Bye bye Cheptebo.. =(

After a wonderful 6 weeks in Cheptebo it was time to continue our journey. It was very emotional leaving Joesph and Sally as they had become our Kenyan parents, and of course our sister Purity! =( They will be missed greatly aswell all the staff at the conference centre and students at the school! Thankyou guy for such an awesome time!

In addition I would like to apologise for the lack of posts on the blog, time has been limited and we have been very busy.

So we left Cheptebo early thursday morning after a night of very little sleep. Our bus was leaving at 10am from Eldoret which is an hour and a half drive from the conference centre. At 8.20am Jospeh decides to get his car washed and cleaned. We also needed to buy our tickets. Hmmm. Time was short - but thats Kenyan timing for you. But somehow we managed it, spot on time. Well we were.. but the bus wasnt.

School Report

After an enjoyable 5 weeks of teaching at Rokocho Secondary School we have written a report about the school which we wish to share we everyone following the blog and people back home. Many Thanks

Rokocho Mixed Day Secondary

Two years after its’ proposal in 2009, Rokocho Mixed Day Secondary School was founded in March 2011 providing affordable secondary education for children local to the area, in the Kerio Valley, based in one room of the local primary school. With the majority of Kenyan secondary education in the form of expensive boarding schools, with fees of more than 50,000KSH per year, the day school was designed to help local children from low income families to gain access to a previously unattainable level of education. By eliminating the cost of boarding, Rokocho Secondary School manages to reduce costs by over 37,000KSH per child, with annual costs to pupils at 13,000KSH.

The nearest day school in the surrounding area is over 13km away, high up towards the edge of the vast Kerio Valley, which requires high, often unaffordable, travel costs or an exhausting trek to school for most children. This made the development of Rokocho day school a priority in an area where financial issues among families are commonplace and is the main reason why many children miss out on secondary education and consequently leaves many of the children uneducated and forced to remain in the valley with few career prospects aside from manual labour and subsistence farming.

Rokocho Secondary School is predominantly attended by children who, after completing primary school, could not afford to continue their education and so dropped out in search of work to support their family or save for one more year of education.  But this new school has offered them an amazing chance to further their studies and allow them to pursue any number of opportunities through extending their academic achievements.

The school is currently attended by 11 of the most dedicated and devoted students whose days start at 6.20am and finish at 6.00pm. These pupils have fantastic dreams of careers, such as becoming doctors, political journalists and engineers, and are determined to make them a reality. They are undoubtedly the hardest working students we’ve met, teaching themselves when unreliable teachers don’t attend, spending what little break time they have studying or revising and during lessons they listen intensely and try their hardest at every task they are given.

At the present, Rokocho Secondary is funded solely by the few donations of local people and housed in Rokocho Mixed Day Primary School which was built by volunteers in 1983 and funded by donations. It currently has 255 pupils ranging from nursery age to ‘standard 8’ (the finishing year of primary education in Kenya) taught by 9 primary and 3 nursery teachers which are paid for by the parents. From the 14^th of June, the government grant which fed the pupils one meal of maize per day ran out which forced children of all ages to attempt walking home, eating lunch and walking back within the one hour lunch break. Often living kilometres away meant that it was unlikely that they made it home to have a sufficient lunch but maybe a piece of fruit, if they made it home at all.

The secondary school currently has a public status and relies heavily on the school fees and donations from the parents, who struggle to feed their families, to feed the students, pay for school equipment and give the teachers, who volunteer their time, a token amount to subsidise mostly travel costs.

Although this school has only recently opened up with a modest start, big plans are in place to encourage more children of the local area to attend. These plans are predominantly reliant on the government changing the status to a state school and providing a number of qualified teachers, which will still need payment from the parents. Although its’ current reputation for helping the students succeed will also promote it to the local area and it is expected that there will be an increase of students next year because of this. Form 1 which is currently made up of 11 students, ten of which will move up to form 2, is said to increase to 30. Form 2, which currently does not exist, will be made up of those who move up as well as other local children at that level who currently attend more expensive or hard to reach schools.

