Friday and Saturday with Rusinga

Sopa!!

Today was basically another hard day of work at Oloika. We left the compound at around 7:45 in the morning to take our usual stroll through Shampola into Oloika. I always enjoy the walk because I get the opportunity to greet the Masai. We worked at a much faster pace compared to the other days. We put up many rows of brick, used around six loads of sand, and threw mortor at the walls. The building is coming along nicely. Now, instead of working outside the foundation, we have to go in the building to work. Today was the Rusinga students last day here in Oloika, so it was sad to see them go. As a group, we played zip-zap-zop, which was really fun. We also had a few leadership temperament activities with the Rusinga kids hosted by Brooke, which made us understand ourselves and our personality better. One of the questions we had to answer was “What makes a perfect utopia?” And by using the nineteen UN Millennia goals, we worked together to form a perfect world by prioritizing the significance of each goal.  It was interesting to see how our perspectives differed. Through this activity, we were able to identify people’s leadership roles, and our own. It was fun working with the Rusinga kids, and we are all going to miss them. We took a picture at the end in front of the future library with the Rusinga kids and the Masai workers. Hopefully, the relationship between Groton School and the Rusinga School will continue! We did exchange Facebook and instagram names so we look forward to seeing pictures of Nairobi when we get home. 

click for the album

We walked back to camp around 5:30 escorted, as always, by a group of six or seven Masai warriors.  The showers we took when we got back were very refreshing.  We took tea, coffee, hot chocolate and cakes (banana this time) while the sun set behind us. By the time dinner was served lanterns were set out around our camp and we couldn’t see the food without a headlamp.  We all, well half of us, were delighted to find burgers and fries for dinner.  We made buns out of the fresh rolls they always have at meals.  Four members of our group are vegetarians or don’t eat red meat and there were only two veggie burgers, but there was plenty of salad, vegetables and fresh fruit so no one went hungry. Now the kitchen always has enough vegetarian options.  We met Shani’s wife and sister during check-in and look forward to seeing more of them in the coming weeks.  Before going to sleep we heard zebra calls from the savanna.  We all look forward to seeing them when we go on our safari next weekend, but we are looking forward to the sleep in on Sunday the most. See you all soon!

~Zhamoyani and Thea