Liverpool FC Goodies!

What with all the excitement of public transport uprisings, pre-weddings and chicken auctions, I completely forgot to mention that late last week I received a parcel. Actually to be precise, on Friday morning I received a little yellow card from the Kenyan Postal Service informing me of the afore mentioned parcel and inviting me to collect it from Murang’a post office at my convenience. Saturday was convenient.

Owing to the remoteness of the school, the sub-standard road surface, and a terrain only a kick start participant (or someone on a mission from god i.e. our motorcycling Evangelist) can get around on, no deliveries are made directly to the school; so we have a PO Box No. (532). This means that we have to go to the local post office to pick things up.

I had only been hoping to receive 1 parcel. I purposefully omitted to say I had been “expecting” to receive, as I have been warned that theft in the postal service is rife and therefore it’s unlikely that anything will ever arrive via this channel. But credit where credit is due, a large padded envelope of goodies from Liverpool FC (pens, posters, stickers etc) was waiting for me.

Having consulted with the multi-talented Mr. Karanja (maths teacher, football coach, choir director), it was decided to give these out this afternoon. So at 16h00 we rdv’d on (what cannot rightly be called) the school field. Mr Karanja had had the bright idea of handing out the goodies as prizes for correctly answered questions.

- “What is Matt’s favourite football team?” began Mr. Karanja, easing them into the program.
- “Liverpool!” screamed Peter Mbugua first.
- “Correct! An LFC pen for Peter. Well done Peter” congratulated Mr. Karanja.
- “Who is the captain of Liverpool?” I continued.
- “Gerrard!”, replied Erastus.
- “Rrrrrriiight! Give Erastus a pen Mr. K”

Glancing into the envelope, we realised that at this rate we would be here until the end of term. But fortunately/tragically (delete as appropriate), this was the limit of their knowledge of LFC so we opted simply to hand out the remaining goodies. Chaos ensued as 200 hyper-excited children swarmed all over us. It took a full 5 minutes and some stern words from Mr. Karanja before a semblance of order was restored.

Eventually the children formed 2 loosely defined lines (picture the French queuing for , … well anything really, and you get the idea) and the remainder was distributed in exchange for a couple of photos holding their prezzies aloft and 200 shaky promises to support Liverpool from now on.

Happy with our afternoon’s work, Mr Karanja and I went to join another teacher, Mr Kerenge, scrumping mangos in our neighbour’s garden. It was like being a kid again. Oh the simple pleasures in life!