I rode with the truck to the house here on the farm where the maize was grown. Some of the employees here are given plots of land to grow their own crops on. When we knew we needed maize Guy was sure to ask people here of they had what we needed before buying elsewhere. Anyway I got to meet the man who we bought it from. He was so nice and thanked me over and over for purchasing it. I watched a team of 4 men load up the 23 bags in trailer. We then stopped in the village to pick up all the donations for the school and the snacks for the final meeting with the teachers. The truck wasn’t only full in the back and on the trailer it was also full in the cab. Good thing for me there were 4 doors and a proper back seat. There were 4 men (and eventually one woman who we picked up along the way) in the back and I was in the passenger seat. A full load for sure as we bumped along the dirt road up to the school. I’m sure you can imagine what it was like when this truck full of all this stuff arrived and children began to come see what this was all about. Slowly slowly 100’s of kids began crowding the truck looking inside and trying to figure out what on earth would be happening today.
All the donations and food needed to be taken to the library and the maize needed to be unloaded on the steps of the head masters office. The workers we had on the truck unloaded the maize and we handed out everything else to children who were eager to help bing things to the library for us. Hundreds of little hands just reaching carry something. Once everything was unloaded the truck left and a few us went to the library to unpack the donations and get them in order. Books needed to be out on shelves and school supplies and teaching tools needed to be organized in a way that would make them easy to hand out. Kat and a few others carried on with that and I went to the head masters office to try and get the run down of how the student award ceremony was going to go. I had to stop myself from trying to plan it because I knew with 4000 kids it was going to happen their way in the end so why worry about a plan 😉
Slowly some of the 23 students parents began arriving. All they had been told was that they needed to be at the school at 10am to see the head master. The parents sat outside on a bench and the headmaster and I had a good laugh because most of them looked worried…I’m sure it was driving them crazy not knowing why they had been called to the school.
The team had made certificates for the 23 students who would be getting achievement awards. Each student would get a certificate, a pen, a pencil and a 50kg bag of maize. Our teachers gathered in front of the office and quickly students began coming in crowds. I asked Aaron if we needed to ring a bell or something and he said “oh no, once the children see something happening they will come! Don’t worry!” He was right, before long we had 4000 kids crowding in the dirt all pushing for a good seat. They had no idea what was happening but it was obvious something was going to.
One of the teachers started leading all the kids in a song in order to focus them all and calm the mob 😉 it worked and some us smiled knowing that those teachers know just how to handle these situations.
We began at about 10:30 and Aaron started us off speaking to the crowd. I have no idea how anyone heard him, but it seemed like they did . He began calling the names of each student starting with standard 1 (first grade). Each name was called and the student and parent would climb through the crowd to come to the front. I handed out the certificate to the student and Kat was giving pens while Mary took care of the pencils. We all shook their hands congratulated both the student and parent and then the parent was presented the bag of maize. There had been a lot of worry about how these families would get this huge bag of corn home. To our surprise though it was not a problem. Each parent (mostly mothers) were given the bag and with not much effort it was hoisted up onto their heads and off they walked out of the school gate toward home. Each time another woman lifted that bag and laid it on her head we were amazed! Off they went proud smiles on their faces. There were a few moments that I think all of us will remember for a long time. Some of the students didn’t have a parent attend they had an auntie or an uncle and a few had their father there. Some of the parents were very serious looking while a few were literally overwhelmed with pride. One man in particular lifted his little girl up off the ground hugging her and smiling. The little one was so excited she was shaking and had tears in her eyes as she watched her dad pick up his bag of maize. At the same time my eyes also filled up and I felt my chin begin to quiver. I looked over at my volunteers and a few of them also began welling up. I quickly pulled it together because I didn’t want to start a chain reaction ugly cry in front of all those students. We managed to get all the awards handed out. Only 2 students were absent and only one didn’t have a parent there to carry the maize home. The headmaster assured me that the bags would be locked up and parents could come collect them Monday.
Once that ceremony closed the teachers all walked with us to the library where we would have our meeting. We had donations to give and also wanted to talk about the two weeks and find out what had been gained by both groups.

to be continued…..