Final week by the seaside

Back to Arocha Mwamba - an exhausting place for someone as introverted and regimented as me. There are always folk coming and going, interrupted conversations, inefficient systems. But there are also tremendous blessings to be gained found from each of the people I have met.
• Alber took another guest James and I on a half-day ( yet another desperately early morning start) walk in the endangered Aruboko Sukoke Forest, and found the rare Scops Owl.
• James from Bangladesh had studied the CRES module I was to work on and gave me some information of potential relevance
• Fred was with an organisation facilitating change for indigenous people – not necessarily by throwing money after every worthy project.
. Jim and Mary Beth have been working with an organization called Kupenda, supporting children with physical disabilities, and their parents.

• And even today, whilst ostensibly looking after the place as the centre managers Henry and Belinda had started their holiday, a chance to meet Jess a white Kenyan, and her brother and friend. She has qualified as a doctor and is about to start training as a surgeon at John Ratcliffe Hospital Oxford.
As well as all this, there was the wireless network I tried to set up, and some occasional spiritual input for staff meetings, and then centre booking management.

The final week of my stay at Arocha has been a bit of a mix, I have been stuck with the computers and having diminishing successes. It also felt important to keep tight control on my spare cash just to see me through to the end of my odyssey , so that meant no option for going out and about other than on foot – or on the bike which I tried once – no brakes and manual gear changes – in other words, coast to a stop, get off and re-fix the chain on a different set of sprockets!

With Henry and Belinda away, I have tried to manage the emails and bookings for the centre, but inevitably changes and additional unexpected commitments occur. For this place to run better, there needs to be a bit clearer delegation of responsibilities. They have plans to upgrade the rooms and the catering which really is not very appealing, but the whole organisation is desperately short of cash. I have really struggled with the basic facilities here after being spoilt terribly over the past two weeks.

A family arrived early Sunday morning having travelled overnight from Kampala, Uganda. Tim and Rachel with Mark and Lisa (9&4 resp). I wouldn’t have brought a young family here – not least because the options to get out and explore are so restricted, but the weather has calmed down a bit and warmed up, so they’ve spent lots of time on the beach. As I got more and more stressed with the computers, it must have shown, and by Saturday morning when I was really not very happy at all, Rachel had a very helpful chat with me about not needing to achieve to be accepted. Our ( my) task-orientated nature does not fit in with African ways. The trouble is that I had wanted to leave something well set up as a legacy of my stay, and struggle with interruptions and conversations.

I suppose my timing here was of some help, as I was able to at least get some basic networking set up following the major milestone of the arrival of the ADSL link via an underground cable laid in a trench down the half mile or so drive to the road. This was installed by two guys working for Orange Telkom in just two days, and by Thursday the internet was available – albeit at a slow rate, but the outside world was no longer a dial-up connection away.

I did have a couple of episodes away from the dreaded Blue Screen of Death, that managed to creep into two of the five computers I was supposed to be working on. One moment of reckless abandon – seizing the moment – when Milja - who took the picture I have used as the portrait for this blogand which she labeled "Father Christmas on holiday in Africa" and I went for a quick swim in the Indian Ocean at 9 p.m. – very dark apart from moon and stars, which I couldn’t see without glasses. Hearing later of the sea creatures and their propensity for biting and stinging made me realize how risky that had been! But the water was warmer than the air, and I had always wanted to swim in the sea at night – not possible in the UK! We had just viewed the results of her fascinating project – getting Kenyan school children to stand in formation in various countryside settings, and imitate bird songs. Apparently this was going to be displayed together with images of Finnish children doing the same in their landscapes. The “Finnished” (apols for the pun) work will be featured on her website www.miljaviita.com or miljaviita.blogspot.com .

A second brief interlude came Saturday afternoon when Leslie, who has been studying monkey behaviour in the Gedi ruins, and I visited a house being constructed in the trees just down the beach from here, using coloured class and coral stone. Apart form the quirky but really appealing architecture, there were some amazing views over the area. It always works: a bit of height gives a bit more perspective. This was then followed by watching SA v NZ tri-nations rugby union in Ocean Sports now much fuller with holiday makers as season hots up. I didn’t have to take the computer to do blog stuff – yippee – and the connection at Arocha is more reliable than it was at OS, as I discovered later on with a lovely long skype video conversation with the family at home. What a shame it wasn’t possible earlier during my stay, as I could have shared the scenery with lots more friends.

So tomorrow sees me leaving here for a brief visit at a place called Brackenhurst, north of Nairobi, where a scheme called “Farming God’s Way” is run. More on that soon – probably after my return to my sabbatical office in the garden at home in UK.