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| October 09 trip - 09 November 2009
October 2009
 We have just returned from our October trip rather more weary than usual as flights from Nairobi were cancelled and connections in Paris missed. We spent 10 days in Kenya, all of them full to the brim. The main emphasis of our trip was establishing communication between our high school there and The Kingsway School in Cheadle. To that end we took two teachers , Anthony DiPaola and Karen Clarke from The Kingsway with us to do some teacher training, introduce ITC on the two laptops and create curricular exchange possibilities. They worked so hard and forged excellent relationships with staff and students alike. It is hoped that a more pupil-centred learning approach will help those students who are not of the highest ability to gain better results as well as maintaining the excellent standards already at the school.
Water
 We met up with a lady in Nairobi who had shown interest in a water filter workshop at her home in Kitale, some 100 miles north of Kisumu. This was very successful and it’s hoped to visit the site during our next visit. We spent a bone-shaking day driving to Kilgoris (Our contact there, Fredrick, already has a workshop in the Transmara among the Masai .) to discuss the possibilities of a workshop in the town. This will begin in the next few weeks when Joseph will  go and start the training. From there we rattled our way another several hours to a dry, forbidding place on Lake Victoria, Bala, where there is an orphanage with 800 children! We had already arranged for four filters to be installed by our workshop in Simbi but the orphanage is going to start its own workshop to serve the surrounding area as well. The roads were some of the worst we’d been on.We have a list of another 6 widows in Nyandiwa to whom water filters will be donated.
Steve could no longer walk past the well at school without sourcing and screwing on three missing nuts! This activity drew quite a crowd and even some assistance!
We met with the Rotary President in Kisumu who at last signed the papers to enable funding from Rotary District grants here to be released to fund gutters and tanks on all our local primary schools to enable water harvesting, rain water being clean enough to drink.
Steve met with the agriculture committee to introduce some ideas for irrigation. Some years ago our friend Margaret Bancewicz told us of a hydraulic ram pump used on Raasay .  It uses only the force of the water to pump miles and to quite a height. Steve has built one! and the big boys at church spent a happy morning with their new toy testing it out in a local stream. It works! Steve spent time with Ayugi looking for a suitable site by the river for the pump to be installed. It’s problematical but he’s sure it can be overcome – it just needs the ‘pump committee’ to come up with a good idea! They’ll be working on it – I know this because at least two of them are planning on a trip to Kenya to install it!
Education
The Primary School buildings are not yet completed but we are sending funds to do this before our next visit in February 2010. We are also purchasing teachers’ desks and lockers, text book cupboards and 70 new double desks so that pupils can sit two to a desk rather than the three at present.
We bought another £400 of text books for the library from Kisumu – a shop which offers us 25% discount!- and took with us some lovely reference books donated here.
Angela took individual photographs of all our 72 sponsored students. We can report that they are all doing very well both physically and academically, some being in the top 3 in their classes and some being prefects.
We are funding another 8 students at University or Teacher Training College through the Hope Beyond Form 4 Scholarship Scheme. This is one of our main expenditures but we feel it is worthwhile both now and in the long-run.
We took with us lab coats and science equipment donated by Loreto, Moss Side, pens and pencils donated by Barclays and yet more school bags donated by The Seashell Trust. We also g ave each Form 2 student a pencil case made by Year 7 students at the Kingsway school, each with name and pencils etc.. The teachers asked for clocks so we bought one for each classroom. They were greeted by much cheering and clapping by the students who found it hard to believe!
I have already mentioned the sterling work carried out by Anthony and Karen. We bought the school a printer so that documents such as registers and exam results will no longer have to be laboriously written out every time they’re needed.
We visited Lwanda Lutheran Secondary School to ascertain whether a partnership with  Moorside High Scool in Swinton might be feasible. The Headteacher at Moorside is an ex-colleague of Angela’s. The school is in its fourth year, has just four classrooms, one cupboard of books and two latrine blocks. We are hoping to establish a link soon so that Moorside can fund more buildings and equipment and begin a curricular exchange similar to the one between the two Kingsway schools.
