The Beverly School of Kenya

Today we made our visit to the Beverly School of Kenya in North Kinangop, about an hour and a half from Nairobi in the Rift Valley. The Beverly School started, much as the Esperanza Academy did, with a dream. This was the dream of Abdi Lidonde and Alice Mudiri, two native Kenyans who both were working in Worcester, Massachusetts, he at the College of the Holy Cross, and she at the Nativity School of Worcester, when this dream was hatched. Their dream was to start a school in their native Kenya for poor, orphaned children, and particularly those who had been orphaned because of AIDS. When an article about this dream appeared in the Holy Cross alumni magazine, Andover's own proud alumnus of Holy Cross, Tom Maher, saw it and said, "I know how to do that!" (or something to that effect). Tom called them up, and what had until then been only a dream, began to take shape as a living, breathing place, and where the first 70 students will live and go to school beginning in January. Four trips to Kenya later, including the purchase of a 40 acre tract of land, moving Alice back to Kenya to be the head of the school, meetings with architects and contractors, and Tom and his family's tireless efforts at consciousness- and fund-raising, Tom is about ready to apply for a Kenyan passport! The school really is taking shape -- on a much grander scale that either Alice or Abdi had ever dreamed. That's what happens when Tom Maher gets involved.

This morning Tom, Alice, and I hit the road for Kinangop. It was nice to be out of the city, driving through the countryside, and into the Rift Valley, where the scenery is absolutely beautiful. Although less crowded, the roadways are still alive with pedestrians and bicycles. It's hard to believe just how far so many people here walk every day, to jobs, or to look for jobs, or to visit their relatives. Miles and miles and miles, to and from this place or that. People in suits and colorful dresses, others in near rags -- some in high heels with children tied to their backs. Grandmothers and grandfathers. People dressed in all sorts of attire, some with identifiable forms of religious dress (there are a thousand varieties of religious expression, Christian and other, in this country). There was one young man walking in his birthday suit through a busy intersection, probably high on glue. People-watching could be a full-time job in this diverse, and endlessly fascinating country -- even out in the countryside.

The drive to the school gave us an opportunity to talk about the recent violence in Kenya, which hit the area we were in especially hard. There are still 300,000 internally displaced persons living in camps throughout Kenya. Today's papers indicated that the first of them would begin today returning to their homes in some areas. Alice gave us a lot of extremely helpful insight into the cause of the post-election mayhem that swept across Kenya. Some of it I have tried to capture in my journal for another time, but won't take the time here to try to unravel. As with most things that have to do with ethnic or political unrest, it's complicated -- much more so than you would know by reading papers or listening to television in the US.

Driving onto the grounds of the school was very exciting. A whole campus is under construction there: a classroom building for the primary school, dormitories, a barn, greenhouses, and a guesthouse where they hope to host visitors from abroad to stay in this lovely location and to visit the school. There were probably forty or fifty workers on the job today. We took lots of pictures, and also did some video interviews with Tom and Alice throughout the campus for their website.

Back in Nairobi, we had meetings with the architects and the accountant. Getting around the city today was a nightmare. We were sitting in lines of traffic sometimes for a half hour at a standstill. I'd rather be in Kinangop. Nairobi is a city of roundabouts -- everywhere, roundabouts! And they often feed the congestion. Sitting at one of them today, we were approached by a young boy (probably about 9 years old). It was obvious he hadn't eaten in a long time. Alice rolled down the window for him. He had a sheet of paper in his hand telling the name of his school, which was a school Alice knew about -- a school for orphans. It said he was trying to raise money for his school uniform. There was a place to sign your name and how much money you had given. We all reached into our pockets and gave him enough shillings to amount to a couple of dollars or so. And then we gave him the bag of trail mix we had been enjoying in the car, and a bottle of water. We watched this sweet little boy sit down on the side of the busy road and begin eating right away. Alice said something to him and he came back to the car window on her side. He told her that his teacher would love to meet her. We got his name, Nicholas, and Alice wrote down his teacher's name and is going to be in touch with her. Nicholas is just the kind of child The Beverly School is being built for. Nicholas was there as an angel -- a messenger -- to remind us, in the midst of a frustrating traffic experience on the way to see architects and accountants, just why anyone would go to all this trouble.

Alice fixed another lovely meal back at home -- and she was the one doing all the driving today! She would have it no other way. Later, we took Tom to the airport for his return to the US tonight. My job tonight is to figure out how to get the videos we took from my camera onto YouTube so that Tom can start using them right away in the ongoing fundraising efforts for the school.

Heard from Martin today that he is stuck in Kigali for a couple more days dealing with child protection issues. Sounds like he'll be back here on Thursday so that we can begin our travels. Meanwhile, I have a lovely place to stay, and I made Alice promise that she'll put me to work to earn my keep!

It's been fun seeing the few comments on the blog. Let me know if you have stopped by!