First Official Update

We finally made it up to the school on Saturday. It took us awhile to make it up the hill. Normally, in dry weather the walk takes about 30 minutes unforutnately it has been extremely rainy so the road was very bad. Some of the ruts were as deep as I am tall. To add to the road conditions many of our paths to the school are now entirely covered in corn. It seems that with all the rain came many many fields of corn. It made the journey interesting to say the least.


The school looks great! The glass has been installed in the windows so the first building is now secure. It was exciting to see that furniture had been moved in doors and that classes had begun in the small classroom available. After looking around for a few minutes it was very clear that much more space was needed. There are so many students just waiting to start school at St. Dympha.

In the afternoon we went around the area to meet our neighbors. The school is being built on Masai land therefore the majority of our neighbors are Masai. The first people we met were incredibly kind and enjoyed making fun of our lack of Swahili. They took us inside there traditional home (a round house made with mud, sticks, and straw). Initally they told us that if we wanted to take pictures we would have to give them money however after spending some time with them they decided that as long as I printed the pictures for them as well, we could take as many pictures as we wanted. The man of the house was not home but his two wives were there sitting together, each with their own baby. It was incredible to see how well they got a long and worked together. While it is easy to criticize polygamy, it is common among the Masai people and with the more wives you have the higher status in the Masai community.


After our visit with our neighbors we returned to the school to meet with our Engineer. He is incredible. Since we last met with him he has done a lot of work on the building design and structure. He also reduced his original cost telling us that he had decided not to accept pay for his work. We spoke with him about what we could do with the money that we have raised so far. Finally it was decided that starting next week we will beginning digging the foundation and placing the concrete columns that will be the skeleton of the school. It was very exciting to make some progress and begin to realize our dreams of building the school.

So, that is all for now. All is well here. I did manage to obtain an upper respiratory infection, but it seems to be dissapating. Our next big mission is to set up a bank account here that we can access from home.

I wish you all well and thank you for your continued support!