Because of the Ebola virus, Shermon's and my parents have requested us to leave Kenya immeidately. Although the virus has not been found anywhere near Kenya yet, and the organisation, with connections with the foreign commonwealth office in the uk and an evacuation plan in case of outbreak, still considers the situation to be fine for volunteering as well as other project workers, Shermon and I have decided to wrap up our project and leave 4 weeks earlier than planned. I hope this act of ours comforts the fear within our family and many of our relatives, and can be understood by friends who have hoped to see much more work done in the school we worked in.
In order to wrap up the project and make sure things invested are completed and sustainable, Shermon and I have asked our parents for one more week in Kenya. With God's efficiency, haha, we were able to complete 3-week of work in 4 days. We had the electrical wiring materials supplied to the school during the weekend, had the electrician in to install the electrician fixtures in two days, had the shelf properly fixed against the wall and painted, had all 167 new textbooks stamped and labelled according to our new referencing system, and had them all arranged onto our new bookshelf! We also completed the memorandum of understanding between the school and EPAfrica the organisation to make sure the school would continue to put in effort to ensure the investment is sustainable, the handover pack about what we did this year and what the school was like which are some info to be passed on to volunteers at Namagara next year, and the data base regarding the school and any professionals or suppliers' contacts. It was a busy week, but we still managed to have taken photos with staff and students of Namagara, whom I will surely miss a lot. (Shall upload more photos when I get back to Hong Kong!) So to conclude, it has been a packed and fruitful week; and we have tried our best to deliver everything we can and have had all the fundraised money invested in the school. Yet it would always be a pity that we could not invest more time in the community - I'm sure the people have enjoyed our company that some of them teared when we left the village yesterday :'(
I will miss the kids who wait everyday dearly at the school entrance to shake our hands and say "hello mzungu" (hello foreigner); I will miss Kenyans making fun of Chinese saying "Ching Chong Ching" when they see us which made some of our volunteers so irritated and mad; I will miss how amazed I was when we always thought there was food insecurity in Kenya but an average Kenyan eats sooooo much ugali (their staple food) a meal that equals to 4-5 bowls of rice; I will miss how Kenyans think the whiter the person the richer he or she is so they keep begging us for money whenever they can; I will miss eating mangoes as I had never had so much mangoes in my life due to constipation; I will miss my disciplined life that I can sleep and wake up so early and stop myself so easily even when we are watching a very exciting soap opera; I will miss our everyday routine of thunder and lightning in the late afternoon and even hail that the falling ice hits as painful as paintballs; I will miss the super long prayers I made to God repeating the same line "please let there be light and do not let me live in darkness" as there was literally total darkness during some nights when the lightning stroke the transformer in town; I will miss all the graces of God that we praise the Lord every time we had light and water and food and good sleep; I will miss the times Shermon and I talked to other volunteers about what Christianity really is; I will miss the bible verses that appear everywhere in our life even in clubs and supermarkets; I will miss the super super loud church music and the very exhausting worship with dances and jumps and top voices from lungs...... Memories that would only pop up bit by bit as we move on in life. I thank God for the opportunity to have lived a short life here. So weird that I feel homely here and feel that I will be back one day, if not to somewhere similar maybe.
Okay I'm boarding now. Will update the bits and pieces when they come up in my mind again! And I would very much prefer to talk to anyone in person about this experience :) Thank you for accompanying me through this experience!!