Friday 26^th July

Yesterday was spent mostly in travelling. We left Nairobi and headed for Narok and our route took us through the Great Rift Valley. The road hugs the edge of the top for quite some time so we had spectacular views across the valley. We stopped at one of the view points for a photo opportunity and had the chance to see some of the local crafts as well.

Around 60km from Narok, the bus made some very strange screeches and started giving out lots of smoke!! It turned out really to be steam as the engine had overheated. We alighted and a passing truck pulled us into a farm drive while we waited to see if it was a permanent break down or not. Luckily there was a nice breeze and intermittent cloud cover, so we were able to stretch our legs and speak to a couple of local children for a wee while and then after refilling the radiator we were off again! Narok, where we stopped for lunch, is where Pastor Tom works. It is on the edge of the Maasai Mara and we saw several warriors in traditional garb. We’ll be staying in Narok later on so we didn’t take time to look round after lunch. We knew the drive from Narok to Kisumu would be a long one, and so it proved; because the bus has to travel much slower after dark we were travelling for over four hours, though it must be confessed that most people slept at least part of the way. We were very glad to reach our destination in Ahero at 9.00 p.m. and after choosing rooms we just ate and went to bed.

Today was much more exciting as we finally went to work on our project in Kandaria. The first job of the morning was to sort out all our boxes of donations and organise them so that we could take a couple of boxes to Kandaria with us. When we travelled there,we saw why we had to stay in Ahero even though it is 20 km away and takes an hour on our bus: it is very, very rural with only small scattered hamlets of huts, although it looks very fertile and we saw fields of all kinds of crops including rice, sweet corn and tomatoes. It’s also a tea growing area. Kandaria Mixed Secondary School, where we are working is very small and only two years old. There has been a primary school there for some time but the community only managed to raise enough money to start building a secondary school two years ago. They are delighted we are helping them to grow.

Today, Mr MacDonald and Dilara and Jon were teaching a combined S1& S2. They did an interactive lesson on the history of medicine; I believe Dilara having her leg amputated was a memorable moment. While they were teaching, the rest of us were working on building the classroom. Everyone helped to organise and lay out bricks ready for adding to the walls and some of the group tried their hand at bricklaying. More of the group will have the chance to try that tomorrow. They only have one trowel and one spade so not many people can build at the same time. We also played football with the pupils and tried to teach them rounders; we hope by next week they will be star players.

We had lunch today at Pastor Tom’s house and met his wife. Lunch was served in a reed shelter which had been especially built for us.

Everyone was hot, dust and tired by the end of the day, but we are all feeling a real sense of achievement.

Miss Scott and Mrs Duncan

We will try to add photos to the blog when we can, but pictures can also be seen on the Mission International facebook page www.facebook.com/missionmatters