The secondary school, although presently housed within the primary school, owns 7 acres of land which will be used to build brand new school buildings. This land will be used for 4 classrooms, a laboratory, a library and an administration block. However, these encouraging plans may be somewhat unrealistic with a whole series of complications and lack of resources and money.

 Firstly, where we would rely on the government for, such as funding for even the most basic building requirements, it is expected that the student’s families foot the bill, as government support comes only in the form of providing partially paid teachers. Furthermore, the raw materials necessary to build the complex would require funds far exceeding any amount that the parents of the children could ever afford.

Lastly, even if donations could surmount the building costs there are far greater necessities that need addressing as we experienced when we arrived. What was initially planned to be one month of assisting local teachers and helping the children learn became more of an uphill struggle to ensure these brilliant students could achieve their best. With subjects having an average 1 book per class, we found that there was a real deficit in learning resources. With money donated from our families and friends we managed to ensure form 1 had at least 1 book between 2 students for a class size of 11. With the money left over we tried to equip the class for next year and bought 2 books for each subject. Although this will allow them to access the material, it is nowhere near sufficient and in the UK would likely be grounds to close the school. We identified textbooks for from 1 and 2 as a priority for the donated money for two reasons.

1)      Form 2 would be without textbooks for likely the whole year which would likely cause many students to drop out, as they would be wasting their money, and those who remained would be forced to repeat the year as without sufficient knowledge to pass the end of year exams they would be unable to progress to form 3. Therefore they would have to pay for one year of education twice with money they do not have.

2)      Textbooks are the students’ primary source of educational material. This comes back to the problem with public school status. Due to the lack of government supplied teachers, the school relies heavily on teachers from the primary school who volunteer when they have a gap in their busy schedules and local university students who give up their time to help the children. Unfortunately this means that there is a tendency for the students to have to teach themselves when the volunteer teaches are unable to make it to class.

The Battle of the Termites

The Battle of the Termites!
One afternoon last week it had been raining and raining, real Kenyan style. But we were fine as were indoors and planning some of our lessons for this week. Later on in the evening the rain had stopped, so we went for supper. On our return we decided to watch a film on the laptop before heading off to bed. I was just shutting down the laptop as I noticed a termite flying by, flapping around and making lots of noise. I didn’t think much of it. The next minute there was two of them, then three, then four. I quickly retreated to my room for insect repellent – spraying them over and over didn’t seem to do much, if anything it just made some of them stick to the floor. They continued to multiply by the second, ten, fifteen, twenty! I shouted to Paul who was in bed by this time, he was not impressed and thought I was exaggerating. I wasn’t. There was that many of them by now that we couldn’t go out our rooms without getting attacked by them. There must have been a minimum of 50 of them flapping around. Paul finally got out of bed to see what was going on, upon opening his door he was also attacked by them. “Ahhh! Josh what have you done!?” Still Paul did nothing to help, he just closed his door and returned to bed. After a good hour of spraying what must have been the whole bottle of insect repellent, I decided to arm myself with a flip flop. It was good baseball practise! I stood in the doorway swinging at any termite that came near. VICTORY! At last!
Although when I finally got in to bed I realised that the best option would have been to just turn all the lights off and go to bed in the first place. Aww well, my way is much more fun!

A quick update..

So yet another blog post about our adventure in Kenya.We have been very very busy and havent had much time, so appolgise on not getting more posted on the blog.

So firstly we are still alive and well - always a good start. Still only lacking some sleep from being so busy, and blood from the mozzies. The weather has been very mixed, lots of sun but lots of Kenyan rain too, it makes rain in the UK look pathetic in comparison. We have been eating very well too, lots of stews and Kenyan dishes. We have really taken to their Chai tea and have learnt how to make it ourselves.

Now then, an interesting story about our journey from Eldoret to Cheptebo. We were driving along with Joseph and Sally, coming down the hills from Iten when we saw a large group of people in the middle of the road. Joseph pulled over and asked them what was going on, they replied and said that there had been an accident. When pulling off to continue our journey we notice a strange object on the ground near the group of people. Joseph informed us that it was infact someone’s arm. After another few hundred metres down the road we came across another crowd of people and a pickup. We stopped again and asked what happened. They explained that the driver of the pickup was drunk and was driving down the hill with his arm out the window. He then had a side on collision with a large truck going up the hill, damaging the whole side of this pickup, as a result had also taken off his arm. He was that drunk that he didn’t notice until a few hundred metres down the road. We could see where the blood had showered over the side of the vehicle from where his arm was taken off from the Elbow down. What a lovely Welcome to Kenya it was. 

