Agora, religion and tribal dwellings

I have been struggling with religion for my children. I do not want a doctrine without question for them, like I was given with Christianity (thank the good Lord it was tempered with my mother’s probing Hindu mind). I just want a template for what my family considers right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. Was watching on prime time TV, our President Uhuru Kenyatta being congratulated outside the Hague by no less than 100 supporters – that many adults going all the way to prop up the Dutch economy ( hotels, carbon footprints) for what? Unacceptable my moral compass suggests; very strongly. This then begs the statement: Religion cannot give you a total guideline as to right and wrong for my family – only I can do that through my example and my vociferous condemnation of something that seems to everyone acceptable, but to me, is unacceptable. This view was further cemented by a movie – AGORA – dramatizes the destruction of the library at Alexandria and the murder of Hypatia around AD 370. Why? Christians took the letter of St Paul to Timothy literally without thought … – “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over man, but to be in silence …… in full submission”. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” Hypatia An example of taking scripture literally is from our little fish pond of class 4, Deusche Schule Nairobi - Ilana completed some running math-a-thon thingy last term – you run a round, you get asked a question, you answer and run the next round. 3 times. She got all her answers wrong. She struggles so and gets disheartened (don’t we all) but, as I had asked her to, she tried to see the good or the lesson to be learnt from the experience. Ilana - speaking to friend - ' I am so proud of myself - I managed to run 3 rounds of the field without getting winded' Friend 'Pride is a sin, you are prideful, therefore you have sinned'. Great. So Ilana is in tears - her friend, who can do no wrong says she is wrong, nay, she is sinful ... a delicate balance. I explain, your friend is right; to a degree - too much pride, wrongful pride is useless and a waste of energy but pride in an achievement is excellent. There endeth the strife in my poor head about religion. I am a good human being. I know I can give my children a good moral compass (checking myself - ‘to heel, boy, to heel’). On a really hilarious note – Arno’s weekly project is different types of dwellings in class. Eskimoes live in igloos, Maasai live in manyatta’s and Red Indians – Indianer as opposed to Indish/der Inder as I keep getting corrected. He really got into it – obviously, as it is not maths or writing! Decimated my miniature bamboo, (sliced pricked his finger with the Panga and that caused some drama) covered it with bedspread (later replaced with dog blanket – poor Bongo keeps circling the teepee, trying to fit in and under his blanky) ‘borrowed’ my goshawk feather, put on sunscreen war paint and named his tribe – Hintern. http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_de.html#/search=hintern&searchLoc=0&resultOrder=basic&multiwordShowSingle=on Papa – The great chief stinkenahintern Ilana – Kleinepoops which she did not like so she is Ganzefliegen aka (deep breath)Goose-that-flies-across-the-lake-on-a-full-moon-just-skimming-the-water Arno – Sottlekopf (no idea how this fits into the poops/hintern tribe) Mummy is married into this tribe so can retain her maiden tribe. Mummy - shrieking cow/crow

How to attain the prize of Delamere hot hot bhajias.

My children are turning out into helpful, good humans. Got last minute booking for self-catering cottage, Malu, Naivasha and took it in a heartbeat. • Packed car, in the pouring rain, both kids pitching in. • Start going down Escarpment and it (rain) stops ... dead. • Stop at Escarpment view point as I so love the Great Rift Valley view - Mt Suswa on the left, Mt Longonot ahead, the Aberdare mountain range to the right ... aaah. Arno and his sense of humour - sees a cloud and names it with great import in his voice ' I name that big spot (long pause) ahem ….. big spot. Ilana wants to be overly clever so does not come up with a name for the other spot, which I named, guess . go on ….yup; the other spot. Forgot to pack tapes – TEHPS as Russel Peters says - you know, those things that have a reel inside that lay music on a TAPE deck. Had only two tapes in car - Sting, ‘mercury falling’ and times tables. Guess which one Ilana insisted we play ... yup. We can all sing every song on ‘mercury falling’ now (Arno’s repetition of ‘Let your soul be your pilot ‘and ‘I hung my head’ are particularly grating after hearing the same line for a whole minute each time) We get to Mallu and cottage is being cleaned. (So glad is Ilana that it is raining. We cannot camp – what weird children, not wanting to camp indeed, and not wanting to camp, in the rain)Agreement arrived at that if they both walk for 2 hours without any complaints, they can have a fire lit in the grate and we can play kamili or scrabble that afternoon. So up towards the top of the ridge to get a view of Lake Naivasha. Two hours of walking to the ridge and back, with me taking a few side paths just to scare Ilana into walking more, with no effect, we were back with … no complaints. We had a good time, says Ilana in surprise. (I got surprised too - that those words came out of her mouth, voluntarily) She got almost scared to death by a grasshopper the size of a mini horse,(no exaggeration on our part at all) jumping at her (not away as in reality but at her as in the dream world she inhabits) and got irritated by Arno’s constant zig zagging like a mad wildebeest ( and his constant talking … no worries about us surprising any buffalo in any thickets with him along eh) but she saved him from a huge jumping spider intent on killing him ( the intent of these poor dudus is suspect). Nice to see them sharing, getting along, and helping their old ma along. It was really good. Got in just before rain and had a nice afternoon of playing scrabble and eating crisps and chocolate indoors while it pelted outside. Next morning was grey but no rain so went out to raft leaves and twigs and see which ones went over ‘waterfalls’ or got caught in ‘dams’. Arno’s leaves made it, through guiding assistance from a large pole that ‘forced’ the poor leaf through eddy’s without any 45 degree lines … just brute force and ignorance as is the way in Africa. Ilana’s ‘not fair’ finally got to me so we set off for a ‘kleine’ spatzieren, just an hour. Arno made us take a ‘short cut’ to the hippo pool where the hippos had, without informing us, moved some 3 weeks ago and are up the river somewhere. He entertained us with Arno rap – really atrocious and repetitive with lots of shuffle moves that look like a chicken-with-malaria and raise a lot of dust. He claims to be singing in Hindustani. The hand signals are most perplexing. He says you must wave the hand ludicrously with the middle fingers bent as if broken; no explanation given as to why. He got us a tad lost. Assume it was all that head bopping, rap meandering and foreignness. Ilana got really worked up, and why did we not just stick to the trodden path? He says, it would not have been adventury. ( a real word now for my family) Why is Ilana so very scared to get lost? We are 3 people, we have water .. and we will find a hill and re orient ourselves so?! Even driving – are you sure you know the way mummy is always her first question and should I stop – I hope you are not lost mummy. Hmmm. Anywho. Found a hill – backtracked, recognized least-adventury path and … yup, it started to rain, well, gently drizzle. The one thing Ilana feared; happened. She got rained on in Mallu in 2012 – badly rained on. She was 5 and she remembers it and said she would do anything BUT get wet on that ridge. So, we got wet, but not on that ridge, thankfully. Only Arno had his raincoat. You could see she was so mad at him. If we had not got lost, we would be home, dry now! But she said it in conversation, no accusation. So very proud of her. We saw a warthog tunnel in the ground. Told them how their dad had been chased by a warthog across the savannah while trying to find us a potholing cave in the Chyulu hills and who knew he could run so fast … all good. Arno even admitted he got us lost … just a bit lost but that he admitted that he could make a mistake … well well. Progress is being made. We HAD to stop at Delamere Farms to get hot bajias with some glow-in-the-dark-tomato-sauce-that-would-not-recognise-a-tomato-if-it-saw-one. Treat indeed. And to end on a funny note – thank you Norwin for introducing me to Wise Guys – they crack me up even if I only catch a quarter of what they say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlQI0mfJbCc