It Ain't Half Hot

Did I mention it was HOT!!! Like most people, I love sunshine, in the past I have been accused of being something of a sun worshipper …. bright, blue skies do it for me! But I’m beginning to wonder if it really is possible to have too much of a good thing! I’ve just been on the internet for the weather forecast, to establish the true temperature, and it says it will continue to be between 30 and 35 degrees for the coming week with no sign of a rain cloud coming from anywhere. Interestingly enough this particular site also includes a ‘feels like’ temperature which suggests that most of the time it will feel more like 32 to 38 degrees!

I guess the issue is that this would be a real treat if we were on our holidays … but we’re not and nor are our children or any of our neighbours … all of whom also agree that right now it is VERY hot! I know that back in the UK, a spell of hot weather generally creates a challenge in schools for both the concentration and energy levels of the pupils and the teachers (very few school buildings were ever designed or equipped to manage our more extreme weather conditions.) I also know that if we are blessed with sunny and hot during the last weeks of the summer term, it is not uncommon for the break times to grow a little longer. Here in Kenya it looks like we are in for more than a spell of just one or two hot sunny weeks. January is the beginning of their school year and there is no time to be lost in pushing on with the syllabus and addressing the needs of some of the children who already struggle with their learning. By mid-morning, walking into some of our classrooms is like walking into an oven - now I can really empathise with one of my all-time favourite story characters … The Gingerbread man! Most of my days are split between the classrooms and a small, stuffy office (iron sheet roofs are just not conducive to producing cool buildings.) I usually wear a loose fitting skirt and a sleeveless T-shirt and I can easily get a ‘wet’ (though not cold) drink and yet …. I’m still pretty uncomfortable. But I’m also very fortunate. For our neighbours it is very hard to find any kind of paid work. What work there is, usually involves some kind of labouring on buildings or the land. This week we’ve had men moving and flattening the mountain of soil that came from digging the foundations for our latest set of classrooms. They have also been digging up and placing retaining stones in order to create the stone path that we will be needing in the coming months - when the rains return and I stop complaining about heat and dust and moan instead about the wet and the mud! These guys are wearing their long trousers and their usually oversized T-shirts and they are working really hard, out in the sun, from about 8:30 through till 4:00. Every morning (to quote a song from a famous musical) they seem happy to greet me and even smile and laugh while they work …. but I still find it hard not to feel bad that they have no choice but to do this really tough work, irrespective of the weather and the temperatures.

As well as the high temperatures, everyone here has to contend with the dust! Some people sound like they’re suffering from a heavy winter cold but in actual fact they are simply congested by the amount of dust that is thrown up into the air from the vehicles that travel along the dirt road in front of our home and school. I remember the first January we were here, back in 2003, when the playing field for our children was right by the side of the road. I would lie in bed at night listening to the children coughing, the kind of cough that sounded like it would never stop and yet the child seemed to somehow sleep through. As soon as the rains returned, the coughing went away.

So, without doubt, this is the DRY season and yet, contrary to past experiences and what I thought was the pattern for mosquitoes, this last, very dry month has seen a serious outbreak of strong malaria. Right now we have three members of our staff and three of the staff’s children, in the local hospital being treated for dehydration and the other unpleasant side effects of malaria. Every day, for the last month, we have had anything between five and ten of the school children come to us with symptoms of malaria. They come to you complaining of a headache, they have a high fever and feel shivery and when they try to eat or drink they soon find themselves vomiting. Sometimes they can be treated with a course of tablets, between one and three big tablets (depending on their size/age) twice a day for three days. But with some of them, the symptoms come on so fast that they are unable to keep the tablets down and they have to receive a course of injections over three days. This is hard because, instead of resting and recovering peacefully at home, they are forced to take three long walks to the local dispensary.

According to some of our staff who were visiting others in the hospital, there is currently a conspiracy theory going around to suggest that it is the Americans (leading all the research on malaria and possible future cures and treatment) who are responsible for this unusual outbreak. The theory is that they have introduced a new species of mosquito that likes to come out in the dry season … just so that they (the Americans not the mosquitoes) can still make money when the rainy season mosquitoes have been eradicated! Seriously though, malaria remains a big problem in this part of Kenya. As I sit here at my desk, trying to resist scratching the more than half a dozen bites that I‘ve just received on my legs and ankles, I can’t help but think of that famous quote from Anita Roddick the founder of The Body “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”  At the risk of sounding like an advertisement for mosquito nets, the facts remain that there are still more than half a million people who will die this year because of malaria . 90% of them live in Sub Saharan Africa (which includes Kenya) and most of them will be children under the age of 5 yrs. Even after all the great work to get nets out into peoples’ homes, it is estimated that less than 5% of the children are sleeping under any type of insecticide treated nets. The reasons for this are many. For most, their homes have just one simple partition. One third of the house space is allocated to a sleeping room and storage and the other two thirds is used as a simple living room. It is very rare for children here to have a bed of their own let alone their own room. In reality, most children sleep on an assortment of mats or wooden sofas or chairs in the area that is the day time ‘living space.’  Purchasing and arranging nets to cover every member of the family is not a simple affair and, because it is dark by 7:00pm, most of us are still up and active (not hiding under our nets) at a time when the mosquitoes, like the ones living under my desk, wake up hungry and ready to bite! The bites can be unbearably itchy but that is nothing compared to the misery that malaria brings. We have said many times that “Kosele is a really tough place to live in.” The children grow up pretty tough and it is very rare that you will see any one of them cry. But in this last week, as children have come to the office to tell us they are sick, I have seen a lot of big, silent tears trickle down their faces. Back in England, at my last school, a sick child would be taken to the office where he or she would receive sympathy, kindness and lots of reassurance from our lovely school administrator, Mrs Milward. She would phone their parent and either mum or dad or grandma or granddad would usually appear within the hour to take them home (if necessary via the doctors surgery) to the comfort and love that we all need when we’re feeling poorly. But many of the children in our school have only one parent, most don’t have any. The relatives they stay with struggle to meet the basic needs of their families on a ‘good day’ (i.e. when no one is sick.) So, just like every other day, when the children here are sick, they take themselves home. When they reach home they will simply curl up in a corner of the room and hopefully sleep until the worst of the sickness passes. No chicken soup, no curling up on the sofa in front of the T.V., no sweet sweeties to take away the taste of the nasty medicine, no mum to just sit and cuddle and be with them. Please pray that this latest outbreak of malaria soon disappears, that there are no fatalities amongst the children here or in the homes of our neighbours and that each one of us here, working under the name of “Hope and Kindness,” will not miss the chance to speak a kind word or demonstrate some simple TLC to a child that needs to know God’s care and love.