Rollercoaster

This week, I will be taking a short trip to Kampala to look at potential schools for our children. It will be a quick tour and I will have to take in lots of information in a short period of time! It is exciting and yet also daunting...

Then next week, we hope to visit our Juba home, to pack it up and say our goodbyes... If all stays calm there, we hope we can all go.
We hope and pray it will bring good closure for this chapter of our lives... and we hope we can finish well. It will be a bittersweet trip: lovely to to see friends, but hard to say those goodbyes and sad to pack up our home. It is also a little nerve-wracking because we will face memories of stressful circumstances; there is some concern about how that may cause us to react.

The next couple of weeks will entail both looking forward and yet also looking back and finishing off. A roller-coaster of emotions...

Busy in Nairobi

This blog has been rather quiet lately- which means that life is Nairobi has not!

We have been very busy here....

Home-school takes up most of our time,  from 8:30am to 3pm Monday to Friday.
Outside of these times, there is plenty to do in Nairobi!

On Monday afternoons, Esther has been joining some of our friends from MAF who go to a local orphanage each week to volunteer. Esther simply loves helping out with the babies and toddlers at this home! There are many jobs to be done and willing helpers are much appreciated.

Last week, I decided to take the boys along to join in too. I was pleased to discover that Ben and Joel also enjoy helping out with little ones!

It was wonderful to see how well cared for the babies are at the New Life Home. It was inspiring to witness the dedication of the staff as they look after roomfuls of tiny children - but at the same time, I felt deeply sad when I found myself holding an adorable 6-month old baby in a room full of tiny babies, all needing care and cuddles, without their parents to care for them :-(

The home works hard to find homes for the babies under their protection. Statistics on their literature shows that 75% of their children are happily adopted into families.

Naturally, photos are forbidden within the home, for the protection of the little ones in their care. However, their leaflet gives lots of information about the amazing work that the staff at this fantastic New Life Home do for vulnerable babies and young children. Definitely a cause worth supporting.

Last Friday, the same MAF friends invited Esther, Ben and Joel to attend a home-schoolers Science class which is held once a week here in Nairobi. The Science Class is organised by a group called "Little Einsteins". They provide a children's laboratory environment where they teach an hour's Science lesson and encourage the children to engage with hands-on practical experiments- under the careful eye of the staff!

All three of our children loved attending this Science Class! They donned their lab coats, joined the other home-schooled children and had a fun hour of learning scientific principles.
Last week they were learning about the theory of flying and had great fun setting empty tea-bag papers alight and watching the lit papers ascend into the air as the hot air caused them to rise!
(Much more fun than the Science lessons I attempt to teach, with my limited grasp of science and a  mother's natural reluctance to set things ablaze around small children!!!)

   

 

There have also been excursions to enjoy Nairobi's fabulous "outdoors" climate. Yesterday, Andrew took Esther, Ben and Joel rock-climbing and out for pizza, along with 2 other families we know here. (I was elsewhere, attending a day-long course organised by the church we attend here- I enjoyed an opportunity to stretch my brain and to be on a course with other adults!).

Rock-climbing in Nairobi:

For the 5 weeks since we moved into our flat in Nairobi, Andrew has been up in Juba for 3 of the weeks, so it always nice when he comes back to our "home" here. The children enjoy having Dad back - and I enjoy some time off duty when they all head out for milk-shakes ;-)

Another nice thing about Nairobi is that is a city where we have been able to meet up with friends:
-friends who evacuated from Juba with us
-friends who we knew from our 6 months here in 2014
-inspirational friends working in South Sudan, who have been passing through Nairobi.
Over the past 5 weeks, we have enjoyed some happy times and meals with these special friends. It has been so good to spend time with them, especially as we now begin preparations for moving to a new country. Weekends have been packed - and we have really appreciated these times.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be busy with more preparations for our move.... but I'll save that news for a different blog post.

A Good News Blogpost

I am excited to have some great news to pass on...

 1. Andrew has accepted a post as a MAF pilot for the Uganda programme!

 This means that we are now planning to move to Uganda as soon as possible. We are delighted to be able to continue in the exciting work of MAF!

 It is a huge relief to know what we are going to next, after a period of uncertainty since we felt unable to return to South Sudan as a family. We are starting to make plans for our move from our temporary base in Nairobi. We hope that this can happen before the end of the year... We are looking forward to our next MAF assignment and to discovering a different African country!

