Language School

January has been a busy month so far. We started language school at the state university which is from 8 till 12 everyday. This is intense but we feel that is worth while as we are both learning lots everyday. Paula is doing really well and I'm following closely behind. I am already better at Kiswahili than I ever was at Fremch which is encouraging because I studied French for more than 5 years at school and at university. Our class is great it consists of the teacher, Paula and myself - more like one on one tuituion. There was supposed to be more but they didn't turn up.

Paula after another big dinner

This morning we had to go to the place where they issue a sort of MOT based on how clean your engine is. I watched one guy check a vespa moped, (lots of them here, they are called piki pikis), he looked at the engine, kicked the tyres and tested the horn. All in all took him about 30 seconds! We had to go to this place to prove to a guy, who was going to issue our national driving licences, that we could drive. Apparently our UK licence didn't mean anything to him so we went for a drive with him. He asked if we could go half a kilometre to quikly get something from his house - this ended up being about 8km to drop a chicken off at his sons shop. When we got back we asked if we could have a licence for a piki piki as well which he agreed to issue one to me as he thinks that anyone can drive these. Unfortunately he decided not to give one to Paula saying that she was not fit to drive one of these as she has to wear glasses but more likely because she is a girl!

Project stuff is going well. We started work on it this week installing a gate and digging a trench for electricity and water supply. We have an official opening ceromany on Saturday in which important people will come and give speeches etc. Ill post some photos of that event in the next blog. Here is a little drawing I did to give an idea of what the Vocational Training College may look like.

Some girly stuff. The girls held a suprise baby shower for Julie....



....and Paula had yet another birthday.

Happy Christmas and New Year

I trust you all had a happy Christmas and New Year. We have had a good few days however they were very different to what we are used to. The culture here carried on as normal as Christmas isn't celebrated here. We have continued to settle in and have had many adventures such as taking a few thousand litres of water in a trailer to some friends the other side of town as the local pump was broken. I wish I had some photos as this was another great experience especially when the empty 2000 litre tank fell out of the trailer at full speed along the road!

We have good news regarding the project, the Memorandum Of Understanding between us and the college we are partnering with has been signed. (This took 1 year!) So we plan to start on the building work soon, this is very exciting and I am looking forward to being involved with some of the building work which will be a bit different than in England - No machines, no pointless paperwork, no safety!

This my language helper/gardener/day guard, Im not sure what his job is really but it is great to have a friend that I can talk to and help me with the language. Here he has just climbed our coconut tree so we could drink the fresh coconut juice! In our garden we also have bananas, passion fruit, papya, sugar cane, lemon grass, advocado, and more which I dont know what they are.

Roast dinner on Christmas eve with Alex and Julie. Windows were shut and air conditioning was put on all day and by the evening it felt a little cool which felt a little bit like an English Christmas. (Although I guess the first Christmas was probably hot without any snow)

Christmas day on the beach, with Paulas home made mince pies.

Christmas Dinner - Not bad. All the trimmings such as stuffing and bread sauce all made from scratch by my amazing wife. (You cant just get packets of stuff like that)

Team Girls - Roxanne, Paula, Julie, Doro. Kids - Annikah, Analie, Romy, Nasia

This was Boxing day with the team, Its good to have our team

leader (Hans) and his family back on the Island

And the boys with the meat - Jason, Alex, Hans, Me

New Year
This was spent on the best beach on the island, which was amazing beautuful white
sandy beach, swimming under the stars, nice food etc.

Looking into the year ahead, January will be a busy month for us and will bring a bit more structure to our days as we start language school on Monday. I am again looking forward to this as we want to learn the language quickly and so far we have just learnt a lot of vocab so would be good to understand some of the grammar.