Remember the good advice you're given and use it...

31-12-12

09:15 and the sun is already baking down, according to the weather app on my phone we've almost reached the days high of 26 degrees as I set off along the track to the children's home, quite the antithesis of the past five days. The deluge of rain that has hit the Rift Valley this past week has tragically killed over 20 people and wiped out a village in a horrific landslide, so dealing with muddy feet and a slippery track is a very small price to pay, plus everybody is very grateful for the full water tanks and jerry cans.

As I set off along the track, a quite elderly couple are tending their shamba close to where I stay, as is the Kenyan way, we wave an exchange a friendly "Habari - Mazuri sana" now I've encountered this elderly gentleman before, and both times he has attempted on a full conversation with me, and both times it's involved a lot of smiling and tummy rubbing on his part, now he either is telling me he's hungry, but from the ample crops his shamba is producing I don't think that to be the case, so maybe he's just explaining to me that he is the local Buddha :o) either way each time we have this "conversation" I smile a lot, and apologetically explain sielewi (I don't understand) and carry on my merry way.

I'm walking with a bit of a heavy heart today, to be honest I'm finding some things more difficult than I anticipated (I'm struggling to get my head around some aspects of the children's home) so as I walk I'm taking in my surroundings and committing them to memory so I can share them when I blog.. The walk to Holding Hands is a similar distance to my daily walk to work at home, and just like that walk it proves to be a fantastic time to mull things over.  So as I walk, as always I think....

As I make my way past the school, I catch myself wondering what it will be like to be working there later in my stay.  And as I walk I scan the wall for the now familiar lizards that scamper to safety up the wall and dart along the top to sun themselves, this morning I see only two.  I love these little guys, and have photographed them a number of times, they are much larger than the skinks we have back home and never fail to make me stop and watch them for a moment or two.

In the small fenced area opposite the school quite a commotion is taking place, it would seem that about 15 goats, two turkeys and a large number of white geese have found their way into a maize patch and are in the midst of a delicious feeding frenzy, if they aren't careful I think they could be making a quicker trip to the pot than originally intended - a fantastic New Years feast maybe!

Today the track is littered with fresh cow dung, it doesn't take a detective to guess who has walked this track before me today, and sure enough as I pass the school and make my way onto the open grasslands I'm faced with the now familiar sight of the Masai heardsmen.  These five; tall, majestic looking figures stand solemnly on the grasslands about two hundred meters from me.  They are dressed head to toe in long red robes, they carry long crooks to prod at their stock, though from this distance I can't make out if these five have the massive gaping holes in their ear lobes that many of their fellow tribesman do.  They are surrounded by their heard, the Masai graze an unusual looking cow, one that is much more slender than our black and white Frisians, it has a small camel like hump between it's shoulders and horns that range from a small nubbin to intimidating looking weapons of mass destruction.  The masai cow is a docile animal, that barely even gives me a sleepy second glance as I pick my way through the ones that dotting the path I'm taking.

I'm told by locals that the Masai are nomads, that graze their stock on open grasslands such as these, their homes are tiny shelters erected daily from sticks and plastic or canvas sheeting, and if need be they are known to take shelter under the belly of their largest beast.

I'm starting to recognise natural landmarks on my daily walk, be it the small junction where three paths meet and I take the straight ahead path, whilst the other two wind off in different directions across this vast open expanse of grassland or the ever growing ant hill that has doubled in size each day I've passed it since I first noticed it on Boxing Day.  The small pointed tail swallows constantly duck and dive above my head catching flying insects remind me of being a child in England, I don't recall ever seeing them in such huge numbers in New Zealand.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I've been mentally battling with a few issues, (all of them totally my own making I'm sure) certain aspects are very different here and I'm having to learn to adjust.  I'm loving the people, the place, the food, the culture, I'm just adapting to a few other aspects, and as I walk I think back to the words spoken by a person I greatly respect and admire, a person who has faced far bigger challenges than this... I recall him saying as he trekked across the vast expanse of Antarctica the only way to feel any sense of achievement was to set small goals, and look at how you can work towards them, and when you get there celebrate those small achievements...

So I decided instead of being frustrated by the lack of structure and the insurmountable behaviour issues I knew I would be facing on arrival at HH, I would see at how I could fit into the structure that does exist, so that's what I did.  As soon as I put my bag away, I set to helping the house mums clean up the dining area from devastation of the recent meal that had taken place.  These three teams of five woman do have systems in place, so it seemed a good place to start... And after an hour of scrubbing the 8 enormous ten foot long tables and the 16 bench seats with my meagre bucket of water, I felt ready to face what ever HH had to throw at me, and I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a day of far less unrest and far more cohesion...

Was it a state of mind on my part? Who knows, but Asante sana for the reminder Jamie it certainly worked.

Jacq

"It's always the right time to do the right thing"