The touch rugby teams are still competing and enjoying it. A friend of Sam’s donated lots of pairs of trainers which were very well received. We watched a football match between our school and Wang’apala, the local boys’ boarding school. The latter team was kitted out with matching strip and boots whilst our team had some in a striped top, others in plain blue and several with bare feet. Does anyone out there know or have a business which could sponsor a strip and boots? We can’t guarantee the advertising will do much good in Kenya but it would give the team a boost. We lost 3.1 by the way.
The girls’ hostel will be complete in time for next term’s Form 4 girls to start using it. We signed the rental agreement with Mary on whose land it’s built and who will act as matron with a bed across the door! The Form 4 boys are camping out in the old house we built for a member of staff some years ago. This is how keen they are to study in school using the solar lighting in the library.
The Mooncups have been such a success with the Form 3 & 4 girls to whom they were given last May that we are informed not a single day of schooling has been lost by the girls since then!! They were distributed to all Form 1 & 2 girls this time and will continue each year with new Form ones. Staff and students alike are thrilled. The Jephcott Trust funded 100 and we have funding for another 60. They make excellent Christmas presents for girls and women if you’re stuck for an idea!! (Gift list on our website.)
Health
The dispensary continues to function well under Edwin’s management. It has ju st been inspected by the government during a vaccination campaign and was given a Grade 1 which means the government will make available free vaccines for children. Brilliant! Edwin has extracted some 30+ teeth since May and keeps excellent records. We took out with us the usual thousands of paracetamol capsules, bandages, plasters, needles, gloves, small instruments, spectacles. Doctors and nurses reading this, more of the same please!
We visited all the dental students trained by Jon Robinson on our last visit in May. They are doing such a good job under very difficult conditions and in such shabby premises. They have safe ly and ‘painlessly’ extracted hundreds of teeth since their training. The smaller needles Jon used are more expensive and they’ve been using bigger ones but Angela suggested in no uncertain terms that the finer ones might be a better idea even if patients have to pay a few pence more! (She shudders even as she writes!) Ken has a small clinic in Misambi, our roadside market place; Paul and Philemon are itinerant but work mainly in Misambi whilst Doreen works in Sondu some 20 miles away in a grubby back street. Her surgery is as clean as possible and she has lots of patients on market days.
Those of you who have been interested in our sponsored student, Elijah, who suffered a severe breakdown during his first term at college will be pleased to know that he is now almost fully recovered and hoping to return to college. He has been advised to wait until next September rather than go in January. His place is open any time. Thankyou for your concern and prayers.
Small Businesses
These are plodding along up to now although we can report that the chickens began to lay whilst we were there (Not a result of our visit but nice!) and the cow – Angela! – is in calf. The vegetables have been unsuccessful so far because of drought conditions but mild rains have been helpful over the last five weeks. Unfortunately there are predictions of an El Nino in November which will wash away everything including homes if it does indeed occur. An item for prayer. The sewing business is doing very well making uniforms for two primary schools and clothing for the wider community. One lady is at present being trained at a local tailor’s to make shorts and trousers.
Karowley was used the week prior to our visit by a young teacher from the Kingsway School whose world tour took her to Kenya where she met up with her parents from Bramhall. All three helped in the school and Jim visited Maseno University to deliver a Chemistry lecture. He hopes to help out the University with funding from Manchester University. We warned them about the idiosyncratic plumbing and the bats in the roof but we didn’t know about the lovelorn weaver bird who woke them up every morning at 5.00 pecking at its reflection in the bathroom window! No earthquakes this time but a wakeful night listening to Debbie the cow mooing because she couldn’t locate her day-old calf.
Thankyou yet again for making this work possible by your donations, interest, prayer and insights. Thankyou from everyone in Nyandiwa and indeed many miles afield who share in the water projects and now school support.
Please, if you are receiving this by post and have an email address, just send me a message to let know the address angelarowley@ntlworld.com.
