There are heroisms all around us…

Culled from, the Kenya Field of Dreams blog

With reference to chapter one of The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s, I write another post for the Kenya Field of Dreams Blog. Yesterday, Saturday the third of July in preparation for American Independence Day, we showed the recorded game of Brazil against the Netherlands. I have to say I am not really a fan of the Netherlands football strip, I think it is to do with the font, the six looks like a nine when the player is upside down after a particularly over the top foul. But in a way, I am glad that the Netherlands went through to the next round since we are working for a certain Dutch lady, Cocky van Dam, (pronounced Co-kee), for Moving the Goalposts.

So back to the rural school setting for the showing, without any electricity and potentially running water, it was great to show the game and curiously even better to see the stars, the Milky Way, the Southern Cross without the moon obliterating the starscape. No camera could do justice to this scene. So I didn’t attempt it.

Moving the Goalposts and Kenya Field of Dreams are getting more and more coverage as the month gets longer, a previous post mentioned the piece on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. In our hotel, one of party (Alex Goodey) got talking to a lady from Wiltshire who had learned about Moving the Goalposts from Woman’s Hour several months earlier. Yesterday morning, a piece went out on Radio 4′s documentary series, “From Our Own Correspondent” that describes the whole process of the screenings from the initial arrival to the final wheel spin over the compacted earthen road as we leave. The screen and electrical equipment were kindly donated by Google and the girls were given a great deal of help from Stuart Farmer from Open Air Cinema.

On Friday, I got promoted from classroom assistant to shared teaching responsibilities with Andy Marsh (from KPMG), our resident accountant in plain clothes, and we were asked to enthuse the children and get them to do a short play based on a journey. This is similar to asking an English Year 8 group to write a play in French. After some cajoling, the pupils excelled to the challenge and we ended up filming them on Flip Cameras (generously donated by Google). They laughed so much when they saw themselves on the screen from the computer.

So as I leave the township of Kilifi, Moving the Goalposts and Kenya Field of Dreams project, I am brought to mind of the many heroisms that are present in this wonderful corner of Kenya. There are the muzungus, Sarah and Cocky, who have run the Moving the Goalposts project; the Moving the Goalposts girls who have to master the English language which they do so lyrically; Kahindi, James and the other Minibus, Matatu and Tuck-Tuck drivers who drive over such changeable surface conditions; the girls we have all taught and coped with our varying accents; the tailor who made some shirts for me and didn’t make them look like a marquee; the various Kenya Field of Dreams volunteers from Google, the BBC and the interlopers of which I was one who added to the rich tapestry of life and finally to Harshad who came up with the original idea to send us out here. I hope that this project reaches greater heights like an eagle that floats on the thermals over the African plains, that it continues to spread its message like a coral reef spreads over the shallow sea floors and inspire many people like water from a waterfall nourishes many lives.

The lesser known animals of Kilifi

So as the Larium pill of literacy slips down the throat of tertiary education, I realise that Wednesday night has blended into Thursday morning. The former was spent showing a film, “Bend it like Beckham”, on the Mnarani fields and despite some potentially dubious scenes, these may have included public exhibitions of affection onthe screen. More laughter was got from the mentioning that a daughter couldn’t cook chipatis and from when the father nearly caught the daughter with the football coach. This film was shown instead of a football match and it seemed to get general approval with an attendance of around 250 people, children and adults alike. When I was younger, around the seventies and the eighties, cinemas used to be in old theatres, which would have higly decorated ceilings and walls. This open air cinema had two medium sized baobabs to the far side of the football field and then an amazing star field of the equatorial hemisphere which included the much missed, by me anyway, Southern Cross.

So back to the subject of the title. On the way back from the MTG building to the Mnarani Beach Club at night, I have come across what I would describe as a large African land snail, a millipede as long as twenty five centimetres and a centimetres in width. In Zimbabwe, we called them Chongololos, I have yet to find out there names in Swahili, but imagine one of those long London buses which is heavily armoured and highly segmented with legs that move in waves instead of tyres.

