My life is settling into a routine. I wake at around 730 in the mud hut where my room is. A mud hut might sound difficult. If i make any noise then I will wake the other two boys who live in the other rooms of the hut. There's no electricity (my head-torch is a godsend!). It's pretty cold at night (although not now that Ben - one of the sons - kindly fetched me another blanket after I mentioned this). But the mud hut has its advantages. I've not had a single mosquito bite since I've arrived - apparently the mud puts off the mosquitoes.
I change my clothes and go to the main building of the family's house for 8am. They have breakfast ready for me and Jamie, who is the representative of the UK organisation Teach A Man To Fish. She is also here to help the management of the school, but not just looking at the finances. We get chastised for not eating enough.
I then use the pit latrines. I find the buzzing of the flies my favourite part!
Then we walk to school. It takes around 20 minutes walking through mud paths and usually getting a few kids shouting "wazungu!" (Swahili) or occasionally "odiero!" (Luo) and coming and holding hands with one or both of us. (One of them is pictured here) Jamie tells me that the word mzungu comes from the Swahili word for traveller, and "odiero" is the name for a type of bird that is very clean. (Infer what you will about hygiene around here!)
In the evening we come back to the house just before nightfall (we're close to the equator, so it's just after 6pm every day). The family have hot water ready for us to take a bucket bath, and then we eat - usually something involving ugali. Afterwards the family like us to stay in the living room and chat. Unfortunately conversations with them are hard to maintain, because someone will typically interject with a new (or possibly a continuation of the same?) conversation in Luo. Every now and then I'll start a new conversation with them in English, but it normally doesn't last long. Then I'll walk through the dark towards the mud hut where my room is, possibly fighting off any ants with my towel (they climb up your legs and they bite) and go to sleep.
Today I have mostly been talking with Joseph, whose main role is the agricultural expert to help the school's projects, but who also does the finances. We found the only quiet space we could to hold our meeting - the store room. We still did have people wandering past and interrupting, and the yellow boxes in the background contained beehives, and the bees would buzz around us and occasionally settle on a limb, but otherwise it was fairly quiet! He seemed to really appreciate having time invested in thinking about his career, and to receive the coaching that I was giving him. We made a plan that will - I hope - help both Joseph himself with his career and the effective functioning of the school's finance processes. Since the school's HR is as good as its finances (i.e. not very) Joseph has no boss nor any support. He seemed happy, but I hope Jamie can do something to improve the HR around here so that he - and other staff - can get better support over time.
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