It has been quite an eventful one month of leave. Characterized by major highs and lows, my one month of leave has in general been a great family time. The first weekend was indeed the best of all. The children had a big time swimming with their favorite uncle and wished every day was Saturday afternoon.
Soon after, Jordan fell sick. I spent seven sleepless nights trying to control Junior's body temperature which in many occasions defied the power of Calpol and wet towels. It ended up being a very stressful week. Nevertheless, this was a great time for bonding with my son and from it I got to understand him more and even love him better. What a joy it has been.
Junior was hardly back in school when a major tragedy struck; the passing on of a close cousin from Leukemia. For another week I was juggling between taking part in preparation for the funeral and looking after Jordan. This was one of my worst experiences in my life. Still in between all this madness, I managed to find time to go ahead with supervising the construction of A Rocha Kenya's community office at Gede.
The following week was another great family time where I spent a good amount of time working in the farm and even had rare opportunities to drop Junior at school. I also had time to take part in assessing potential ASSETS beneficiaries from three schools. Despite the long hours driving around the forest, this was quite a fulfilling and enjoyable exercise. It always great to deliver the great message of hope to these otherwise desperate families around the forest.
The most frightful happening came on the night of 28th; a Thursday. I was woken up by a uniquely disturbing cough from Jordan. That evening, I had given him some pain-killer after noticing a slight rise in temperature. I had hoped that within a short time the temperature would drop back to normal but instead it went on to cause terrible fits of convulsions. It was very reassuring to here the doctor say he was alright on reaching the hospital at 1 a.m.
The climax has been the general election from which we are still waiting for the outcome. By 5 a.m. on the 4th of March, my whole family was already in the queue at Gede Polytechnic ready to participate in this historic event. I still wonder what difference this is going to make. Nonetheless we are very pleased to have participated in the exercise despite that most of the candidates we voted for lost the election. We have no regrets but only hope that one day Kenyans will be able to vote candidates because of their credibility and not their ethnic affiliation.