Back to school

Well what an interesting day I had today in the outback of Kenya, our orphanage social worker Dan and the boss Peter were invited to give a talk at a school near Eburru, which turned out to be a 45 minute drive down a dirt track into the back of beyond. I was invited to tag along, as were our two gap year volunteers Lulu and Harry. We came accross a tiny village of mud huts where there was a primary school and a secondary school. The primary school had around 900 pupils and the secondary school had around two hundred, we were visiting the secondary school. We had the formal introductions with the staff and then sat outside to see the pupils in the glorious sunshine. We all introduced ourselves and I spoke for a few minutes about what I did, what I was doing out here, followed by a few words of encouragemnt re their exams and future. I didn't want to steal the limelight and waffle on too long. There was no danger of that as when Peter got up he gave a motivational speach that lasted nearly an hour. It was a great speech, Kenyans really do have a thing about giving long speeches, but sometimes less can be more guys!!! The children were all mostly from Maasai tribes and clearly walk many miles to school and back each day. They have a real problem at the school with young girls being dragged away from school to marry early or getting pregnant. Peter's speech made a point of tackling these issues in detail. The principle of the school was a man named Clement. He has strong links with our Restart Africa charity as he has volunteered at our orphanage quite a lot over the past few years to help with counselling our children through the horrific abuse they suffered. Whilst at the school we were treated to a traditional Maasai dance by a dozen or so children. Our gap volunteers got up and joined in, whilst I filmed it. It was a wonderful experience. 
This afternoon we went to Nakuru which is about 40 minutes away. We went to have a look at a craft production business which makes traditional african artifacts. Their products are all hand painted. We went there to see how the business is run and to have a meeting with the owner of the business to get some advice about running a craft business. Our charity currenly has a sideline craft business employing local Gilgil women who would otherwise be on the streets. We make bags, jewellery and flip flops which are all beautifully hand made. We employ women from the local community. It is still in the early stages and a little advice won't hurt about how we can do things better. We took our manager and assistant manager of the craft business to the meeting. It went well and we came out of it with many new ideas.