both sides. Many Kenyans were walking up the road on both sides many heavily laden with bags of rice or other pulses on their heads. Children ran towards the car as we moved past shouting "Hi" each one of them with bright white smiles flashed across their small dark faces. Most were without shoes and were in clothes that were stained with the red dust.

After what seemed much longer than 1.25km, we turned off the main dirt road onto a smaller dirt road that was corrugated by the weather with a large gouge taken out of it by rains. We got to the top of a small hill where Mike pointed out the Cura Primary School. This is the school that his wife went to and many of the other relatives I met yesterday. We turned off the smaller dirt road cum driveway, and headed straight across what appeared to be a school oval. It had a rickety soccer goal post erected at one end sans net. Once on the other side of the oval, we turned left towards a roughly built block structure. This was home for the next two weeks.

The Cura Orphans Home was built by the Rotary Club of Nairobi. Whilst it can hold 150 orphans, due to the cost of keeping them only 50 are able to be resident at this time. To the right of the home is a small clinic and to the right of that a large church and several other rough block buildings. We exit the car into perfect blue skies and 27 degree heat and are greeted by Moses, the Manager of Cura. Around him are 3 young boys, who I later learn are Peter, Duncan and John, plus a tiny 3 year old girl with braided hair and a stark white dress. The little girl Ciro is the daughter of the nurse in the clinic who lives in a small house next to it. The boys speak surprisingly good English but the little girl only speaks Kikuyu (the local dialect in this region).

Mike, Moses and I head into the "Board Room" of the Home; a small yellow room in front of Moses' tiny office that seats about 8 plastic chairs. After some more introductions, we tour the home and a couple of the surrounding buildings including the clinic. The home itself is a rectangular block building with a "courtyard" in the centre with a set of swings, a broken set of monkey bars, a trampoline (donated recently) and several clothes lines stretching across the length of the courtyard. To the side three of the House Mothers are painstakingly sorting out good and bad grains of rice in preparation for lunch.

We head back to the Board Room and milky tea is served from a thermos. Whilst I haven't drunk tea or coffee for some time, I realise that for the next two weeks I'm going to have to as all the water I drink will be boiled and this will help kill that boiled taste. To go with the tea we are served white bread sandwiches with a sweet butter in between them. After some more discussions Mike needs to leave and so climbs back in his car and heads off to Nairobi.

As he leaves another man Kenneth arrives. Kenneth lives in over the hill in Cura and often helps out around the home. As Kenneth arrives, lunch is served. Lunch is made up of a generous serving of rice and a bean stew with potatoes. Both the beans and the potatoes were grown at the home in the small vegetable plot they have. It's surprisingly tasty for how it looks.

Moses, Kenneth and I head back into the home to start sorting out my sleeping arrangements. Whilst initially they had intended for me to sleep in the home in one of the rooms normally reserved for the children, they change their mind and decide it would be better if I slept in the clinic. The next thing is to find a bed.

All the children sleep on small wooden bunks. Moses and Kenneth suggest taking apart a bunk and giving me half of one. However, I'd rather not take apart a perfectly good one and instead point towards a number of broken bunks stacked up in one of the rooms. I ask that we take two of the less broken bases from this pile and use that. With the children helping we carry the two bases over to the clinic along with two thin mattresses. Within moments the "Recovery Room" has now been turned into perfectly good guest quarters for me. There is a single power point in the room, a bare light bulb in the ceiling and a small stained sink in the corner. To be honest it's not that unlike my French apartment when I first moved in! The walls are painted a thick custard colour with dirt over most of them. The two windows at either end both have bars and have a thin sheet draped over them. There are three small childrens desks in the room and two plastic chairs. Perfect.

After trying unsuccessfully to find a key for the lock on the door, we decide to walk about 3 km to the nearest town called Wangige to buy a new lock. They are adamant that my room be able to be locked not because of theft but because the children are very curious. We walk down the dusty road stopping along the way to meet various people some of who are herding goats, others are just walking to or from the markets. Again children run out to the road to see these two Kenyan men escorting the white guy. The children are not scared, nor do they rush up begging. They just seem to be amused by the whole situation

The term Jackaroo actually comes from the Aboriginal word dhugai-iu which literally means "wandering white man". Thousands of kilometres away, this word could not be more suitable for describing me as I walk down this dusty road in the middle of Kenya.

Eventually we get to Wangige and the guys show me around. We stop at a few hardware type stores and inquire about locks. None of the stores have one but they have latches we can put on the door and then attach a padlock. The going rate for these seems to be 70 Ksh (around €0.60). After purchasing one of these, Moses heads to the bank, while Kenneth shows me the rest of the market. Mondays and Thursdays are the big market days and so every Kenyan for miles around is at these markets. Naturally, I'm the only white guy. There are many types of pulses, fruits and vegetables on display. Most of them I immediately recognise although they are not always similar to what we have in Australia or France.

After wandering around the market, having 3 bottles of soft drink for 60 Ksh (around €0.50) we then head back to Cura. Often Moses and Kenneth will take a taxi back if they have a lot of shopping. However, today we have only a small bag so walk down the hot and dusty road like all the other Kenyans.

About half way back, a taxi stops by us to chat to Moses and we decide to hitch back to Cura with him. In the back is an old frail Kenyan woman probably around her mid 60's but looking more like her mid 90's. I'm stuck in the middle and as we bounce down the road it takes all my strength to hold myself still in the middle for fear of crushing her.

We are deposited at the end of the small dirt road leading to Cura Home, thank the driver and he speeds off. Moses gets back to doing his book work whilst Kenneth and I, accompanied by the 4 children attempt to put this latch in place on my door. Unlike a similar project back home I'm dealing with uneven doors, recycled nails and screws, and only a hammer and screw driver. Fortunately, I have my Leatherman with me, which proves invaluable in getting the job done.

Kenneth leaves for his home and after a brief chat with Moses I decide to start unpacking my belongings in my new room. Of course the children want to help me.

With the room unpacked and looking a little more homely, one of the house mothers arrives with dinner. She deposits two large stainless steel bowls with lids on the table of the small ante room outside my bedroom with a single metal bowl and a large and small spoon. I open them both to find one contains a large amount of rice and the other a cabbage stew. There is way too much food here. I protest that this can't be all for me but she says it is. I quickly serve myself a huge helping of both but haven't even made a dint in the volume of food. I ask her to take it back but she says it will be collected in the morning. I can only guess that these seconds will be recycled the next day.

As I'm finishing dinner, another house mother turns up with a very large bucket of hot water for washing (bathing). I take this into my room along with the small plastic jug she has bought and the smaller flatter bucket and calculate how I'm going to go through this process. I eventually find a suitable method to cleanse myself change into my pyjamas and am in bed falling asleep at 7:30pm. I wake up about an hour later and decide to read a bit, start doing some preparation on the computer for tomorrow and write this blog. I'm in bed about 11, the end of my first day at Cura.

This was a good day.