Last day of projects

Today was the last workday before we depart Nakuru.  We leave first thing in the morning to drive back to Nairobi for our flight tomorrow night to Qatar and on to Philadelphia. We were up and on the road early because we had a lot of work still to accomplish. 

This was the last school day of this term, so there were still lots of children present to spend time with, and several of our team do that amazingly. They are kid magnets! We feel like rock stars when we ride up in the morning in our vans and get mobbed by screaming kids! 

We also had a lot of concrete to get poured to finish the last section of the floor for the dining hall project as well as to pour the floor for Wanshakae's house.  When we started getting prepared for the first pour, we had our first hiccup: the valve on the rainwater cistern at the school was locked. We were told by the principal that there was not enough water in the tank and that they needed it all for the lunch preparation for the students. We decided to start on the floor first at Wanshakae's house and proceeded to move the mixer the quarter mile by hand. When we got there with the mixer and all the peripheral equipment, we found that the water that had been there two days before had all disappeared! At that point, we started to feel like the Israelites in Egypt, when they were told they had to continue making the same amount of bricks but had to provide their own straw! Satan was trying to stop our work any way he could, but there was no way he was going to succeed. The local women and several women on our team organized a brigade, carrying water in jerry cans and any other vessels they could find from several hundred feet away.   We soon had the 120 gallons we needed for our concrete floor for the house (the fact that a lot of tadpoles got sacrificed to make our concrete wasn't a major stumbling block!) With a major team effort loading and carrying buckets of sand, stone and cement, loading the mixer, discharging the mixer into wheelbarrows that were dumped into the form and screaded and leveled and "floated" smooth, the floor got poured in a little over an hour.  It was a blessing to see the joy on Wanshakae's face as her house gained a floor.  At the same time, our friends Rufus and Ibraham worked on installing the corrugated sheet metal for the roof.  When we left the site to move the mixer and materials back to the dining hall worksite, the house just lacked the wall panels, windows and door to be complete. 

The trip back to the dining hall project proved to be not only taxing for the pushers but also for the mixer, which broke welds and lost the front axle and steering mechanism. Nice try, satan! God wouldn't allow something like this to upset His plans, and a little extra manpower got the mixer up to the site and supported by building stone to complete the concrete work for the last section of the floor.  Once again, a major team effort like a well-oiled machine got the remaining work done by right after lunch.  

Some of our team also got to participate in the end-of-term school academic awards ceremony.  We had the chance to give the school some library books and soccer balls, and every student received toothbrush and toothpaste from us.  One other significant thing that we had agreed upon as a team is that we would use excess funds we had raised to sponsor two scholarships to send community residents to teacher's college. They are committed to coming back and teaching in the school after graduation. This is a relatively insignificant investment ($3600) that will have far-reaching impact on the lives of the children in the school and the community.  

For many on our team who have been to Kenya these last four years, this visit was truly inspiring! We had the benefit of seeing this old stone barn four years ago when it was literally a squalid environment with nothing in it but chickens and their droppings, debris and tin shelters of displaced persons. We had the benefit of pouring concrete footings and building walls two years ago, and we now got to see it fully functioning and bustling with children learning.  And now we have been able to work on construction as it grows and gains a dining hall to meet the students' physical needs and to help to provide more teachers.  It has truly been a blessing that God allowed us to share in this effort.