The STRIVE Kenya group has been busy as usual and having tons of fun!

We began our second service project at Kiptabus Primary School last Monday. We decided to paint another classroom, this one adjacent to the last one we finished painting. The first task was to scrape the old paint off of the classroom walls, as it was a botched job. We quickly realized that we were unable to scrape the wall efficiently and so we hired workers to finish off the scraping. Then, we applied one coat of paint emulsion on all of the walls in the classroom. We put the first layer of cream paint down and recently finished the second layer. This Wednesday we will begin painting the blackboards and the green stripe that spans the bottom portion of the classroom walls. We hope that this will leave Kiptabus better prepared to educate their students in a newly painted classroom.

We have also continued our teaching lessons at both primary schools. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we taught a mathematics lesson in geometric constructions at Kiptabus Primary. On Thursday, the group traveled to Kamariny Primary School to teach a 5th-grade English class. While the high school students helped teach the kids, the interns helped set up a system for using the government-issued tablets in the classroom. The new technology was provided by the Kenyan government for its new Digischool initiative. This morning, the interns gave a tutorial lesson with the tablets to the Kamariny staff to demonstrate the Windows 10 capabilities and familiarize the teachers with the new equipment and its potential to help in the classroom.

Although it rained a lot last week, we still managed to make it our high mileage week of the trip. We have had some injuries that have prevented some of our athletes from hitting as much mileage as they would like, but the cross-training equipment in the gym is excellent. One of our favorite group activities has been the one-hour strength class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with Coach Timo Limo.

This blog marks the second-to-last that will be published from the Kenya Krew, as our last week has just begun today. We are bummed that our time is coming to an end but we know that some of the best parts of the trip are just on the horizon! We will finish our painting service project this week and then head to the Masai Mara for safari. Then, we’ll be flying back home before we know it. Time to soak it all in this last week!

-Kenya Krew