School Holidays

The schools in Kenya closed - 1st term was finished, time for holidays. Hamza was supposed to go to Mombasa to stay with his relatives but he liked Lamu so much during the few days we were waiting for Juliet to arrive that I decided to keep him here - much to his delight :) I will most probably not be in Kenya in August when the next school holiday is so I thought it would be better to have him stay with me and Juliet this time and send him to Mombasa next time when I am not around to look after him. I also wanted some more time to bond with him - it is always much harder with a boy... With Juliet it was an instant connection, with Evelyne took a bit longer because she is very quiet but Hamza is much younger and he is a boy...

Hamza with his friend preparing the firewood

Hamza and friends playing Bao game

On 13th April it was the day of Juliet's case. I was supposed to travel to Nairobi and then come back to Lamu with her but I was not well again and not up for the long journey... I spoke to her on the phone and explained the situation - this was also the time when I had the infection on the back of my foot... She understood and we agreed that the day after the case she would travel to Mombasa and I would meet her there and we would travel to Lamu together...


with Juliet on Easter Sunday

When Juliet went to court it was only to find out that the case would not take place on that day as the court was not sitting... The case was moved to end of June!!! that's already a 3rd time now... it's been more than a year since it all started and we are no nearer to getting the justice...  Juliet was very upset - it is a lot of stress for her every time but at least this time she was excited about the forthcoming trip.

Hamza enjoying sailing for the first time - he was a very serious captain ;)

Evelyne went to visit her grandmother whom she hasn't seen for about 1 year and Juliet travelled to the coast.
To collect Juliet from Mombasa I travelled during the day (over 7hrs journey), waited for her for 1 hr and then 3 hrs later we were already on the night bus heading back to Lamu... The journey was terrible - I was already very tired from travelling to Mombasa, we were travelling at night and it was very humid and the road from Mombasa to Lamu is really bad so no chance for getting any sleep. We arrived in Lamu after 5am...

Brother & sister finally spending time together :)

Hamza & his friends

We were supposed to travel to another island for a wedding with some of my friends but I was just exhausted from all the travelling... Juliet wanted to go though and since this is part of her culture (she was born and brought up at the coast), I decided to let her go with my friends - they were gone for 2 nights and she came back very happy. After that wedding everyone kept telling me how good Juliet is at dancing and since then everyone always wants to take her to weddings with them - within 2 weeks while she's been here she already attended 3 weddings :)

Spending so much time with Hamza really helped us bond :)

Hamza's top wish was to go swimming and sailing - all of which we already accomplished :) I took them both swimming and then on Tuesday after Easter we went on an all day trip - first we visited ruins of an Arab town from 17th century and then we went to the beach. It was a really great day - kids swam all day long, we cooked lunch on the beach, tried a bit of fishing but unfortunately didn't manage to catch any this time ;)


Kids having fun with the waves :)



even Juliet decided to join in :)

The Easter was rather quiet - it is predominantly Muslim community here and it is also Hamza's religion but I treated them to nice food, drinks and cake... They were very happy with that. On Easter Monday I was very sick so we didn't do much which is why I wanted to make up for it by taking them on a trip. Hamza really liked sailing and was very interested in how to operate the boat.

Just "hanging around" ;)

Both Hamza and Juliet have many friends here and they are never bored. As Hamza's school results were so good I did get him a football which he was over the moon with.

The only thing spoiling the great time we are having was Juliet's accident - when we came back from the trip and she got out of the boat she slipped on the steps and cut her toe really badly - lots and lots of blood and loose skin - luckily we were literally outside the hospital so we took her there straight away where she was treated but it involved a lot of crying and screaming. Normally when I see blood I want to faint and run away but this time I had to be strong and try to calm her down - she was so distressed (she has very low pain threshold) that the nurse refused to treat her and we had to wait for someone else to attend to her. Finally a male doctor arrived and he finished the treatment well. As I am while I expected to get a high bill for that but he was very nice about it and it all cost next to nothing. I will have to take her to change the dressing probably tomorrow as on Sunday she needs to travel to Nairobi so I want to make sure that it is all healing well before she goes back to school.

