Ken & Gilly help in Rombo

Vice President Ken Morrison and his wife Gilly in February 2011 went to Rombo for a few weeks to help and work there. They gratefully took with them the Club's donation of £500 for wood for the school desks that he would be making and 20kg of clinical material donated by Limerick Hospital.

2On his return, Ken reported to the Club: Gilly & I arrived in Rombo from Nairobi in a land cruiser after a tiring 4 hour trip - a lot of it over really bumpy roads and us feeling a bit dopey after the overnight flight. The next day we were collected to go the 1 1/2 mile journey to work. We hadn't expected a motor cycle and certainly not just ONE!

The photos in the Gallery below show the whole process of making the desks from the timber donated by the Club. On its arrival I measured it into lengths and Mike cut them in the workshop. I then hammered them all together. It was extremely hot work at times as the tin-roofed workshop got like an oven by midday! Mike made the metal stands and finished off the varnishing and we got them finally finished on the last night!

While there we travelled to see a school which was built by Light of Maasai contributions - right out in the bush. This is the charity set up by Elaine Bannon (originally from Dublin) and three educated Maasai who are now business partners. The quite small school by Western standards held 633 pupils and 200 in the kindergarten. Gilly and I spoke to each class telling them about ourselves and Rotary - a fascinating experience but tiring. We donated a football and a Kids Out T-shirt to a couple of top-of-the-form kids to great enthusiasm.

9cWe have had captivating time learning about the Maasai people and made some great friends. We have visited clinics, a hospital, given talks at a number of schools, and worked at a number of projects (i.e. dug many wells!).

Finally this photo shows that we did take some time off - this was a Saturday afternoon with Gilly and I (left) and Elaine and Joseph (one of the three partners) in the local pub (curiously, and now unfortunately, named the Tsunami Pub).

 

Gallery