How to move forward

The biggest challenge right now is really how to move forwards. To rebuild the school - all the new classrooms, I've got a quotation for 1,5 million Kes. I don't have nearly that amount of money, so I need to decide If I should do a few rooms at the time. The girls in sweden has some money, some of the other swedes living in Nairobi might have some money and I don't yet know if I'm going to get the weleda scholarship. I also need to start all the things I need to do for Christmas. I think I have to:
-get Ebba started in doing the christmas cards
-send e-mails to all my contacts
-activate the facebook page
-update the webpage
I guess that this will contribute with some money. I'm also contemplating waiting until next year, when I see the result of the christmas drive, but then again, christmas is a long break for the school and by doing it now it will be done when the students are off and will not affect their daily school work.
I also know my mother has a few contacts, so I have to ask her to get in touch with them. My dad promised me to talk to his friends that work with big companies, so I can send them a presentation of the school and might find new sponsors. I'm planning to go to the school very soon to discuss it with George. I've already had a lot of e-mail contacts with him, and asked him for new quotations.
It is really frustrating when I have so many plans, but not at all the money to go through with my plans. It is also frustrating to just wait and not really know how to solve the problem. I'm telling myself to just keep working. To wright the list above helped a little, now at least, I know where to start.

Crazy guys in the school

Teachers working in the new room

Thinking of money... and how to get more!

OK, I'm thinking of how to raise the money to rebuild all the classrooms. I've e-mailed the girls in Sweden, I'm going to start on the Christmas drive (I'll have my sister design the christmas cards) and I've been pushing hard for the Weleda stipend on face book and still don't know if I've got it (but I doubt it, because last time I checked we were in the 10:th place with likes). Maybe it's time to mail everyone that has shown interest and ask them for money. That will, however take a lot of time and my work load in school is quite demanding. I think I will have to delegate this task to my mom and my sister. Hopefully they can help me out...  Christmas is the "time for giving" - so I can't afford to loose the opportunity. Is this showing leadership skills or is it just a way to get out of lots of work??

Scholarship jury is thinking...

Last week I got an e-mail from Weleda saying that the jury now is working on deciding who to give the scholarship to. I'm wondering how they will decide. I know that the number of likes on facebook was one important criteria, but hoping it is not going to be everything they go on. I managed to get over 300 likes for my project in Excellent, but some had over 1000 likes. Last year they gave the funds to an organisation working with people living on a dump in Equador. Some people I talked to think that it is unlikely to go to a foreign country again. There were lots of project about health, environmental issues and troubled kids in Sweden that applied. I'm hoping they will see that my project is much more urgent and important, but as I stated before, people tend to not allow poverty problems to get to them and find them hard to understand. I guess it's a common effect by living in a country where no one is starving and lack the possibility of getting an education. 

Now, the only thing I can do is keep my fingers crossed!

I still feel that Weleda seems to be a great company, taking their social responsibility to a high level. Only the fact that they contacted ME, a teenager in Kenya, is very impressive. I know there is a lot of company with social responsibility plans, but they all seems so hard to get to. They probably give their money to organisations that also uses them for administration. My project is not run by a big company, but by me, whit no extra costs that means that all the money goes to what they are intended for. I'm also very thorough when reporting back. I'm going to work hard on getting more companies to notice me and hope that opportunities like this comes up again.

New teachers room

Yesterday I visited the school to look at the new teacher room. We managed to repair a room after buying so many, and fix it up as the teachers room. Previously, they had nowhere to grade their papers and prepare for their classes. As part of the money we got from the Swedish society, we bought them desks and chairs. The problem was, that until we fixed the teachers room, there were no place to put the nice new desks. I took a lot of pictures, so now I can finalize my report to the Swedish society, and also start working on the poster that they'll need for the Christmas bazaar.

I also had a long chat with the 8:th graders who are preparing for the National exams. They felt well prepared and I'm sure they are going to do well. I had a kiss and hug party with the smaller kids and had a hard time taking photos, because my hands were occupied by smaller hands holding on to me wherever I went!