One of the volunteers working on the Kenya Field of Dreams project was heard to be saving one of the gardeners of the Mnarani Beach Club from a potential crocodile attack, it did later turn out to be a Monitor Lizard. But the thought was there. On the hotel, we seem to have an inordinate number of what appear to be Ghost Lizards, but no doubt I am wrong in the naming of these species. They tend to congregate around the lights on the external walls at night so that they can grab the moths at night and flies during the day. On top of the thatched roofs, we will have a gaggle of what I think are Vervet monkeys with blue furry balls. One has lost an arm possibly from the Monitor lizard.

On returning from the project building to the hotel, I sometimes walk back through the village and you can often get stuck behind the cattle rush ten minutes. An old man and a boy will take the cattle from the overnight area to the day grazing area. This is sometimes changed with the presence of a goat rush fifteen minutes.

At the project building, there are a couple of goats that get in and start to eat the hedging plants, but hey isn’t that just life anyway.
A couple of chicken are also rounded up by rooster that is slightly reminiscent of the Roadrunner from the Looney Tunes cartoons, well apart from he doesn’t go, “Beep, Beep” nor is he blue. But sure as eggs are eggs, there will be a coyote of some type with a bundle of dynamite awaiting the aided demise of the said bird.

When you mention Kenya, people often associate the country with lions, elephants, cheetah, and other such wonderful poster animals of East Africa. But it is the little guys who are the over achievers, the dung beetles who clear up after all the herbivores and carnivores; the detritivores and the bacteria. In researching another project, the spring 2010 edition of the Harvard Business Review OnPoint magazine quotes that “recent calculations published in the journal Nature conservatively estimate the value of all the Earth’s ecosystem services to be at at least $33 trillion a year. That’s close to the gross world product, and it implies a capitalised book value on the order of half a quadrillion dollars”.

Time and Football

As copy and pasted from my entry in the official Kenya Field of Dreams Blog found here.

So as we wave a fond farewell to those second phasers of the Kenya Field of Dreams project, these include Anna, Chris Baum and Chris Pike, Becky, Simon and Tony. I am hoping I have not left anyone off, but we have also had time to welcome the third phasers who include Ali, Andy, Chris, John, Justin, Mark, Martin, and On Quy. This nicely brings me on to the title of this current post.

Time in Kenya runs on so many scales, it is quite hard to guess which time variant you are on, which adds a challenge to the two strands of the Kenya Field of Dreams project as explained by Tony in his 25th of June post. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying that “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once”, never has this quote had so much resonance in these few weeks in Kenya.

There is European time, where the hapless tourist has got off their flight and into a taxi, where everything should run like clockwork. There is Kenya time, where time periods can run from a couple of minutes to hours and this can be due to many factors, which could include a heavy downpour of rain may have washed the road away or at the very least created some very deep potholes. This we found with the arrival of the new pupils last Thursday when they arrived an hour and half late because the rains had damaged the roads so the minibus driver had to drive slower. A later time delay was reflected by the arrival of the lunch time meal an hour and a half. So we then booked the lunch meal the previous day so that they would arrive on time, alas the Kenya time check stood like a bridge against a flood and the computer lesson was extended. The Swahili word for slowly, gently or softly is “pole” (pronounced pole-ay), the repetition of the word adds emphasis to this definition. The advantages of these time delays has allowed the Kenya students to explore the vastness of the Internet and the Google search engines, especially for Bongo Flava. There is a third form of time, where one walks as slowly as chameleon so as not to get too hot. This was illustrated by one of the volunteers as he walked back the Moving the Goalposts project today. But I hear on the grapevine, it is as hot and humid here as it is in the South East of England.

On to the second subject of the post; Sunday the 27th of June, a large number of volunteers were asked to celebrate with the Moving the Goalposts project as they sent a delegation of footballers to the Football for Hope Festival in South Africa. The teams have not been chosen for their soccer prowess on the field, but for their contribution to social change in disadvantaged areas. There are about 50 organisations from 35 countries, the full list can be found here. As we mzungus listened to the speech before the celebratory meal, we realised that no other global sport had such a unique way of using the sport as a tool for social development. We wish the Moving the Goalposts team all the best for their successes on and off the pitch

Friday and Saturday

Friday follows Thursday like a toilet roll follows a haricot bean and rice lunch. Day two of the second class and we seem to find a certain pattern forming. Google will only allow less than 10 email accounts from one IP address per day. For those who need a bit of information about IP addresses (imagine it is your full postal address for your own computer address for even more mind boggling information, click here).

