Open House

A beautiful morning beginning at the Kennell's porch to watch the sixth grade girls perform their tap recital which was choreographed and taught by our own Miss Jacque Breuer! Next we went to the schoolhouse for Open House, and toured the classrooms, heard class presentations including a reading from PD Eastman's Go Dog Go by Asher and from Dr. Suess' Green Eggs and Ham by Gabriel.

After the presentations we enjoyed watching a splendid slideshow which Jacque had put together with pictures of the students, teachers and families throughout the year. Last on the agenda, but very important.. graduation! Each student received a diploma from their teacher and the kindergarten class even wore adorable white graduation hats thanks to Andrea's creative imput :)

It was a marvelous morning and I was pleasantly surprised to receive a few teacher treats from the families and students! I loved my presents of an african bag, a Faure rice bag hat, a framed photo of our school and several notes and cards telling me how much I'd be missed. Thank you! I'm going to miss all of you too and I feel so blessed to have been able to have had this year in Togo with each and every one of the people here :)

Last Days

I feel as if I can't write anything worth writing. Perhaps it is because I am filled with so many emotions. We are packing up and out of the schoolhouse, school is done for the year, and we are finishing up our time in Africa. I look forward to being back in the states, but I know I will miss so much about the community here.. so it is extremely hard to put words to my emotional state currently.

As I sit here, I have been making sure I have souvenirs I need for gifts and watching Jacque figure out the sorting of items to pack. I am thankful that I am packed for the most part-- I only need to reorganize a bit of my items so I will be able to add a couple items from Accra without my baggage going overweight.

It is so fascinating to me how different people react to the stressors of transition and packing for travel. I think it's funny how stressed I usually am about packing and getting everything I need into my bags and procrastinating about it, but here I've finished packing away everything I'm bringing back to the states... and I have a week to reorganize and repack and figure out exactly which bags I'll need in London, and perhaps even organize well enough to not have to repack for Searcy..

Well, I'm gonna go see if I can organize my baggage so it's practically perfect in every way :)

Field Trip

Thursday morning we had an all school field trip to the well digging project that David Reeves and Matt Hangen have been working on in Lassa Tchou. My two kindergardeners, Gabriel Reeves and Asher Miller, began the day excited and energized at even the idea of observing the well digging.

They were both so happy to be able to help out with the digging as well. Each student had an opportunity to help with the drilling and to help with the pulling as well.

This is a great shot of Gabe helping out-- you can even see the sediment coming up out of the drill pipe.

This is Asher drilling-- I think he preferred this part since when he tried at the rowing he fell

Even the teachers were able to try it out and see what difficult work it truly is. Here is Jacque rowing to help lift the drill up each time the drillers strike down into the ground.

In this photo I'm taking a turn drilling-- hard work!

You can see it's a pretty muddy job...

As we observed the current drilling site and learned about the process of this technique of well digging, an audience of children from a local school gathered.

After helping at the current drilling site we walked with Dave over to wells that they have already dug in the area. It was neat to see what the finished product would look like and what goes inside the pump.

After walking back to the car, I took a photo of Gabe and Asher revealing their exhaustion from the draining day in the sun and the long walk. Getting back to school for snack time and read aloud, I was surprised at how much we accomplished in school after all we had been able to experience and observe out of school.. and with fatigued students!

Some more fun photos from the day:

Looking at a local well with only a puddle of water in it, unfortunately it wasn't dug deep enough into the ground, so it dries out quickly in the dry season.

Another amazing discovery of the day were these great colorful grasshoppers. This was one Aidan caught within minutes of arriving at the well-site.

For more information on the well digging project check out the facebook group Lim We - Clean Water for Togo.