There
is no such thing as a schedule in Kenya. You can make a plan for the next day
and even have back-ups for your "what if" scenarios, but it's all
useless.
Carley
and I returned to Mwakoma after our Christmas break, excited to take on the
challenge of project management in the absence of Lucy. On the day of arrival, we
thought all we had to do was have a quick meeting with our fundi, Nzumu, to
discuss the next two days' work, and surely we'd have camp set up well before
dark. Of course, that's not what really happened. Our driver needed more money
for his bus fare back to Nairobi which we didn't have to give. Chief Alex
wanted to share mingi (many) stories. And silly us, we had to have known that
we would need to buy more materials for the construction immediately before the stores closed through the rest of the
weekend (nothing is open on Sundays)!
Duh.
Add
in the typical "faff time" in Voi and it wasn't until 8:30 when we
had finished setting up our tents that night. We had fried eggs and PB&Js
for dinner.
I'll
admit, I've held some grudges over the lack of time allotment for showers and
food and those basic needs in the past, but after being the only on-site
supervisor having to solve all the problems, including bandaging sliced fingers
and running back to Voi for forgotten supplies, I will never be upset over a
short day turned long again unless it was my fault. One day, Nzumu even had to
come tell me (the one who gets angry
when she's hungry) that it was time for lunch.
To
get things done in Kenya, I've learned that I just have to roll with the
punches and keep on keeping on. You may get a call at 8:00 at night saying a
truck with our bricks that was supposed to arrive two days ago is on its way
now, only to find out at 1 am that, in fact, they are not coming, again. But
that's just how it goes sometimes.
On
the bright side, the hard part is over. We are all moved into our amazing site,
and official research on the elephants and bees project has begun!
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