Last year’s Christmas cards were a success so we’ve had more made this year. If you would like some, email and we’ll get them to you. (Photos of Nyandiwa with a couple of robins!) £3 for 8 .
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| May 09 trip - 14 July 2009
We spent just 10 days in Kenya this time up to 30th May, the main emphasis of the visit being on dentistry. Jon Robinson, a dentist friend from Birmingham, taught at our dispensary from Sa turday afternoon to Thursday evening by which time he and the six trainees had extracted over 120 teeth and inspected 300+ people including the whole of our High School. Our health practitioner and nurse were two of the trainees and the other four came from clinics further afield. We took out five dental kits – each one filled a rucksack – purchased from Dentaid. Jon even managed to preach in church on Sunday!
Water filter workshops.
The filters made at our original workshop in Nyandiwa are easier.JPG) to transport now since the start-up of the donkey and cart business which has been going since February. We have another nine names of widows or needy families who will be given a filter thanks to specific donations. The latest workshop in the Transmara among the Maasai is running very well, so much so that a group of people from the north east near Marsabit who saw it functioning have been to Nyandiwa to train and have started a workshop there. We met with our Rotary contact, George, to discuss a new workshop in Kakamega – north of Kisumu - which should be up and running before our next visit.
Education
Kolweny Kingsway Primary School’s new classro oms are almost finished and we hope to complete the scheme for them over the next few months. They will then be able to demolish the old ‘stable block’and have a smart new complex and parade ground. The primary school at Oogo which we paired with a school in Buckingham has sent letters for the students here which are very moving to read.
Kolweny Kingsway High School now has just over 200 students in the four forms, really the maximum we can support. We were visited in our home by two former students, Dorothy Awuor and Perez Atieno, who are studying at university under our Hope Beyond Form 4 scholarship scheme. They are doing so well and during the long break both are helping out at local primary schools, already giving back to the community. We await applications for this year’s grants as soon as letters of acceptance are received by the students. We are in a position to sponsor 1 0 more students this year. On our outward journey we bought another £1,000 worth of books for the Forrest Hill library which is functioning so well that the initial idea of borrowing on just one day of the week has had to be increased to two and students are studying in their free time. This ‘openness and trust’ with books on open display is a new concept and one not readily accepted but we are insisting on giving it a go. We were able to take out 25 solar powered science calculators and again, many pens and pencils etc.. Some had been brought by our nephew from the States in a suitcase which could then be filled with English goodies for the return journey!
The laptops have meant that better communication between Kolweny Kingsway High School and The Kingsway School Cheadle is now achievable. This will bring about an exchange of ideas and better understanding of each other’s culture. It is planned to take out two Kingsway teachers next time to increase these possibilities and help in the school.
We visited Orera High School to photograph the co mpleted water supply to the science laboratory which has been funded by Formby High School. It is important to provide evidence of projects for those who are kind enough to become involved.
We took our young friend Mike Burr (17) with us too this visit. His main role was t o introduce the High School boys to touch rugby. It went down a storm and the presentation of the Mike Burr trophy on the final day was greeted with such elation and jumping around, that the trophy was irreparably bent out of shape! They don’t do anything gently! The boys are determined to learn ‘proper’ rugby soon - Kenya is among the world’s top 10 teams playing sevens.
Following the success of the new sanitary protection, the mooncup, in the pilot group of three adults and their teenaged daughters, Angela started the Well Woman Clinic using girls from Forms 3 and 4 and female staff members as the next .jpg) control group.We have received a grant from the Jephcott Trust to pay for 100 mooncups and the new girls’ latrines which are completed ahead of schedule and were opened during our visit. They are the talk of the town with running water from a gutter and tank!! The girls and women are so excited about this new venture.
We mentioned in our last newsletter that we were having difficulty finding a piece of land for a Form 4 girls’ hostel to enable the gi rls to use the solar light at the library to study in the evenings during the week. Praise God Ayugi has had discussions with Mary, whose land borders the school, and although she would be prepared to sell us a small piece of her land, one of her sons is only prepared to rent but that’s OK. We will negotiate a rent for a period of 10 years and build only a semi-permanent structure, perfectly adequate for the purpose. We hope to have up to 12 beds to begin with, with the possibility of building on another room as the number of girls increases. As the hostel will be just a stone’s throw from Mary’s own house, she has agreed to sleep there and look after the students – couldn’t be better!
