Update from Kibwezi!

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
-- Albert Einstein.

Just checking in to tell you guys how things are going. We've been in the classroom every day, and the kids are really starting to pick up how to do things on the laptops on their own. We've let the older grades take a class or two to explore the computers on their own, and they're usually able to do that without much help or guidance--we're just there to fix a jumpy cursor or two. The favorite activities seem to be anything that creates music (TamTam Mini especially), Maze, and Speak. Among the older students in the polytechnic school, they seem to really enjoy chatting with one another. We've definitely made a lot of progress since day one where we had to teach the kids how to move the arrow.


Greg has been meeting with the primary school teachers a few times to teach them some things about the laptop and also some trouble shooting tips. He's also busy writing an instruction manual of sorts for all the activities on the XOs, so that the teachers know how to use things once we leave. Since our deployment is considerably shorter than the others (3 weeks instead of 9), we've been trying to cram everything in and are beginning to feel like we're running out of time. But, we all realize we're doing the best we can with what we've been giving, and we're hoping the program continues after we've left.

As for the coincidence quote at the beginning, we've run into a stroke of quite good luck. We'd been given a server by another team who were unable to use it in their deployment, and needed to figure out how to pick it up. As it turned out, Paul Commons was able to drop the server off in Nairobi at the PCEA Guest House around the same time one of our team members needed to catch a flight out of the Nairobi airport. Therefore, we were able to easily pick it up while we were there and bring it back to Kibwezi. There was a piece of software that we needed, however, and the internet here is absolutely not fast enough to download it. This weekend, we're venturing to Mombassa for a sort of vacation within a vacation. A team north of Mombassa, in Takaungu, had been planning on coming down Friday to go to the beach, and we've arranged a meeting with them to both discuss the program and to download the software directly from them. Things have fallen into place really well, and I thank God for that.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers throughout the next week and a half!

-Kate