This school is in the north east slum area of Nairobi. It is a church school, that gets support from European church communities. It is one of the best schools in the area, and the children and their parent(s) are overjoyed when they get a place. School is the best thing that could ever happen to them. As in all Kenyan schools, school uniform is de rigueur
This is the environs:

The buildings were well designed and solidly build, but there wasn’t much spare money for maintenance.

First of all we went into the equivalent of a year 8 class, the top class. They were very quiet. The children stood and greeted us in chorus. Then some children sang us a song, with enthusiasm, whilst the rest of the class watched.

Then we went to a littlies class. The school takes in children of all faiths, even though it is a church school. Big smiles, happy children:

These were the building blocks

There wasn’t much more equipment, other than some tables and chairs

And of course they sang us a song or two.

The school has a library, unlike many schools.

A bit of escapism:

I am curious about the story, but don’t have the time to read the book. Fortunately Judy has the speed reading and summarising skills to do it.

So don’t read this if you don’t want to know what happened!

This is Judy’s summary ….

The Order of the Phoenix gets Harry safely away from Privet Drive before his 17th birthday, and get attacked on the way by death eaters and Voldemort. Voldemort’s wand doesn’t work against Harry’s despite the fact that Voldemort got a new one made. Mad-eye Moody gets killed. Lupin and Tonks, and Bill and Fleur get married. Rita Skeeter publishes a nasty book about Dumbledore, claiming he was friends with Grindelwald, and involved in many dodgy dealings. Death eaters take over the Ministry of Magic, Harry, Ron and Hermione flee and live in the forests. Dumbledore left them Gryffindor’s sword and the ring
he’d had in the last book. They learn the sword destroys horcruxes (those bits of Voldie’s soul) and the ring has a stone that’s one of the “deathly hallows”

The deathly hallows are three artifacts that together let death be conquered: a cloak, a stone and a wand. The cloak is Harry’s invisibility cloak. They discover that Dumbledore used to be friends with the defeated wizard Grindlewald, and that together they were looking for these hallows.

Harry’s wand gets broken. He takes Draco’s in a fight. They manage to find and destroy the horcruxes that are Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, and Slytherin’s locket. Voldemort gets a new wand, but it still doesn’t work against Harry, so he tries to find the wand that is one of the deathly hallows (The Hallow was Dumbledore’s wand, so Voldemort sends Snape to steal it from Dumbledore’s grave). Snape gets Dumbledore’s wand, then Voldemort discovers he needs to conquer the last owner to get it. So he kills Snape and takes the wand. Harry finds Snape as he’s dying and Snape gives him his memories. Harry watches Snape’s memories and discovers (YAY) that Snape was good, loved Lily potter, killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore’s orders, etc. He killed Dumbledore because a) cursed hand was killing Dumbledore anyway, b) so Draco didn’t have to, c) so Snape stayed as a trusted agent, d) so Dumbledore wouldn’t die slowly or at hands of Death Eaters (fans were divided as to whether Snape was good or evil…we are vindicated, woohoo)

In Snape’s memories, Harry discovers that he (Harry) is also a horcrux, that when Voldie’s curse rebounded off Harry years ago, Voldie’s soul was torn, and a tiny piece lodged in Harry. This is why Harry has that connection through his scar. The memory was Dumbledore telling Snape that Harry had to die. So Harry is horrified…we’ve also had lots of plot build-up with learning that Dumbledore was friends with the evil wizard Grindelwald, and wanted to get the deathly hallows that conquer death, and all this. So Harry feels betrayed and used etc, we feel Dumbledore is nasty and manipulative.

Voldie realises that almost all of his horcruxes are gone or endangered, and goes to Hogwarts with death eaters to secure one of the last ones. Harry and all the order go there too to try to get this one. There is major fighting in Hogwarts. Percy Weasley comes back to fight for the order. Fred Weasley is killed, as are Tonks and Lupin (leaving an orphaned son: Teddy), and Colin Creevey, who sneaked back in to fight despite being under age.