Health
We have already mentioned the work of the dentist which was so very well received. Now people will be able to have a tooth extracted painlessly and efficiently at our dispensary for only a nominal cost. So many have been walking round with sore mouths because they can’t afford dental treatment.
Mike taught all the forms at the High School and Prim ary School how to clean their teeth properly and we handed out hundreds of toothbrushes and toothpaste. We also gave each High School student a nylon backpack bag to carry their belongings in, surplus to requirements at the Seashell trust (Formerly The Royal School for the Deaf.) and donated to us. We looked over the financial records which are being kept each week.
Water harvesting at local primary schools is not yet underway as funding via the Rotary International matched funding scheme is on hold due to the recession. Their funds are gaining little or no interest but there may be funding available after September.
Alfred, the health technician is visiting the dispensary three times a week and we took him a centrifuge this tim.jpg) e to help in his work. It is hoped that the dispensary will soon be registered as an Aids clinic which will mean that drugs for HIV will be freely available to patients. For this we need to have a nurse trained in counselling. More donations of stethoscopes, diabetes testers, blood pressure gauges, operating gowns, sutures, needles, gloves, tablets, bandages, plasters etc and old spectacles were again well-received. There is a possibility of buying a gismo which will test the donated spectacles and give an accurate reading of the prescription so that a simple eye test at Nyandiwa Dispensary will be matched with a corresponding pair of lenses. More pairs of spectacles are most welcome as are Ibuprofen, or similar, caplets.
Small businesses
These are all functioning well. We visited the cow – flatteringly (?) named An.jpg) gela – the several dozen chickens kept at various people’s homes and the fields where the vegetable crops are thriving on this season’s gentler rains after a drought which meant late sowing and then such heavy rain the first sowing was washed away. As mentioned earlier, the donkey cart is being made good use of, transporting goods to and from the road and also transporting water filters even further afield.
The sewing workshop is widening its scope to make uniforms for other primary schools as well as Kolweny. Tailoresses are trained to make only women’s clothes amongst which trousers don’t feature at all so a young tailoress in the community who is without a job has been approached and we are paying for her to train with the tailor in nearby Kadongo who makes our High School uniforms, after which time she will be proficient in the tailoring of trousers and shorts.
Food is still in short supply and will be until the harvest so in April we funded another lorry load of grains for our community. Up to 250 families were supplied with a week’s grain.
Karowley is a comfortable home from home if you forget the appalling, practically non-functioning, plumbing, the cock-eyedness of every door and window, the geckoes in the roof which are especially playful during the early hours and the weight of the furniture.
An elder at church prayed that we would have new experiences this visit – how about an earthquake in the first night which felt as though the entire roof was caving in and an accident in the vehicle? That was more than enough. Noone was injured but there was a fairly hefty excess to pay for a dented front bull bar and bonnet etc.. With the advent of the motor cycle there is an increasing number of road accidents, many fatal, especially when the roads are wet and muddy. In a torrential downpour a motor cyclist skidded in front of a lorry and came off. The lorry driver stood on his brakes and came to a halt barely inches from the man and we gracefully slid into the back of the lorry. The driver didn’t even notice and drove off but his skill had no doubt saved the man’s life. The hassle was afterwards when we had to make a report at the local police station and then another one in Kisumu for insurance purposes just in case someone said we had injured them. Of course everyone moves at a snail’s pace and nobody has the necessary forms and much precious time is wasted dealing with a totally inefficient system. It gives us yet more insight into the frustrations of everyday life in this beautiful land.
Thankyou again for your donations large and small, one-off and regular in money and in kind and for your prayers for the work and for our safety. The people of our community and indeed further afield again send their heartfelt thanks.
P.S. May I again remind those receiving this through the post who have an email address to please drop me a line at angelarowley@ntlworld.com ? Thanks.