Friday was also the day we say goodbye to two of the first phasers (as in the first phase not the shooting laser sort of thing), Alia (pronounced Aaahlia) who used her camera with great aplomb to take time lapse photographs of the shoreline as the boats adn clouds went by and not forgetting Max, who had been nicknamed (the Swahili for) Goat by the MTG girls as he had a ginger goatee. But for us Kenyan Field of Dreams people, he was the lynchpin of obtaining the cargo from the Nairobi customs, when asked if had seen a transformer for a light he said that he had a soldering iron and was prepared to make a new transformer. Luckily, the original power source had been found.

An early night, after returning a foldable golden coloured reflector to Max and said goodbye to the leavers, I had to be up reasonably early to find the new or the third phase people who were arriving in dribs and drabs.

So the sun came over the horizon as is its wont and Saturday arrived like a friend turning up for a party unlike the English defence against the Germanic attack. As you can see I am trying to type this up whilst watching THE game.

The second phasers made an epic trip to Tsavo East to watch game, quick entry – one goal followed by another that could have been a goal but wasn’t really a goal so the crowd in this wood and raffia ensoaked bar are not too happy with the lack of FIFA stewards. The guys left at six in the morning whilst I awoke to the news that in order to balance the karmc scales I would have to travel north of Kilifi to a field to show the screening. Pah, so any work was out of the window.

As luck would have it, Orange John turned up to the front desk and I took advantage and ordered a dongle, despite the fact that I am told by my computer my dongle is a dingle, and I eventually to the Orange hut – a shop, wall and huge aerial all painted orange – and got a phone. This gave me the ideal opportunity to phone my brother on the football field, similar to the one at Muchinjike but of a lesser standard, he was having a dinner party to celebrate his birthday.

But before we even got to the field, I made a side trip to a hotel on the north side of the creek, which has got the word “Baobab” in the name to reflect the abundance of the actual baobabs in the vegetation on the side of the roads. This reminds me of the trip to Kilifi from Mombassa where we passed fields of sisal that have been grown on a commercial scale. I went to see the new phasers who include Ally, On Quy and Justin from Google and some people from the BBC and the freelancers who include Chris, Andy, Martin, John and Mark. So whilst the majority of the second phase leave on Wednesday morning, their work will be continue by this last phase. I took some of them to see Orange John and then they walked back to the hotel.

Caution – this next part includes some graphic content – when the girls come to play football at the Moving the Goalposts, there will often be four teams, so whilst two teams play on the pitch, the other two teams – sorry Germany has now scored 4 goals to England’s 1 – are taken to the side and they are taught about HIV AIDS, STDs, the correct usage of sanitary towels and the potentially bad effects of an early sex life. It is thought that if you are not married and do not have children by the time you are in your mid twenties, you have probably wasted your life. Girls will probably miss a week’s education every month due to the presence of the painters or the crimson tide, the curse or their period due to not turning up as the presence of “clean” sanitary conditions to cope with their own predicament. This is something, as I used to be a teacher, that I never really even thought about when I taught in Ashford, Drax, Hastings, Muchinjike in Zimbabwe and Tenterden. I overheard a conversation between Sarah Ford and one of the MTG ladies about the advantages of Moon Cups - a form of sanitary towel where a device is put in to the front door downstairs (oh alright, the vagina). The following is taken from theMoon Cup website:

The Mooncup is a reusable menstrual cup, around two inches long, and made from soft medical grade silicone. It is worn internally a lot lower than a tampon but, while tampons and pads absorb menstrual fluid, the Mooncup collects it. This means it doesn’t cause dryness or irritation, and also that collects far more (three times as much as a “super-absorbent” tampon!). Because the Mooncup is reusable, you only need one so it saves you money and helps the environment, too.

The Mooncup is designed to be folded and inserted into the vagina, then removed, rinsed and reinserted up to every 8 hours. A light seal is formed with your vaginal walls, allowing menstrual fluid to pass into the Mooncup without leakage or odour. This seal is released for removal, allowing you to empty the contents, rinse or wipe and reinsert. Comfortable, convenient and safe: the Mooncup can be used overnight and when travelling, swimming or exercising.

I hope this helps to explain some solution, but I shall find out more later on methods used by the girls taught who can’t afford this solution.

