The trip home....

Travel out here is an interesting thing. Nairobi traffic can be very congested at times and I've probably mentioned before that there are times when I can walk faster than the traffic is moving. On a saturday things don't tend to be as busy so its usually a better day to travel. That wasn't the case for me heading to the airport on my way home. My troubles started pretty much from the beginning when the taxi driver didn't show up. When I called him it was clear he had forgotten. I wasn't too worried as he sent someone right away and I knew I had lots of time. The driver arrived and informed me he need to get gas. Again not a problem as we had lots of time however the first gas station didn't have working pumps so off we went to the next place. Unfortunately we didn't get very far as a police officer decided to pull us over and check the taxi's paperwork which wasn't complete so off we went to the police station. What I hoped would be a quick stop turned into over an hour waiting for the driver while he went in to deal with everything. After about an hour I started to get concerned as I knew I still needed to make a stop and and get to the airport in less than 1/2hr so I called the driver's boss to see if there was another taxi I could take. Of course the original driver came out as I made the call so off we went. I was able to make the quicks stop I needed to and the driver got gas. The next thing I knew we were stuck in unexpected traffic. This was a result of a motorcycle getting into some sort of an accident. Out here if you have an accident you leave things exactly where they are until the police are able to review it. So there we all were on the highway going very slowly until we got past that point. At the airport it was a challenge to find where I was suppsed to actually go as my ticket and the internet had 2 different terminals. We started with te one the taxi driver knew about and sure enough there was a sign directing us to the other terminal which was so new the taxi driver didn't know where it was. After asking someone where to go we finally found it and I was off to check in. (by now it was around 12:45 and my flight was scheduled to leave around 2pm). Thankfully I was able to clear the checkin quickly and head over to the seating area to meet with the rest of the group I was traveling with and head home.

One may think that was the end of things but it was not, I still had to get through the airport I was arriving at. This is always interesting as its either empty or jammed pack. This time it was packed as 2-3 flights arrived at the same time. After going through a temperature screen in a UN tent we headed to off to the customs area. This is a 30x50 room where both customs paperwork and baggage check would be completed for all flights. Essentially it was standing room only in a very hot climate. It got smelly fast. It also was a matter of always staying close to the person in front of you or you'd risk losing your spot. While waiting in line I was able to fill out my paperwork and help the others get theirs done too. It was an interesting process since a few didn't have passports as we know them but instead had a few official pages stapled together and I had to dig around in their paperwork to figure out what was needed. Once customs was cleared we had to push (and yes I mean literally "push") through the next crowd to grab our many bags and bring them to an official to do a hand search, regroup with all 5-6 people, and head home. It all went fairly smoothly considering everything but I'm glad this time I didn't try and bring a few flats of eggs through that chaos (yes I've done it in the past to go to Doro where eggs are hard to get).

cleaning time

Back home in Canada I never was one to clean the house much. My logic being if you keep things clean as you go there isn't much else to clean and it worked pretty well. Out here I use the same logic but have to clean more often (every week or two instead of monthly). It is more challenging here as with all the dust and hard water is a nasty and annoying thing to deal with as you can see with my shower.

Before (a year+ of calcium buildup)

After

I'm liking the shiny white color much better. One of the challenges of getting this clean was what to use to clean it. Cleaning solutions out here aren't as good as stuff in Canada so it was a bit of trial and error. One suggestion was to use some battery acid (and be very careful with it) but I wasn't too keen on that as it seemed a little extreme for this. What I found worked was citric acid (thanks T for the suggestion) left to sit on it for a while with some water. I love the sizzling sound it makes as it eats through the buildup. After rinsing away the citric acid I took a flat razor and scrapped it all down. It took a few hours to get it all cleaned up and I still need to do the sides but I'm liking the results so far.

Vinegar is another useful product I've found to be helpful to cut through the calcium buildup. About once a month or so I take down the shower head (or have J do it since I'm too short) and soak it in vinegar for a few hours. Its also useful in keeping the sinks somewhat shiny too.

My next challenge is to get the water stains out of the toilet and off the floor. Both are more of a challenge as they aren't flat surfaces like the shower tiles so I can't use the razor blade to scrape them clean. One of the other people who live here suggested a specific cleaning solution so I'm hoping that will work but for now I'll just ignore the stains. I still have lots of other cleaning solutions to use up and with everything being so expensive, its not worth a closet full of cleaning supplies that may or may not work.

