August 3rd, 2013

It’s been another busy week here in Kisii; we have been feverishly criss-crossing Kisiiland, visiting potential partner schools for the future. Meanwhile students have been back in school, following the teacher’s strike coordinated by the Kenyan National Union of Teachers (Knut).I am very excited to announce that we have found five potential schools that we will hopefully be able to work with next year. The schools face a number of different challenges. Project Workers will be able to assist them in numerous ways including improving library provisions and textbook-to-student ratios, equipping laboratories to enable students to do more practicals, securing water and electricity provision and working with teachers and students to create sustainable initiatives around careers and health.

We have also been conducting our second round of pastoral visits; travelling to each of our project pairs to see the work that they are doing in their schools, discuss how they are getting on and ensure that they are enjoying life in their village. Project Workers have begun work on libraries and laboratories in their schools and are also very busy with preparations for careers and health days coming up in the second half of the summer.

On one such visit we were able to meet three puppies, all less than three weeks old, who live on the compound with Ana and India, two of our Project Workers. This provoked much laughter from Mokeira, who lives with them; these puppies will grow up to be guard dogs so they were much amused to see that it made a man who turned 25 this week go all gooey!