Wed 17 Eid Mubarak - Thursday 18 November. Mboga.

A midweek Islamic holiday because of the position of the moon, interrupted our Pre-Formal swimming program however, as the Form 1’s were at school we organised for them to use the swimming session! It was a win/win! The girls were delighted and we had heaps of fun swimming, relaxing, helping them float, blow bubbles, playing games and singing and generally feeling at ease in the water.

Having dressed we were ready before the bus arrived. Due to the holiday, classes were not being run at the International school. This was fortunate as the next half hour was rent with squeals of laughter and screams of delight as we all entertained ourselves playing on the playground equipment!

Sadly we farewelled the girls and we walked down our dusty track, through a herd of goats, to an afternoon of baking.....My first loaf of wholemeal beer bread, wasn’t quite cooked however, it was topped with vegemite and couldn’t be wasted so I opened a cold Kili and washed it down!

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Leo ni Alahamisi, asubuhi, Tarehe kumi na nane mweziwa kumi na moja mwakka elfu mbili na kumi.
Today is Thursday, morning. 18 October, 2010.
Leo, tuni kupanda bustani mboga wetu!...Today, we are going to plant our vegetable garden!
Mustafa, our gardener helped us prepare the beds yesterday and today he has gone to town to buy the seeds and seedlings: Karoti: carrots, viazi kitamu: potatoes, mgiligilani: fresh coriander, kabichi: cabbage, vitunguu: onions, pili pili hoho: capsicum and maybe rasiberi: raspberries.
We already have mchicha: baby spinach and nyanya: tomatoes growing randomly in the garden beds around the flowers which are a bonus as we don’t have to wait too long before we can eat the mchicha. At SEGA, the girls have been educating me on how to tend to the plants and which ones can't wait to taste the rewards!
Since I arrived the yard has been transformed into a relatively dust free, tranquil setting. Scoria, small stones, have been spread over the areas that don’t have garden beds so the rain will drain away more easily and hopefully reduce mud and flooding. Many roses have been planted, together with hardy, bushy plants and flowers. I am so happy as I love roses...hopefully some of them will be red ones! The fruits include, mangoes, bananas, guava, oranges from which we are already eating fruit as one tree was already here.

Mchana.

Having arrived home from school, and the others back from town, we started gardening....some of the expected seeds were unavailable so we have proceeded to plant: carrots, cucumbers, Chinese cabbage, Savoy cabbage, Spring onions (red salad onions), Mchicha (the seedlings are unable to be used) and we transplanted the tomato seedlings from the flower bed into the veg patch!

Our landlord, Mr John Fuhsi, has a large compost so we used several barrow loads to feed the beds, sprinkled them with a fine layer of dirt, then gently watered each bed. Our job is to ensure that these beds don’t dry out!

As the afternoon progressed, I looked at my hands and could hear Mum saying “You should be wearing gloves!” Sorry Mum but I had two choices: not to help OR...
.... to help, have fun but get disgustingly red dirt encrusted hands and nails! Oh, but it was so worth every grain of dirt to have an afternoon in the garden with the prospect of our own veggies and to achieve almost weed free plants.

It became a very domestic arvo as I decided that to rid my hands of the encrusted dirt, I would do my washing! It worked! I now have very clean hands and clothes and while I was at it......I swept the whole house and washed the floors! Spring cleaning....don’t you just love it at the end!?
I had one small problem. Having washed my new dresses and tailor made outfits, I realised that I didn’t have an iron or coat hangers! I drip dried the outfits so they were pretty straight when they dried, but I ran my hands over them pressing out as many bumps as I could, then laid them along the back of my couch under a kanga to keep the dust off. I will close my eyes when I put them on and by the time I get to school they will be a bit crumpled anyway!

Life’s pretty simple really!