Monday. The Toronto girls get the full experience of going to school at Limuru. It is a LITTLE BIT different than at home... here's what their day looked like:

5am: Wakeup (but in fact, most of the girls wake up earlier) and wash up (showers are buckets of cold water...)

5:30am: Preps. All girls have to be in their assigned classrooms by 5:30 to study and do their homework. The dorms get locked at 5:30, so if you get locked in, you get punished by being assigned extra duties (like scrubbing something with a toothbrush), or if you're late, you get duties too, and then you have to make up for your missed schoolwork time on your own time.

6:30am: Breakfast. Bread and a sausage and tea.

7:00am: Chores. Each girl has assigned duties (like sweeping or mopping or washing toilets, etc) and they have to make their beds and keep their rooms tidy.

7:30am: Assembly. The whole school meets in the chapel courtyard.

8:00am: Classes start. Each class is 40 min. long, and in total, there are 10 classes a day.

10:50am: Tea Break

1:15pm: Lunch (Lunch is the big meal of the day, which consists of some variation of rice with beans, potatoes and cabbage. I had some today, it was very tasty.)

2:15pm: Back to Classes

4:30pm: Activities (Games, Choir, Clubs, etc)

5:30pm: Supper (something simple like bread and sausage again)

6:45pm: Preps. More studying and homework in classrooms. This is very disciplined quiet time, and there are student monitors who have the authority to either rat you out or assign you some kind of punishing duty if you get out of line.

9:30pm: Back in the dorm to get ready for bed and socialize a bit (it's VERY animated & noisy)

10:30pm: Lights out.


So here's the thing. The Toronto girls did ALL of this with the Limuru girls. They wore matching uniforms. Their classes for the day consisted of Swahili lessons, English, Math, Biology, Phys Ed, Chemistry, and Geography. The school is surrounded by tea fields, and the phys ed teacher announced to the class that he thought it would be nice to show the visitors a bit of Africa... so instead of playing soccer, they went for a run in the tea fields, which are VERY beautiful. So imagine a big long line of girls (like we're talking 125 girls!) in very colourful gym costumes running through a rolling patchwork landscape of bright green... gorgeous.

And all the while, the girls traded back and forth about a million questions and became friends. Our girls commented often about how hard these girls work, and how respectful and proud they are of being in a school such as Limuru.

P.S. While this was all going on, Leanne & Jane and Roz (our amazing videographer) went on a Unicef reporting mission. A mere 2 hours away from here, with our lush surroundings, they were greeted by an entirely different landscape... dusty and bleak, devastated by drought. They visited a health care center for women and children who are in acute stages of starvation, and also visited a Masai village where the men had all left with the few remaining animals to try to find food and water. The women and children were left alone, to fend for themselves with little hope of success. It was a shocking and emotional day for them, and they were speechless when they returned, but all the more determined to find a way to help build programs and support networks to assist girls and women in marginalized situations.

We've made it to Nairobi, safe and sound! It was a long day of travel, and the first time in an airplane for some of our girls.

(Above: Felicia (faculty chaperone), Maedy, Wendy (faculty chaperone), and Taleisa get ready to say goodbye to the parents.)

(Above: the gi's get their final briefing from Leanne & Jane prior to take-off)

It was dark when we arrived, and we were greeted by Jane from the Unicef office here. She told us that the school girls were awaiting us with great excitement and anticipation. The bus ride to the school was longer than we expected, but after our final haul down a verrry bumpy dirt road, we arrived at the Limuru Girls School, and sure enough, a group of about 15 or 20 girls was there to welcome us with big friendly smiles and handshakes.

As we walked down the driveway to unload our bags near the dormitory where our girls would be introduced to their sleeping quarters for the next few nights, we passed by the other school buildings and pressed up against the windows, backlit by the light inside, we could see dozens and dozens of girls watching our arrival, waving to us when we looked up, the chattering of their voices reaching down to us below.

The yards all around the dorms were spread out with hundreds of pieces of drying laundry which was quite a beautiful sight with the dim light...

The Toronto girls are spread out among the dorms, completely integrated with the Limuru girls. The dorms are very rustic, humble dwellings -- each sleeping quarter has about 4 to 8 sets of bunk beds with very simple mattresses, and each girl has a trunk above her bed to hold her few belongings. Many of the girls were already sleeping, so we'll try to post some photos up tomorrow when we can get some good shots in the daylight. I think it was a bit of a jolt for the Toronto girls to see the dorms for the first time -- they looked pretty wide-eyed as they were being shown around and some got a bit shy... I'm looking forward to hearing their thoughts and first impressions tomorrow.

Margaret and Ann, the principal and head of boarding of the school, gave us a little introduction to how things go at the school on a Sunday, and as they were describing what our meals would be like the next day, our bus driver was pressing Ann to serve chicken for dinner, for the "guests". But Ann very practically pointed out that this is a public school, and there are certain things, like chicken and pork, that they simply cannot afford, and she reinforced that the school is not fancy, but it is very decent.

The rundown on what's happening tomorrow -- Sundays are for rest, worship and study here. The girls will wake up at about 5am, and have breakfast and clean and mop the dorms. Then there are worship services, 3 different ones for Catholic, Protestant and Muslim girls. Tomorrow afternoon we are playing in a soccer tournament in the city. And we shall see our surroundings for the first time in daylight.

Welcome to Africa...