Dear Friends,

It has been a long day, but I will write a quick note. My visit to Naulu school was wonderful in terms of meeting the children of this school. Naulu is just down the road from Chebuyusi school, where I was on Friday. Of the three schools, Naulu is the one with the biggest struggles. Most of the classrooms have 60 or more students in them. The teachers there seemed very caring and hard working, but it is clear that they are working with few resources. You can see from this picture how excited they were to meet a 'mzungu' and have their picture taken.

Nonetheless, the children performed some great songs for us. For each song, one girl would be the lead singer, and the others would do the response to each of her lines. They were always moving and dancing as they sang. One girl recited a poem from memory that was about hobbies. The final line was, “The most important thing about whatever hobby you do, is that it is something you love.”  I have to agree with her.

Naulu is one of the schools that received a cow from the Moses Brown project one year ago. Our original plan with Juliet, 15 months ago, was for Moses Brown students to raise money to purchase cows for the Kenyan students that would be the beginning of a dairy program. This program would help the Kenyan students become self-sufficient, by giving them the opportunity to learn how to care for cows, milk them, and sell the milk. By doing so, they would be able to raise money for their own school uniforms and fees. Unfortunately, we have learned that this cow is being cared for and milked by the head teacher (kind of like Mr. G at Moses Brown), and none of the Kenyan children are being taught dairy farming, nor are they getting to milk it and sell the milk. When Juliet and I tried to explain to the head teacher that the cow was to be for the children, he was not very happy (not the cow, the head teacher).  More Kenyan politics, I fear. The good news is that the cow looks healthy and happy, and has been producing about 5 liters of milk each day.  Tomorrow Juliet and I will try to work the confusion out, so that the Kenyan children can begin benefitting from the cows. I am looking forward to resolving these cow issues and spending some final days here in Eldoret at the hospital's Sally Test Center with Amelia, Geoffrey, and Zachary, playing with the young children there.

Before I finish, I want to say how much I have appreciated my amazing taxi driver, Nelson. He has taken me back and forth to the villages, driving 6 or more hours each day, over roads that I would never think were passable by any car, let alone this yellow taxi cab. Not only is he a safe and expert driver, but he has been a wonderful travelling companion, answering all of my questions along the way, telling me stories about Kenya, and helping me to understand some of the crazy cow politics that I have been trying to resolve. Without him, I would not have been able to learn so much about Kenya, and about our Kenyan buddies. I will miss him (but not that bumpy drive!)

Good night!

Elizabeth