Our Last Days in Kenya

Submitted by Jessica Hughes
UPEI Preservice Teacher
April 19th, 2006

Only 4 more days left to go! Our last full weekend here turned out to be very busy and eventful. On Thursday and Friday, all of us went to a local beauty salon to get our hair braided...and it was a very painful experience for some of us. Friday night, we went to Nanyuki with some of the staff from Kihuti Secondary school. We had a fun night of dancing, and ended the night eating chips (french fries) at Starbucks hotel in Karatina. A very fun night!

On Saturday, we attended the Gathukimundu Prize Giving Ceremony. It was late getting started, but it was a full day running from 2 p.m. - 7 p.m. They presented many awards in different categories to the students. It is a day the children look forward to and are acknowledged for their hard work. We were disappointed that the students were unable to do the songs and dances they had prepared for the day, but unfortunately they ran out of time. Afterwards, the school presented us with traditional baskets with our names, the year and the name of the school woven into it. A very nice gesture and we were all very touched!

Sunday, we celebrated Easter by going to the Stem Hotel in Nakuru to go on a safari. It was a very nice time. The highlight was the hundreds of flamingoes we saw in the National park. We also saw rhinos, buffalo, waterbuck, a hyena and numerous families of babboons. It was a very fun adventure! On our way home, we were invited to our friend, Shaad Olingo's house for lunch. We met his wife and six of his eight children. So now we are ready to spend our last four days in Ichamera. We have arranged to do some videotaping field day seminars for farmers to be played at the Sacco, (local bank). We are also going to see the collection route for milk.

On Saturday, we have planned a farewell party for all the people that we have met here. It will be a sad day. Our trip is almost at an end, but we will send one more blog to tell you about the rest of it!

The School Term Ends

Submitted by Jessica Hughes
UPEI Pre-Service Teacher
April 13th, 2006

This past week flew by like whilwind. Our trip is quickly coming to an end and we all have mixed emotions. Yesterday was the last day of school for Mwati and Kihute, with Gathukimundu finishing today. We all found it hard to say good-bye to our students. These people have been in our lives for the past five weeks and it is sad to leave them. The memories we have will be with us forever. Kihute finished with a ceremony where they presented the students with award for the higest averages in each form (grade) and all the students cleaned up the school, closing with a prayer, song and well wishes from all the teachers. Mwati closed with a small ceremony, presenting Meredith and Jessica H. with small tokens of appreciation and all staff and students said their good-byes. A prize ceremony will be held this Saturday, April 15th, for the students at Gathukimundu and all of us will be attending. We have all completed our assignments and will be coming home with Kenyan questionnairs, video documntaries of both students and teachers and of course, letters for the students in Prince Edward Island.

On Tuesday, Meredith, Shauna and Jessica H. completed a documentary of the day in the life of a Kenyan Teacher, videotaping and questioning the Headmistress of Gathukimundu, Lucy. Tuesday also marked the end of our football practices with the girls at Kihuti. We arrived to start practice, but the torrential seasonal rain kept us from actually going on the field. Instead we resorted to sitting in a classroom for 1 1/2 hours. This provided us with a good opportunity to talk with the team members and present them with Canadian Tattoos we brought with us.

On Saturday night, we spent the the night at Green Hills Hotel in Nyeri, compliments of Farmers Helping Farmers. We had a day of relaxation and a night of fun at the disco located below the hotel. It was a welcome addition to our usual weekend activities. We still have a lot more to do before we leave Kenya on April 23rd. We have the prize giving ceremony at Gathukimundu on Saturday. On Sunday, to celebrate Easter, we have arranged to go to Nakuru, to go on another Safari at Lake Nakuru National Park. We hear they have flamingoes. We will be staying Sunday and Monday nights. We arrive back to Mukurweini on Tusday, when we will be starting some work at the Dairy, including going on a milk collection run! We will be very busy!Our time here is flying by, but please keep checking for updates on our latest adventure!

Global Classroom Highlights

Submitted by Trudy White
April 14, 2006

Now that the dust has had a chance to settle, I’ve been looking at pictures and thinking back over the three weeks I spent in Kenya with the Global Classroom teacher team. It would be impossible to describe all of the highlights of our visit, but I will try to share a few. Our welcome to Kenya was warm and gentle as we visited the farm of an old friend, Rhoda Ole Sein, and her family. On their farm we saw our first Kenyan wildlife – zebras, gazelles, and even a giraffe - grazing alongside the family’s cattle and sheep. We also got our first glimpse the devastating effects that two years of drought has had upon the farmers and animals of Kenya. We would see and hear much more about this in the days to follow.

We spent our first week in Mukurwe-ini, where our hosts were the members and staff of the Wakulima Dairy. We toured the Dairy, the Sacco, a local health clinic, a coffee farmers cooperative, the market, farms, and 10 schools! We had several very candid discussions with Kenyan teachers who welcome as colleagues and shared their challenges and successes with us. We also billeted one night with local families and we were welcomed everywhere we went. A highlight for me was seeing how proud everyone was of the new Wakulima Dairy facility and hearing about how far they have come and how much of a difference this project has made throughout the community. Before leaving Mukurwe-ini, we hosted a welcome luncheon for the pre-service teachers who were arriving just the day before we moved on. Even in that brief overlap, we felt very confident they were well on their way to an amazing teaching/learning experience.

