Tech Rehersal

Yesterday we had the tech. rehearsal and it is quite unnerving to watch the the play with some of the actors still holding their scripts because the opening night is on Friday the 4th of November. But it is coming together which is quite nice. Like many plays this is very based on timing and since this play is also about death it makes timing even more important. We finally made it through the first act in one run with no interruption or big mistake which was a huge accomplishment. Our rehearsal yesterday was very much tiresome and you can really see that in the actors since they start to get out of character. Towards the end of the rehearsal it became more of a comedy rather than a murder mystery because we were all very tired. I do sometimes wonder how people work with plays as a full time job. Even our 1.5 hour rehearsals after school are tiresome much less 8 hour work days like we did this week end.

Destiny money

Last week, our family payed for the National Exams in Destiny school. It is quite expensive, because they need to keep the children in school all day, with food and they also need people to overview the test taking. We paid for this quite a few years, but next year we don't have to. Then the state will recognise the school and pay all the necessary fees to get it done. The National exams are really important to Kenyan students. The score is what determines where they can go for secondary school. In Mathare, most of the children who proceeds to secondary school goes away to boarding schools all over Kenya. I think it's great that they get to go outside the slums for four years, but unfortunately most of them also comes back to the slums after they are done. Usually people in the community help gifted students to go on to higher education. This happened to Destinys head teacher, who came back to start Destiny school to give back to the community. I'm happy to say that Destiny always score pretty good in the exams. Last year there was an article in the paper about how well the students did. I always get a report when the results are in and it's great to see how well they are doing. Unfortunately, many of them can't pay the fees for Secondary school, so they have to finish their education after year 8. We have tried to find donors for smart students, but it's hard to make people take on a commitment for so many years.

Destiny

We have a friend in Sweden who used to live here. She's been helping me with some fundraising activities in Sweden, and last year she got in contact with a Rotary club in Stockholm. They helped us fund some new rooms and some furniture. However, the biggest challenge is to pay the teachers in the school. Teachers get payed from how much money the school has, and it is never enough to pay everyone a full salary. The result of this is that the teachers leave the school. Dixon, the headmaster is really struggling with this because without teachers there is no education for the children. Rotary would not fund teachers salaries, but we got some private members that send us money every month now. It is not a lot of money, but helps keeping at least one teacher to stay in the school for a longer period of time. Last week Ann e-mailed me to tell me that we got another sponsor. I tried to check the account and it seems that we've got another 2000 Kes last month, but nothing this month. I think I need to check this a bit closer and not tell Dixon yet. It would be bad if he is counting on the extra money and then he might not get them.

PTC Bake sale

We have had some difficulties raising money for our upcoming talent show. We were supposed to have a cupcake decorating table at the PTO Welcome back picnic but we didn’t get a table until too late. So now we decided to have a bake sale during the Parent Teacher Conferences which went well and we raised quite a bit of money. Not many people came though to bring food or help sell. I did come and helped out for about 1 and half hours on Friday but almost none of the freshmen came. I do hope we can figure out a better way to make sure that people come and work their faire share. Now we should have enough money for the talent show.