At Takwa Ruins



love spending time with my kids :)

I am sad I didn't get to spend any time with Evelyne this time but I know it was important to her to visit her grandmother who was the one taking care of her since she was born. I also know that Evelyne would not like it here too much - she comes from much cooler part of Kenya and over here right now is unbelievably hot. The rains were supposed to start a couple of weeks ago but so far it only rained twice for less than half an hour at the time...



Hamza enjoying sailing :)

On the way back from the beach - playing improvised drums and singing :)



Hamza's results after 1st term - from his report book

More about Hamza's school

2 days after I brought Hamza to his new school I had to go back there - there were 2 reasons for that: Firstly I forgot to buy the matress for him (!), felt really terrible about this but the head teacher was very helpful and they got a spare one for him to use until I bring a new one... I simply forgot about it as for the girls' matresses we just paid at the school... I also had to go back there because it was the time for the AGM meeting which was normally attended by pupils parents.

The meeting was on Saturday and was supposed to go on from 9 am till 12pm. I knew that since this is Kenya it would never start on time. I did however arrive on time just in case... And I really wished I had taken my book with me as the meeting was much more delayed than I anticipated - it did not start until 11.15! While I was waiting for the meeting I was talking to Hamza who seemed to be quite happy with the school but I could tell he was missing his friends from Nairobi. Somebody also stole a couple of items from his storage box so I had to speak to the teacher in charge of the boarding students as well as the head boy and they promised me to investigate the matter. The only items stolen were soap for washing clothes and vaseline (kids here use it to moisturise their skin).

While I was waiting I also realised that most probably I was just wasting my time as the language spoken during the meeting was more than likely to be kiswahili (many of the coastal people can't actually speak english or at least not well enough to have a serious conversation). I mentioned it to one of the teachers and he promised to get me someone to translate which I thought was really nice.

Obviously I was the only white person at the meeting so I got quite few stares and funny looks, especially when my interpreter was sitting next to me explaining what was happening. I found the meeting very interesting - there are many issues there, mainly financial as the governmet funding is not enough to cover all necessary costs. Een though the US marines have been helping out a lot recently (painting the buildings, sponsoring the solar system etc) there is still a lot that needs to be done there.

During the short breaks kids were singing, dancing, reciting poems... It was very nice to see.

I went to visit Hamza one more time when my friend Kate was here visiting for a couple of weeks. Again, we spoke to the headmaster about the issues that the school is facing. I was also told that the top scorer in KCPE exams (end of primary education exam) for whole Lamu district came from this school which is very encouraging. I hope it will motivate Hamza even more to work hard and get great results.

We were supposed to go back again for the football tournament for the local school but unfortunately I did not feel well on that day. Hamza's telling me that his school won though so it must have been a great day :)

The school term was supposed to finish on Friday, 8th of May. Kate left on Wednesday which meant I would have 1 day to prepare for Hamza's return home. I got up pretty early on Thursday and decided to do most of the laundry on that day and prepare a room for Hamza. While I was busy washing I did not hear my phone and when I finally checked it, there were many missed calls, quite a few of them from Hamza's school. Immendiately I started to worry that sthg bad had happened and I rang the headmaster straight away only to find out that I must go to school asap to collect Hamza as they decided to close the school 2 days earlier (on Wednesday instead of Friday) and they forgot to notify my which meant that Hamza was the only child still remaining there.

I think it must have been the faster shower I had in my time in Kenya - where I stay means that I have to walk for over 20 min to the pier and then get a boat to the mainland, and then a motorbike taxi to get to the school... so quite complicated... I did get there pretty quickly though and got the apology from the headmaster. I then was told that Hamza is a very good student, polite and disciplined and he scored really well in the end of term tests which put him in number 3 position in class (out of 36 children) - I was really happy to hear that, it is a really great performance on Hamza's part especially that he missed couple of weeks of school at the beginning of the term and had to change schools in the middle of the term. Now I am expecting even better result next term :)

I am supposed to take Hamza to stay with his relatives in Mombasa but at the moment he likes it here and I am still considering my options - I will not be here in August when next school break is so maybe this time I will keep him with me and send him to Mombasa next time. He has made many friends here already and every time I ask him he says he'd prefer to stay here for a while longer... But next week Juliet is coming and at the moment there isn't enough room here for the 2 of them unless I come up with some solution to that.