Dear Friends,
What a day. Amelia, Geoffrey, Zachary, and I spent several hours today with the Moses Brown fourth graders' Kenyan buddies. When we first arrived at Juliet's house, they stared at us in amazement, because most of them had never seen a white person (in person) before. They were very shy, but we inflated the soccer and rubber balls, and soon everyone was running around playing happily with each other and with us.

After sharing tea together (Kenyan tea and mandaazi, a sweet fried dough snack like a munchkin), we handed out the packets that the MB 4th graders had put together for their Kenyan buddies. Inside each packet was a letter, a package of photos, and a book the 4th grader had made. (For those of you not familiar with this project, during the school year the MB 4th graders exchange letters with Kenyan students at Quaker schools in these villages. We also send over disposable cameras for each Kenyan child, to take pictures of his or her daily life, home, school, family, etc. The Kenyan teachers get the cameras back to us in the US, where we develop the film. Each MB 4th grader uses the photos of his or her buddy to learn more about their life in Kenya. Then they write a book about their Kenyan buddy's life, based on what they have learned from the letters and photos. Each personalized book contains copies of the photos, as well as text, and is printed, laminated, and given to their Kenyan buddy.) After the Kenyan children got their packets, they looked through them. It was an hour that I will never forget, watching the expressions on their faces as they looked at the photographs they had taken themselves. Many of them have never seen a photograph, let alone one of themselves, or a book made with photos of themselves. I hope these pictures capture a small fraction of the moment for them.

Oliver is VERY excited about the airplane Matt put in his packet, because he knows Oliver wants to be a pilot when he grows up.

Shanty laughs at the picture of her holding her 'paka' (cat).

Valentine and Sylvia look through their photos together.

Marrion and her friends enjoy a picture from Alex C's family photo calendar.

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What I think sticks out about the experience, several hours later, is affirmation that our Kenya-Moses Brown partnership is allowing for meaningful learning on both continents. The Moses Brown students gained a more personalized understanding of the Kenyan children as fellow human beings, and the Kenyan students today felt proud to be known and respected. Hopefully their image of "Americans" has been personalized a little, too. Needless to say, the school supplies and craft sale money that the 4th graders raised will have a significant impact on these 28 Kenyan children's lives. Maybe for some of them, this experience will give them hope that they can achieve their dreams.

Tomorrow I will repeat the 3 hour drive to spend time at Chebuyusi School.At Chebuyusi, I am hoping to clear things up with Rural Service Programme about the missing cow (see earlier post), as well as learn more about how things work at the school itself. The students from Chebuyusi that saw me today should be comfortable showing me around, but my guess is that the other students at the school will show that initial shyness and quiet curiosity about the strange mzungu ('white person') in their midst. You should have seen the double-takes, the looks of surprise, and heard the cries of "Wazungu! Wazungu!" (the plural of mzungu) when children looked at our passing taxi today full of the four of us! Everyone is extremely friendly, but in the small villages, our faces are definitely unusual looking.

I hope you are all well. More news later...
Take care,
Elizabeth