Secondary Luthern School at Ngarenanyuki Region
Today had to be the biggest adventure of my life! We went with the New Life Band to see them perform for a secondary school.
We were picked up from our house at 9:30 by a dala dala. A dala dala is an inexpensive public transportation which has 21 seats and unlimited capacity. The African joke is "How many people fit in a dala dala? Nobody knows!" You fill it completely up and then add ten more. There is a driver and one person who hangs out the side yelling for people and then hits the top of the roof when the driver needs to stop which could be anywhere. The people know which one to ride because of the colored stripe on the side which represents the route or region it is going. There are hundreds of dala dalas driving crazily and wrecklessly through town as if they own the road.
I will be honest that we actually had a private dala dala for all of us to get to town. So the people were looking at us funny because the dala dala was filled with white people.
We all met at the New Life Band office and loaded up for the trip to the school. There were 13 of us stuffed into a van. One person was sitting on a stool in the middle and another one was just squeezed in between the seats. You would never fill a van like that in the states. We had no idea what the trip would be like. It took us 2 1/2 hours to reach the school. Two hours of the trip was driving around the mountain on an old cow path. It was like off-roading through the Australian outback. There were periodic washouts covered with rocks and boulders. It wasn't like we were driving carefully and slowly, it felt like we going as fast as a roller coaster. For those with car sickness, a continuous drip of Dramamine wouldn't even come close to helping. Along the way, we saw endless signs of poverty.
We saw corn being grown in every square feet of land available, brick huts half built, round water troughs for a village so they could bring their cattle, lots of homemade bricks drying, kids walking or waiting on the side of the road to go to school, donkeys carrying supplies, men with machetes cutting down the grass to carry back for their livestock.
In the midst of all of this was some beautiful countryside. We stopped one time to take pictures of the valley. It was so beautiful with Mt. Meru in the background and streams running through the valley. It was a very plush area.
We finally arrived at the Lutheran Secondary School campus. It seemed to be a really nice campus in the middle of nowhere. James told us it was one of the best secondary schools around and it was obvious as soon as you pulled in. We found out that James was very good friends with the Headmaster/Principal. If someone wanted to come to Africa and experience life on a campus, this would be the place to go. They actually had a group of six students and two teachers visiting at the time from Germany.
On the campus, there were about a dozen buildings. An office, library/auditorium, 5 dorms, 2 shower houses, 12 classrooms, 4 staff houses, guest house, and a community room. They received most of their funding for the buildings from a sister school in Germany.
We were very impressed on how they used their natural resources. They had four ways of generating electricity. They had solar roofs on their classrooms, two windmills at the top of the hill, hydro-electric power from a small creek running through the property, and a generator for back up. During the day, they actually create more electricity than they need so they store it in batteries. It was amazing how they had all these systems running.
For water, they had gutters on all the roofs to catch the rain during the rainy season. The water was stored in large 5,000-10,000 liter containers. The water collected was expected to last until the next rainy season. So they had to use it sparingly but they had enough. They would do their laundry in the creek and use the creek water for watering their crops.
After the tour of the campus, we were served a special lunch. They had decorated a room and had it catered for all the visitors.
Then it was time for the concert. We were impressed with the behavior of the students. They sat quietly for an hour and a half waiting for the band to set up their equipment. The concert was about two hours long. It was so fun because all the students were dancing and participating. Of course we joined in with them. One boy was showing me all the moves and interpreting the Swahilli songs. Pretty soon all his friends were laughing at him and watching him. He told me it was because no one has ever danced with a white girl. It was really funny!
When the concert was over, it was dark. To start our journey, we were getting in the van and the sliding door fell off, that created an interesting situation. The men did figure out how to get it on but we weren't sure if it was going to stay. Then the trip back down the mountain was quite the adventure. I was sitting in the front seat and it was the scariest ride ever! It was like riding the scariest roller coaster in the dark that you can imagine. I actually had a death grip on the bar by the door. I had my seat belt on even though they never wear them here. I am pretty sure I screeched a few times as we went over bumps that looked like they were going to be drop offs.
I have never been so relieved as we finally hit the paved road. However after about 10 minutes I noticed my seat was feeling really hot. I was joking with James, the driver, about having heated seats when all of sudden the motor stopped running. We pulled over and I found out the motor was under my seat and it was overheating. So they put some water in it and we were on our way. The problem was the car wouldn't go very fast, so were crawling along the road for about 20 minutes. All of sudden my seat was getting extremely hot and I told James there was smoke coming out of the seat. So we pulled over and everyone got out of the van.
This made an interesting situation. 13 white people piling out of their car at 9:30 at night. It was really dark because they have no street lights. As soon as we started to get out, all the village people started coming over. The children and young people swarmed us. They all wanted us to take their pictures. It was pretty funny how the children would pose and then laugh as we showed them their pictures. Luckily, some of the men went to get us some water. A hose had come off and it took about 45 minutes to fix.
One big problem was after the long bumpy ride, we had to pee soooooo bad! I always said that I would not go on the side of the road but sometimes you just have to. So we hiked up into the bushes on the side of the road. The children knew what we were doing so they snuck up around us and started making wild animal noises. We didn't know it was the children so it scared us to death so we came out running. Everyone had a good laugh over that. Especially the children! Everyone was teasing that we should have recorded it and put it on u-tube....really I just want to forget it..He! It was a good thing we went because it was two hours before we actually made it home.
I do believe this had to be the biggest adventure of my life! You just never know what a day in Africa will bring.
No comments:
Post a Comment