SIRIWO BUILDING PROJECT

I visited Siriwo Primary a few weeks back on one of my health talks with a fellow volunteer.
The school was SO far away...I spoke a little about it in a previous blog, so apologies
if you have heard this part before. I live on the main highway, the link between Kisumu
(closest city = 1.5 hrs) and Uganda (where I live is very, very rural already). This school
is half an hour by motor bike OFF the main highway, winding through various villages until
you reach the end of the path where the school is found. The kids here have access to very
little, aside from school and home. At home families are sustenance farmers - they grow to
eat, maybe make a little money if they are lucky enough to own a large enough amount of land.
My drift - the kids have access to jack all in terms of resources.

The schools surroundings are absolutely beautiful. It is set up high on a hill and looks
over a green valley dotted with houses. There is an old roof less grey church that sits at
the bottom of the schools property that creates a scene like the old buildings in Scotland or
somewhere far, far away from Kenya. It' pretty cool.

There are supposed to be 9 classrooms at the school, but they only have 8. Until this year,
the baby kids (pre school and nursery, 4-5 year olds) have been learning in old,
dilapidated mud huts. The floors are soft red dirt, the blackboards are chipped..Horrendous!
I have uploaded some pictures, check them out, I couldn't believe it when I first saw it!
Because the babies moved into a classroom, it forced all the kids to move up one. This meant
the class 1 (grade 1, 6 yr olds) moved into the unsealed, wall-less classroom. The ground
was a collection of uneven dirt, some soft, some hard. There were rocks everywhere and the
divide between classrooms 1 and 2 was broken cement. Above the divide there were huge
unstable bricks sitting precariously on a thin rod of concrete. SO dangerous! How on earth
kids learn here, no idea. So I decided to spend a fair chunk of the fundraising money I
raised on sealing the floor and improving the safety of the rooms.

I hired a contractor (who decided not to show up for work on multiple days, lucky his
workers did, good on you Kenya) to get workers to complete the job. He provided about 3
workers, I had 6 volunteers working and we hired random people from the community who heard
there was work going near by. The work began Monday morning. "Be there at 6:30" - head guy
did not show until 12. Luckily we are fairly resourceful and got the kids to run home and
get us shovels and jembas (local tools) so we could start smashing up the floor. This was
awesome - literally smashing apart the floor..we had to get down about 40cm so it was so
tiring but very rewarding once we finished. The floor was made of an assortment of dirt,
mud, gravel, stones and boulders (removed about a 60kg one at one point). Lucky we didn't have
any asthmatics or they would have been in serious trouble..the colour coming from our noses
at the end of the day was horrendous lol. That was day 1. Day 2 comprised of laying concrete
mixed with stones. The boys were mixing the concrete by hand, so heavy, so us girls decided
to gracefully bow out and enjoy a day of painting. I bought a huge tin of blackboard paint
and we did 9 boards in the school..they looked brand new. Think I should invest in some for
back home. The final day was the top 2 layers of concrete. Once again I was on painting duty,
including the 'S' in the word SCHOOL at the entrance to the school. Yes, yes, the school sign
did once read SIRIWO CHOOL. Sad. At least now it reads school! After the final layer was
complete, the classroom looked so good. Where there used to be the chipped divide, there
was a perfect step. There is a stone pathway leading to the door so kids don't drag
much mud into the room when it rains and there is a freshly painted blackboard. I can't
wait until Monday when I get to see the kids in their new classroom.
It's interesting comparing the gratitude we receive from the various places we work in. At
the baby orphanage, there are always volunteers from around the world helping out and chipping
in ad it has come to the point where it is almost expected that volunteers give things.
There is practically no gratitude there. At Siriwo the teachers practically cried when I
offered to repair their classroom. The headmaster was beside himself when he returned on
day 3 of work from holidays - he was so grateful. Pretty cool, he informed me that we were
the first foreigners to ever assist the school in any way :)

Anyway, Mondays the big day where I get to see the kids inside their new classroom. The
kids that saw the work were pretty excited on Wed so it should be good to see them learning
in their. A sealed floor also has really good health benefits..there are these parasites
called Jiggers that get into the kids feet and eat into their flesh. They cause the kids
great pain and itchyness. As the jiggers live in the dirt, the now sealed classroom will
be free from Jiggers so they will be less likely to be affected by them.

Just before I end I wanted to send out a HUGE thank you to everyone that donated money.
Without your support, this would NOT have happened, this school would not have a new
floor and these kids would still be learning in dirt. So thank you :)

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the cooler months in Aus. Lots of love from Kenya, xxxx.