Cute Kids and Fantastic Foliage (Africa, Part 5)

My post today focuses on a very poor, yet amazing primary school (and lots of other cute kids we met as we traveled around town, meeting friends and families) in Narok, Kenya. And I’m throwing in some of the more interesting flowers and plants we saw, most of which I can’t identify. But at least I could appreciate their beauty.

One afternoon we visited a little school that our leader Marilyn had discovered on one of her walks from her home into the city of Narok. This school was on a relatively main street, behind a fence. It’s a very poor school; in fact, we found it hard to believe the conditions under which the students and the lovely, dedicated teacher performed.

We were greeted by the teacher and her youngest student outside their corrugated tin schoolhouse. Yes, this is the entirety of the school.

The teacher - I wish I had written down her name - was amazing. She was fluent in English, French, Swahili and Kikuyu, another African language. Plus, she had a smattering of knowledge of a couple other tribal languages. In these lower grades (up through about the 4th level), the primary language is Swahili, but the kids are learning English.

Notice the posters hanging around the room. The teacher used old grain sacks and painted them with waterproof paints, then painted a coat of lacquer over them so that they could be washed of dust without running or fading.

Two of the student that charmed me were:

Gift 

Blessing

And here is my granddaughter Lauren and DIL Kim handing out some toy wooden cars to the students - and you can see the above-pictured twins, Blessing and Gift. They stole my heart!

Another sweet little girl plays with her new car.

We gave a stock of composition books, pencils and erasers to the teacher to pass out to the class as needed. But one of our group, Shelly, also had brought along several new coloring books and boxes of crayons that she presented to the teacher. In the picture below, the top students for each grade level pose with Shelly and the teacher.

Across the road was another school of higher grade levels - we think it may have been a private school with some paying day students as well. At any rate, we also passed out pencils to them and their teachers through the fence 

We also made a trip into some of the neighborhoods of Narok to visit some family members of our hosts. We passed out still more cars and stickers to these kids. And some pillowcase dresses, too.

I fell in love with her cute little face!

Some happy boys with their new cars!

The rest of the pictures in this post are just foliage, most of which I cant identify. But I thought they were beautiful.

In Nairobi:

 A nursery in the Karen district of Nairobi. I’m a sucker for lovely flower pots!!

In an around Narok and the Mau Forest:

This, again, is the omnipresent mountain sage plants. I snapped this picture when we visited with the Maasai warriors because they explained to us how the white tip of the branch is chewy and tasty. They called it “Maasai chewing gum”.

Thistles?

And at our guest house in Narok:

 

In the next Africa post (probably next Monday), We’ll go on SAFARI!  I have so many animal pictures - and great pictures of our beautiful lodge - that it’ll probably take more than one post. We’ll see. And then after that, we’ll finish up with our visit to the Giraffe sanctuary, another visit to the elephant orphanage, and some miscellaneous pictures.


You can check out my first four Kenya trip posts here:

Part 1 - Elephant Orphanage and The Escarpment
Part 2 - Tenkes Elementary and the Mau Forest
Part 3 -  Days for Girls and Lunch in a Mud Hut
Part 4 - Maasai Warriors and Around Narok City