25 May: Green Tea and mosquitos

Avenue Of Roz

First stop this morning was to Migosi school which I haven't been back to since my first trip here. It was great to see Roz's trees so big (AKA the Avenue of ROZ) plus the water harvesting system still up and looking in good condition, however now there is big Unicef water tanks that hold much more. There are two new classrooms, one of which was a government funded building and the other from Barclays Bank UK. The head there is a real go getter and applied to the Bank, I think he just has a lot of balls and is very motivated. You can tell this by looking at his school, the beautifully planed gardens and trees as well as a highly motivated staff team. They are the second biggest school in Kenya with over 1500 pupils and have a huge number of class rooms. E-merges presence can be seen in the form of painted class rooms and a huge line of trees as well as good toilets and some newly build urinals that we were looking at to see what we could plant around them to soak up the ammonia from the urine/sand pit that’s below it.
After that we went to the Bustani farm, while Tyler had a look round a took a peek at some of the plants to see how they were doing. It looked much or tidy and well maintained than when I was last there. It became apparent that they did not have enough feed to give to the chickens so we drove up to by feed, only to find that there is a big shortage so we could only by half a bag which last just 3 days. Both Marcel and the Lady there said the best thing to do would be to drive and pick some up from this place that is about 30KM from the farm. When I asked her how much it would be there she said probably about Ksh350 but where we are they charge about Ksh500. Suddenly my eyes rolled and you could see dollar signs. I asked Marcel if we could go to buy a whole truck load and take it to the farm, then let the boys sell it to make money enough to feed the chickens for a long time. Marcel and Tyler thought it was a great idea, I guess its one of those good example where my business sense can be worked into this kind of NGO work. I think Marcel and I are going to go and pick a load up in the truck later in the week.
Next on the monings list was St. Marks school, which is in Nyalenda one of the big slumb areas which faces many challenges for the youth growing up there. Having a strong school there is so important and the headmaster showed us almost a 10 point increase in exam results (which they have not reached in a decade) which he credits to the work E-merge has done to make the learning environment improved therefore increasing the moral and self esteem of both students and teachers. We looked at some of the holes in the asbestos roof which need fixing before we go on to work on a water harvesting system that will flush toilets and to divert water which is very important as the school floods so easily. (it is the school Peter and I pumped water out of for two hours last week).
The job of replacing all the asbestos roof for iron sheeting would be hugely expensive, but I came up with the idea that people in England could donate 8 - 10 pounds and personally buy one sheet of metal that could have their name written on it. With enough donations for one metal sheet we could re roof the whole of one class room block. Saving the kids from inhaling carcinogenic particles. Undisturbed asbestos is not the end of the world, but this stuff is crumbling a lot in places and I think really should be changed if possible. I'm going to suggest the Idea to a few people back home, but I cant really head up any fundraising or spreading of the Idea as I am all the way here. I hope someone will volunteer to take on the project as it could make such a difference to a school of almost 900 kids.
After an awesome lunch made by Roxi, Marcel and I went off to Kisumu boys school and the Ministry of education to ask about chair and table designs and also for a second opinion on text books. Both of these things are towards the Lefungu high school E-merge is starting. I'm finding sorting the tables, chairs and lockers difficult due to all the different necessary quotes and working out. Mostly because I spent so long on one design only to find out that we were to change it, this was at first Bart changing his mind but I also see now that a different approach would be much better but also more expensive. Its difficult working as the middle man, when doing Rendezvous stuff I know exactly what everything costs and how much we have in the bank to play with. Here with E-merge I need to keep costs down but really have no idea about there accounts and money distribution to projects.
Now I'm just chilling with a green tea typing this blog over a green tea while trying to right the mosquitos off. I went to the gym today which was weird as its such a luxury and western thing, but it felt good so I may be a bit spoilt and join for a month. I just find it hard spending £25 on a membership when I know that’s two and a half replacement roof sheets at the school.