The event was to begin at 11a.m. Grace and John and Anika (Give Us Wings rep) and her brother Joe and John Shonko and Rev. Wangeci, WBG board members, the district adult education officer and his deputy for the area arrived at around 11:30.
They toured the building and took tea, and we eventually started the program around 1:30! Not quite 2/3 of the seats were filled at 1:30. Entertainment was provided by various groups of Masai singers including a group of adult learners and two of my adult learners read a welcome “in English!” Then there was a message by Rev. Wangeci encouraging the community to attend class because, “knowledge is power.”
A series of speeches followed. Grace led by talking about how the Ilkiloret outreach project of Wezesha By Grace came to be. Then Anika read a speech by Mary Steiner, founder of Give Us Wings. Then I talked about the building construction. The total cost for construction was 680,025/= KES ($8,193).
After that Janet’s father spoke, then a few other community members and a few local politicians, who made varying degrees of promises - elections are coming up soon. ;-) And then the district adult education officer spoke.
In the 20 minutes district adult education officer spent walking around after he first arrived he decided to make us his special project. First he will get us the appropriate resources, part of which will involve partitioning the classroom and giving us a library. Then we need to fence this land and get a youth center up. Then we need to get more teachers here because there are obviously young mothers here who dropped out of school around grade 4 to be married off and they need to finish school. And we need to be a registration centre for students who want to independently register for the state exams.
He had told me all this while we were waiting for the meeting to start…so while I had his attention I said, “You know my first concern is that Janet is compensated for her work here.”
He hemmed and hawed for a minute and then said, “Our department doesn’t have any more funds for staffing, but because she’s a woman and she has a disability, I can to talk to the temporary teachers department and social services…I’ll find money for her.”
Score one of the White Masai girl! My politics out of the way for the day, I sat back and enjoyed the speeches...all three hours of them!
Even though I’m pretty sure that Grace wasn’t thrilled with him making all these announcements during his speech without consulting her, they are actually related (he is John’s nephew) so she can’t be too harsh about his lack of subtlety.
At about 4:45 we made for the classroom to unvail the plaque and then it was time to plant a shade tree in honor of Mary Steiner and her daughter Shawn Whelan, founder of Give Us Wings.
A little after 5pm we sat down to eat! The food was typical Masai fare. Rice, potatoes, chapatti and meat…not a vegetable or green in site. But they did have nice fruit for dessert!
I piled in a safari van that Grace had rented for the day and headed back to Ngong with the visitors who had come for the day. We had said they would be home by 3:30 – I arrived home shortly before 8pm.
Exhausted but with a certain energy still flowing through my body that I couldn’t quite explain. Maybe this is what it feels like to have a baby…all the pain of construction, dealing with the laborers, negotiating for the materials, transporting it all back in forth - now that it’s over, it was all worth it…I think I might be able to do this again!
Now where did I put that forewoman hat?
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