My time in Kenya has come to an end, and it feels like I only just arrived.  How have ten days flown so quickly?  It was been all go since day one, with very little time to sit and rest, and I don’t know how Jon and Sarah do it all the time - I am exhausted!  

Having written a blog post during church last week, I suppose it is only fitting that I should write another this week - although right now it is before church, and I am just writing in my notes because I have used up most of Jon’s data already (hehe) and plan to post when I get to Nairobi airport (free wifi). 

I only spent three days in Sarah’s school: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  Wednesday was a market day in Kisumu, so Jon and I took the day out for that, and Friday was a big school trip - so although we had all of the children for the day, it wasn’t really school-school. 

The children are just wonderful.  Having only started to learn English in January, they already understand quite a lot and can speak a little.  They are very unspoilt, and they genuinely appreciate every little thing you do for them.  Bravine, one of the sponsored children, who comes from a very poor family, was just overjoyed when I bought him new clothes and shoes - the shoes which I bought in the market for 3USD.  He kept coming up to me throughout the day saying “Teacher, see my shoes!”  

You can imagine little Western boys and girls clamouring over having the wrong colour cup, or refusing to wear clothes they don’t like, or shoes too small, or girls’ bags for boys, etc.  Here, they are so grateful just to have something.  So grateful to have a pink mug full of thin sandy porridge for their morning snack.  And at lunch, when they receive a plate of rice and beans, or rice and green vegetables, the loud shouts of “Lunch! Lunch! Lunch!” and hands clapping above their heads needs to be seen to be believed.  

Little Kingsley, aged three, has a zipless pink backpack clearly reserved for some Western girl child, Darren has a warm pink scarf tied around his neck.  They don’t notice these Gender Boxes that we give to colours and things - and why should they?  All they see is that they are fortunate to even have a bag, or a scarf.  

One of the hardest things for me was seeing their shoes.  Their feet are crammed into frayed footwear two sizes too small, shoes tied with fragments of a lace, or just string - or in many cases just flapping open with no lace at all.  But then when you consider their wages...  

One of the teachers, before coming to teach at Fountain of Life, was earning 400USD a YEAR.  And that was to support, as a single mother, two small children and her own mother.  No wonder little Manu (4) is so skeletal and frail.  Now the mother is earning 100USD a month teaching at Fountain of Life, which to us seems insignificant but for her must be massive.  To put into perspective what size Manu is, I bought him new shoes which were a size 9 (a size too big for him).  Seth, who is also four, and average size, I had to buy a size 11.  Manu’s arms are like twigs, his skin stretched on his face like an old man.  He is now getting plenty of food, especially at school, but at that age it is hard to undo the damage done by years of starvation. 

One of the downsides to teaching in a pre-primary class is that they all cough... constantly... and they usually direct their coughs into my face.  Or whoever’s face they happen to be looking at at the time.  This means that I am now down with another cold, having just got over the Irish one!  Hurrah for me!  It doesn’t help that they have absolutely no concept of hygiene.  They wash their hands at break before their sandy porridge, and they wash their hands before lunch.  And in between times, they use two hole-in-the-ground squat toilets (with no light, no toilet paper, literally just a slit in the ground - not even a bench) and then they run back into class and spend the remainder of the day sucking their fingers.  

Imagine, if you will (or skip the entire paragraph, if you have a delicate stomach), 29 small children between the ages of 3-5.  Imagine their clothes:  the girls wearing both underwear and baggy shorts beneath their skirts or dresses - sometimes even tights as well, the boys wearing underwear and two pairs of baggy shorts that come down to their ankles in most cases.  Imagine their going to this slit in the ground completely unsupervised - aiming as best they can while attempting to keep their many layers of clothing out of the way - not to mention their tattered shoes.  And then, having finished whatever they needed to do, traipsing back into the classroom.  Traipsing back onto the sand-covered concrete floor.  I had to tie up a number of broken - and sodden - shoe laces - during my time at school, and the smell of urine from the damp shoes was overwhelming.  So this, and the unwashed hands, and the general red dust and dirt over everything, is an interesting environment. 

The children are so excited to learn.  They are so enthusiastic, so keen to try new things. 

...more to come but I am tired...now in my B&B in Nairobi!