2. Our house-lady, Grace, in Juba, has delivered a healthy baby boy! I am thrilled by this news and so thankful for the safe delivery.
Grace has stayed well. despite all the upset and troubles of July when she literally had to run for her life with her 2 other small children. She took refuge in a UN camp in Juba during the worst of the fighting. When gun-fire broke out near the camp, her feet were badly cut and injured as she ran for shelter with her 3 year old and 7 year old.
Late last month, Grace went into labour in the middle of a dark Juba night. It is far too dangerous to venture out across town to a clinic or hospital at night in Juba, so she just got on with delivering the baby at home all by herself! Thankfully, a nearby neighbour realised what was happening and came to help her out- and all went well.
A friend in Juba has since been to visit and sent me some photos...

Introducing Moses Lado:

Grace and baby at home:

It feels strange that I haven't been able to see Grace yet, but it is very much my hope that I can see her in the not too distant future. We really hope to be able to get up to Juba as a family to say goodbye to our South Sudanese friends, our home and the Juba MAF team... if it is safe enough...

 In the meantime, I sent up a bag of baby clothes and gifts via Andrew when he was in Juba last week for work. He dropped these off with a MAF neighbour for Grace to collect when she is able to send someone. Andrew was able to speak with Grace on the phone, She was her usual cheerful self, which is heartening to hear.

3. Since my blogpost last week on home-schooling in Nairobi, something wonderful happened. A new neighbour in our block of flats, who is here for a temporary MAF assignment in Kenya, approached me and offered her teaching services to help me out with home-schooling! It didn't take me long to answer her generous offer with an enthusiastic, "Yes please!!"

Over the past week, it has been simply fantastic to have Ruth's help. She has worked as a teacher for many years and has raised 5 children, so is a great source of help to me. I am able to send one or 2 of the children over to her flat, just along the corridor from us: they get extra support and teaching while I am able to focus more on the other child or children at home. If this is for an hour a day or even for just an hour 3 mornings each week, I cannot express what a massive, positive help this is! A real bonus.

It has been a good week for good news!

Home School in our Nairobi home

We are all learning a new type of home-school in our temporary Nairobi home.

Doing home school here is a different experience.
For one thing, Joel has joined us, adding an extra layer of learning as he starts out from the beginning of Primary school. At 5 years old he still needs lots of help to consolidate his knowledge of the alphabet and numbers to 20.

Meanwhile, Esther is working towards the end of Primary School at Y6. Her maths gets harder and harder, but I have little time to prepare lessons or to even teach her with all the distractions of working in our lounge all together.

 Ben is supposed to be starting Y4 work, but at the moment all I can manage is to to revise his work from Y3. I am facing a new learning curve as I try to mange 3 levels of learning, alongside three contrasting learning styles, in a very different environment.

During this season, I find that The Teacher side of me is battling with The Mum side of me...

The Teacher feels very concerned that we are falling behind curriculum requirements. During these times, my head feels like it is going to explode, trying to keep ahead of the children's educational needs! I feel so overwhelmed by the thought of trying to teach everyone according to their level that, quite frankly, it makes me want to curl up in a ball and ignore the problem- it feels like it is too much effort!
 It requires clear planning to manage this well. Planning well requires time and space... both of which are tricky to find in this season. I haven't managed to find any time to plan ahead yet, so we swing from day to day, just revising last year's curriculum for Esther and Ben and starting out with basic literacy and numeracy for Joel. This makes me frustrated and concerned. I feel guilty when I pick up the children's home-schooling curriculum files and know that we are falling far short of what we ought to be doing, if we were in a more organised class-room environment.

The Mum side of me is enjoying this precious time with my children. I know it is a privilege to be master of this season of time with my children. It is a gift to have my children with me while they are still young. There is a sense of freedom that I don't have to answer to any school policy. The free spirited side of me is glad that I am not having to follow a particular set of rules imposed by some unknown education minister who thinks they know what is best for my children...
The Mum side of me is enjoying this school time to follow projects which are inspired by my children. Last week, the children had fun planning a meal for their dad's return from his week in Juba:

Joel planned pizza for starters.
Esther planned spaghetti and stir-fry chicken for main course.
Ben planned Andrew's favourite rice pudding for dessert.

Each child wrote down their shopping list, Esther and Ben having first researched their recipes on the ever-useful "Google" site. They had a think about possible costs in Kenyan shillings and wrote out their recipes in their literacy lesson, ready to use them for cooking the next afternoon.

On Friday morning, we borrowed a car and I drove them, with their shopping lists, to the supermarket, where they each found and bought what they needed. Esther and Ben used cash and tried to work out their change ahead of time (a tricky task, as it all moves so quickly at a check-out and Esther got a little upset at this point, bless her! A lesson in coping with pressure!!).

That afternoon, the cooking started. Utter mayhem with 3 mini-chefs in our kitchen eventually produced a wonderful Welcome Home meal for Andrew when he came back from Juba!
Now that kind of home-school definitely pleases my Mum-side, even if it does not tick all the boxes for the anxious Teacher in me!