On another note, our first church service here at the project was eventful. I don’t think I have ever met so many people in one go, nor have I shaken so many hands. Although the church is stunning, a really nice clean and fresh look about it, and has a really good turnout. Praise God, Amen! We were invited up to give the congregation a few words of encouragement and to tell them a bit about ourselves and what we are here to do. You can really get the sense that everyone has a really passion for Christ and that it means a lot to them, they love to worship by dancing and singing but also by prayer, Arab boss, a local man, takes prayer every week and he just keeps going on and on. Although its in Swahili, you can tell he has a real relationship with God and loves to chat and do business. Joseph was telling us how he once spent a night in the church praying, 12 hours straight! How did he not run out of things to say? Hehe.

God has been doing even more amazing things, Paul received his exam results for his first year Medicine at Liverpool. I am happy to inform that he passed and is now officially a second year! As a result, Paul can now join us for the last few weeks of our trip when we travel to Mombassa and get to relax and see more of the country. Congratulations Paul!

Even more to come very very soon!

First blog!

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn darkness into light before them; and make the rough places smooth” Isaiah 42v16

So here we are in Kenya. After leaving Nottingham at 15.02 on Wednesday it took just over 24 hours of travelling on trains, planes and by car before finally arriving in Nairobi.

Coming through arrivals at Nairobi airport was a nervous experience, partly because I had no real idea of what time or day it was due to so much jet lag, but also because of the reality check of where we actually were and not knowing what to expect. We must have stuck out like sore thumbs, carrying our massive rucksacks, looking lost, and not to mention our massive matching broke back hats. Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee. No wonder Wesley, our contact, spotted us straight away.

Nairobi was an interesting place to be. Their roads are more like bumper cars at a fare, and a constant fear of being mugged as we were the only masungu’s around. However Wesley was great, he welcomed us with open arms into his home and even gave us his bed. I have never been so genuinely well looked after, Wesley and his family made us feel so welcome and couldn’t do enough for us.

After catching up on some sleep we adventured into Nairobi city centre on a tour by Wesley’s wife Fancy and her friend Charity. They got us a good deal on our Masai Mara trip, sim cards, easycoach to Eldoret and also treated us to lunch at an Organic restaurant.

We were up early the next morning to continue our travels to Cheptebo, we had a 6 hour coach journey to Eldoret before getting picked up by Sally and Joseph for an hour and a half drive to Cheptebo project! The coach journey to Eldoret was more of a mix between bumper cars and a roller coaster ride! Lots of terrible bumps, overtaking on hills etc. Upon arrival in Eldoret our bags were stolen! We opened the hold under the coach to find that our bags were no where to be seen. Paul’s fears, which he had kept to himself during our travels, had come true! It felt like a life time before we found them, somehow magically on the opposite side to the coach. What actually happened we don’t know, but there was no physical way they could of moved themselves.

Eldoret seemed a nicer place than Nairobi, not quite so busy. We grabbed some lunch in one of Paul’s childhood favourite places Sizzlers before heading off to our main destination, the Cheptebo Project. Hmmmm Fried Chicken :)

Some pictures of the journey…

At the project we are slowing becoming more and more busy. Everyone was very welcoming and excited to see us. We gave a small talk in church Sunday morning. We visited the local school on Monday to find out what we are going to be doing. Paul gave an amazing talk to the Christian Union at the school.

We are experiencing issues with setting up the network, the antenna which was set up by SafariCom is purely for their own benefit to increase the 3G network coverage in the area. We will be investigating into it more tomorrow, trying to find a way of getting around the issue and allowing me to setup the WiFi successfully. Most likely we will be ordering hardware from the UK as the price of equipment here is expensive.

We are currently about a week behind on the blog, but hopefully will be posting more and more as the week progresses.

God bless, Josh and Paul