Fun Times and Bad News

Well, this weekend was quite the whirlwind. I traveled to Voi on Saturday morning and met with Nick, another education volunteer who is stationed nearby. We spent the day in town and ate lunch with Yuri (sp?) who is a German volunteer in the area working in a primary school for a year. He is originally from Wurzburg, and seems like an interesting fellow. In the afternoon, we met up with Tori, a health volunteer who has been in the area for almost a year now. She took us to a bar for dinner. Nyama choma is basically grilled meat, and it is delicious. We also met up with Chris for dinner. He is from VSO (basically the British Peace Corps) and he is working in the same organization as Tori.

Nick and I crashed in Tori's guest room (she has pretty sweet digs) and on Sunday morning we did some shopping (I now have chairs!!!) before heading home. After waiting two hours for the matatu to come, I finally got a ride home. When I arrived, I found out that the headmaster of my school had just died. He had been sick since my arrival and I never had the chance to meet him. I heard he was a very nice man; he taught Christian Religious Education (CRE) at the school, and they always had their best marks on the exams in CRE. We are still figuring out the funeral arrangements so that we can get his body back to his home in Western Province.

Yesterday, we traveled to Wundanyi, which houses the district offices. The schools are on strike right now, so Peace Corps has banned us from going to school for safety reasons. I traveled with Bwana Boniface, the head of the Board of Governors (think schoolboard), to meet the District Education Officer (DEO). It was nice to meet him and see the offices in the area. Bwana Boniface also explained to Bwana DEO (and a few people in that office) that our school now only has 3 teachers employed by the government, and one of them has not even had his paperwork filed, so he is having some troubles. The 3 government teachers are supplemented by myself and one teacher hired by the Board of Governors (so that's 5 teachers, with no headmaster or deputy headmaster). But there are eleven subjects in the school, so hopefully we will have some teachers transferred here soon.