From Mukurwe-ini, we traveled to Meru. We were welcomed with dancing and singing by the Muchui Women’s Group members. We saw the water catchment tanks and tree nurseries sponsored by FHF and individual Islanders. Lauren Gill- O’Brien was delighted to find herself at a shamba boasting the tank sponsored by her own Vernon River Millview 4-H Club. The women also thanked us many times over for the food supplies and seeds provided by the FHF agriculture team in February and to which we added our own donation of more bean seeds. However, with predictions that the rains will be late and sparse again this year, it was hard not to wonder and worry about how these wonderful people are going to fare. Before leaving Meru, we also visited a local primary school, St. Lucy’s School for the Blind, and St. Theresa’s Maternity Cottage Hospital.

Our next stop was Kericho, in Kenya’s tea growing highlands, where we visited a tea farm, a tea packing plant, and 3 more schools! Even in this seemingly lush region of the country the drought has reduced tea yields and everyone is feeling the effects.

Then, we moved on to Kisumu, situated on Lake Victoria. In the Bondo area, we visited a CIDA- sponsored micro-finance project which is helping fishermen to find alternatives in the face of a collapsing fishery. We also visited the Millennium Demonstration Village project at Sauri, headed by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. This ambitious project aims to demonstrate that sustainable development is possible and that the Millennium goals are, indeed, attainable. Agriculture, health, water, education, sanitation, and infrastructure are all being addressed through a partnership approach involving the community, government, other NGO’s and the Demonstration Village Project. Only a year and a half into the project, the lessons learned at Sauri are already being applied and adapted to12 other villages in different agri-systems throughout Africa. And in Sauri, the project is now being scaled up ten-fold, to a district level.

Our final destination was Nakuru, where we visited a home for street kids called the Child Discovery Centre. Although this project was just started in 2002, the Center is now caring for more than 140 children. Last, but not least, we visited the Lake Nakuru National Park where we added lions, a leopard, a jackal, and black and white rhinos to our now long list of wildlife sightings!

Needless to say, we were very busy but we loved every minute of it! We are now anxiously looking forward to the return of the pre-service teachers in order to hear more about their experiences of teaching and working in the Mukurwe-ini community. Over the next weeks and months, we will also be putting all we’ve seen and learned into lesson formats for Island school children.

All in all, this was a very special journey for me. I was able to visit some old friends like Rhoda, Shaad, and Gerald, and I made many new friends. I felt very privileged to be seeing the projects and meeting the people I had heard so much about over the years of my involvement with FHF. I would like to thank FHF’s Board and the GCI Management Committee for giving me this opportunity and all of the folks in Kenya who worked so hard to make our visit successful. I will always remember it.

Busy Days in Kenya

Submitted by Meredith Cameron
UPEI Pre-Service Teacher
Tuesday, April 3, 2006

Over the past week we were fortunate to have seen what life is like through the eyes of some Kenyan students. On Monday, Shauna, Jessica H and I were accompanied by Jackson (a teacher from Mwati) to James Mwanti's home near Mwati Primary. We were greeted by James' father and sipped on some tea while James was preparing for the school day. We were led through his five acre family farm, across a rickety bridge, and up through a forest before coming to the dirt road which leads to the school. James, who is a student in standard 8, was documented on video throughout parts of the day and we were happy see what life is like through his eyes. On Thursday, Nora and Jessica B trekked through the mud around the bottom of Mt Kenya with Edith, en route to Kihuti Secondary, a 45 minute walk to school. The trio was accompanied by the head teacher, David Othongo, who acted as the translator for the visit to the family home. The girls went onto document Edith throughout the day and learned more about the obstacles that some students face in Kenya.

On Saturday of last week we attempted to learn how to plant the Kenyan way. Standard 7 students from Gathukimundu who are twinned with Miscouche Consolidated were eager to show us how to plant nappier grass. The grass is tended by students from standard 4 - 8 and is then sold to local families which is used for animal feed. The money collected goes towards funding for the school.

On Tuesday, we were greeted by Mama Paul a.k.a Grace, Gerald Kariuki's wife, at their family farm. With PEI beans and some maize in hand, we were put straight to work, learning how to properly use pangas and jambas. After a morning's work, Grace took us on a tour of the local community where we were greeted by local students and teachers, and some friendly neighbors too! After a two hour tour our bellies were filled with delicious Kenyan cuisine...chapatis, rice, stew, and of course, mangoes and pineapple. We were sad to leave but hope to return soon.

This past weekend marked the halfway point of our time here in Kenya. We celebrated by going on a safari at two different locations. On Friday, we arrived at Mountain Lodge where we overlooked a watering hole. We saw water buffalo, impalas, antelope, hyenas, baboons, and a wart hog. The next morning we woke up at 6:00 am to get a good view of Mt Kenya, and then we were on our way to our second destination...Sweetwaters.

When we arrived we were excited to see we would be sleeping in tents,but these were not normal tents, they were better, with fully functional showers and toilets. Our tents were nice, but the safari drive was better. In two hours we saw zebras, gazelles, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, and the unexpected...lioness. We stopped off at the chimpanzee sanctuary and were informed of the tragic lives from which the chimps were rescued. The camp was founded by Jane Goodall.

When we returned to our tents we had a late supper at 8:00 (usual supper time here in Kenya) while we watched a massive giraffe stroll up a few meters away to have a drink at the local watering hole. I don't think we will ever come that close to a wild giraffe ever again...just a few arms lengths away! That night we slept to the roar of what sounded to be lions in the distance.

The weekend getaway was nice but we are happy to be back in Mukurwe-ini and see our students again. This week the schools are preparing for their national exams before Easter break. Students here have about a month off so we will not see them be before we head back to Canada. However, we still have three more weeks here, so stay tuned for more details!