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| October 09 trip - 09 November 2009
October 2009
We have just returned from our October trip rather more weary than usual as flights from Nairobi were cancelled and connections in Paris missed. We spent 10 days in Kenya, all of them full to the brim. The main emphasis of our trip was establishing communication between our high school there and The Kingsway School in Cheadle. To that end we took two teachers , Anthony DiPaola and Karen Clarke from The Kingsway with us to do some teacher training, introduce ITC on the two laptops and create curricular exchange possibilities. They worked so hard and forged excellent relationships with staff and students alike. It is hoped that a more pupil-centred learning approach will help those students who are not of the highest ability to gain better results as well as maintaining the excellent standards already at the school.
Water
We met up with a lady in Nairobi who had shown interest in a water filter workshop at her home in Kitale, some 100 miles north of Kisumu. This was very successful and it’s hoped to visit the site during our next visit. We spent a bone-shaking day driving to Kilgoris (Our contact there, Fredrick, already has a workshop in the Transmara among the Masai .) to discuss the possibilities of a workshop in the town. This will begin in the next few weeks when Joseph will go and start the training. From there we rattled our way another several hours to a dry, forbidding place on Lake Victoria, Bala, where there is an orphanage with 800 children! We had already arranged for four filters to be installed by our workshop in Simbi but the orphanage is going to start its own workshop to serve the surrounding area as well. The roads were some of the worst we’d been on.
We have a list of another 6 widows in Nyandiwa to whom water filters will be donated.
Steve could no longer walk past the well at school without sourcing and screwing on three missing nuts! This activity drew quite a crowd and even some assistance!
We met with the Rotary President in Kisumu who at last signed the papers to enable funding from Rotary District grants here to be released to fund gutters and tanks on all our local primary schools to enable water harvesting, rain water being clean enough to drink.
Steve met with the agriculture committee to introduce some ideas for irrigation. Some years ago our friend Margaret Bancewicz told us of a hydraulic ram pump used on Raasay . It uses only the force of the water to pump miles and to quite a height. Steve has built one! and the big boys at church spent a happy morning with their new toy testing it out in a local stream. It works! Steve spent time with Ayugi looking for a suitable site by the river for the pump to be installed. It’s problematical but he’s sure it can be overcome – it just needs the ‘pump committee’ to come up with a good idea! They’ll be working on it – I know this because at least two of them are planning on a trip to Kenya to install it!
Education
The Primary School buildings are not yet completed but we are sending funds to do this before our next visit in February 2010. We are also purchasing teachers’ desks and lockers, text book cupboards and 70 new double desks so that pupils can sit two to a desk rather than the three at present.
We bought another £400 of text books for the library from Kisumu – a shop which offers us 25% discount!- and took with us some lovely reference books donated here.
Angela took individual photographs of all our 72 sponsored students. We can report that they are all doing very well both physically and academically, some being in the top 3 in their classes and some being prefects.
We are funding another 8 students at University or Teacher Training College through the Hope Beyond Form 4 Scholarship Scheme. This is one of our main expenditures but we feel it is worthwhile both now and in the long-run.
We took with us lab coats and science equipment donated by Loreto, Moss Side, pens and pencils donated by Barclays and yet more school bags donated by The Seashell Trust. We also gave each Form 2 student a pencil case made by Year 7 students at the Kingsway school, each with name and pencils etc.. The teachers asked for clocks so we bought one for each classroom. They were greeted by much cheering and clapping by the students who found it hard to believe!
I have already mentioned the sterling work carried out by Anthony and Karen. We bought the school a printer so that documents such as registers and exam results will no longer have to be laboriously written out every time they’re needed.
We visited Lwanda Lutheran Secondary School to ascertain whether a partnership with Moorside High Scool in Swinton might be feasible. The Headteacher at Moorside is an ex-colleague of Angela’s. The school is in its fourth year, has just four classrooms, one cupboard of books and two latrine blocks. We are hoping to establish a link soon so that Moorside can fund more buildings and equipment and begin a curricular exchange similar to the one between the two Kingsway schools.
