Familia (Eirian)

This is probably going to be my last post on this blog: we leave for the airport tomorrow at 4.10am Kenyan time (2.10am UK time), and we won't arrive home until about 10pm tomorrow night - and I haven't packed yet!


I just wanted to share our vision of the project with you: we had to draw a visual to say where we wanting to be in 5 years time. 


We decided to call our partnership "Familia", which means Family in Swahili, as that's what we want to build between our 3 partner countries of Wales, Ghana & Nigeria.


Here's our (rough sketch) of our vision that we came up between us:

We are really excited by the projects we've planned, and we hope you will be too.

Working over breakfast (Eirian)

Just to prove we're not just having a lovely time, here's a photo of what happens from about 7.30am to 8.30am when we start our morning's activities: 

We're working hard to put the most into our partnerships ... we have been having intensive talks as to what we hope to achieve with our partnerships, and we're really looking forward to coming back and sharing our plans with you. 

Research Club (Eirian)

We had a visit yesterday morning from students from some schools in Nairobi, who came to present some of the work they have done through connecting classrooms.


After the presentations, we had a chance to chat to some of the students, and I talked to three incredibly eloquent young men from Nakuru Boys High School.


After we had talked about the work they had done in their Research Club (a fantastic idea, led and driven by students in the school, and commissioned to carry out research on behalf of the school, we got chatting about other things - like football and rugby.


I discovered, that all of the boys liked rugby, with 2 supporting New Zealand in International Rugby, but one of then supported Wales. I gave my flag to him ... it seemed appropriate!


When it came to football, one of them was a Man U supporter, while the other two supported Arsenal.


Boys in my form, I may have found you some links with other football and rugby-mad young men!

Bush Dinner (Eirian)

It gets dark here at 6pm, and we usually have to be escorted to and from the lodges after dark, so an excursion into the bush in the dark was something I have to admit I approached with a high degree of trepidation!


We met at 7.30pm, with many of the people dressed in their respective traditional dress: Mike and I were dressed traditionally as we would for a rugby match!


The photos is of us with our partners:

Folake has promised to show me how to make one of the fab hats before we leave! Look at it - it's fantastic!

We were escorted through the dark of the grounds, to an area where the light was provided by candles and some lights around the edge. There was a band playing, and all of the buffet food had been set up for us to help ourselves.


There was much dancing and laughter, and very good food - lovely evening!

Planting trees (Eirian)

One of the abiding principals of the Connecting Classrooms project is that the carbon emissions generated by the air travel we have carried out to get to our partner countries should be offset in some way.

For us to do this, we went to Mirera Secondary School in Naivasha. The students from form 1 were all gathered outside to welcome us, and we saw the most incredible singing and dancing from the students. We then all went with some of the students to plant trees - I went with Edwin and Margaret - both lovely young people with aspirations to succeed. We planted the trees together, took tea together and then the students danced and sang for us again. 

We then showed our appreciation by sharing various ways we have learned to show people how great we think they are ... something else for me to show you when I get back!

The one thing that struck me was that these students were learning in classes of around 50, in classrooms with high windows that you couldn't see out of, with no materials on the walls, and just a chalkboard for imparting information, yet their passion for their learning was so evident, it choked me up a bit!

Again, Mike has the camera, so I'll try to post photos later!

Alphabet Part 2

Managed to get 5 minutes on Eirian's lap top because everyone is using it to skype home. What a marvellous invention that is! You get to see how untidy people's living rooms are, if nothing else!

Here's my alphabetical update of the day:

H is for Hippopotamus. They are huge and come right up to our rooms in the dead of night to graze. They are also fond of a good scrap and don't mind waking you up at 4.30 with roars that would make a lion sound like a pussy cat. Seriously scary.

I is for impala. A small type of antelope that gather in large groups and flee at the slightest hint of someone getting too close.

J is for Jambo. This is the easiest way of greeting someone in Kenya. Its a bit like saying "Hi! How are you?" Or "Alright? How's it going, alright?" You answer by saying "Jambo!" right back.

K is for Karibu. The word in Swahili for "Welcome" or "Croeso". You hear this a lot because people here are very friendly, polite and welcoming to visitors.

L is for Lodges. These are the equivalent to hotel rooms in which we are staying. They are much better than hotel rooms though because you have two double beds, a sunken bath and wild animals outside your windows. They are probably looking in with some envy at the creature comforts enjoyed by us humans. No wonder they do their best to wake us up in the dead of night.

M is for two things in abundance - Monkeys, which are entertaining and Mosquitoes which are not. We had to laugh today as the monkeys ransacked the marquee that had been set up to provide us with afternoon tea. They sat there ripping open the sachets of sugar and spitting out the tea bags.

N is of course for Naivasha Lake, an place of outstanding natural beauty. I am privileged to be here.

Partnership talks

Well, we now have our partners for the project ... but I'm not telling you who yet! You'll have to wait until the end of this post!


We started off by being divided into 3 groups: our group was based on the fact that the profile we had submitted talked of literacy and storytelling.


We then went to a beautiful lodge in the woods, and talked about the process, then had about 20 minutes to set up our stall - this is what ours looked like.

Then we went around all of the different clusters, and we each had 3 minutes to introduce ourselves: this was really overwhelming for us all as 3 minutes is almost no time at all!

After everybody had seen everybody else's presentations, we then had to sit and discuss who were wanted to put on our short list. Michael and I had enjoyed everybody's presentations, and were really happy with anybody as a partner, but  we decided that the clusters from Nigeria (2 of them), Ghana (2 of them, and Rwanda (1 cluster) were particularly interesting.

After a short time talking about our shortlist, we were then told to go and start approaching people we were interested in working with. The District Education Officer from one of the Ghana clusters came straight away to talk to Michael, and the representatives from Uganda and Rwanda came to talk to me, followed by one of the representatives from Nigeria, and a headteacher from Tanzania.

After about 20 minutes of discussions, Michael and I decided to take ourselves outside for a few minutes to talk together. It was really difficult to know what to do - all of the people we talked to were very keen to work with us, and we didn't want to hurt people's feelings.

We were keen on the Rwandan cluster, but they wanted to work with Uganda, and we were incredibly fond of the Ghana cluster ... so we decided to talk to both the Ghana cluster and the Nigeria cluster, to ask if they would work with us ... and they agreed!

Ours was the first partnership to be set up for the whole conference, so we were historic!

Our partnership is now between Wales - Ghana - Nigeria ... and we are very much looking forward to working with them!

I'll replace the photo below with one with Michael in it once he lets me grab his camera to download his photos!

From left to right: Hakeem Ayoola Ajibona, Headteacher of Sanya Senior Grammar School (Nigeria); Folake Adetoun, LGEA (Nigeria); Samuel Owuo Adonti, MOE, (Ghana); Theresa Adjei, Headmistress of Kotobabi 13 Junior High School (Ghana), me, and half of Michael.