Kenya Mission Newsletter 6: Amazing Maize

Wednesday was a long day by our standards, but not by Kenyan standards.  BLISS Secondary School students begin each day at 7:00 AM and classes end at 5:00 PM … SIX days a week.  Our day was a few hours longer since we attended the 5:00 Lenten Service at the Mawanka Church … a great idea if only we had asked if it was in English (it was not) and would be about the same length as at FUMC (lasted about 2 hours).  

We began our day with leading the devotions for BLISS (no elephants this time) and distributing the school shoulder bags we had brought for the first year students.  We then quickly moved on to spend the morning at the Kithoka Primary where we toured the school, had tea with their staff and heard about the feeding program supported by FUMC.  If only all of you could have heard how much the daily cup of porridge means to them.

Most of the team spent the afternoon at Gichunge.  Our focus this year has been math.  We continue to try to get a handle on how to help in this area.  Math is competing for classroom time in even the pre-primary rooms where large portions of the day are spent in learning English (they come to school with only knowing Kimeru) and Swahili.  The great news is that EVERY Kenysn student is trilingual by the end of primary.  The bad news is the time it takes from we in the US might call STEM subjects. 

The Gichunge parents took in the harvest of maize yesterday.  They laid it out on the school grounds to dry.  It was wonderful to see as evidence of our mutual commitment to the porridge program.  

In our travels we passed by the Winner's Hotel (not sure where the Losers stay) and for those on the cutting edge, you can shop at the Digital Butchery.  

All the best from Kenya,

Kathy, Marcos, Julie, Greg, Dixie, John, and Debbie