So…Harry destroys that horcrux, leaving himself and Nagini as the only two.

Voldie pulls back from Hogwarts into forest and demands that Harry be sent out - or he’ll destroy castle and everything in it. Harry knows he must let Voldemort kill him.

Harry tells Neville Longbottom that Nagini the snake must be killed, then goes out to Voldemort, is not holding his wand, and Voldemort casts the killing curse on him. Harry wakes up in sort of afterlife/waiting place and Dumbledore is there. Dumbledore explains that Harry isn’t dead…just in limbo.

When Voldemort came back to life in half blood prince he used Harry’s blood. So some of the protection given by Lily’s sacrifice is shared. So Voldemort tethers Harry to life just as Harry was holding Voldemort to life and the killing curse killed the piece of Voldemort’s soul in Harry Dumbledore tells Harry he has the choice - he can die here, or go back and try to finish things.

So Harry goes back to his body, which is lying looking dead at Voldie’s feet. Voldemort makes Narcissa Malfoy check if Harry’s really dead - but Narcissa whispers to Harry asking if Draco’s alive. Harry reassures her and Narcissa lies to the Dark Lord – telling him Harry is dead. The death eaters and Voldemort take Harry’s body and march on Hogwarts

Another battle ensues.

When nobody’s paying attention to Harry’s “body”, he pulls out his invisibility cloak and wand, and hides. Neville Longbottom attacks Voldemort. Voldemort decides to destroy the sorting hat and Neville at the same time, and puts the sorting hat on Neville’s head and sets fire to it. Neville shakes off that curse. You’ll remember that a true Gryffindor can pull the sword out of the hat? Neville does this, and kills Nagini. Harry appears at this point, and he and Voldemort start circling each other….

So then Harry points out to Voldemort that Snape was Dumbledore’s man the whole time and that Harry was willing to give his life for all these people at Hogwarts, so Voldemort’s spells don’t work that well against them: like Lily’s protection all over again. Harry also points out that since Snape didn’t actually conquer Dumbledore - because Dumbledore chose to die - that Snape wasn’t really the master of that wand.

So since the wand only actually belongs to someone if they conquered its previous master… Voldemort isn’t really the master of that wand. The last person Dumbledore was actually “beaten” by was Draco Malfoy, back just before he died, when Draco seized Dumbledore’s wand, and since Harry beat Draco (which I casually mentioned earlier) the wand Voldemort is using - the really powerful deathly hallows wand - actually answers to Harry.

Harry casts expelliarmus. Voldie casts avada kedavra: the killing curse rebounds on Voldemort, the expelliarmus works, Harry seizes the deathly hallows wand, and Voldemort is dead.

Then we get an epilogue 19 years later, where Harry and Ginny are married, as are Ron and Hermione… and they’re putting their kids on the train to Hogwarts. Harry and Ginny have three kids; James, Albus Severus, and Lily. Ron and Hermione have two children, and Teddy Lupin is dating Bill and Fleur’s daughter.

They all lived happily ever after.

*****************************************************************
Best line of the book: Fred: “people, don’t get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking [Voldemort’s] out of the country. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but the fact remains he can move faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo when he wants to”.

We have been having daily+ earthquakes, getting bigger every day ….

the news report:
Seven earthquakes of between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitude on the Richter scale have hit the region around Lake Natron in Tanzania since last Thursday, causing panic and anxiety hundreds of kilometres away.

On Monday, it emerged that two of the three machines for monitoring earthquakes in Kenya are grounded.

Now I am considering human nature. I am sitting tight, enjoying my Gin-and-Ton-Tons, in front of my computer etc, wondering should I nip off for a quick holiday somewhere nasty like Somalia.

Probably not, I will just keep my head in the sand ….
Denial rules as usual.

This is the coldest month here. People are rugged up as if it were 20 degrees below in Stockholm, when it is about 12 degrees above freezing. Here is Kevin the Man, all dressed up and about to go outside to play with Hannah the Dog.
Is this how dogs sit?

