Diplomas in Oakland

This lovely image was posted on Oaklands Facebook page. I'm glad that they still use the Diplomas I made for them last year! Next year, I will try to make different diplomas, and maybe update the posters and leaflets I made last year. They are doing really well now, with lots of students.

Pad progress.

I have been a bit busy lately, and are finding it hard to take time to make the pads. There is a lot going on including studies for the exams. I've got some pads done, but I really need more. I was planning to bring about a hundred, but we'll se if I can focus and do it. I think I need to ask my mom if she can sew the remaining.

My art in the art exhibit

I'm happy that some of my pieces made it into the High School art exhibition. We have been working with prints for a while, and this is my contribution.

Christmas market in Swedish school

As always, I was helping out in the Swedish market again. I was selling candy, saffron buns and other swedish things. I also helped out in the kitchen, making the usual christmas plates with ham, herring and salmon. They were really good, but I like the christmas smorgasboard we make in our house better.

Success in the gym

Since starting training in the gym, I improved more than I could ever hope for. I'm lifting quite heavy weights now and I've gained a better control of my body. It is very encouraging to improve. In the beginning, I didn't feel I did so good and only compared myself to the rest of the family,  who works out regularly in our gym. Now I'm proud to find that in some exercises, I can lift more than my mom (and she is really strong and spends a lot of time in the gym). My commitment to continue has increased and even my trainer is impressed. My mom always says that how you build muscles is determined both by how much you work and how easily your parents gains muscles. This was not so much fun to hear when I started, but now I realise that I easily get muscles. I'm going to continue to work-out one to two times a week and do taekwondo two times a week and MMA at least one.

Creativity is flowing in ARTSCO

We decided a couple a weeks ago in ARTSCO to create some art just to inspire each other. This is what I came up with:

Destiny rooms

After a big mess, I finally got the recipes for the rooms we bought from Destiny. To make a long story short, we had to get different rooms than the ones we planned to buy. These are a bit smaller, but quite expensive. The fact that we had to pay 20.000 kes for Logistics was a bit surprising and I don't really understand what that is. There is almost always a problem with corruption. You have to pay someone to get the right to buy a room. Technically it is a bribe. Kenya is famous for being very corrupted and it's sad that even in the slums there are money changing hands during a simple transaction. I'm not sure that that is what this is, but I need to investigate further. We did not buy land, we just purchased the rooms so that is also a bit confusing.
The next step is to find out what it will cost to do basic renovations and to buy desks and blackboards. I think that the only way to buy rooms for the school is to look at what you're buying and ask yourself if you think it's worth it, even if you know that some money goes to other things. This is also the only way we can follow up. Look at the cost and what you got for the money we put in and see that it's really there after the constructions or renovations and then report it to the donors.