Morning tea arrived at 6.15am, and we enjoyed it while watching the daybreak and the rock hyraxes warming up outside our window. At 7.00am Solomon arrived and we headed off for our pre breakfast walk - the clear fresh air and wildlife were intoxicating -however we ensured that we kept good distance away from the elephants. We arrived back for breakfast at 0830 and agreed to meet by the jeep at 1000 to visit the schools and village-Gill was going to join us.
First stop was the resource centre - we took some books, posters and cricket gear - some will stay for all to use in the resource centre and some, the very capable young man in charge, will be distributing to the schools. As we left he was off to a polling station to prepare for tomorrow's elections. Most of the literate men and women will have a role helping in the elections.
We then went to look around the schools even though all the children were on holiday due to the elections. The primary school had a great new boarding facility - there is a real focus on encouraging the girls to attend so theirs was the biggest building - families can put forward lots of excuses for not investing in their girls even though the law stipulates that they should be in school.
We then visited the growing secondary school and I saw the plaque which recognised my retirement donation from The British Association of Women in Policing (BAWP); it had paid for all of the first years books.(todays picture) As primary education covers youngsters to age 14 this school covers 15/16/17/18 year olds with some staying until 20. John looked at some of the physics and maths on the blackboard and was impressed at the depth and complexity being covered - probably harder than we currently teach. The plans are for a science block which should be built in the next few months; this should really be the cornerstone of establishing the school as the school of choice.
Next we went to visit the new health facility which is in the final stages of completion and thanks to an American benefactor - it was really impressive - you could uproot it and plant it in an English town and it wouldn't be out of place. The big hope is that mothers to be will break taboos and come to it to give birth thereby reducing the death rate during childbirth.
Magnificent progress has been made with both the educational and health facilities which have really grown from from de minimis in 2006. However I cannot help thinking how different life is depending on your where fate dictates you will be born. We have so much and they have so little - so we left even more determined to continue to do what we can to provide stimulating educational aids and anything else that we can to support the community.
We returned to the lodge and entered a different world - lunch by the pool, a pedicure, massage and afternoon tea -all before meeting Solomon at 5pm.
Our 5pm target was to walk/climb to the top of Ol Lentille @ 6500 feet. It was a steep climb but easier than the climb from Sultans house to the pool which is steep and stretching (and which John avoids by taking the slightly less arduous route).
The views from the top of Ol Lentille were great even you could see into the Samburu to the north and to Mount Kenya in the south. Due to the rounded smooth sided and steep top I felt much safer sitting down - it was also very windy up there! What we had gone up we had to go down but we returned safely back to Lodge for a shower and dinner - Chris had set up the DVD for us to watch a film - the White Masai - sadly the DVD wasn't a good enough quality so instead he arranged for us to watch a version on the laptop- it was a long time since we last watched a film after dinner and it was lovely. The film turned out to be the German version- but strangely once there were conversations between the two lead characters (the Masai warrior and his Swiss wife) they were in English the remainder were in German!!! Fortunately it didn't affect the meaning too much and we got the story - I still cried at the end!