The last week and a half has been the busiest and most exciting yet! On Thursday evening Emily looked on in anticipation as Bea got a call from, Kate, “the boss”, about our central pot application. Luckily it was good news! Kate explained that 75% (£453) of the funding for a generator for the school would come from the central pot. The next day the Principal and teachers were incredibly happy to learn that the school will no longer suffer from power cuts or electricity rationing. We celebrated over bananas and soda.
Although this was great news, it also meant it was crunch time for deciding exactly how we were going to spend our £1800 investment money. After considering many different options and discussing with the girls, teachers and management, we came to a decision everyone was happy with. We are going to spend the money on library electricity, the other 25% of the generator costs, a photocopier, and shelves and tables for the library. We decided to abandon our original plan of sharing the cost of tables and chairs for the library with the school, as they have no spare cash at the moment and we did not want to leave them in debt. Instead we are fully paying for the library tables, and the school plans to buy chairs at the start of next term when fees and government funding start to come in.
Today we took the plunge and spent around £800! In Kakamega we collected all of the supplies needed for the library electricity, and the much anticipated generator. We also met with Samuel, a dynamic carpenter (and student) from Kakamega over a “business lunch” of chai and mandazi. We left him with a down-payment to build 4 library tables and a librarian’s desk. Hopefully these will materialise next week! With a mahogany veneer and metal frames we hope they will last many years of students.
We have been really encouraged by the school’s response to our idea of bulk buying sanitary pads. In Kakunga pads are marked up and many girls struggle to afford them, or simply forget to buy them. Some use dirty rags and others borrow money from teachers to buy them.
After some awkward conversations with supermarkets assistants asking where we could purchase hundreds of sanitary pads, we hit upon a potential solution. Our idea is quite simple: the lovely school Matron will make a termly trip to a wholesale store we found in Kakamega to buy pads in bulk, and can then sell individual pads or packs of pads to girls in school at cost-price. Yesterday Emily spoke to the girls and decided with them that the school will stock both the cheaper “Dream Girl” and the more pricey “Always”. Exciting.
We are keen to hold a careers day for the girls so they can learn more about what is required for different career paths. We have asked the teachers to invite friends from a variety of jobs (doctors, journalists, businesswomen), so the girls can speak to them about their future plans. We’ve also been asked to talk to the girls about our university experience which should be fun!
Chatting to the girls about their interests, we found some are Scouts
“Students should engage in Boy-Girl Relationships” was the motion for this week’s school debate, which we awaited with great anticipation through the week. To our surprise, we were told on arriving at the debate that we had each been named as the first speaker, Emily for the proposition and Bea for the opposition. A huge variety of points were made from both sides, both funny and serious. We left confident that quite a few girls have the potential to pursue a career involving public speaking.
Thanks for reading! We will keep updating as often as we can.
Until next post,
Emily and Bea
Bea and Emily: The best is yet to come 