Currently, my father and brother are here in Kenya visiting the school and seeing what I’ve been up to for the last 10 months. Along with them, they brought suitcases full of books from amazing aunts, friends, and the St. Thomas Moore and CDH libraries in Saint Paul. Before I go any further, I want to send out a special thanks to everyone that contributed to those suitcases. I saw first-hand the girls’ eyes light up with excitement as Harry Potter books continued to be pulled out from the suitcases like rabbits in a magic show.
By the way, the first book in the series already has a waiting list established.
We are still waiting for our large shipping container full of over 2,000 books through Books For Africa, the University of Minnesota, and Kenya School Libraries Program (KSLP). This will hopefully arrive sometime in September this year. Until then, Harry Potter and the 150 other books will absolutely suffice! Thank you again so much for the books everyone!
In other library news, our computers from Junior Achievements finally arrived and now we have 3 brand new computers, a printer, and a scanner in the library that the girls can use. It’s extremely exciting to see them finally have access to computers and internet at our own school where they can work on their assignments after class in a safe space, research facts for the journalism club and their magazine, express themselves and their voices through postings on their blog (http://kgsa.blogspot.com), and even have some fun with the games that are on the computer; which is actually my favorite thing to see as they all love to play chess!
Speaking of the Journalism Club, I know that many of you are wondering when the second issue will be out, as I had told you to expect it in June. Well we had a minor set back in production but it should hopefully be on our magcloud website - www.kiberagirls.magcloud.com within a few weeks. Keep checking!
Our first volunteer, Claire Raether, has started teaching an economics class and is implementing an HIV/AIDS education course throughout each of the grades. I was able to sit in on one of her classes and she has great enthusiasm and actually got some of the girls to say that economics is the best subject! If anyone can get high school girls to say that, it’s my guess she is doing a pretty good job. Our second volunteer from NYC just arrived a few days ago and is fitting in just great. Caroline will be working on computer trainings and typing exercises, exploring internet researching skills, and all the while she'll be doing a lot of filming as she is a film major from Columbia University.
In other news, if you didn’t get the monthly newsletter, the poetry performance last month went really well and we’ll be uploading video from it very soon. There was an artist there by the name of Pepe who works for MTV-Africa who was really impressed with the girls and their artistic talent and is trying to get us some air-time on MTV! Keep your fingers crossed. That’s it for now, hope all is well with everyone and I’ll be back stateside quite soon. I can’t believe these 10 months are wrapping up but I’ll be back July 8th so look out for more KGSA events upon my arrival.
Wooooord! Haha, what a typical hip-hop response to something that goes a bit beyond such an expression.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, just got caught up on ALL of your travels and man, it sounds ridiculously incredible. I'm glad you got to experience all of that, and happy you took me with you.
World Cup? Our (yes, I love him too) man Didier is looking to get into the match today--I hope to see a victorious Ivory Coast. Africa has not started as strong as I would have liked, but there is still time and there is still hope.
It's beautiful to see....
Peace