Magadi Maasai Learning Fund

"Thoughts," his teenage voice lifted to address the audience, "thoughts are the limits we put on experience."

I am caught off guard, impressed. His profound idea is presented in thick accented English to the gathering of children and adults. This thought, as poem, is spoken by a slender fifteen year old, a Maasai.

I sit with the school's P.T.A., Eva, and her son Paul. We, the outsiders, are the honored guests, facing a throng of wide eyed children. We listen to this eloquent, gangling boy, and other youngsters' performances which represent their classrooms. We are the focus of this formal hour long assembly of the entire school, in a dark, electricity free, luncheon hall. It is 11am in late May. We are at a Maasai boarding school for 300 youngsters and teachers deep in Africa's Great Rift valley.

We are here to be celebrated, and thanked. We sit in ninety degree heat, straining to see details in the dark room filled with small alert faces. Finally arriving after a two and a half hour ride by a jeep-like four wheel drive. It careened over rutted dirt and stone tracks far away from the last piece of surfaced road.

One week before this day we began in Nairobi, Kenya, and headed north west toward a large saline lake in the Great Rift Valley. Our destination Magadi Township, Magadi Soda Company, and Lake Magadi on the edge of western Kenya. This private Maasai boarding school is five hours by road from Nairobi.

Because of Eva, we had delivered to this school, what would constitute, their first library. We are rather far out there.

Eva has collected 30 crates of books from a local library in Cheshire, and from Paul's school's library. Paul has brought gift boxes from his second grade class; toys, action figures, colored pencils and crayons, pop-beads gathered by the boys and girls of his age to be given here as a spirit of friendship.

Classroom materials here are limited, as these murals show (below). They were made by senior school children using the packing bags from feed stock for animals. Older students stitched yarn on the opened bags to make A.B.C.s and numerals for teaching the younger children.

In a typical classroom lit by a windows, Paul brings out a shoe box. One marked "BOYS", the boys crowd around a table, I ready my camera, there is caution and little noise. As one gift box after another is opened, eleven times over, five boxes for boys, four for girls, two unmarked, the play and noise level of children in delight envelops the dark room. What proceeds with each box is fast action discovery.

I had expected squeals of delight and wonder, I get their solemn attention slowly changing their disbelief to an eager rapture of seeing something new.

The children in England had been asked to give toys they no longer used, they were quite generous. Some bought new, smaller toys, to fit in Paul's suggestion of something to fit in a shoebox. We were limited in the amount of baggage we could bring into Kenya.

So, a small dump-truck lifts up a stuffed animal. There is a Winny the Pooh coloring book, balls, colored pencils, pens, sketch pads, paper. Just think what a western child takes for granted, uses once and puts in their toy box. Suddenly that toy is here, has a new life in Maasai land. There is a packaged game with a ball and strange plastic forms, no one understands, I glimpse it, recall it from my grade school days, I show the children and teacher what we used to call "Counting Jacks". I throw up a tiny ball and try to gather the pieces one at a time before the ball bounces a second time. The children "get it". I see delight, suddenly some are playing.

Paul shows the boys how to use a yo-yo. There are trucks and trailers, small cars, wind-up walking mice, face paint. Potato heads? Table top roads are built; I sense that the truth about these books, the children's literature library, that Eva brought - the shoeboxes of toys that Paul brought from his schoolmates in England will have far reaching effects. They will extend this schools knowledge of the world far beyond Kenya.

Hands reaching to touch a toy, they hold an action figure, never mind that Batman is not an African icon. They spend minutes over a replica of a police motorcycle with a blaring battery powered siren and flashing lights. Would they ever see a real one? Little girls get pop-beads, their eyes not wide with surprise but show intelligence at work.

Another box and this mystery game has handles on the ends of a cord, Eva, demonstrates how to jump rope, together we show how two people can swing a rope so another can jump across it. They all try, even the teacher. I see no indication they ever played at this before.

I catch Eva's eye, unsaid we realize these children are indeed doing better than what we expected. Perhaps the real problem in any poverty situation is little or no time to play. A stick and a rock, a child sized spear to aim, these we saw. Fun is present in their lives. But, they did not even know how to play a simple hop-scotch. Life in Maasai land is hard and it is serious work to survive. Children have to work, and we know play to be a necessary component of creative growth and learning.

The school is performing fine educational work with limited funds. Their teacher, a young man in his twenties, exudes his love of the children under his charge like fresh water. These kids are in wonderful hands.

An award is presented to Eva M. Wisemark, in appreciation of her support and efforts to improve the quality of education at the Olkiramatian Arid Zone School. Ms. Wisemark has for the past two years collected library books, school uniforms, and funds from her community in Cheshire, England. Jenny, her daughter in boarding school in Sweden, participates by raising awareness of conditions in Africa, and has started fundraising for repairs on the schools' bus. Paul Wertheim, Ms. Wisemark's son, continues to engage his classmates to choose toys and materials necessary for the running of a classroom. James Maxwell supports this project by raising awareness and funds in the U.S.A. and provides additional support from his home, and in his classrooms in Northern California.