What a good dog.

Keeping warm (the dog at any rate)

Please hurry up and take that photo so I can put my hood up again.

This weekend’s trip was to a national park near Lake Naivasha, about 100km west of ILRI.
Hell’s Gate is a part of the Great Rift Valley, a massive, active fault system that runs through Africa and on north into places like the Red Sea and river Jordan. Most of Kenya’s lakes are part of the system (including Magardi, see last blog entry).
Hell’s Gate starts benignly enough, with savannah complete with zebras etc, between two high cliffs of hexagonal columnar basalt, as is common along the rift valley.
Then you see puffs of steam …

We walked down a deep gorge, following a major fault to the joy of the geologists amongst us.

Some of the gorge was well vegetated

A side branch was very narrow and deep, making walking on all fours a convenient way of moving.

This bit of the gorge had a volcanic plug towering over it.

Another bit was almost enclosed.

There were small springs along the length of the main gorge, which started off cool, with warmer ones as we walked on

at one point they became hot showers that got me well wetted

The stream at the bottom of the gorge stayed a good paddling temperature though the little side pools were scalding hot.

Beyond the part of the gorge we were in, the hot springs were so hot that they had become steam, they were captured into a geothermal power station. Fissures in the rocks had been capped (not always totally efficiently) to capture the high pressure steam.

On the left in the distance you can see the pipes snaking in from the captured steam vents, on their way to the generating station.
The expanses of white in the far distance, that look like salt pans are plastic greenhouses (generally run by Dutch or Japanese companies), in which are grown millions of flowers for export to Europe, giving huge local employment.

Another volcanic plug near the entrance is used as a training place for rock climbers. The guy on the right had climbed up well, but his nerve failed him when it come to abseiling down. A climbing instructor (on the left) shinned up the rock to give him moral support, kindly instructions and a calm presence, to get the poor lad over his terror (which had my greatest sympathy) enough to lean back on the rope to abseil down. This is just after the lad had straightened his legs enough to abseil down successfully.

Our bit of Nairobi is about 2000 metres above sea level, usually quite cool temperatures even though it is just about on top of the equator. Lake Magadi is slightly further from the equator, but only 600 metres, and dry, heavily mineralised and surreal. The mineral (sodium carbonate or ’soda’) is washed out of volcanic fissures, into a lake with no drainage, but a very hot climate. The sodium carbonate chrysalises into a sparkling crust, often with very pink tinges.
This is a close up of the ‘crust’ of sodium bicarbonate chrystals.

The lake is very shallow series of interconnected arms, and you cross it by a series of causeways.
There is a large soda factory, complete with rather large company town, with schools, hospital, pool, clubs etc. This is the view of the factory from the second lake causeway:

The thing that looks barbed wire is probably a water pipe, heading off westwards, but the water inside could well be heading eastwards to the factory and township?
The crust looks very white here, but other parts of the lake are very pink:

And a more general view of a bit of an arm of the lake further away from the hot springs, with flamingos++:

This flamingo had a damaged leg, but still very elegant

Some parts of the lake, where small streams flowed in, on the western side, had no crust at all.

We drove up the western escarpment, very steep and rocky, you can just see the track going up the escarpment (from right ot left) at the far end of this, the last causeway.

The scenery and vegetation changed dramatically beyond the top of the escarpment. These sheep are on the way to the watering hole:

the watering hole … goats, sheep, cattle and donkeys;

donkeys and their keeper leaving the watering hole.

There was very little other traffic. This Maasai woman and her donkey did not get on at all well with each other, donkey not at all happy.

The roads were sometimes a bit rough, sometimes deep sand. We didn’t get sand bogged, but we had a flat tyre. How many people are needed to change a tyre? Five. Sandy at the technical end, Lulu to hold the umbrella, Barbara (who likes her stats) to keep a count of the wheel nuts, Rasa to spin the spanner, and me to record the scene.