So on to the next day…

Wednesday was the day of the big decision, we have one digital television recorder in order to record a football match before it can be sent via a heavy footed VW camper van style minibus to the outfield where the inflatable screen is awaiting a cheering crowd. But the decision was, do we record the England match or the Algerian match. Tony, in his BBC fashion, asked various and assorted pedestrians in his quest to find which match should be recorded. The die had been cast.

After lunch the children were finishing off by attaching their CVs to an email and looking through the wondrous virtual corridors of Google on how to become neurosurgeons, news broadcasters and other assorted potential job vacancies. The lure of watching Bongo Flavva through Youtube was becoming more tempting for our new electronic fledgings, another brood of software sparrows were about to fly the nest.

So with the afternoon nearly finished and the recording choice had been made it was up to the set up crew from Moving the Goalposts

Wednesday was the last day for the first group of students that I acted as a classroom assistant, it was quite lovely to see the children’s faces light as they realised their words that thy had written were now on the Internet. It was one of those moments when you can comprehend the wonder of teaching. This profession has good hours and bad months. But more on the teaching later.

To help you learn a bit of KiSwahili, “Jambo” means “Hello”. “Mambo” means “Hi” and “Dumbo” means “Watch out there is a large eared elephant who knows how to fly is behind you”.

Whilst I type this in the bar, courtesy of an Internet dongle supplied by Orange John, Orange because he works for them and not because of his pallour. It could be described as a download-as-much-as-you-want-from-the-Internet-for-seven-days type of dongle. But as I teach them, I have a lovely collection of people from Yorkshire or Lancashire and I know there are very different. But they remind me of the two old ladies that Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough (Sissy and Ada) used to portray as they talked over the garden fence whilst adjusting their bra straps and mouthing words that they shouldn’t speak aloud.. They are now taking about how the locals, bring a cup of hot water and and a tea bag at the side, and what is the use of that since the bag doesn’t have time to brew,so what is the point. They are now talking of exposed nerves within teeth and porcelain teeth.

During lunch time, which is a combination of rice, haricot beans (but not in a tomato sauce like your Heinz variety), a fried sort of rape leaves with pieces of fried onion, if we are really lucky a weak meat stew and then pancakes; but back to the mid lunch banter, it somehow moved to the pop cultural references of turtles. So without mentioning the infamous Ninja Turtles, there is Yertle Turtle; Touche (with an accent) turtle; the old turtle in the film Kung Fu Panda (Oogway); the old turtle in Finding Nemo (Crush) and Squirt. Then the conversation took a turn for the worst, so we then go on to film titles with dodgy turtle connections…Indiana Turtle and the Temple of Doom, Octoturtle, you can see where it goes…

Thursday came and went with a new class, so back to making up stories and introducing the new students to computers. More to come soon, I here you are having hot weather in the UK, don’t burn. Hakuna Matata!

The 19th to the 23rd of June – from Sedlescombe to Kilifi

So whilst the last performance of the farce went well and all the lines flowed out of my head into my voice box like a chilled pint of Guinness from the tap to the glass. In the words of Noel Coward, I went to a marvellous party on Sunday, with thanks to Tara and the Sedlescombe Players, and then went on to get involved in packing things into a suitcase and then making my way to Heathrow despite a sulking dog in preparation to catch a flight to Nairobi.

Made it there and found one of the other volunteers, Anna Lacey, who specialises in Science broadcasting. On the flight I got to talking to an elderly gentleman who farms near Goole in North Yorkshire but mainly deals with farm diversification in the guise of the cart racing and paintballing. He and his son were off to look at animals in West Kenya.

Only a slight hiccup with bureaucratic redtape at the Immigration desk and then an hour’s delay on the plane.Sadly no window seat but I did see Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro on the way from Nairobi to Mombassa.  I guess I will be back in Africa as if you see Kilimanjaro you will see Africa again. I don’t know if this legend was created by the Tanzania and Kenyan Tourist Commission but it seems to work.

