Bitterjug’s blog

Here’s the college. (note the satelite dish!). This is a smaller version of a picture I put on the college intranet web page.

I just taught my first proper class: Javascript. I enjoyed that too and I even managed to get the girls to answer a question that really involvd understanding what was going on. This sounds bad, they are smart girls but the style of teaching they are used to does not really involve that sort of interaction very much. They were trying very hard to answer my questions, I could tell. It was very encouraging.

I learned a lot at the weekend.

On friday I noticed the difference between my life and that of Shelley: she works for a NGO in Nairobi. Although she doesnt earn much more than me, she has an expensive lifestyle living in the city and mixing wiht ex-pats. Her home is more luxirious than mine but I imagine she has problems making the approprioate comprmoises on cost to live in the city.

On saturday I met the other volunteers. Some of them have (only just got into) homes that are much less luxurious than mine: they are dirty, dont have beds, etc. And there is the thing about their employers taking advantage of them — I dont thikn it would be entirely appropriate for me to give more details here at this time, but it was a real issue.

I think I have an easier life than both these parties. I am considering myself very lucky. And still feeling happy. Apparently it is normal to have a euphoric period at the start of a placement like this. It can last up to a few months. Then, according to some of the others who have been here a while, it gets hard and we need to support one another. At the moment I am missing someone who has the same frame of reference as me. This comprises mostly living in the UK, so I have been gettinga lot of support from you guys via this forum, email, and SMS messages. Over time, as Fede pointed out, my memories of the placement will add to those of home. I will need support of people who have the same experiences as me and then, it will be harder, though not impossible, for you guys to support me. I will get support from the other volunteers because they will be in the same boat. Hopefully this blog will enable you to share my boat, in a sense, and still be able to see where I’m coming from in a few months when it starts to drag a bit.

I forgot to say yesterday that the Internet Cafe I was in was on the 4th floor of the Norwich Union building in Nairobi!

Yes, the whisky went from me to Cad. Hope you dont mind, in fact, Penny, he and I enjoyed some together when I visited and then I have left it in his custody. He’s the kind of guy that when he finds out he’s the 4th owner, he’ll probably find someone else who likes whisky to pass it on to. It happened wiht an excelent book once. I still havent found out who’se the next owner though.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2004 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorised. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.