Ndanda school

The school seems very large, and there were many students in town. Joseph seemed to be well known, and well liked, as many of the students greeted him, and many wanted to meet us. On the last night we were in town (Monday) two of the students asked to come by the house and visit with us. They spent about 90 minutes hanging out. There is often no electricity, and really very few forms of entertainment, so there is a lot of visiting, and Joseph loved to talk to people.

In July after we had visited, two students finally told him that the cloth wall hangings that we had hung as decorations had the sayings: . “I’m behaving out of goodness, you out of vanity.” The other says “I regret I ever knew you.” Apparently, the cloths are a way to communicate with your spouse. Joseph thought that it was hilarious that he had had many visitor in the month, and they had been talking about the sayings on his wall - what did that mean? Joseph took down the hangings that night.

The buildings of the school look quite beautiful from a distance, but they are poorly maintained and falling apart. There is rarely any electricity, the school runs out of money to buy food for the students(there was a food riot while Joseph was there and the army had to be called to maintain peace on the campus), there are not enough textbooks, pencils or paper. Poor management somewhere along the supply chain. Joseph had worked with Fordham Prep for a textbook collection of old science books to be sent to the school; I assume all of the collected textbooks are in the library. Joseph said the library was very bad, many of the books in it were propaganda.

After we cleaned his house, we toured the school, Joseph showed us his Physics lab and equipment; very basic stuff but functional. One of them most haunting memories we have of Africa is walking up the street at night to go to the guest house, and seeing all of the students studying under the European side of the town's street lamps. They would pull their desks and chairs out after dark and study under the dim light. Around 8-10 students per street light. Americans have no idea how much they are given.