Day 15 - Wednesday

No building or painting today, instead a day of visiting schools that we have funded but not built at due to the covid pandemic. 

Lol - Keringet Secondary school

The welcome we received as we arrived at the school was incredible. The singing and dancing started right at the school gate. Our route into school was lined with students and the parade meant we had to get off the buses at the gate and join in with the singing and dancing right from there.

The school had really pulled out all the stops for us. The classroom was finished and decorated with ribbons and a plaque was curtained off ready to be unveiled. The dancing and singing were led by one of the parents from the school, who is a professional singer and by a couple of other parents who could create a sound that none of us could manage!

The building looked great. A couple of issues with the guttering for them to resolve but otherwise a good sturdy, finished classroom. It transpired during the morning that this classroom was originally destined for the primary school next door but the request for it to support the secondary school was accepted by our trustees and essentially completes the school buildings. I don't know what the primary school felt about this and I am sure that there will be a building going in there soon enough.

Part of the ceremony involves everyone getting to say a few words, from the staff, members of the board, head teacher, deputy, a representative of the county assembly, and probably a few others that I have either forgotten or didn't quite their name or title. I was a little taken aback that whilst they were thanking us for their building they were asking for more. Desks, computers and books were now being added to the request. I was a little disappointed with this, if I am being honest, but I think this is a result of them not having students and teachers actually in their school, during the building process. Mrs Sitti handled this beautifully by explaining that our students had made sacrifices to fund the building project. They had worked, held events etc in order to finance the building of these classrooms. So she gave them a lesson on fundraising for the things that the community needs. Students often have small jobs that earn them a few shillings and if they collectively make a similar sacrifice by sharing some of their earnings then the collective power of this would quickly realise the things that they are looking for.

I stood up and kept my speech short, I thanked everyone for the most amazing welcome to their school, explained a little bit about the work the charity has done over the last 17 years, and said that I was sad that their community had missed out on the interactions between our communities and invited them to make the most of the time we had to say a few words to each other. I then invited Laura to say a few words and our head boy Max. I invited Laura to open one of the classrooms today as I don't need to have my name on them all and she rose to the occasion beautifully.

Once the unveiling and cutting of the ribbon had happened we got to look inside and then take some photos with the school. We really didn't get long for much of an interaction at all but we made the most of it nonetheless.

Wekhonye - Primary School

This was a slightly different celebration to the previous one. The welcome was very muted and it was more like visiting a school for the first time rather than being welcomed to a special event. We parked up and were surrounded by hundreds of students and greeted by the head teacher. 

The school was huge, 1300 students working out of 24 classrooms with 22 teachers, and a total staff of 35! To put this into context, the Weald has 1850 students and over 100 teachers plus another 100 or so support staff. 

The ceremony here was far more muted than that of the secondary school. We sat on the veranda of the new classrooms surrounded by most of the population of the school. We did have class 3 all 100+ of them sing the national anthem and a couple of additional songs, which was really good, however, they were really squashed into a tiny space right in front of us. 

There were far fewer dignitaries to do speeches here, which some would argue was a blessing, and disappointingly the teachers were introduced from the other side of the crowds so we really have no idea who they were and couldn't hear anything they said.

The chair of the board, this would be the head governor in the UK, got up and spoke to us and said he was going to cut his speech short due to the impending weather, which started to pour down whilst he was speaking.

A quick change to the plan meant we then rushed through the official unveiling, my turn this time, and then we entered the classroom to allow the speeches to continue and for us to escape the weather. The chair of governors spoke really well from the heart about his and the communities gratitude for replacing the dangerous structures with the classroom that we had funded. It was then the headteacher's turn who again asked for more financial help with buying things for the school, and then he was open about his impending retirement from the school the following year. I think this was clearly the reason for the muted celebration, as we later chatted and he said that next year this would all be someone else's problem. I'd like to think that any headteacher, about to retire, would be creating the succession of the school rather than taking his foot off the pedal.

A massive ray of sunshine here was when I introduced ViVi to speak. She had prepared her speech and it was absolutely exceptional. She completely captured everything that needed to be said and conveyed our journey perfectly. I didn't think I could answer that in any way, but Mrs Sitti, insisted that I got up to say some more. My usual speech about being humbled, and going through the work of the charity would have been completely wasted here as I was talking to our team plus about 5 members of the school community, so I instead mumbled my way through the legacy of these classrooms and how many lives are affected in the lifetime of the classrooms. 

Whilst we were there, we saw a girl with a baby in her arms. The team were clear, that they wanted to try and track her down but at the end of the speeches, she was nowhere to be seen, and when we asked teachers about her, the teachers gave us completely different stories about the baby and brought out a different child afterwards. This is still something of a taboo in schools, and we never saw the girl again.

We also saw a UK beaver scout jumper being worn by one of the kids. This was a real surprise as it's original home was on a child in Norfolk UK! It's journey from there to this school is something of a mystery and I'd love to guess how it got here. The group badges were still on the jumper that was being worn by this kid as his uniform jumper!

I was pleased to also be asked to plant a tree, this isn't my first tree planted and I always love this part. Always a little concerned about the longevity of these are they are placed in the middle of a courtyard where kids normally play so my hope is that these survive for at least a while!

So a day of two very different halves. The first school was the usual over-the-top celebration, and the second was something of a thrown-together last minute, at least in my eyes. We did get a chance to interact with the children but they were clearly after anything that they could get from us. The deprivation in this school was really clear to see and this would have been a really interesting place to have brought a group to build at.

Back at the Karibuni, an afternoon of trying on clothes that had been made, a trip to the supermarket and then a relaxing film rounded off quite a busy day. It is really important for our kids to see what the finished product looks like and I really liked the fact that we managed to arrange this for the second week so that we can really visualise what we are working towards!