Our high hopes for painting the classroom and dorm room for the special needs students were radically adjusted as we discovered our time and adequate supplies were severely limited. The first day, our task was to sweep down the crumbling cement walls and then the floor. We used local "brooms" made of branches from some bush tied together at one end. We soon realized there was no way to completely make the walls free from dust. In Kenya, after you sweep the walls, you then "wash" the walls. We were given two metal bowls with some water. But then all we had were our paint brushes with which to wash the walls.
All this really accomplished was spreading a thin layer of mud all over the walls. By that time it was time for lunch, which was just as well since we now needed to wait for the walls to dry before attempting to paint, which we still weren't sure how we were going to accomplish in the first place, since all we had were a variety of colors of enamel paint and several six inch wide brushes. No turpentine, no stir sticks, no paint pans, no rollers, no blue tape, no tarps.
What we did have was plenty of opinions from the local officials about how to paint, which colors to use, etc. By the time we had negotiated some semblance of a plan, it was time to go back to Nairobi for the night.
After dinner a few of us went to the local Nakumatt (think Fred Meyer) in search of more paint supplies. It seems hardly anyone uses rollers to paint, so no rollers, no paint pans, no blue tape, no stir sticks, no tarps. What we could find in the paint department was turpentine, and plastic sheeting remnants, and some metal serving trays from the houseware department to substitute for paint pans. With these in hand and the blue painters tape I happened to bring in my luggage, (what teacher doesn't travel with blue tape?) we headed out the next day. In the meantime, Washira our head driver, praise the Lord, had also gone by a larger Nakumatt and found us three rollers and paint pans. We were feeling pretty good at this point.
The reason for the turpentine, in case you were wondering, was not for cleaning the brushes when we were done, but actually for thinning the paint, which the local official insisted we were supposed to do. The paint already looked kind of thin in the first place, but we certainly didn't want to cause any more waves, so we thinned the first batch of the white paint. Our paint crew got started painting while I went to meet with the teacher. When I came back more than an hour later it looked to me like the walls had barely been touched. Gingerly I asked how it was going. The look on Dawn's face said it all. The walls were so porous, and the paint so thin, it soaked completely in..leaving the walls looking not much different than before. Oy.
From then on, we thinned paint with just a capful of thinner just in case someone was watching. The bottom 30 inches was to be blue and that went on much better. But again, by the time we had everything sort of figured out it was time to go back, and we would not be returning. The dorm would have to wait.
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It's not too often I smile and laugh while reading a blog, but yours certainly got that response from me. What an adventure.
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