Conference

A few months ago our team had a spiritual retreat. This was unique in that the entire team participated including local staff. In the past, retreats have been held in another country with a variety of teams getting together and thus local staff were unable to attend due to the cost. This time it was decided to have it on our compound and include everyone. The theme was Transforming to God's Culture. As a result there was lots of discussion about what things in each person's culture were good, bad, or neutral based on Biblical principles. One of the things I enjoyed was hearing the perspective of the local staff. In our orientation training we were told to expect differences but its much more interesting to hear someone talk about their personal culture and thought processes. During this time I also got some hands on experience in dealing with these differences. On the first day of the conference I got a call from one of my friends at another organization who was travelling through the capital on her way home She was assisting a mother and daughter in getting home as they had just been to a nearby country for surgery. The problem was that although all 3 were booked onto the same flight, the mother/daughter got bumped off while my friend was still supposed to fly out. There was no way my friend wanted to leave this woman in an unfamiliar city on her own so could they stay with us overnight and be assisted to the airport for the next flight out? Having her over was a very interesting experience. Although she was familiar with many things from her time in the big city, I still ran into some cultural/lifestyle issues. One thing that was really helpful for me was to mentally put myself in her lifestyle to understand why she did things. Its amazing how differently we do things subconsciously and don't think about why we do what we do. For instance, the woman was not bothered at all by all the food crumbs her child dropped while wandering around the house eating her meal. From my perspective this would be odd and alot of work to clean up the mess. Looking at it from her perspective, they eat meals outside so kids wandering around and dropping food is no big deal. The cultural differences then made more sense to me and I was better able to adapt to how she does things and not be annoyed by the things that didn't seem right in my mind.

Electricity

Electricity is something I didn't have much of when I was living in the bush. Then I had a setup of a solar panel, inverter, and a large battery. This was enough to power my laptop, flashlight, e-reader, and a bit of evening electricty from the lightbulb in my tukel. Life in the big city has much more electricity but still has its limits. City power exists but is horribly unreliable and we can go for months without it so we mainly depend on our generator. This means life tends to run on a schedule. The workday starts when the generator goes on, and ends when the generator goes off. It also means that suppertime revolves around when we have power since we use the electricity to cook. We still do have a gas stove/oven combo but since gas is expensive and electricity is "free" this cuts down on some of the costs of living here.

Running a fridge/freezer also is pretty good out here if you keep it full which isn't too hard as it also makes for good storage of foods that we don't want to go bad. Flour here comes with extra protein and freezing it for a few days will prevent the protein from reproducing. Rats also can be a nusance so anything that they would like that isn't in glass or tin containers ends up in the fridge since its rat proof. Veggies out here don't last long so I chop them up weekly and throw them into the freezer to use throughout the week (bonus is that later I just have to grab a bit of different foods to make dinner). Water bottles added to the freezer when things get low means ice water for the really hot days.

Although electricity availability can get annoying, we have settled into a routine and its not a huge bother. Probably the biggest difference from north america is that our schedule is based on the generator running and we always know where our flashlights are at any given time (and they always have charged batteries). I'm reminded of how much I've adapted to life without electricity when local people visit and they are asking why I don't have any fan or lights on when the generator is running. Unless its dark, 1/2 the time I just forget to turn things on and with natural light, why bother?

Inflation

Note: this is a blog post I wrote about over a month ago when the prices were spiralling upward. Things have settled down and are somewhere in between the prices listed below but I've been gone for a bit and with fluctuations I'm not sure the current prices. 

Life here is getting more expensive all the time. Although there has been a blackmarket exchange rate for as long as I can remember, the difference between the bank rate and the black market rate has widened drastically in the last few months. As a result the price of goods is rising quickly. Here are a few examples. All prices are in USD and are in the exchange that we can get at the bank.

Item	cost in November	cost in May
small bucket of potatoes (fills a plastic grocery bag)	$7	$14
green pepper	$0.28 for a medium one	$0.28 for a very small one
carrots	$0.28 for one	same
onions	$1.41 for medium pile	$2.82 for medium pile
garlic	$0.28 for one	$0.42 for one
meat - mince	$8.47 for 1kg	$20 for 1kg
flour	$3.38 for 2kg	$7.34 for 2kg
20L of drinking water	$3.39	$7.34
1 egg	$0.28	$0.56

For us its frustrating to see the costs rise but not nearly as frustrating as for the local people who are already are living day to day and have to pay the price that things are going at for the day. For us, I tend to buy a weeks worth of food at a time and can afford to wait a day or two if the prices are high in hopes that the next day the price is less. Many others don't have that option.

One thing we never really bought much of is water since we have a filter and it has given us more than we need when we first arrived here. recently it has gotten slower and thus we have been buying water periodially since we drink more than the filter gives out. Last week those prices doubled and I'm not willing to pay that much for drinking water so instead I've been boiling it to kill bacteria and running it through a cloth to prevent guinea worm. This doesn't cost me anything but some time since the generator runs on its schedule regardless of my water needs and we use electric hotplates to cook. I've chatted with our local staff about doing this to save money but for them there still are expenses because they have to buy charcoal so they can boil the water which reduces any savings (if there is any savings after buying the charcoal).

