This week has been super busy! As soon I as got back from my mini-vacation, I was right back to work. There was much to prepare because we had many guests coming for the weekend. On Friday, a new volunteer from the USA arrived. He will be spending 6 weeks here doing research and volunteering. He is very nice and has taken to the village quickly. In addition, we had a local college come on Friday for a tour. They were all college students studying agriculture and organic farming so they wanted to come here to learn about our sustainable farming practices. They joined us for lunch as well. It is exciting to see that people want to come learn about our village especially because of our environmental practices. We really are a unique and futuristic example of sustainability in this country, and it is amazing to see that people want to come learn here.
Friday night also brought the arrival of 28 Kenyan Rotaract members. Nyumbani is very connected to Rotary International and many staff members are also Rotary members. We also have Rotary, Rotaract, and Interact groups come from Scotland, Ireland and the US. Rotaract is the college age/youth bracket of Rotary. The group that came are all presidents of their Rotaract groups and were coming for a weekend retreat. They arrived late on Friday after a long drive from Nairobi. It was a little overwhelming to have so many guests at one time. It is the first time I have had such a big group! Saturday, they had meetings and then in the afternoon they got to meet our villages Interact club (the high school version of Rotary). I think it was very valuable for the kids here to meet older mentors and learn more about the organization from them. They got a tour from the older kids then had mentoring sessions. At night they had a large bonfire after dinner and one of the Nyumbani Kenya Board members, Paula, arrived to greet them. She is one the board for Nyumbani but is also a very active Kenya rotary member and has done much community service. It was very great to meet her.
On Sunday, the group left and we are back to a quiet guesthouse. Now there are just 3 of us in total. We have more volunteers coming at the end of the week, but it will still be quieter for a couple of months. The high season for guests and volunteers was definitely the summer months, so now it will be interesting to adjust to a smaller volunteer contingent. This week we are starting a new water metering project this week as well as starting some English lessons in the evenings with the Lawson High School students. In addition, we are continuing our ecobrick project with the environmental club at the high school. If you don’t know what an ecobrick is, google it! They are super cool and very eco-friendly. Our goal is to build a ecobench by the end of the month with the bottles and also educated the kids on the importance of recycling and re-use.
Other than that, not much is going on, just working away. We cleaned our office out this week. It was very satisfying to purge many of the trash and old supplies that are just taking up way too much room. We also made a new schedule and hung up photos from our photo exhibition around our office. During the summer camp the volunteers worked with a group of students to create a photo class. The kids each got a camera for a day to take photos of anything then they could choose one picture they liked to display at the exhibition. They had to also write a paragraph on why they chose that photo. Then the whole village voted on the favorite photo and prizes went to 1st, 2nd, 3rd. The photos were amazing and now they are in our office so we get to look at them everyday!
This is the winning photo, taken by a boy named Joseph. It is his susu (grandmother) making a basket.
Will update again next week! Xx Maggie
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