Umoja

On Saturday evening, we went to our friend Tedman’s house for a party. Tedman works for the British Council and we have been friends since I waltzed into his offices in Kisumu and asked why the British Council were moving out. Our first meeting somehow ended up with him inviting me to a Rotarian meeting and our friendship developed. Suffice it to say, Tedman is a very kind and generous friend and the party we attended was organised by him for two British friends of his who were over on holiday celebrating their 27th wedding anniversary. At this point, I’d usually insert a phot of the evening, however, all the pictures I took were… well crap really. The only passable one is of Tommy standing with Tedman’s sons.

The party was a multi-cultural affair with a liberal smattering of English, a Scot, an American, a few Luhya and a good deal of Luo. As with any properly organised shindig involving Brits, the heavens opened about 2 hours before the party. It was a heavy downpour and although the rains stopped as we arrived, it was accompanied by a lengthy power outage. This meant that the sound system was out of action and the party had to be lit by Kerosene lamp. Still, it was enormous fun. Tommy fell in a lake sized puddle after we’d been there about 2 minutes and had to be leant new clothes. This didn’t seem to upset him much and he spent much of the party running around outside with the other kids. By about 10pm, he pooped out on a chair, just as the food arrived.

We met lots of new people including many local teachers. We met Ian and Jane, who’s anniversary party we were attending, Eva, an American running various development projects in Busia on the Ugandan border and Tedman’s uncle Bengo, among others. We also met the couple who live across the road from us. It turns out they have a boy exactly the same age as Tommy. Play dates are in the works.Talking to the teachers was very interesting. I was keen to find out what computer facilities the average school has. Not a lot it seems. At least 4 or five Kisumu schools were represented at the party, due to Ian and Tedman’s school links project. They have partnered many schools in the UK (around Gloucestershire, if I remember correctly) with schools around Kisumu over the last 7 years. Ian informed me that his school had raised money for a laptop and a desktop for their partner school. Later, they had discovered that the computers spent nearly all their time locked in the headmasters office, or in use for administration purposes. This is not an uncommon turn of events.

I was talking to one teacher and he said that what his Seconday school really needed was mains electricity. Unfortunately, it was going to cost KSh 1.8 million to get connected to the grid. I nearly fell of my chair. Another school had electricity and I asked whether they had a computer lab. They said no. I mentioned the ICT in Education bill which aims to have a lab of 25 computers in every Kenyan secondary school by 2015 and they laughed. They said this was incredibly unlikely to happen. I also asked if anyone had heard of the $100 laptop. They hadn’t. I gave a potted history of it and the response was hardly enthusiastic. Most people thought that the kids would probably sell them. After all, some kids would find they have in their possession an object worth more than their entire household’s contents.

I asked myself, if the $100 laptop is supposed to be for these teacher’s pupils, why has no one talked to them about it? I didn’t get around to really talking about my idea of Mobile Computer Labs, though I now have a few schools I can visit to see the reality of school infrastructure around Kisumu.

We retired from the party around 11 and took a trip with a recalcitrant taxi driver who tried to rip us off. We wouldn’t stand for it, so we were dumped outside a hotel in town in search of another ride. As luck would have it, the caterer from the party came past about 10 minutes later and offered us a lift home, which we happily accepted.

During the party, Tedman’s uncle, pictured above, offered to take us around the Kisumu Agricultural show the following day, Sunday. That was an experience on its own and Hannah has offered to write something about it here soon (it’ll probably be up here by Thursday). It involves meeting an MP, a former deputy speaker of the Kenyan parliament, a few former Mayors and sitting next to the guest of honor’s seat and receiving a military salute from a marching band…