The touch rugby teams are still competing and enjoying it. A friend of Sam’s donated lots of pairs of trainers which were very well received. We watched a football match between our school and Wang’apala, the local boys’ boarding school. The latter team was kitted out with matching strip and boots whilst our team had some in a striped top, others in plain blue and several with bare feet. Does anyone out there know or have a business which could sponsor a strip and boots? We can’t guarantee the advertising will do much good in Kenya but it would give the team a boost. We lost 3.1 by the way.
The girls’ hostel will be complete in time for next term’s Form 4 girls to start using it. We signed the rental agreement with Mary on whose land it’s built and who will act as matron with a bed across the door! The Form 4 boys are camping out in the old house we built for a member of staff some years ago. This is how keen they are to study in school using the solar lighting in the library.
The Mooncups have been such a success with the Form 3 & 4 girls to whom they were given last May that we are informed not a single day of schooling has been lost by the girls since then!! They were distributed to all Form 1 & 2 girls this time and will continue each year with new Form ones. Staff and students alike are thrilled. The Jephcott Trust funded 100 and we have funding for another 60. They make excellent Christmas presents for girls and women if you’re stuck for an idea!! (Gift list on our website.)
Health
The dispensary continues to function well under Edwin’s management. It has just been inspected by the government during a vaccination campaign and was given a Grade 1 which means the government will make available free vaccines for children. Brilliant! Edwin has extracted some 30+ teeth since May and keeps excellent records. We took out with us the usual thousands of paracetamol capsules, bandages, plasters, needles, gloves, small instruments, spectacles. Doctors and nurses reading this, more of the same please!
We visited all the dental students trained by Jon Robinson on our last visit in May. They are doing such a good job under very difficult conditions and in such shabby premises. They have safely and ‘painlessly’ extracted hundreds of teeth since their training. The smaller needles Jon used are more expensive and they’ve been using bigger ones but Angela suggested in no uncertain terms that the finer ones might be a better idea even if patients have to pay a few pence more! (She shudders even as she writes!) Ken has a small clinic in Misambi, our roadside market place; Paul and Philemon are itinerant but work mainly in Misambi whilst Doreen works in Sondu some 20 miles away in a grubby back street. Her surgery is as clean as possible and she has lots of patients on market days.
Those of you who have been interested in our sponsored student, Elijah, who suffered a severe breakdown during his first term at college will be pleased to know that he is now almost fully recovered and hoping to return to college. He has been advised to wait until next September rather than go in January. His place is open any time. Thankyou for your concern and prayers.
Small Businesses
These are plodding along up to now although we can report that the chickens began to lay whilst we were there (Not a result of our visit but nice!) and the cow – Angela! – is in calf. The vegetables have been unsuccessful so far because of drought conditions but mild rains have been helpful over the last five weeks. Unfortunately there are predictions of an El Nino in November which will wash away everything including homes if it does indeed occur. An item for prayer. The sewing business is doing very well making uniforms for two primary schools and clothing for the wider community. One lady is at present being trained at a local tailor’s to make shorts and trousers.
Karowley was used the week prior to our visit by a young teacher from the Kingsway School whose world tour took her to Kenya where she met up with her parents from Bramhall. All three helped in the school and Jim visited Maseno University to deliver a Chemistry lecture. He hopes to help out the University with funding from Manchester University. We warned them about the idiosyncratic plumbing and the bats in the roof but we didn’t know about the lovelorn weaver bird who woke them up every morning at 5.00 pecking at its reflection in the bathroom window! No earthquakes this time but a wakeful night listening to Debbie the cow mooing because she couldn’t locate her day-old calf.
Thankyou yet again for making this work possible by your donations, interest, prayer and insights. Thankyou from everyone in Nyandiwa and indeed many miles afield who share in the water projects and now school support.
Please, if you are receiving this by post and have an email address, just send me a message to let know the address angelarowley@ntlworld.com.
