Day 5 - Down to work and what we came for

Its been an interesting 24 hours full of power cuts and no water periodically – welcome to Kenya!  Internet access has been intermittent hence the late posting of the last few days onto the blog.

Today we began our project work and divided into two groups.  19 of us headed off to the Luchema Children’s home and 13 went to the Jubilee project.

 

Jubilee Project

At Jubilee the team were greeted by three impressively straight rows of very excited children (they would show us up during a College fire drill with the straightness of their lines).  Almost immediately 9 of our team who had volunteered to teach were ushered into three crowded classrooms.

Rachael teaching

Meanwhile the building team sat waiting (Kenyan time) for the paint to arrive and Nelson the site foreman which gave us time to do some pre-painting stretches much to the amusement of some local children who had sneaked through the security gate to mimic us.  They then out did us by doing their own gymnastics.

 

Pre-painting stretches

The task ahead – the toilets to be painted

By the time Nelson arrived it was breaktime so it was all hands on deck in the playground, the favourite games included Mr Hill and Joe, fireman lifting very small children around the playground.  You could never push a child on a swing for long enough and the queue was endless.  They also loved our sunglasses and watches and were keen to try them on.

Trying on our sunglasses 

After breaktime the building team set to work on a 60 minute makeover of the new ‘long drop’ toilet block with varying techniques whilst Natalie and Mr Hill remained spotless, the rest of the team have the blue chicken pox.  Sophie had a few difficulties with the painting before revealing that she only achieved a Level 3a in Art at High School and it wasn’t one of her strengths!  Meanwhile the teaching assistants were very busy marking books in their classes.

Lunch was a real eye opener.  We served over 100 students with a portion of rice and beans which they queued immaculately for again both to wash their hands and be served their food.  There were only 35 bowls so they had to wait patiently and eat in three sittings.  No cutlery to use to eat with other than your hands.  It felt wrong for us to eat our chilli and rice when they had so little.

Playtime at Jubilee

The afternoon passed quickly and the building team put the finishing blue touches to the doors on the toilets. 

The finished job

Luchema Children's Home

A challenging day for the students at the Luchema project.  Our building team were constructing a fence around the site to make it secure, as without this they are unable to keep things safely on site.  It’s hot work digging holes for the upright posts in the heat of the day but this is what they did without complaint and the team are determined to complete the fence before we leave.  We have been shopping to the supermarket for additional hammers this evening to make the progress quicker.  One side of the fence is complete and we have our fingers crossed that the delivery of the upright posts for the fence arrives at Luchema tomorrow morning to allow us to continue to complete a further side of the fence (these things are never guaranteed in Kenya and when working on Kenyan time).

Moving the wood offcuts ready to start the fence

Shortly after we arrived at the project those working as teaching assistants were introduced to their classes and began teaching lessons.  This was daunting as in some classes our ‘teaching assistants’ were without a teacher and expected to teach their classes with limited prior knowledge of the curriculum and where the students were up to.  As the day progressed the teaching assistants confidence grew and working in pairs helped.  Tom was in the pre-school / reception class and did a brilliant job of teaching the children their alphabet. 

Oli and Jackie teaching class 3

Just before lunch the whole school had PE which would best be described as organised chaos as we tried to explain how to play stuck in the mud and organise running races in teams.  There was a comical moment when we demonstrated how to do a relay race checked that all the children understood (or so we thought) and then when we said on your marks, set, go they all ran even if it wasn’t their turn.

Adam cooking lunch with Patience

The children’s lunch – beans and corn

Lunch at Luchema was an equally humbling experience, our cook of the day Adam did a great job in the kitchen tending the fire and serving the food.  It was all hands on deck to serve the food and again the children were so patient as they waited their turn for a bowl to become available.

Playtime at Luchema

Afternoon lessons passed quickly and soon school was over and the children were out to play with us.  The building team did a brilliant job and completed one of the four sides of the fence.

The end of school playing with the children

After Project work
Tonight was a great night as we sang happy 18^th birthday to George and celebrated with a slice of delicious cake made by a local baker (interestingly called the London Bakery).

George’s 18^th birthday celebration