Spring Newsletter
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 27 April 2011 03:29
The Bumala school is as beautiful as ever educating 300 kids and housing 35 in the dormitories.. The latest new water well (deeper, electric pump) is working pretty well, (thanks to Meryl Tihanyi) and they are having a nice rainy season which should help the vegetables. We started the first year of high school classes, which will soon be self supporting, by having two-thirds of the 28 stays pay fees to offset the costs of the MCC primary school graduates.
In Nairobi, our Kawangware MCC school is also rolling along fairly well and the students and teachers remain enthusiastic. From our experience in Bumala, we’ve learned that a permanent campus facilitates learning and stability for our students. We are currently fundraising to build a campus in Kawangware.
We thought that giving the opportunity for some of the boarding students in Nairobi would help their growth and development. However, the transition proved to be difficult for many of the students. So we are welcoming them back and reopening the boy’s dorm on the Kawangware campus and putting the head teacher – John Wafula – in to live with these kids. Here is a picture of some of the boys who want to live (again) at the school sponsored apartment.
On the other hand, the Form One kids at Bumala seem very happy with their new home and schooling. They may miss their people back home but they seem to like their new bucolic home very much, and like many 15 or 16 year olds the most important people in their lives are their classmates anyway. I was amazed by how mature and sharp some of ‘our kids’ look these days. It warms the heart. Unfortunately I didn’t bring a camera with me to Bumala when I visited.
April is a holiday month between terms for Kenyan schools but I was able to have a craft day at the Kawangware school. We worked outside while the floor was drying with new hard clay covering. Thanks to some donations by Barbara Hoegen and her colleagues at the American School of Paris we were able to give the kids book bags and back packs to decorate on craft day. The baby class also got tin cups that they each put their own name on while the teachers helped decorate each one specially.
A neighbor lady taught the older kids how to make beads from recycled paper. They are really very nice and I ended up buying a bunch of these necklaces in the hopes of selling them in Paris as an income generation scheme for the school. Here are 2 examples (please excuse the aging model but she was the only one available on such short notice)
We’ve finally gotten our new NGO, “Amis de MCC” officially registered and France and have opened a bank account, and we will be providing that information to interested folks. Happy to help arrange some “virements”!
Cheers,
Lili
