Bitterjug’s blog

Its been a busy week already. Starting thursday.

Wednesday we had no power. I didn’t read my email, and I didn’t blog (I’ve decided its a verb, ok?).

Thursday I got up early, did my 8km run and shaved my head under the shower as a treat. After breakfast I stayed in my house for an hour to mark a test and finally sauntered over to the college at about 9:00 with a plan to spend some quality time researching how to create objects in Javascript as the notes I have are wrong. How little did I know.

The Missionary Sisters of Holy Rosary want Sister P. to send them photos for their web page. I was despatched to all corners of the college to take pictures from all angles of sister posing expertly with the students. I’ll upload some of the pics one day when I’m on a PC with image SW. I’d just got back to my seat by the machine from my David Bailley exercise when Sister P. came to me again with news that there were a bunch of messages from yesterday on the subject of a conference call with USAID about their support for the college. I already knew this and was in the process of working through them but I had to keep dashing off to take pictures.

USAID wanted to do a conference call that afternoon. The messages had come on wednesday but we’d had sina stima so I’d not seen them. That arranged it was time to press on, but Sister wanted us to talk, as we sometimes do, about who hasn’t replied to our requests for assistance. The lady from Safaricom Foundation hadn’t; we’d invited them to come visit the college. I decided to telephone her, so I went to my computer and opened up the mail box into which mail about the college goes. There was a new message from the Safaricom lady herself:
“Just to remind you that I’m coming today at 11, hope you got my message on the 1st”
I sprang up from my seat and ran out of the lab to tell Sister, the students giggled at my swift exit.

The door to the lab is only a few feet from the door to the admin block but, somehow, I managed to look at the time on my mobile phone on the way. It was 12.20pm. I entered the admin block in a state of mild confusion,trying to work out whether she’d already come and we had managed to miss her (I still haven’t got the hang of African Time). Then three things happened at once. Sister Pauline was in front of me, I wanted to talk to her but the secretary was by my side telling me that I had a visitor, and there on my third side was the lady from Safaricom.

Speechless.

We spend a happy hour touring the college and taking more digital photographs, we hope Safaricom will be able to assist us after all! When I Got back to my computer it was lunch time. I did a quick investigation of objects in JS and dashed off for a place of rice and stew before my afternoon class. But I did notice a new message from USAID cancelling the conference call (they thought I’d given up on them because I’d not replied on wednesday) and inviting me instead, to a meeting on friday (i.e. the next day).

Now I was already planning to go to Nairobi on friday to collect a few PCs that were being donated to us. But the end of thursday I had a full itinerary and had cancelled classes to spend the whole day in town. Isaac, the sisters’ driver, was driving in the Catholic-Dioses-of-Machakos pickup-truck. It was a long and tiring day. The highlight, apart from being given computers for the college, was going inside the offices of USAID. But I think that story will have to wait for another day.

And today, I’m waiting for the other vol-au-venteers to arrive. Will doesn’t know yet but there is a supprise party at my house for his birthday (yesterday) and leaving (August). He just thinks he’s coming to stay the weekend with me. I’ve been up early and baked a cake and iced with home made choc butter icing (yuck!).

I’d planned to do a test this morning and an additional class this afternoon, which doesn’t leave much time for preparations. After the test I went home and did a little work then pumped up the tyres on my bike for a quick dash to Tala for supplies. But I noticed it was half-past one. I’d have to turn back as soon as I got there or miss the extra class. I came back into my house and sent a SMS to some of the VOLs who are due to arrive any minute, asking if they would get my margerine and vegetables from Tala market when they get of the Matatu at the market. That’s when I iced the cake. I wolfed a slice of bread and ran to my 2pm class: hakuna students. I ate an andazi and drank a soda in the cybercafe and discussed with the lady who runs it how my day was beginning to be puzzling and unsucsessful: no lunch, no shopping and no class! Fortunately I just decided to laugh at this and treat it as one of those humorous days that gets out of one’s control, and relax and see how the screenplan unwinds. So, here I am typing a marathon blog instead of cooking curry.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2004 at 4:08 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.