That January Feeling

January happens when you least expect it.  One moment you’re socialising, eating, singing Auld Lang Syne and then BAM.  Very suddenly, you’re back to work, broke, cold and remembering the heady days of December when an early payday seemed like the greatest idea ever.  It’s the same in Kenya, apart from the cold. December was the time for eating and drinking more than usual, and if not on presents, you’ve spent all your money travelling up-country to see your extended family, and treating them all to a bit of meat.


January is the height of summer in Kenya, and also brings with it a brand new school year.  After a month off, the kids are back to school needing clothes, books and if they’ve just graduated Standard 8 (at age 14), they’ll also need school fees. The average Kenyan family has little (read: no) disposable income, and this time of year can be crippling anyway without a large annual fee they may have never faced before.


Many of us VSO volunteers have been asked for money for school fees at least once; often from women we barely know.  It must be tough to budget for kids in consecutive fee-paying years (some have kids in Forms 1, 2, 3 and 4) when you earn so little to start with.  Family planning wasn’t a consideration for these women, or certainly they didn’t get a say in how their children would be spaced out.  No wonder so many kids drop out after free education ends at 14.  Kenya might be hitting one Millennium Development Goal in 2015 (universal free primary education was re-introduced in Kenya in 2003, and it’s a great step forward for Kenyan literacy levels), but it’s tough for most families who try and continue that promise.  And it still doesn’t give us a good enough response to, ‘You sponsor my child?’


At the other end of the social strata, a Nairobi sight in January is Kenyan business men in sharp suits and shiny shoes wedging into dingy buses all over town, because they just don’t have the cash to fuel their car this month.  They squeeze into my matatu, wearing designer glasses and a bling-bling watch, and glance around the grimy interior at the peeling stickers with half-readable ‘inspirational’ quotes, with a look on their face says, ‘What am I doing here?’, almost exactly like I did, 6 months ago when I was new in Kenya.  Well, apart from the bling.


Which brings me to my point: 2012 has brought a very unusual January in our lives, so That January Feeling is different this year. 

Let me explain.  Imagine us -

Feeling sad that Christmas is all over, but REALLY sad.  I feel a bit grumpy in a UK January to be back at work having gained a few pounds, but my Christmas holidays rarely contain as much fun as they did this time. When friend Matt flew back to the UK on 5th January, he said he was sad that his 3 week trip was over, and to be leaving the warm climate behind.  But Dan and I had the wonderful feeling of our adventure isn’t ending!, because we were staying in Kenya and there was more fun to be had.  If only every new year could feel so ripe with possibilities!  But that feeling wore off very quickly.  It’s a sharp contrast between the warm waves of the Indian Ocean and the frustrating daily realities of our normal VSO existence.  This life brings with it such dizzying highs and crashing lows, and as a result our moods seem to be all over the place.  Not helped by...

Feeling angry at Things I Should Be Used To By Now.  I might be giving myself a hard time, but shouldn’t I be used to EVERYTHING after almost 7 months?  But being pointed at, yelled at in the street (‘BABY!’) and being constantly approached in all public places just for being female, white and on my own is getting to me.  There are idiots in every country, and here in Kenya they all fancy their chances of chatting up a white woman, getting her contacts and then joining her in Europe/America where they’ll live off her vast wealth and never have to work again.  Why would she be walking here without her husband, if she wasn’t looking for a Kenyan man?  I used to think I was starting to enjoy being a celebrity here, but friends back home who know me as a ‘shameless self-publicist’ will be shocked to learn that I’ve now started to crave anonymity.  Lots of attention combined with long dusty commutes, grinding traffic, broken things and unexplained delays some days just grind me down.  It feels like the patience, flexibility, and thick skin I’ve built up last year is draining out of my scruffy shoes.  Maybe some things get worse the more you’re exposed to them.

Feeling excited about the next few months.  We’ve started planning more travels within Kenya and now beyond.  Confirmed work permits in hand, East Africa here we come!  It all starts with a weekend to Tanzania, as Dan and Eddie take part in the Kilimanjaro marathon.  We hope to also visit Ethiopia and Uganda before we leave, it’s just the challenge of fitting it all in.

Feeling like returning to the UK is a closer reality.  Turning the corner into a new year really makes a difference: it feels like we’re falling downhill to that big deadline in July (exact date TBC).  And mentally, we’ve now moved past it, making plans for when we’re back in the UK; namely to be at Dorney Lake for the rowing heats of the London Olympics, for which we’re lucky enough to have tickets.  It feels very strange to already be making plans in the UK, because for the longest time we were gearing up to go away, but with dates in the diary and July 2012 part of this year’s calendar, its inescapable: we’re coming home.  And with that comes....

Feeling like our adventure will be over too soon.  Taken all together, we’re having an amazing time in Kenya, and things here are still so new, there’s so much to see and do and achieve.  How can we only have a few months left?  We’ll be so sad to leave. We met some people the other day who are just now putting down roots in Nairobi, so when we said we were not leaving until July, the response came back, ‘You’re leaving already? I can’t believe it!’  ‘No’, we said ‘We’re only halfway through!’ but the impression was clear, that some people commit to Nairobi life, and others like us, are only really visiting.  I’m enormously lucky to have the support of my UK employer, and they’ll be welcoming me back this summer. So the only thing to do is make the most of the time we have left.  Our New Year’s resolutions are to: work hard, play hard, and not worry about a thing.