I filmed this outside the school - but many of "my kids" are playing there. It gives a feel of the area:

It is still surprising that the kids are so welcoming and happy when we get there. They live under the worst of circumstances and a few of them are sick. Many have scars from burns on their faces, arms and hands. I was told that it is easy to get burned when they have an open fire on the ground to cook food in their houses. Many of the kids are living with siblings or relatives because they are orphans and one of the big problems in Excellent is that they are always hungry. There is no food served in school and they drink water to fill their stomachs. Living under these conditions they certainly have not much to be happy about, but they truly are! This is fantastic and I think that many would learn a lot to visit the school, mainly to be thankful for what they got and put their own problems in perspective. I realised that visiting USA and Sweden during the summer, people are generally into their own problems and think they are so big. For me, it is just ridiculous to hear them complain and even when I tell them about life in Mathare they just don't get it. It is truly sad that people can't relate to an every day life that so many people in the world experiences!

It is also interesting and bit sad that all the kids spend their week-ends in school playing and studying. This is the only place they can go to to feel safe and play with each other. The streets of Mathare is really not a place to hang out so this makes it even more important to build a school area that is only for the kids!

Doing a drama production

On yesterdays performance, I was actually glad to be an actor. I know all my lines and feel comfortable in my roles. I even felt confident enough to improvise a little (even if the director thought I took to much attention on stage, so I might have to tone it down a bit.) I also got a lot of really great comments from school friends and teachers, which makes me happy and thinking it is worth the effort. I'm comparing it ta last years experience to work back stage. There is so much to keep in mind and you really can't relax a minute during the two hours performance. Even if you're not exposed to the audience it is truly nerv wrecking to be responsible for everything that goes on back stage. As an actor, I'm able to take short breaks when I'm not on stage and as back stage crew you have to be in control all the time. I'm really thankful to all the back stage crew this year and really not envious of what they are going through. My drama teacher wanted someone of the seniors to direct the next school play, and I would really love to get that experience. But, I doubt I would be able to put in all the time and the hard work required and to train the back stage people as well as directing the cast would be extremely hard. To have the ultimate responsible of a production is something that seems quite impossible!

Tonight is my last performance and I'm looking forward to it. It feels great and at the same time a bit sad that it is over soon. Next week my life is getting back to normal, and the biggest challenge will be to catch up on everything I missed during the last couple of weeks.

Theatrical premiere

Today was the first day we performed Arabian nights. We are going to do one matinée and three night performances. We were all quite nervous, but it went fairly well. The audience was not really big and mainly kids from schools near by, so that felt good. Tomorrows performance will be more nervous!
My mom managed to record our warm-up on video...I'm the one with a loose headdress!

And some more images:

Art center entrance

Me and the King!

In action

This video pretty much speaks for itself. It's me, my sister and mother in action...

Report to the Swedish Society

One of the criteria to get funds from the Swedish society is to make a report on the results and send in the receipts. I started working on this over the break, I still need some photos for the poster I need to make for the christmas bazaar in the Swedish school in December. I will probably not have time for that    next week, because I'm really busy in school right now.   

New project

My Tae kwondo coach is starting a school! He is going to start with the lower grades, Pre-K to 1:st grade. It's in a lower-middle income village and he is financing it all by himself. I really want to help him out and have to think about things to do to raise money, without competing with my own project in Excellent school.

Drama, drama, drama and loads of work

We're coming in on our last two weeks of rehearsals and preparations for the production "Arabian Nights". It is taking up a lot of time and we're in rehearsals until 6 pm every day. I'm a bit worried that I can't keep up with my CAS work this coming two weeks and I'm suspecting that the drama production is going to take time during the coming week-ends as well. I'm playing five roles in the play, so I'm quite busy. There is also a lot of focus on my history IA, my drama RI, my math IA, the biologi IA, a TOK essay and presentation and last, but not least my EE. I'm doing the SAT on Saturday, and still need to organize some of my college applications. Needless to say, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment.
I know that now is the time to only focus on the next thing you need to do, but I also know that eating healthy, sleeping and exercising is important to be able to get through this stressful situation (or, thats what my parents keep telling me). There is no time to feel sorry for myself, and to be truthful I feel better that almost all the seniors are in the same situation as I am. I'm not alone!
I'm hoping I can find time for a Taekwondo class this week-end and some time to organize my work load. There is no way that I'll have the time during the coming two weeks to finalize my poster and my report for the Swedish Society. To update the web page for Excellent is also on the agenda, but that has to wait too. This is the IB program in full force!!! I hope I'll survive until the christmas break.