I start my morning routine and hope that the power will be back on by the time I'm done showering. Kenya Power is probably also struggling with the strong winds. I feed the cats - which are not mine, they came “with the house”, as they say in Kenya. At least two of them belong to the Italian owners of the bungalows next to me. But they are not here now and prefer to spend the cooler, rainy months of Kenya in summery Italy. The power is back. I drink my coffee on my veranda while listening to the Swiss News Bulletin from the previous evening. And greet the gardener who is collecting tonight's palm fronds.
My second coffee goes into the thermos flask and, together with my Bircher muesli lunch, into my backpack for my portable office. In addition to my laptop, this is an external monitor with a stand, external keyboard and external trackpad. Then there's the cable clutter that goes with it. Next, I kick the cats out, which one of them promptly takes as a game and gives me a little chase under the bed. I greet and thank the guard, who is already holding the main gate open for me, in front of which my tuk-tuk driver, Juma, is already waiting. Only Juma is not here today; Ali is. Juma's vehicle broke down, so he sent his friend Ali to take me to the office. We drive the ten minutes to the Elimu Resource Center. I seem to be one of the first today to set up my office and get to work with a sip of coffee.
Elimu is committed to promoting education and runs various projects, such as a supervised workroom for pupils who want to study for their intermediate and final exams. A computer room where young people can acquire and certify their digital skills or a tailoring workshop for young women from difficult backgrounds. First, I prepare my lesson for today. I'm teaching young people the basics of digital photography. This is a new and wonderful experience for me, as I've never taught a group over a longer period before.
After a while, a colleague arrives with a couple of guests from Italy. They are in the process of setting up a school in central Kenya and want to find out from Elimu how IT could help. I help with translation when the English is not quite enough, and we discovered that we have mutual acquaintances in Italy from my first Comundo assignment in central Kenya. By the time the guests leave, my lesson is almost here and I move my office one floor down to the classroom. Thanks to a project contribution from Comundo, it has been newly furnished, including fitted carpets. There is, therefore, a shoe rack in front of the door, and I enter the room barefoot while the ceiling light flickers briefly. The Comundo project contribution also includes a solar power system, which has just had to step in again. The lesson goes well; the young people are interested and thought along with me. Only my concept for this one lesson doesn't quite work, and I have to improvise a little towards the end. I realized that it takes a lot of work to prepare lessons.
Then I resume work on the programming problem from yesterday. A colleague drew my attention to the fact that the database of beneficiaries that I developed for Elimu was not spitting out the correct values at one point. While I'm going through the code, a message comes through the WhatsApp channel that the priest who is to bless the house has just arrived. As I've never taken part in a ceremony like this before, I join him and wonder what the salt in the holy water is for. Before I can ask (the priest is in a hurry, two more blessings before lunch), a young volunteer from the IT department asks me if I could review her thesis. She is doing industry training at Elimu and needs to provide a final report with examples of when she returns to college. She explained several of the small applications she had rogrammed herself.
I give my feedback - which gives me an idea of how I could solve my problem. And really, the nut is cracked just in time for the lunch break. I sit down in the shade behind the building with my Bircher muesli, together with a few colleagues. Some want to know what I'm eating, and I explain the recipe. Others discuss the current demonstrations in the country, which are directed against the latest increase in VAT and import taxes. They are organized by young people, the Generation Z: they are non-partisan, there is a code of conduct for participants, everything is filmed and posted live on social media. Anyone who misbehaves is quickly identified (allegedly including the agents provocateur) and shamed online. Every member of parliament who voted for the new law is visited by peaceful crowds at his/her place of residence. The police and the government don't quite know how to deal with this new type of demonstration. The rest of my coffee has gone cold by now, but still serves me well as a “café freddo”.
Update: The protests degenerated when several demonstrators invaded the grounds of the parliament building. Over 20 people were killed, and the controversial law was suspended for the time being. The protests continued.
Afterwards I take a tuktuk to the Catholic diocese, where my second office is located. I usually try to avoid changing my workplace in the middle of the day, as it makes the day less disrupted. Today is an exception: I meet the director of the Pope Francis Rescue Home, a former partner organization of Comundo. The Rescue Home would like to digitize the list of its current and former protégés and we discuss the expectations and requirements. I get straight to work, install a blank copy of Elimu's beneficiary database, and start customizing it for the Rescue Home. It makes the next meeting easier if we can discuss a first draft of the database right away. My office neighbor, the head of the Caritas Malindi office, arrives with a load of pineapples. The diocese has a large pineapple field that is just ready for harvesting. For a while, the small anteroom to our offices serves as a market stall for the employees of the diocese. Of course, I also buy one. Then it's time to text my Tuk-Tuk driver to come and pick me up at 5pm.
Today, we take a detour home: first, we make a stop at the Seven-to-Seven supermarket. It's supposedly called that because it's open from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening. I can't confirm this because I've never been there at these off-peak times. The names of the stores in Kenya are sometimes very imaginative: for example, the other supermarket called Cleanshelf, the butcher's shop called Doublevision, and the restaurant called Come Back. In addition to the usual necessities, including the house brand of roasted peanuts, I treat myself to chocolate from South Africa today. Then it's on to the courier service Wells Fargo, where the parcels from the large online mail order company Jumia arrive. I often shop online, it saves me running around and searching in Malindi, and the range of goods is bigger. Today I pick up a pair of sandals and a box of assorted acrylic paints. And fortunately, the coffee from Rockern is already there too. This is a small coffee roasting company in Nairobi that processes Kenyan beans. On the way home, we suddenly hear sirens coming towards us and the tuktuk has to swerve sharply to the left onto the shoulder of the road to make way for a convoy of black SUVs with tinted windows. Ali tells me that this is the provincial governor who was in Malindi doing business today.
I arrive home and am let in by the gardener, who is just relieving the guard. The cats welcome me and watch with interest as I put my groceries away, hoping that there is something for them, too. I decide to take a short walk along the beach before the sun goes down. But I hadn't realized that the tide is high at the moment and the beach is largely under water. The tide is unusually high this year and has already made the first and sometimes even the second row of tables at the small beach restaurant. They reacted quickly and built a small terrace that is above the water at high tide. The unusual weather, including the strong winds, is attributed to the La Niña effect. This is a global weather phenomenon in which the western halves of the oceans are warmer than on average. This means more rainfall and more winds, which push the tides even higher up the shore. However, the rainfall does not fall on the coast but inland. The little rain that has fallen here has only just let grow the maize knee-high. Then the rains stopped and the plants slowly withered - before the rivers burst their banks due to the masses of water from the hinterland and washed the crops away. So I sit on a step above the beach for a while and watch the waves. As I walk back to my bungalow, it's already getting dark and the cats are now loudly demanding their dinner. Once the predators are occupied, I prepare my own dinner, a vegetable risotto. Malindi has a large Italian ex-pat community, which means that many “essential” things from Italy are available here (albeit a little expensive), including good short-grain rice. I often cook two or three portions at a time and put the rest aside as lunch for the coming days.
fter washing up, I sit on the veranda, which is also my living room, and listen to a podcast. It's an interview with Sal Khan, founder of the online learning platform Khan Academy. He explains how he believes artificial intelligence will change education and talks about his AI-based learning assistant. I resolve to try it out at the next opportunity. The wind picks up again, and the power goes out for a minute every 10 minutes or so for the next hour. Fortunately, I don't really need light for my podcasts. I move to my hammock and listen to one or two more science fiction short stories. Then it's time to put up the mosquito net over the bed.
(This day is fictional, but the episodes that make it up are not.)
