If you read about our Fun Day with the Vipingo Grads, today's post is going to sound very familiar. One of the perks about sponsoring two schools in Kenya is that when you figure out a good structure for a day or finish a really great activity, you can do it all over again with the other school.
We started out the day by meeting the graduates from Bomani at Valerye McMillan high school. As we did on Tuesday, we split into small groups and received a tour of the school with our group of incoming Form 1 (freshman) students. The Bomani graduates seemed very happy and even overwhelmed by the facilities and the high school students.
Checking out the school library
The current high school science lab. Another lab is being built that's even larger than this one.
The girls dorms are still under construction but are coming along nicely.
The grads loved the mall. We looked through shops, rode the escalators and elevators, and looked around at all the sights. Bomani is a village a bit further off the beaten path, so even more of the students were seeing new sights that they had only heard about from friends.
City Mall in Nyali
As we continued to enjoy the day, the students became much more outgoing. We've often noticed that the people from Bomani seem to be a bit more stoic at first, but really open up once you spend time with them. Our students from New Life Academy are no exception to this, so the trip to the mall really helped establish (or re-establish) those personal connections.
Making and eating pizza at Domino's was again a fantastically fun experience, for both students and the group leaders. It was fun to see the different toppings the kids chose to put on their pizza. Besides the usual toppings, the Domino's here had Kenyan ingredients like Swahili chicken and piri piri (spicy) sauce.
First spread your dough out...
Then spread the sauce like this...
Then add the toppings and smile!
Pop it in the oven
Box it up when it's done!
After the mall, we returned to the school for some additional time with the students. The graduates got to learn self-defense techniques with Ben and David, while other members of our team talked with the graduates more, or took the time to play with the younger kids at the school.
Some of the littles we got to spend time with in Bomani Thursday afte the trip to the was complete.
The day at the high school, the mall, and then back to the school was a fun way to celebrate this important milestone with the graduates. These students have worked hard and achieved excellent results. Not only is some time of fun a great way to celebrate, but it's a great way to give deeper attention and connection on an individual basis. It was a huge blessing to the team to have this special time with them.