 So we carry on... and today will be another day... we will do our best, with limited resources. Nearly all of our home-school resources are still sitting in the wonderful school room in Juba: we miss that school room sooooo much!! :-(  Last week, Andrew was able to bring back the children's rulers, maths equipment, reading books and pens- but we are still missing so much. However, we can be resourceful: dry pasta replaces maths counters for Joel, and home-made number lines and alphabets replace the posters still up on the Juba school-room walls... there are ways to continue even while we miss our class-room.

Home-school time in Nairobi:

Waiting in Nairobi...

"What kind of people climb off a flight from London, late on a dark night, with 3 small children and 8 suitcases, to move into a flat in Nairobi that they have never seen- and never even heard about until 5 days previously?"
I asked myself this question as we did exactly that last Saturday!

I guess the answer is: people like us, who are still in post-evacuation mode from Juba!

We find ourselves back in Nairobi as we wait to see what happens next. We must begin to work through decisions to decide the best way forward for us as a family.
While we wait, we are grateful to our MAF friends based in Nairobi who found us an appartment to live in for this period.

We heard a few days before we left England that a 3-bedroom flat had just become available. It is only a few minutes walk from the Nairobi MAF compound, where most of the Kenya and South Sudan team are now based. The MAF compound itself is too full to accommodate our family, but happily, two other MAF families from our South Sudan team are based in the same block of flats where we are currently living.
It is such good timing that this flat became available. It is the only 3-bedroom flat in the entire block! All the others are 1 or 2 bedrooms, which would feel very cramped for both living and home-schooling.

It was a strange sensation to usher our 3 children into an unknown, dark flat, at nearly midnight, attempting to find light-switches, then scrambling through a muddle of suitcases trying to discover everyone's pyjamas and toothbrushes so that we could all get some sleep.

Thankfully, the beds were made up and clean towels were laid out. Kind MAF friends had stocked our fridge with the essentials like milk, bread, butter and jam. It was a relief to fall into bed and rest. knowing we had everything we needed for the next day.

In the morning, we began to acquaint ourselves with our new, temporary home. It is fully furnished, which is great. We discovered a TV, which is exciting for the children- and we found out that the flat is quite orange in its decor!

I am super-pleased that this flat has a washing-machine, as most of the other flats in this block do not. This does well for me on the popularity front, as I have offered to share the machine with the other MAF ladies living here :-)

There were no mosquito nets, so that has been Andrew's project this week, in between his flights for MAF here in Kenya.  On Thursday, Andrew bought and fitted nets for all the beds, after Esther revealed 30 mosquito bites on her skin one morning! Andrew and I were also fed up with the mosquitoes. We had had enough after enduring a few nights of being woken by that ever-so-annoying-drone of tiny blood-suckers diving at us in the dark!!

The boy's room: now fully protected against mosquitoes!

It has been a little tricky to adapt to the idea of buying all our water for drinking and cooking after a few weeks in England, where clean water miraculously comes out of taps in every household :-) In our previous African homes, we have relied on a water-filter to clean water from our taps. Our water filter is still in Juba, so for now I am trying to remember to buy 20-litre water cans when I shop. Obliging shop-workers have been helping me lift these huge containers into the trolley!

Andrew managed to find a tap this week which can be screwed into the lid of these giant water bottles, so that a bottle can be laid down and the tap used. Genius!
It is now much easier to access our water, rather than trying to tip these weighty bottles every time we need a drink or want to fill the kettle for tea!

The other aspect of our new flat which has needed some consideration is the sparse nature of  kitchen resources. We only managed to unearth 4 knives and just one cooking implement- a wooden spoon! I have realised too that the 5 dinner plates and 6 bowls provided in the flat mean that I can never leave the washing up- because if I don't wash up straight after a meal, we literally have nothing to eat off at the next meal!
I deliberated and then eventually decided that it was worth buying a few kitchen items. On the one hand it seems absurd to buy new kitchen-ware when we already own a full complement of kitchen equipment- but the problem is that it is all in Juba! Since we cannot access our things in Juba immediately, I decided it was worth buying a few essentials. 2 knives, a few tea-spoons, a potato peeler, a serving spoon and a spatula later, I was ready to cook family meals in our new flat!

So after these little adaptations, we are all set to get on with life in Nairobi for the temporary future. We have already started home-school (that is a whole new blog post!) and Andrew is fully immersed in work again. On Monday, Andrew will fly up to Juba and be based there for the whole week, flying within South Sudan, while the children and I continue in Nairobi.

Welcome to our new Nairobi flat: