Hello everybody! Sorry about the delayed postings of late. I've got some good news on the development side of things here - all the desks and tables have been completed for the three schools in the area. Two of the schools got all their desks and tables in time for classes opening this week, but one of the schools still needs to pick up their desks. Thank you all very much for all of your donations for this project! 100 desks that will fit up to 200 students, as well as 9 desks for teachers. This will greatly help with congested classrooms where there can be over 60 students in one class. All three schools either have, or are working on building new classrooms in order to split up some of the classes into two, and these desks will be helping with those endeavours. Thank you all!
I am supposed to be meeting the carpenters today in Ngong to purchase the materials for the development project I am working on - the MEAC/Rohit Group School. Thank you again to the Rohit Group for funding this project. We are anticipating everything to be finished and ready for students by June 1st. I met with some members of the MEAC committee last week, and they have assured me that they will be paying for the Nursery/Pre-unit teacher to teach at the school, and we are having a meeting on Friday of this week to determine food costs to feed all the children who come to the school. I'm thinking positively and hoping that the committee will be able to support the feeding program for this project, as I think it's very important for the community to feel some ownership of the project. Since Kimuka Primary stated they would like to transfer all their nursery/pre-unit childen to our school, a few extra costs have come about - including a kitchen, water tank, and toilettes. I'm working on the budget and am going to try to build as much as I can while I'm here.
I will be leaving in the middle of next week for two weeks of travel around East Africa. My plan is to head to Kigali, Rwanda for a few days, and then Kampala, Uganda for a few more days, before I go white water rafting at the source of the Nile River in Jinja. I will then be heading to Kisumu in Western Kenya for a few days of R&R on Lake Victoria, before heading back to Kimuka around the 27th or so. After that, we leave on June 1st for 8 days in Europe, where my girlfriend Jess will be meeting me. It's crazy to think I'll be back home in just over one month. There's still a fair bit of work left to do, but I think I've established some good procedures for the MEAC/Rohit Group School, and I will be leaving the project in the capable hands of MEAC staff and volunteers.
Alrighty, well that's all I have for now. Check out my Flickr page for some recently uploaded pictures!
