Sunday 13th June

We started working this week. I quite like my timetable for the next 2 months as its is a good mix of manual, community and class based.

On Monday and Tuesday we started digging for trees at a school we are working in. The school lies at the bottom of a massive rocky bank so we had to walk up that with our equipment to do the digging. It certaintly got the heart beat going! The views up there were awesome as it was pretty high up. On the Monday I cant remember how many holes I dug but on Tuesday I dug around 21 which was me going an a decent speed. Fortuately the sun was out which was nice but we cant plan the trees until it rains. The reason the trees will benefit the schools is because once they are fully grown in 2 years time they can be sold to provide money for the school or used to build new buildings. On Thursday we dug and planted over 100 trees on the school grounds. They could be watered down here unlike the top of the bank. (carrying enough water up would of been a killer hence waiting for the rain!) We got pretty mad at one point because all the kids came out to play and were trampling on all our work.

On Wednesay we have our community work and this week we helped an elderly neighbour with her property. She lives in a mud hut but she grows her own food and sells coal to the communiuty for their stoves. She relies on her grandson to come and help her so she loved us being their. She can only speak kikuyu and we think she is traditional tribal as she has those ears! (you know the ones right? lol) We used machetes to strip back her hedges, strip the leaves off what we chopped so it could be used as wood. Some of the girls pulled maize pieces of the cobs for her to use in meals which takes a while. I asked her grandson how much time we saved him and he told me we had saved him one month!! I thought that was brill! We finished quite early so had the afternoon off after our dinner. Two of the girls went back later that night to buy some coal so we could heat some water. She gave them 3 large maize cobs so we could cook. They noticed she was in the pitch black and mustnt have any electricity. It seems really sad that she is 76, lives in a mudhut on her own with no electricity. It goes dark at 7pm here at the moment, And for someone to have so little but to be so giving is touching. We are going to take her some bread today as a gesture. We are looking into buying her a lamp too which she can maintain with parafin. watch this space!

On Friday we had our weekly meeting. John who is the main guy in charge of the Kisima project which we are contributing to comes to these so we get to ask him about things we have noticed. I noticed this week about disabled prople and the way they are treat. At the school there is a deaf boy, no one plays which him, he finds it difficult to interact with the other children and the teachers accept that the way it is. He plays with a car tyre every play time. There is also a mentally disabled child in the village and he is always on his own. Apparantly they are seen a burden and some parts of Kenya kill thier disabled children which is appaulling. The government is currently getting a new constitution which includes provision etc for disabled children and the school we are working at is looking at being the disabled centre for the area so this is good news!

On Friday afternoon we were invited to teach a class. Me and Millie took Class 6 Science: The solar system. The teacher told us "they arent very bright" bless them but we tried to make it as interesting as possible. We had fun at the end and they gave us a song. After class we all sat down outside with sme of the teachers and the headmaster brough us some maize cobs. They were delicious!! The headmaster also wrote a letter to four of us and us out in a few weeks. He is going to show us around the area which is nice :)

Yesterday (Sat) we were invited to a wedding. We were all really excited but it felt really odd not even knowing the bride and groom. We even got a special mention from the reverand which proves how wierd it it! It was a gospel wedding and I'm not lying it was pretty intense. They went on and on for about 2 hrs before they were actually wed. "praise the lord", "halleluliah" etc. They were freestyle praising the lord into the microphones rather than saying the same prayre so it was just noise. We were all glad once the 10 surmons were over lol and sat outside to be surreounded by kids. One of the adults even told them to give us some breathing space! We are getting a bit sick of it now with the ones that see us everyday, we've been here 2 weeks and it feels like we are on exibition. The kids would happily take the clothes off your back if they could, constantly asking for stuff, your shoes everything. We are hoping the novelty will eventually wear off LOL.

Theres some political issues going on at the moment in Nairobi, There are rows over the new constitution and there were some bombings on Sunday night. I hope it sorts itself out soon!

Thats it for this week. Til next week

Jules xxx

P.S Miss Tom :) xx