ETA at 181: 7:15

Landed at JFK!

Arrival into New York

Hello families of BCS. I just want to confirm that you should meet your son or daughter at Berkeley Carroll School and not the airport. BCS has arranged an airport shuttle for the students. Thanks! 

Erin Lasky

Director of Operations 

Students in the airport

Hi friends and families of BCS! The students are at the Nairobi airport and should getting on their flight in the next hour. We will continue to monitor the flights and will update the blog with any travel delays. Thank you for your continued support of the program! We are thrilled by how well the trip went! Here is the flight information:

Turkish Airline 608 Sat. July 6th 3:45AM IST 10:05AM

Turkish Airline 1 Sat. July 6th 1:15PM JFK 4:50PM

Erin Lasky

Director of Operations. 

Students on safari

Hello friends and families of BCS. The group is in the Masai Mara on their safari and they don't have an Internet connection. They had a fantastic safari today and got to see lions, elephants, gazelles, water buffalo and much much more! The students are all happy and healthy! They will try to update the blog before they leave for the airport very very early on Saturday morning. We will keep the blog updated with any travel delays! 

Erin Lasky

Director of Operations. 

Kenya: July 2, 2013

The group awoke at 6 o’clock this morning to a beautiful Kenya sunrise upon the horizon before beginning to pack for the long trip to Nairobi. While packing, many of us were surprised to see that on the other side of the fence that surrounded our camp were many of the friends we had made during the trip. Although this was an unarranged send off, it was one of the more moving experiences of our stay. Friends such as Toikan and Edward entered our camp to exchange gifts, take pictures, and say their final goodbyes. We all then got onto a bus where we arrived in Nairobi four hours later and returned back to the Masai Lodge. The rest of the day was spent by the pool and participated in a group activity called “Utopia”, in which we discussed how we would solve worldly problems in order to create our own Utopia.

Dinner was served in the evening, consisting of cold sodas and beef stew. Towards the end of the meal, a celebratory birthday cake was brought out for Chris. It was super duper fun, and Chris said it was totally the best birthday he had ever had! The day came to a close with a group reflection. 

- Aidan, Ethan and Georgia

Photos, Part II

Greetings from Masai Lodge. The group left Shompole this morning, and is spending the night in Nairobi before heading to the Masai Mara tomorrow morning. We hope you've enjoyed the blog so far --  even with our Safaricom modem it was hard to get a strong enough signal to load Blogger (or any webpage). That said, it's pretty amazing one can get a signal at all in a place as remote as Oloika! I'm going to make good use of the WiFi now and post some more photos, since there's usually no internet whatsoever in the Mara.

- BC

Allie and Georgia getting sand for the cement

Ethan and Jasper conferring with fellow workers

Izzy keeping the foundation's surface moist

Emma and Maddy working on the other end

Aidan trying his hand at throwing a Maasai spear

Garrett receiving a necklace from his host

Homestay group portrait

Admiring the sunset...

...which was pretty special...

...matched only by the sunrises!

Walking to the market after the last day of work

Kenya - July2

Sopa! (Hello!)     

       

Today was the last day at the worksite. We finally finished the foundation for the library with everyone putting in a lot of blood, sweat and tears, literally (don’t worry though, everybody’s doing well!). The day ended with a celebratory ceremony, where Shani, the chief and the treasurer of the Oloika Sub-location spoke to the community about gratitude, the mixing of cultures and the future of Shompole. Following the ceremony, we trekked to the ‘market’ where we bought gifts to support the community. They were selling everything from machetes to intricate bracelets, and with the help of Shani’s wife, Namelok, we bargained for good prices on our gifts. Apparently there is a culture of bargaining in Kenya, where it is expected that the buyer bargain with the seller before buying the item. It was a great day!

On a different note, yesterday was the last group of homestays. The entire homestay experience was amazing! The kids sang/danced/jumped for hours and everyone in the ‘boma’, or the homestead, were unfailingly polite and kind. We all had chai tea (which was sugary and delicious) before eating a wonderful dinner of rice, cabbage and potatoes. By eight o’ clock, the sun went down and the singing began. A lot of the Maasai songs involve jumping, sometimes for several minutes, and also a lot of clapping and call-and-response. We sang a few popular songs like Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Sunshine, You Are My Sunshine’. Ethan, Shaun and Mr. Sanchez’s group were treated to stories under the stars and an impromptu rap battle. Also, we had a translator all along, so we could ask any questions that came up. In the center of the boma were many, many, many goats, sheep and in some cases, even cows and donkeys. When morning came, we all got a chance to milk goats, which was a very interesting experience. In most groups, either the children or the elders of the boma gave us our Maasai names. We exchanged gifts, thanked each other for the wonderful night we all had and headed back to camp to journal about this intense experience.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Maasai lodge, where we will rest before heading to the Mara.

‘Night.

Nashya (Karen) and Malodjé (Maddy)

P.S. Karen’s name means ‘Rain’, and that she’s productive and makes people happy.

P.P.S. Maddy is not exactly sure that this was her Maasai name/the correct spelling of it but it means ‘The Sacred One’.

P.P.S. from Mr. Clarke: we'll be back in Nairobi this evening and will be able to post some more photos.

