We have spent the past few days settling in to our new home at the Rift Valley Academy.

We have been allocated a two-bedroom semi-detached house, with beautiful gardens.

Fortunately we don’t have to maintain the gardens, because to boost local employment, we are encouraged to employ local workers for a few hours each week. So Jesse will ensure the garden always looks wonderful, and Anne will help us with laundry and cleaning.

When we arrived, the weather was overcast. damp and cold (around 13 degrees Celsius). We dug out our hot water bottles, and tried (rather unsuccessfully at first) to get the wood burning stove in our living room working.

Now the weather has improved, and the temperature is in the low 20s, with beautiful sunshine, although the evenings are still a bit chilly.

Over the weekend we walked around the perimeter of the campus, which stretches for more than 2 kilometers, and has some wonderful views over the Rift Valley.

As you can see, the campus is well protected. International boarding schools can be a soft target for terrorists and kidnappers, and so in addition to the fence there is a team of security guards patrolling day and night.

Yesterday we started a week of New Staff Orientation, which included a tour of the school. This view is near the cafeteria. If you look carefully you can read Nairobi and New York on the clock tower. There is a third location mentioned – Seoul – reflecting the high percentage of South Korean students at the school.

Kenyan Elections

Today is also a very important day for Kenya – election day. A public holiday has been granted to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to vote. General elections take place every five years, and include the position of president, governors, senators and members of parliament.

Previous elections (although not the last) have been marred by serious post-election violence. At the two church services we have attended since being in Kenya, the sermons were on the topic of the election, encouraging people to exercise their democratic responsibilities by voting, and to accept the result, even if the elected candidate is not the one they voted for. Many prayer meetings have been arranged to pray for a peaceful outcome.

The predictions are that the elections will be peaceful, but to be on the safe side, we have been told not to travel outside the immediate vicinity of the school, and to stock up on food in case conditions mean that we cannot go out for the next couple of weeks. New AIM personnel who are based in Nairobi are living in temporary accommodation in the university (which is more secure) and will move to their flats in Nairobi itself only at the end of the month. As you can see, security is taken very seriously here.