Harry's House

This is Harry (centre) and a neighbour building his house. Harry is 12 years old, and figures he wants some space. The equivalent of the teenager moving to their own 'pad' in the basement of a suburban house in Canada. Usually a boy gets his own house when he has been circumcised, which usually happens more around age 14-16, but who knows, maybe it happened earlier for Harry. Or maybe he just wants to have his own place. He has three younger brothers, and only the next in line, Harold (age 10?), will move in with him.

The house frame is made of thin poles of trees found wherever, then the gaps are filled in with small rocks, cement, and ??? The soil here is pure sand, so there isn't much hope of making a good mud-clay mixture or bricks like everything is done up-country.

Harry's dad is named Francis. He is the gardener at the field study centre where I lived two years ago. I had gotten to know his family a bit and took this photo when I went back to visit them two weeks ago. Francis was one of my swahili 'teachers', and we got on quite well. He was the first person I had ever met who got married when he was 15 (the second was a 28 year old woman I worked with in Mt. Elgon). Francis is 28 now. I asked him this time why he got married so young. He said that his father was giving him some land that he was to be his- like early inheritance. Francis was also put in charge of caring for his mother and younger brother, since his father decided it would be easier to just divorce Francis' mother and marry another woman instead of staying married to two woman at once and caring for two families, which is the normal tradition. Francis thought it would all be too much work for his mom to take care of everything alone, so he married a girl to help his mom around the farm & household. In the meantime, Francis learned how to be an expert gardener.

Now Francis's 'little' brother is quite big and is just starting high school. He wants to be a doctor and is really bright. The only problem is finding school fees for him- so he hasn't actually started school. I think he may start next term, and try to catch up. It will be tricky on such a limited income to find fees each term. Francis does hope to start an indigenous tree nursery next month, which should help a bit.