Kenya: Saturday, June 30

Yesterday was one of the hotter days since we got here but another very hardworking day on the foundation of the new library.  This was the first day the homestays affected the amount of labor at the worksite.  So there was more to be done with fewer people. It consisted of wheel barrowing and shoveling from one end of the facility to the other.  When we gathered the rocks they were put into the foundation of the library for the creation of the floor. Soon we will cover the stones and pebbles with concrete to make a sturdy and durable floor for the library. Unfortunately, our streak of soccer games following days of work came to an end with both soccer balls being deflated and the pump being broken. The good news is that now we have fixed the pump and things are looking up, but it was still very much a let down that we weren’t able to play with the kids our own age. I guess we’ll have to wait for tomorrow to play another game, because we are packing for our homestays tonight.  

Chris & Jasper

Photos!

We've been having some difficulties getting a reliable internet connection, so sorry about the lack of photos. Here are a few from days past. Everyone is having fun and working VERY hard. This is a terrific group, and I'm loving working with them. They make BC proud.

Group bonding at Masai Lodge

Digging the library's foundation

Games with children after work

Who doesn't love a cute goat?

Kenya: Friday, June 28

Jambo!! Laura and Izzy in the house! Yesterday we moved 150 rocks in the hot hot sun 250 meters from the pile to the construction site. The rocks were from 50 to 100 pounds and we moved at least 100 more than they thought we could, putting us ahead of schedule. We ended the work day with a soccer game and helping the students study for their finals. The soccer game ended in a tie 0-0 and the kids quizzed us on the questions they were studying and none of us knew the answers. We noticed that the kids were really excited to learn and put a lot of effort into studying their finals and were also eager to start high school, which is far away from their town. [By the way, the teachers' union is on strike, and there has been no formal school since we arrived, making the students' dedication all the more impressive.]

            Today we had a delicious breakfast of omelets, sausage, and juicy fruit. We then headed to the worksite at promptly 7:45am and began work immediately. We mixed cement and covered our trenches with cement and rocks and started building the walls of our library. We then broke for lunch and heard an amazing story from Christopher, Shani’s brother. He told us about when he was a Maasai warrior. One night he heard someone making his way to him and he suddenly woke up. He quietly grabbed his spears and snuck out into the bushes. As he heard the noise get closer, he used three spears to strike the animal, which made it roar. The roar woke up his friends around him and they all ran up into the trees and the animal ran away. In the morning the boys followed the paw prints to find the animal and found that it was a lion! The tradition when you kill a lion is to cut off its tail and put it on the top of their spears, so when they walk back home the whole village knows that someone killed a lion. Everyone sings and dances and praises the boy who killed the lion.

            As we headed back to the work site all the children followed us and slipped their hands into ours. We all travelled together to the site and we finished up our work from the morning. At 4:00pm the students going on their homestay left and the rest of us headed to the soccer field. We brought out the cameras and the kids were ecstatic about taking pictures of us. They day ended well because we won the soccer game 1-0, which was such an accomplishment!

            Now we’re about to get some amazing soup and dinner and head to bed. Goodnight!!

                        Peace out,

                                    Laura and Izzy

Homestays tonight!

Hello family and friends of BCS! I just talked to Rebeckah, the WLS instructor with the BCS group in Kenya and things are going great! They had connection issue with the modem but they will try to blog again tonight. Everyone is happy and healthy and working hard on the service project. They will be heading to their homestays tonight and the group is very excited about this unique opportunity. Please don't hesitate to call with any questions - 303.679.3412.

Erin Lasky
Director of Operations

Kenya Day 3

Jambo! Today was our first day working at the Oloika Primary School. We began our project, which is to help build a library for the students. We woke up at 6:45 and were fed a filling breakfast before departing at 7:45 for the school. After about a quarter of a mile walk through the village, we arrived at our worksite. We were surprised to see that this dry plot of land was full of trees, most of which needed to be removed from the area. We spent the first two hours of our day cutting down and dragging thorny branches across the dusty ground. We took constant breaks where we were able to rehydrate and eat so we weren’t vulnerable to heat stroke in the hot weather. At 10:00, the Westminster Safari Company brought us tea and hot chocolate before the next stage of our project. Shortly after, we dug the foundation for the library, which had to be one and a half feet deep into the rocky dirt. Pick axes were used to loosen the dirt and break down rocks. Shovels would follow to scoop up the debris. In between the tenuous shifts, we had the chance to play with the local children who came to watch us work. At 12:30, we returned to the campsite for a lunch break, and stayed there till 3:00 to avoid working during the hottest hours of the day. We were followed by an eager group of children who casually held our hands on the way back from the worksite. From 3:00-4:00 we returned to the worksite, where we continued digging the foundation. At 4:00 we were given the opportunity to play games with children, such as duck duck goose and football (soccer). After playing, we returned to the campsite for much needed showers (its been 2 days!), and a delicious meal for dinner.  It was an overwhelming experience to see how kind and trusting the community was to strangers they had just met.

Lala Salama!

Kaitie and Samantha

P.S. Happy 18^th Birthday Brittany!

Note from Mr. Clarke: we're having some technical difficulties with our modem out here in the field. We'll try to load some photos soon!