Then an hour’s drive from Mombassa to Kilifi before the big creek if you are looking on Google Earth in a slightly batttered minibus driven by Mr. Hakuna Matata, I asked what his English name was, he replied, “No Worries”. We got driven to the Mnarani Beach Club, it used to be part of Lord Delamere‘s estate. On arrival I was met by a friendly face of Alex Goodey, one of the volunteers who explained that we had to rest our weary bodies and then I was slowly introduced to the other volunteers; Anna-I-didn’t-mean-to-tread-on-an-urchin; Annie-I-am-writing-a-piece-for-From-Our-Own-Correspondent; the two Chris’s – Chris “Bam Bam” Baum and Chris-I-am-not-a-fish-but-a-staff Pike; Tony who taught some of the lessons yesterday; Becky who let me in to the Centre at London and many more yet to be introduced.

Tuesday led to a day of classroom assisting at Moving the Goalposts and saw various volunteers in teaching mode including Tony and Becky who seems to have taken teaching in their own stride. I have been mentoring a group of girls from Bahari Girls School. This then led to a night where the inflatable cinema screen was erected as was a gazebo which in turn, later in the night, was tied to a nearly standing football goal frame. The inflatable cinema screen was brought over by Stuart Farmer from Utah, an enjoyable chap to talk too over a cooling evening. For those in the know, The Guardian published an article about the outdoor filmings.

Wednesday awaits…

First and second night at the Sedative Village Hall 17th to the 18th of June

Tonight is the first night of the farce at the Sedlescombe Village Hall or as my Blackberry states “Sedative”, hopefully they won’t be needed. Things coming together for the trip to Kenya and now on the Larium, so I expect the dreams to get better.

Missed two major lines in the farce but the cast battled on without them and it was good to see some friends from BLOGs, a sales woman for eXtrascents, the RAC and Tuesday night Latin Style Salsa Night come to watch me play an old man in a wheel chair.

According to Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt‘s Oblique Strategies set of cards – “Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities” – may not be the ideal instruction for work on a dissertation on invasive weed control and management let alone the empowerment of women and children.

Work up this morning, at about 3 or 4 am, after either hearing a radio program on Marcus de Sautoy or dreaming about him and then had an epiphany (a moment of sudden revelation or insight, not the religious type) about my dissertation and about how I may be able to turn it around on the management system. Study the lengths of a few roads, waterways and railway lines, three being the magic number, that pass through several district councils and after examining their methods of invasive native and non-native (marking it on a percentage scale) and then add in the environmental strengths and weaknesses to create some sort of management total – as you can see it needs some work on it. As they say, on all good conference calls, please bare or should that be bear with me, I always ask Grizzly or Polar?

Up to London and then back again

Off up to London after Monday’s injections for Diptheria, Tetanus, Hepatitis A & B and start to feel lousy as soon as I wake up, achy limbs as if I have ‘flu’. Train from Battle to Charing Cross and met with two family friends who were going to the new Saatchi exhibition.  Then a quick trip to White City to meet the gang from the second phase going out to Kilifi at the building opposite the real famous BBC building. I was slightly late but caught up Harshad Mystry (whose idea this whole thing is).

Back to the west end and I hover between Waterstones near Piccadilly Circus and to the Royal Academy. The former has a very relaxing bar, with a lager shandy I start to read a book that I bought there for a friend, “The Wave Watcher’s Companion“. The latter has its summer exhibition with a more than life size gorilla made out of coat hangers. Followed by a drink, a pint and a half of Honeybee, in a London pub with my brother, Russell, the bloody purines played havoc with the gout in my big toe on my right foot.

Had an amazing dream, where there was snow on the ground in the middle of June.

Off for injections…

Later today, I am off to get a few injections before going towards Kenya and then Kilifi. These will include typhoid, hepatitis A, hepatitis B,  yellow fever, polio, meningitis, the MMR triple jump including Mumps, Measles and Rubella, tetanus-diptheria and rabies. I then get to enjoy a final rehearsal of a farce, by Ray Cooney, called It Runs in the Family, where a doctor about to give a life changing speech finds he has sired an illegitimate daughter eighteen years ago. Much hilarity is spread by his daughter, his wife, the matron, his lover, two doctors, a nurse, a mother, an administrator, an old man in a wheelchair and, of course, a paying audience. Tomorrow I travel to London to see some of the rest of the cast for this expedition to Kilifi.

Whilst doing this, I am also making notes and adding to my dissertation, “The Control and Management of Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) and Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) along the transport infrastructure routes in the county of Devon”. This will make more sense later.

It is good to see that the first phase are making headway in Nairobi, Mombassa and Kilifi, they even got to see a giraffe.