Today I visited a nearby school. The name of the school was Mkanga. CLI had previously put roofs on two of the classrooms in this school. The school had standard 1 to 7. They used to have a standard 8, but since there weren’t that many older students, they decided to remove it. Al and I met with the head master and he was super nice and gave us a tour. We went to the school to observe and find out whether the children used the hand washing stations that a previous organization put in place outside the restrooms. The station consisted of a cement container, which was filled up using the nearby well pump, and a small bucket that is used to scoop the water from the container. The bucket had a small hole on the bottom to allow water to fall through. The head master said that the hand washing stations were pretty effective and that the children do use them.
There were only 4 actual classrooms and the rest of the classes were conducted outside. Usually one meal is provided by the community through a program. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay long enough at the school to see the students eat their meal. The way school was conducted here was so different than anything I have ever seen in the states. There are about 900 students attending Mkanga, but less than 10 teachers. There was definitely a need for more teachers and classrooms.
The container finally arrived! For the past few days Jeff, Karen, and everyone else has been waiting for this shipment to arrive. It has the two new larger wind turbines and more solar panels.
Tomorrow, Al and I are going to the St. Gabriel’s Hospital. We are hoping to talk with the head of the community health outreach program there and see whether he is interested in sending any of his community outreach workers to CLI. CLI has a pump repair team that travels all throughout the nation of Malawi fixing wells and Jeff is hoping that we can get a community health outreach worker to go out with the well repair team and provide basic healthcare to individuals in the communities that need it. With this, the well repair team can take the community health outreach pack with them and Al and I can take note of the usage of the pack and whether there is anything that needs to be changed.