Last year’s Christmas cards were a success so we’ve had more made this year. If you would like some, email and we’ll get them to you. (Photos of Nyandiwa with a couple of robins!) £3 for 8 .
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| May 09 trip - 14 July 2009
We spent just 10 days in Kenya this time up to 30th May, the main emphasis of the visit being on dentistry. Jon Robinson, a dentist friend from Birmingham, taught at our dispensary from Saturday afternoon to Thursday evening by which time he and the six trainees had extracted over 120 teeth and inspected 300+ people including the whole of our High School. Our health practitioner and nurse were two of the trainees and the other four came from clinics further afield. We took out five dental kits – each one filled a rucksack – purchased from Dentaid. Jon even managed to preach in church on Sunday!
Water filter workshops.
The filters made at our original workshop in Nyandiwa are easier to transport now since the start-up of the donkey and cart business which has been going since February. We have another nine names of widows or needy families who will be given a filter thanks to specific donations. The latest workshop in the Transmara among the Maasai is running very well, so much so that a group of people from the north east near Marsabit who saw it functioning have been to Nyandiwa to train and have started a workshop there. We met with our Rotary contact, George, to discuss a new workshop in Kakamega – north of Kisumu - which should be up and running before our next visit.
Education
Kolweny Kingsway Primary School’s new classrooms are almost finished and we hope to complete the scheme for them over the next few months. They will then be able to demolish the old ‘stable block’and have a smart new complex and parade ground. The primary school at Oogo which we paired with a school in Buckingham has sent letters for the students here which are very moving to read.
Kolweny Kingsway High School now has just over 200 students in the four forms, really the maximum we can support. We were visited in our home by two former students, Dorothy Awuor and Perez Atieno, who are studying at university under our Hope Beyond Form 4 scholarship scheme. They are doing so well and during the long break both are helping out at local primary schools, already giving back to the community. We await applications for this year’s grants as soon as letters of acceptance are received by the students. We are in a position to sponsor 10 more students this year. On our outward journey we bought another £1,000 worth of books for the Forrest Hill library which is functioning so well that the initial idea of borrowing on just one day of the week has had to be increased to two and students are studying in their free time. This ‘openness and trust’ with books on open display is a new concept and one not readily accepted but we are insisting on giving it a go. We were able to take out 25 solar powered science calculators and again, many pens and pencils etc.. Some had been brought by our nephew from the States in a suitcase which could then be filled with English goodies for the return journey!
The laptops have meant that better communication between Kolweny Kingsway High School and The Kingsway School Cheadle is now achievable. This will bring about an exchange of ideas and better understanding of each other’s culture. It is planned to take out two Kingsway teachers next time to increase these possibilities and help in the school.
We visited Orera High School to photograph the completed water supply to the science laboratory which has been funded by Formby High School. It is important to provide evidence of projects for those who are kind enough to become involved.
We took our young friend Mike Burr (17) with us too this visit. His main role was to introduce the High School boys to touch rugby. It went down a storm and the presentation of the Mike Burr trophy on the final day was greeted with such elation and jumping around, that the trophy was irreparably bent out of shape! They don’t do anything gently! The boys are determined to learn ‘proper’ rugby soon - Kenya is among the world’s top 10 teams playing sevens.
Following the success of the new sanitary protection, the mooncup, in the pilot group of three adults and their teenaged daughters, Angela started the Well Woman Clinic using girls from Forms 3 and 4 and female staff members as the next control group.We have received a grant from the Jephcott Trust to pay for 100 mooncups and the new girls’ latrines which are completed ahead of schedule and were opened during our visit. They are the talk of the town with running water from a gutter and tank!! The girls and women are so excited about this new venture.
We mentioned in our last newsletter that we were having difficulty finding a piece of land for a Form 4 girls’ hostel to enable the girls to use the solar light at the library to study in the evenings during the week. Praise God Ayugi has had discussions with Mary, whose land borders the school, and although she would be prepared to sell us a small piece of her land, one of her sons is only prepared to rent but that’s OK. We will negotiate a rent for a period of 10 years and build only a semi-permanent structure, perfectly adequate for the purpose. We hope to have up to 12 beds to begin with, with the possibility of building on another room as the number of girls increases. As the hostel will be just a stone’s throw from Mary’s own house, she has agreed to sleep there and look after the students – couldn’t be better!
