It is 1:08p.m. of an otherwise uneventful day. Otherwise uneventful, because the three male teachers and Matron just walked by supporting one of the girls. She was crying, so loudly that at first I thought she’d been hurt, but as they drew closer I saw that it wasn’t because of that. Nupur and I were outside under the shade of the tree. As the procession went by our building and behind the teachers’ block, we asked Lucy, who was following behind, what had happened.
It turned out that Diana had just found out that her father had passed away. That is also why there is the sound of wailing coming from the direction of the main road, a horrible, chilling sound that has lasted for a good half an hour or more. I’d thought it for the piki driver who had been buried yesterday, but I was wrong.
Diana has just walked back down, still crying but quietly now, holding hands with Lucy. Matron and Anne go to comfort her, and she seems somewhat calmer. Joy has come to sit beside me, and Sadhna has returned with Kennedy, and gone to talk with Anne. Diana’s in no position to do her exams. I hope they will let her go home.
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In the afternoon several of us went to Customs. Sadhna and Reese ran, and Frank and I followed in Kennedy’s car, giving the District Education Officer a ride, about half an hour later. We caught up with them a little way into Customs, and curiously found Leonard in the soda store opposite Memorial as well. We must have been quite a spectacle—a whole group of musungu kids in the middle of Customs, on market day, at the busiest hour!
Because Tuesday is market day, the market was far more crowded—and well-stocked—than usual. Sadhna and Reese started walking back after we bought some mahindi chouma (roasted maize) to munch on. Frank and I continued to shop, but we kept stopping because we ran into a lot of familiar faces. I saw Mourine from Senye (one of the few Senye students whom I can recognise!), James from Lisori, and another Senye boy who was at his father’s stall. Frank stopped to talk with several of his students from Nyangwayo as well. We spent a good forty minutes in that little square going around all the stalls, checking out the goods, and bargaining with stall-keepers. Frank was absolutely hilarious. He wanted to buy everything there was on sale, and ended up with 20 tomatoes, 11 large bananas, a bottle of honey, a mango, a pineapple, and six avocadoes, as well as debating over fish and bo, a leafy vegetable that resembles la jiao ye back home. He also tried to turn the negotiations into maths problems for the kids. For my own part, I bought a stack of sweet potatoes, three mangoes, four tomatoes, some cabbage and four pineapples (three of which were for Reese). So we brought the market a lot of business today.
It was getting rather late and so we drove back, picking up Leonard three-quarters of the way back to the WISER campus and Sadhna and Reese near the bend. We drove to Tagache with Reese sitting on Frank (of course), me on Sadhna, and Leonard behind the wheel. Not the most comfortable ride I’ve ever had, even by Kenyan standards; thankfully it was only a five-minute journey.
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