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January 24, 2007 - Mombasa - Kenya

by Bill Stumbaugh

Jambo (Hello) to Everyone,

The majority of our Rotary group left Mombasa yesterday to return home to the USA. Marge Cole and I remain behind to work in the schools. We are now staying in the home of local Rotarian Pramod Shah. He is a widower who lives alone in a large house. He is a vegetarian, so no meat for the next ten days, except when I attend a Rotary meeting.

We started our volunteer work at the schools today. My elementary school is extremely poor, located in a slum of Mombasa where entire families live in single rooms in tenement housing. The road to the school was narrow, dusty, full of potholes and trash. It is not a road that a typical American would dare drive down, not to mention walk. After winding between obstacles and litter, we arrived at the school. Animals and people clustered around the entrance, but our driver negotiated all effortlessly and we drove onto the school grounds and stopped in between classrooms. The school is drab looking, peeling paint, dust everywhere...much like the rest of the poor elementary schools that the team had been seeing throughout the trip.

Nevertheless, the school staff are wonderful and the kids are...kids, well like anywhere in the world. Very deferential to the stranger, yet very curious as well. After meeting the headmaster, he led me from class to class where I was very much surprised to receive a grand welcome. Every class knew my name and presented to me a series of welcome songs and recitations. My heart was touched and what initial trepidations I may have had quickly melted away. In each class I also spoke a little about who i was and how i got there. I also encouraged the students to come and say hello to me during my stay over the next week and half--to not be afraid of me even though I may appear to be strange and different.

The school has about 400 students in grades preschool-8. The classrooms have floors, desks, and chalkboards-that's it. While I perspired profusely most of the day, constantly wiping my brow, everyone else was cooler. No a/c, although one class had a small overhead fan, just enough to remind that you could be cooler, but weren't. About one third of the students are orphaned from parents who died from AIDS.

After meeting with the headmaster for a while, we were joined by a Baptist minister and a director for a NGO known as Compassion International, who both work at the school as well. The school is connected to the Baptist Church, but its role is relatively downplayed. There is a cross on the side of one building, and many of the student songs sung to me contained references to Jesus and God, but the school is open to all faiths and many children from Moslem families attend. The NGO works to identify funds to pay the tuition for the many children who have no resources, provide lunches and assist with families problems which threaten school success.

I met with the three men for about an hour. They were very interested in learning more about Rotary and how they may obtain assistance. They have completed a design to expand the school upward and shared with me a budget for the construction as well as for obtaining computers. The only computers are in the the school office; there is no Internet connection. We discuss some funding possibilities and I informed them about Rotary and how they need to establish a relationship with one of the local clubs. I offered to speak on their behalf to Rotarians at the club meetings I plan to attend before I leave. I encouraged them to further refine their proposal and develop a program presentation that they could present to a Rotary Club in the future.

The school has a two hour lunch break from about 12 to 2 pm, when many students go home to eat. Those with no meal waiting them at home stay and school and many receive lunches provided by another NGO called Assist Children to School (ACTS). During the afternoon, I I taught children how to play dodge ball with the balls I brought. They loved it and played until they dropped. I also provided a lesson to an eighth grade class about world geography, where the USA was located and how I traveled to Kenya by air. They were enthralled.

Later, I observed as some health department medical staff entered the school and administered tetanus vaccinations to all students. There has been a recent outbreak of tetanus in the slums. The younger kids cried and the older ones wrenched. Even the staff received shots, and the kids were particularly interested when the headmaster received his. The health department offered me one, but I lucked out, because I had just received a booster before I left for Africa. By the time they finished, it was 4:00p.m. and I left.

That's all for now.