Week one!

Written by Amy Rawlinson and Harrison Blizzard

We have just finished our first week alone without our mentors and we were sad to see them go on Monday morning. After a couple days to prepare for our Champ meetings with the nursery parents, we headed out to Ruuju school with a little push to get the cab started. We were pleased to have all the five parents show up to meet us during Madaraka Day (the national holiday that commemorates the day Kenya gained self-rule from the UK). They were happy to meet with us and looked forward to working with us to prepare Kenyan food for the nursery school parents. We were also pleased to have both male and female parents actively involved in the process and we believe that this shows the increasing interest in nutrition among the communities that Farmers Helping Farmers is involved with. Thursday and Friday we visited Kieni-kia-Ndege School and Marinya-a-Ruibi School respectively to continue with our Champion parents orientation. The parents were as equally keen and we were honored that they asked us to be involved in preparing the food for the parents. This will be a great opportunity for us to understand their cooking methods and take some skills back home to cook for friends and family. We get a sense within these schools that the sessions will help the parents and children practice healthy eating and the schools are happy to be involved so their students will thrive in academics. We will spend the weekend busy preparing for the presentations and we will cap off Saturday night having pizza with our lovely Italian friends before they leave to go home. They are responsible for the great work that has been done at St. Theresa's and the Machaka orphanage and it was great to spend two weeks with them. It will be an empty two weeks at the residence until the rest of the UPEI team arrives!