Gasoline is the one thing that hasn't changed its price since we got here. Its still $1.69 per liter since there are gov't price controls on it. One might think this is a good thing but with price controls come shortages and finding fuel now is very difficult. At one station a few weeks ago I counted 40 cars lined up before the line disappeared around the corner. There were also a mass of motorcycles bunched together at the station and more scattered throughout the line. The only other gas station that was open had similar lineups. The rest were closed down because there was no fuel. Now I don't see as many lineups however the vast majority of gas stations have tarps over the pumps or the area roped off signalling they don't have fuel.

Life here is one big economics lesson that brings many questions and struggles. One thing we don't want to do is use the black market as its illegal but it also leaves other questions on how we can function in this environment in a stewardly way and how can we help others who are struggling with the rising costs. Do I barter for a good price (potatoes for example were going for $20 but I was able to get them for $14 one day) or do I let it go and pay more for the item knowing that those selling the products are most likely in a more difficult situation. On one level I want to let it go because I know it will help them for the short term however if I pay more for the item than its worth I am encouraging the idea that they can charge certain people more which can be damaging in the long term.

Exam time

Exams have been over for a while but I thought I'd do some catch up on how things went. It was a very different experience to be the one preparing the exam than to be the student writing the exam. I definitely prefer to be the instructor and not the student. The course I taught ended up being done earlier than I was given time for so I ended up giving them additional lessons over and above the course requirements and also gave the students the option to write their exam earlier than the scheduled exam time so they could get it done and out of the way which then would make for a lighter exam schedule. They chose to write early and get the course done and out of the way. 

Writing an exam for the students was an interesting experience. I'm thankful I had developed some practice questions for the students as it helped not only to find areas of weakness that I could review in class but also gave me an understanding of what to watch for. Since many of the students have done their primary schooling in Arabic and are now transitioning to learning in English, language can be a barrier for many of the students. In the practice questions I created I saw a number of problem areas where my wording was catching them up even though they understood the concepts so I made sure to be clear in what I was asking for.

Spacing was another challenge I found as I went along. Although I thought I had given enough space on the exam to do the work, I took extra blank pages into the exam with me just in case I needed them. I needed them all.

Timing was also interesting. I had 2 hours for the exam and I created an exam that I expected would take somewhere between 1/2hr and 1.5hrs depending on the student. well the first student out of the exam left shortly after the 1^st hour. By the end of the 2 hours there were 5 students left finishing off the exam. Since I was new at this, I had been tracking the number of students that left in 10 minute increments and saw that they were leaving in an expected pattern however it was taking them all longer than I expected. By giving them an extra 10 minutes (into their lunch break so it didn't affect other classes) all but one finished.

Marking the exam was also an interesting project. It was interesting to watch how the mark varied across the students. I even got an overall bell curve out of the marks (which also appeared in the spread of how long it took students to finish the exam) which was interesting to see develop. One thing I found helpful in being consistent was to mark all the exams at once going through 1 question at a time for all the students instead of marking one exam at a time student by student. In addition to keeping things consistent I was able to see if there was any pattern to how the students answered each question. One example of this was a question where I asked for the calculation of something but instead got the definition in about 1/2 of the student answers. Once I saw this pattern I reviewed the question and saw how it very easily got misinterpreted thus more of a problem on my part then on theirs.

One of the more challenging parts of marking I didn't expect was having to mark one question wrong for a student and knowing it was the only mistake on their entire exam. I never expected to feel so bad for the student that did so well. I guess part of me knows how difficult it is to get a perfect exam. 

Overall it was a good experience for me and I learned lots. I think the students did as well.

Life as a teacher for a few weeks

While J was away I started and finished teaching at the local nursing college. I was able to help out and teach some basic statistics to the students. I enjoyed the time I spent with them and also saw some of the challenges that many of them face. As a teacher I noticed that there was a wide variety of abilities in the class. Some students knew not only what I was teaching but also more advanced information that I had not taught while others struggled and had difficulty with basic math skills. Another issue was language skills. The students came from varying parts of the country and had different levels of English language skills.For some, their previous education was in Arabic and their English was limited, thus even though they were familiar with the content, they struggled to understand things due to the language barriers. I found much of what I taught was a balancing act of bringing the more complex content to them so all students understood while at the same time trying to keep it complex and interesting enough to keep those with advanced skills interested. I also found it interesting to learn some of the cultural differences in teaching styles and how the classroom works. The most interesting aspect of culture for me was when the students were dismissed. In Canada when the teacher tells us we are dismissed all the students make a mad dash for the door while the teacher stays behind to answer questions for those that still have questions. As a result I expected the 30 or so students I had been teaching to leave when class was done and I packed up my stuff. Nope.... Instead they all stayed sitting and watched me pack up my stuff and leave. That was a akward ending to my first class. It turns out that out here it is a sign of respect to sit and wait for the instructor to leave the room before the students leave. Any questions they have will wait until the instructor has returned to the office or if they find the instructor in the halls after class. Now I make sure most of my stuff is organized and packed up by the end of class so I don't take too long to make my exit. I also spend some time hanging and being available to students before heading back home.