Week Two: Presentations!

Written by: Amy Rawlinson and Harrison Blizzard-Nutrition Team 2011

We are pleased to announce that we survived our first week of nutrition presentations to the nursery parents. Of course this past week did not pass without some out of the ordinary experiences!

On monday we met with the “Champ” parents of Kamaketha school. This school is too far to walk to so we had to take a taxi. Unfortunately the road to Kamaketha is very rocky and difficult for many cars pass by so we had to leave the car and walk a kilometer or two. We arrived back to the car several hours later to find that the battery was dead! It needed a jump start, but of course they do not have jump cables in rural Kenya so the driver had to resort to roll starting the car. Unfortunately for us the car was parked facing down a hill, a hill that the car could not go down because of the rocky terrain. So the only solution was for us and one other man to push the car up a hill backwards so it could be roll started. It is safe for us to say neither of us has ever pushed a car up a hill before, thankfully for our “Beach Body Insanity” training we were able to muster enough strength to get the car up. Disappointingly the car did not start, so we had to roll the car back up the hill again and again and again with no luck! The car needed more momentum, which meant rolling it further up the hill, something we could not do. Fortunately for us there were two oxen handy so the farmer hooked them onto the back of the car and got them to pull it up the hill backwards, this worked like a charm and after three or four runs up the hill and two hours later the car started! Hopefully we will not have to be pushing any cars up hills in the near future!

We had three nursery parent presentations from Wednesday to Friday. For each session there was food samples provided to demonstrate a balanced diet. We wanted to interact as much as we could with the “Champs” so we arrived early to each school to help the them prepare the food. They all really enjoyed making fun of our slow peeling and chopping techniques, but all in all we had a great time learning more about Kenyan cooking. All of the presentations had a great turnout or parents present, the majority being the mothers, but we were pleased to have a few fathers at each presentation too! Our presentation at Kieni Kia Ndege (which we abbreviate as KK) on Thursday was proceeded by an unfortunate accident as we were walking back to St. Teresa’s. We were accompanied by a horde of children, as class had finished at the same time as our presentation. There were many bodaboda’s (motorcycle taxi’s) on the road, all of whom were driving much to fast! To our horror one of the drivers hit a child in front of us, Harrison was forced to stand over the child to prevent anyone from trying pick the unconscious boy up, he came to eventually and another bodaboda driver took him to the hospital once he could stand. Luckily, we later found out that he had no serious injuries, however this was an eye opener for us to always keep our wits about us when we are walking during rush hour. We were happy to have Friday arrive so quickly and we were able to finish our presentation by 2 pm (about 2 1/2 hours earlier than usual). The headmaster then took us to a school dancing and singing festival. This was a little awkward at first as we were being stared at like we had beacons flashing on our heads and the sea of children parted before us as we walked towards the dancing. Once we got seated we really enjoyed seeing all of the traditional dances and songs, the rhythm that the children had was amazing!

We are looking forward to an action packed week to come as we finish with the nursery parent presentation and keenly await the arrival of the nursing and biology students!