Osupuko and Ilmerijo
We have sponsors visiting on this trip! Nathan Szalewski and Jaime Lewis, below, are faithful and early sponsors of Tuko Pamoja. They have chosen to spend part of their honeymoon with us in Kenya, visiting schools and their sponsored children.
Nathan is the sponsor of the first two new kids we got in Tuko Pamoja, Shaleen and Francis. And Jaime is sponsoring our porridge program. Today they are experiencing both of those programs in action.
Shaleen and Francis were identified by the school as being the neediest at the time Nathan started sponsoring.
Below, I’m walking with Nathan and Jaime in Ngong. They had been here for a few days already. Pretty much as soon as they landed we spirited them off for a safari trip. More on that in a later post. So today was really their first chance to feel the real Kenya.
Our schedule for the day starts with picking up porridge to deliver. We went to a mill in Ngong to pick up hundreds of pounds of corn flour and sugar. Board member Virginia’s brother has a van that we hire for each delivery day. He has room to haul all of the porridge for us for the two schools we are visiting.
We bought the flour at one shop and the sugar at another. Virginia had ordered the supplies in advance, so we just had to pick it up.
We then loaded up and drove to Ilmerijo. We got to the school with time for a tour before serving porridge. We visited each class.
Below, we are in the pre-primary class.
We have been at Ilmerijo long enough that the kids know us. They know Virginia and me on sight, and most know Wangari. But they enjoyed having new faces visit and asked questions. Most are pretty easy. They had been studying different forms of government in one class and quizzed us about the US government.
Another question I didn’t expect was “Why is your skin so light and ours so much darker?”
Then it was porridge time. Jaime and Nathan agreed to serve porridge. Wangari supervised to make sure they knew how much to give the kids.
The kids bring all sizes of containers from home and the bigger kids need more than the smaller ones do. So it takes a bit of work to make it all come out right. Some kids bring sealable containers from home. Then they drink half their porridge and take the rest home, often to a younger sibling not yet attending school.
The little kids start first, then the bigger ones. The oldest waited until the very end to get theirs. It appears that the waiting was mostly due to the low coolness factor of standing in line with the little kids in front of the new people serving porridge. But they got some eventually.
During a break in the action, Jaime got to know some of the kids. She spent a while playing games with them. Nathan slaved over a hot pot of porridge. An old Kenyan saying: “The only things a Kenyan fears are God and hot porridge.”
The porridge is a very important part of the kids’ day. Some don’t get any dinner or breakfast, so the porridge is their first food since lunch the prior day. The porridge helps them focus on learning. It also increases attendance at the school, since parents know the kids will get food there. This reduces pressure on the parents.
In another benefit, two of our porridge partners have told us the food programs reduce the pregnancy rate of the girls at the school, since they aren’t as likely to sell their bodies for food money. In a related vein, having food makes the boys less aggressive, according to Margaret, the head teacher at Ilmerijo.
The Junior Secondary instructor asked us to take a picture with his students. So after serving porridge, Nathan and Jaime lined up for the picture. Also, it’s photographic evidence the older kids eventually got their porridge.
As the enrollment grew at the school, the cooking pot they used for porridge was no longer big enough. They needed one very large pot for the lunch and couldn’t use the same one for both lunch and porridge. Tuko Pamoja bought them another large pot so they could more efficiently serve the kids.
Without the pot, they either gave the kids less or had to make multiple batches, which was slow.
In a separate agreement for this school, Tuko Pamoja also pays the salary of the cook. The school wasn’t getting money for her salary from the government, so they were trying to get it from parents. But a lot of the parents couldn’t afford it.
We then went on to Osupuko Primary school. This is the school where Nathan’s sponsored kids attend. So it promised to be a great time.
Osupuko is the first school where we had a porridge program and also the first where we picked up new sponsored kids. Jaime stepped in immediately on the porridge, and Nathan picked up our first two kids.
Our first visit to Osupuko a few years ago was to teach self-defense. We had been referred there by girls at the Cara Girls’ Rescue Center, who were also students at Osupuko. They wanted their classmates to have the self-defense class too.
When we got in the class, there was a visibly pregnant 13-year-old girl. After the class, Virginia and I were talking to the head teacher. Virginia, thinking of the usual suspects, asked, “Was it family or rape?” The head teacher answered that she understood it was neither. The girl had been selling her body for food money.
I asked what would happen to her now. She would likely be sold to an older Maasai man as a second or third wife.
“What will happen to the baby?”
The locals all looked at each other and no one could or would answer that.
As soon as we got back in the car, I said to Virginia, “We are coming back and we are bringing food.” So we did.
Below, Virginia is talking with our older sponsored kids in the schoolyard. From left to right: Nathan, Jaime, Virginia, Moses, Jeremiah, Janet, Joy, Shaleen, Francis, James, Benjamin.
Below, Hannah models her wonderful new jacket from her sponsor, Ika.
Nathan and Jaime met Shaleen and Francis when we talked with the older kids. It was a little emotional. After the chat, the rest of the kids went back to class, but Francis and Shaleen stayed to talk.
Francis immediately latched onto Nathan and started showing him around the school. Shaleen and Jaime took off in the other direction. Both got the full tour with lots of getting to know each other along the way.
After a while, tea was being served to us. But Jaime was nowhere to be seen. Francis and Nathan kept circling, but since they didn’t see the young women, they would take off on another loop. Wangari and I were dispatched to find Jaime. We heard raucous noise and laughter coming from a classroom. Having known Jaime for a number of years, I knew she’d be at the center of that.
We went into the classroom, and Jaime was surrounded by kids, with the usual rapid-fire questioning going on. She was loving it!
In a twist, since Jaime had mentioned that math was her favorite subject, Shaleen started asking Jaime math questions. When I came in, I first performed my duties as tour photographer. Then they started asking me math questions. Jaime and I are both Fellows of the Casualty Actuarial Society, so I think we were able to hold our own and not embarrass the profession too much.
After tea, we were to present a gift we had brought for the school. We went out to the schoolyard to make the presentation. In prior visits, we had seen the kids had nothing to play with in the schoolyard. They had a ball made of plastic bags that they used for a soccer ball. So we brought four of the toughest soccer balls we could buy.
After the presentation, five games broke out. The primary girls had one, involving at least 150 girls, with no way to tell the teams apart. Wangari and Virginia were trying to keep up with them. Also a couple primary boys’ games, a junior secondary girls’ game, and a junior secondary boys’ game. Nathan was game to play with the JS boys. The weather was very bright sunlight and hot! One team of boys were in sweaters and long pants. The other stripped off their sweaters to make another team uniform. The field is dirt with knee-high grass on the edges. Nathan came out OK. Francis scored the only goal we saw.
Overall, we had a great time at both schools. It was a blast!
