Rainbow Clouds Mean God Is Coming

There was a cloud at lunch at school today, floating over the dusty yellow crater, changing colour from green to blue to orange to yellow. It was amazing! The children told us it meant that God was coming, but sadly we weren't intending to stay in school for the afternoon so if he did arrive at Nakuru Workers Primary School at 2pm today, we missed him.

Ellen and I took strawberry ice cream, cones, mango and bananas to St. Stevens last Thursday - they loved it :) I'm not sure if some of them had had ice cream before! We dolloped it out with a metal spoon that kept bending every time I scooped, and the kids sat in a big semicircle licking away. They were so happy but now we get requests for ice cream every day, as there were 2 litres left (we overestimated the amount that would fit onto one cone) and we've promised to bring them back another time.

Talking of St. Stevens, I'm not sure if I've mentioned to many people that we're rebuilding it - at the moment they're in a rented building in a horrific area, filled literally with the rubbish from the entire of Nakuru (the sign on the top of the matatu going there reads 'sewage'), and full of houses that smell very strongly of sausage-tree-wine every time you pass them. Gemma, one of the other volunteers, managed to raise A LOT of money from schools back home, and so that's enabled us to start building a permanent home for them, right next to Nakuru Workers Primary School, where I teach. It's looking SO good - the walls are about my height already and construction only started in May. It's so much bigger for them, and such a beautiful area, compared to their current one :) At the moment construction's stopped because Gemma's money's run out, but some more from other volunteers should be coming soon.

I wish I could give something towards it, but currently my plans for the money all you lovely lovely FANTASTIC people have given me is to put it towards a new classroom for Nakuru Workers, as without it they won't be able to admit a new Standard 1 next year because there simply won't be space for them. By the autumn Rebecca, Annie and I are determined that we'll have the money to send to them and say 'start building', in time for the new school year in January.

We had a pretty dramatic weekend, as

a) Our relationship with the manager of St. Stevens blew up in our faces as Becky had some money stolen, and the manager is claiming that one of the children stole some of it, then returned the rest to him. The rest has now mysteriously gone missing and he's refusing to give it back. We are all very reluctant to believe that any of the children took it, as I would honestly trust those children with absolutely anything, and from the first day they've been trusted with our cameras and phones everytime we visit, and Gemma ended up in a massive argument with the manager about everything, culminating in him saying that there are too many volunteers visiting and he wants half of us to go away. Its ridiculous. He is NEVER there and we care far more about the children than he does.

b) Gemma left on Monday afternoon, meaning another depressing goodbye at the shuttle bus station, which is rapidly becoming the saddest place in Nakuru. This was not helped by the fact that we knew the next time we would be doing this was when WE would be on the shuttle.

c) To top everything off, four children ran away from Pistis at the weekend to become street kids. NIGHTMARE. Chasing four children around town and convincing them to stay once you've got them back is proving pretty impossible. They've left because they want to be able to eat bananas, and all they eat at Pistis is ugali.

Loughborough's also being awful. My only accomodation option is to share a room with someone in halls I didn't want to be in, and hope I can move in the first few weeks, because they told me I wasn't allowed to apply til June and are now telling me all the places are gone because I didn't apply earlier. HATE.

I have to go and have tea with Leah, age 10, from my class, and visit her newborn baby sister now!