Health
We have already mentioned the work of the dentist which was so very well received. Now people will be able to have a tooth extracted painlessly and efficiently at our dispensary for only a nominal cost. So many have been walking round with sore mouths because they can’t afford dental treatment.
Mike taught all the forms at the High School and Primary School how to clean their teeth properly and we handed out hundreds of toothbrushes and toothpaste. We also gave each High School student a nylon backpack bag to carry their belongings in, surplus to requirements at the Seashell trust (Formerly The Royal School for the Deaf.) and donated to us. We looked over the financial records which are being kept each week.
Water harvesting at local primary schools is not yet underway as funding via the Rotary International matched funding scheme is on hold due to the recession. Their funds are gaining little or no interest but there may be funding available after September.
Alfred, the health technician is visiting the dispensary three times a week and we took him a centrifuge this time to help in his work. It is hoped that the dispensary will soon be registered as an Aids clinic which will mean that drugs for HIV will be freely available to patients. For this we need to have a nurse trained in counselling. More donations of stethoscopes, diabetes testers, blood pressure gauges, operating gowns, sutures, needles, gloves, tablets, bandages, plasters etc and old spectacles were again well-received. There is a possibility of buying a gismo which will test the donated spectacles and give an accurate reading of the prescription so that a simple eye test at Nyandiwa Dispensary will be matched with a corresponding pair of lenses. More pairs of spectacles are most welcome as are Ibuprofen, or similar, caplets.
Small businesses
These are all functioning well. We visited the cow – flatteringly (?) named Angela – the several dozen chickens kept at various people’s homes and the fields where the vegetable crops are thriving on this season’s gentler rains after a drought which meant late sowing and then such heavy rain the first sowing was washed away. As mentioned earlier, the donkey cart is being made good use of, transporting goods to and from the road and also transporting water filters even further afield.
The sewing workshop is widening its scope to make uniforms for other primary schools as well as Kolweny. Tailoresses are trained to make only women’s clothes amongst which trousers don’t feature at all so a young tailoress in the community who is without a job has been approached and we are paying for her to train with the tailor in nearby Kadongo who makes our High School uniforms, after which time she will be proficient in the tailoring of trousers and shorts.
Food is still in short supply and will be until the harvest so in April we funded another lorry load of grains for our community. Up to 250 families were supplied with a week’s grain.
Karowley is a comfortable home from home if you forget the appalling, practically non-functioning, plumbing, the cock-eyedness of every door and window, the geckoes in the roof which are especially playful during the early hours and the weight of the furniture.
An elder at church prayed that we would have new experiences this visit – how about an earthquake in the first night which felt as though the entire roof was caving in and an accident in the vehicle? That was more than enough. Noone was injured but there was a fairly hefty excess to pay for a dented front bull bar and bonnet etc.. With the advent of the motor cycle there is an increasing number of road accidents, many fatal, especially when the roads are wet and muddy. In a torrential downpour a motor cyclist skidded in front of a lorry and came off. The lorry driver stood on his brakes and came to a halt barely inches from the man and we gracefully slid into the back of the lorry. The driver didn’t even notice and drove off but his skill had no doubt saved the man’s life. The hassle was afterwards when we had to make a report at the local police station and then another one in Kisumu for insurance purposes just in case someone said we had injured them. Of course everyone moves at a snail’s pace and nobody has the necessary forms and much precious time is wasted dealing with a totally inefficient system. It gives us yet more insight into the frustrations of everyday life in this beautiful land.
Thankyou again for your donations large and small, one-off and regular in money and in kind and for your prayers for the work and for our safety. The people of our community and indeed further afield again send their heartfelt thanks.
P.S. May I again remind those receiving this through the post who have an email address to please drop me a line at angelarowley@ntlworld.com ? Thanks.
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