Thursday, August 4, 2016

Last School Day

It's always hard to say good-bye. We are always so warmly welcomed and accepted that we feel that we've been a part of this community forever.


Teacher Jackie, who I've worked with for the past several years.



Lance is doing triple duty - teaching songs and taking care of two of his three boys.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I help out with teacher training in the afternoons. If you want to see some pictures of that, check out Maggie's blog - magenglund.blogspot.com - for a bunch of photos I took of her and several other trainers in action.

Kids wearing their "hope hats" - based on the Jeremiah verse that says, "I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for hope and a future." Pipe cleaners were obviously a huge hit, and then using the pipe cleaners to create "glasses" was the next big thing.





One of our crafts today was to get a silhouette drawn of your head and then decorate it as you liked.





 The promised picture of the field where the older classes sometimes play during recess.


Part of our walk from the school to Basilus and Esther's house for our chai an lunch. Muddy day today. Rained a lot last night, but fortunately, it did not rain for the kids' presentation today. I'll see if I have any luck posting some videos from that when we get back to Nairobi tomorrow.



Basilus and Esther, the leaders of the school. Not sure whose small child this is.


 Some kids in "my" class.


Some of the business establishments we pass as we near the school. The school serves mostly students living in serious poverty in the slum. But there are an amazing number of super small businesses and somehow people are making their way.





This is a matatu - the "go to" transportation here. This one was hired to take the teachers back to their home after the final training session. The guy is red is the ticket taker. Most of the time, people wait for matatus along the main road, sort of like a bus stop, except that as the matatus slow down (marginally) near a group of people, the ticket guy will shout out the general direction they are going, and if someone is going that way, they'll climb in. Most of the time, people are packed in tight, and many times the ticket taker will ride as he is doing now. 



Another form of transport are these motorcycles. The guys are waiting to be hired, either as transport for a person who sits behind them, or for "stuff" of any kind.

A couple miscellaneous photos from Kay Stradinger. This is "Bitty" who takes a week off work every year to prepare food for our chai break and lunch break. And she is holding Harrison - the youngest of our team and of the Chamberlain family. I think they're both absolutely gorgeous.

The place where we're staying is landscaped beautifully.

We're eating fabulous pineapple - wish we could bring home a box!

At the end of teacher training, there is always a big celebration - so fun! And this year we were given lovely gifts - I'm wearing my new Masai blanket and embracing Carnavale, the teacher whose picture I included in my fundraising letter since last year we had a taken a picture together, both wearing bright pink shirts.



I'm working in our conference room since we can't get internet in our rooms, but this dead mosquito, and other live ones flying around me are telling me it's time to get out of here and under my mosquito-netted bed!  Oo - just killed another one...










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