Another Great Day!

Mashimoni School

So today I went to Kibera, the biggest slum in the world! One of the schools the project provides for is right in the middle of the slum. I went there and spent most of my time with the P1s! The slum is basically exactly as it looked on the TV for red nose day. It is absolutely huge! Goes on for miles! Some houses are made from mud and most others are just like iron and there are wee community shops that are literally tiny but apparently the people that live there never go out of Kibera to buy anything coz everything there is so much cheaper than the outside world. The two guys that drove us through were explaining all about it. It was really interesting. He says that most of the people there try to find work wherever they can, they only make like $1 a day but they have to pay rent for their tiny wee houses because someone else owns the land. The rent for a wee iron house is $500 a month!

I got a tour of the school from the head teacher who was lovely. He doesn't live in Kibera but all of the teachers and staff do, and kids obviously. The school has no electricity!! The people in Kibera all get electricity illegally by using stray wires, SO dangerous! The pictures I have taken of the kids work is from 5 year olds! I was amazed at how near they could write, and how well they could write, and in English!

Apparently many of the children turn up at school at 6.30, 7am because they have nowhere else to go and their parents go to work. The school doesn’t start until 8am but they wait outside the gates. Most of the kids don’t eat unless they have school meals, so we took down the supplies of porridge for every morning and a big main meal lunch.

They absolutely loved my camera as they loved to have their picture taken! Every time I walked past a class they were all running over to the "Muzungo" lol (white person!) So funny! The loved me and all wanted my attention!

I got to see pictures of what the school looked like before Barnardos took it over. It looked awful, and the uniforms were awful and tatty, so someone has sponsored the school with uniforms for every child from the UK.

I saw lots of shoes outside the classrooms and asked the head teacher why they were there, he said it is not a school rule that they take their shoes off, but they are so proud of their school they have always taken them off because they don't want their school to get dirty.

 There are 560 kids at this school, and there are a few Scottish people who sponsor some of them and their families, but most of them don't have anything.

All the tin houses are Kibera slums, the sewers run along the sides of the paths that everyone walks and there is rubbish everywhere and stray dogs!

 After my day in the school in Kibera I went back to JGA School and helped in the kitchen which was so much fun! Lots of banter from the kitchen staff!

I then helped with Clubs, I took Scouts, the teachers basically just introduced me to the kids and threw me into the deep end, and I had to think of activities for them on the spot! There were like 50-60 kids!!!

 This is the attendance, It is always around 100%