Sorry it’s been a quite a while since I last wrote. The weeks seem to fly by.

Two weeks ago I did the fieldwork for another research project (in partnership with the Centre of Commonwealth Education at Cambridge) titled ‘Girls against the odds’. I have a research partner for this project which is nice, because we can discuss all the issues we uncover. The fieldwork was so interesting. We interviewed teachers and pupils in 4 schools in different low-income areas in Nairobi and it was amazing how different the issues are that they face i.e. how diverse poverty is. For instance, in one school 75% of the pupils are Somali refugees and come to Kenya having had no education and not speaking any language other than their native one. Having lived in a lawless society they have no sense of law and order or having a structured life. They join the school any day of the year and many leave after a few months again. So, you can see what a difficult task the teachers have - and I’ve just shared a fraction of the issues and cultural traditions they follow. Then, in other schools boys as young as 11 are in gangs and the ‘normal’ way the teachers hear of them after they’ve finished school is to read in the paper that they’ve been killed by police. Many of the girls are forced into prostitution by their mothers etc etc. So, it was fascinating fieldwork but really sad at the same time.

This last week I’ve been writing up the 1st research project on youth’s perceptions of the world. It’s going well and I’m really enjoying writing. I’ve already done over 9,000 words and haven’t even finished the main discussion yet, so I think it’ll need some editing, because the professor editing the book said 8,000 words as a rough word limit!

On Wednesday we had the referendum for the new constitution which has now been passed. It was surprisingly peaceful. Apart from a bomb attack on a large gathering of Christians for the ‘no’ camp a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t heard of any violence. I was told by my friends in Kibera not to go there this last week, so I didn’t, but I think even in the slum things were fine.

Everything else in my life is going great. I still love KA. There’s not one single day when I don’t look forward to going to class. We’re doing ‘new creation realities’ at the moment, which is incredible. It’s all about who we are in Christ – if even 10% of Christians knew who they really were this world would be a different place.