Finishing the School! By Courtney, Tess, and Julie!

After many hard days of hacking the floors, mixing cement, painting the walls, and digging holes for seedlings, the projects that we set out to were finally completed! The unexpected project of painting a mural was also finished and very successful. Designed by the group, but carried out by Gilda, Emily, Vicky, and Kassandra, the finished mural consisted of two hands holding the world (with stars connecting New York and Kenya), a giraffe, an elephant, and hand prints with all of our names. The kids loved it and were really appreciative of all of our work. We were also able to plant 60 seedlings all around the fence! Hooray for digging holes in the blistering Kenyan sun! All the children ran to help us water the trees and it truly was a wonderful group effort by the Berkeley Carroll group and the Oloika students. During our last day of work, we drew maps of Kenya, Africa, the Great Rift Valley, and also filled out a full multiplication table for the students to hang in their new classrooms. All the teachers were incredibly generous towards us and we really appreciated everything allowed us to do. For example, over the last few days, students (like Julie and Courtney!), had taught certain classes such as English, mathematics, and, most importantly, reproduction to 8th graders (go Ms. Smith!). We said our goodbyes to the many cute and wonderful students and thanked them multiple times for their kindness, hospitality, and appreciation of our work. Ole cere Oloika! (Goodbye!)