Bitterjug’s blog

“That was interesting use of language”, said Shelley as we walked on, “I like the way he said ‘Do you want to promote us?‘”. I’d actually not spotted it.

We were walking in Nairobi on Sunday and talking about condoms and masturbation in the wake of my having attended an HIV/AIDS awareness day on Saturday (that […]

Camden Town
The Royal Festival Hall Foyer
Thursday night’s in Hammersmith
Lindy Hop
Discussions with SLURP
My big black baggy jeans
there’s more but its time to go for githeri

One of the things I sometimes say to my programming students is that the purpose of each instruction in a program is to bring about some sort of change. But, as one of the othe volunteers pointed out, they might have trouble understanding this if the concept of bringing about change is missing from […]

Yesterday I poisoned the rats.

I told the story of rats over my bed at night in the staff room. The other staff were sympathetic (in so much as I let them be; playing up palpitations for comedy effect) and said that they don’t generally get rats in their homes. I had assumed it was just […]

Tom asked me a good question about Ugali. In response I include here a flowchart that I used in a C programming class yesterday.
The maize meal is white and makes a kind of sticky lump slightly more stodgey than mashed potatoe. Some people laughed at me for putting “add salt” in the recipe, but […]

I have just had the most amazing, spine-tinglingly refreshing and totally African experience!

I staggered out of the lab with my books, exhausted but content after a busy day teaching. As I walked accross the field I heard the sound of chanting from accross the games field. It was loud! And in English.
“Father, have you forgotten […]

Continuing my theme this week of old photos, here’s one of the builders raising sand and gravel up to the to of the new building. The scaffhold seemed to be made of twigs and there was a man on each level armed with a shovel. The rest was pure hard work!

A volunteer’s foot, And the foot of an mzee from Ukambani.

The VSO’s foot was taken semi-randomly under the table in a Swahili-style restaurant in Nairobi where we were required to remove our shoes, and had a great time.
The Mzee was at that village I visited, a relative of Dominic. His home very simple.

{{popup treeAndCow.jpg treeAndCow 640×480}} Ukambani is Kamba Land, the area of the Kamba tribe; it’s where I live. Tala is on a flat plain and somewhat dull from a landscape perspective. But out where I visited on Saturday, it’s quite beautiful.

Upon arrival in Machakos I headed for the T.Tot Hotel. Everyone knows it; it has […]

This beautiful Mama was one of the many I saw this weekend in the middle of nowhere (12km East of Machakos on the Kitui road) at a small function where a friend of mine presented some beds to a group of local widdows.

Dominic invited me to accompany him on this short trip to […]