Hello friends and welcome back to
another "Sunday with Sarah." It has been a
long time since I've been with you in
this space and I apologize for my long
absence. The last time I posted a video I
told you I was getting ready to leave on
a two-week African adventure. I
was hoping to come back in two weeks
with lots of stories to share with you
and I do have all those stories but I'm
afraid when I got back I had so much
work to catch up on, having been gone for
two weeks, and then my lovely assistant
Sarah Anderson left on her own two week
vacation. I had my hands full but finally
things are getting back to normal and
here I am. It's midsummer, happy summer!
Today I want to share with you a
little bit about my trip. There's more to
tell you than there is time for one video
but I'll be back next week with more. But
today I want to tell you about my visit
to the Waldorf School for the Samburu
children that I mentioned before I left,
one of the highlights of my trip. The
Samburu people live in the northern
region of Kenya, north of Nairobi, in a
region called Laikipia where we were
I visited the school with the school's
founder, a lovely young woman named Julia
Francombe, who is the founder of a
nonprofit organization called the
Samburu Trust whose mission is to
provide health aide and education to the
Samburu people, among other things. She
was very generous with her time to
take me to visit the school. So we left
one morning to visit the school from the
lodge that Julia's family owns where we
were saying. It was about a half-hour
walk, actually closer to 40 minutes,
through the bush and we had to walk with
a guide and a ranger carrying a big a rifle in
case we met lions or other
predators along the way — really an
adventure. I learned that the
children walk an hour and a half each
way to school, to and from school, from
their village.
It's quite a commitment. When we
arrived, we were visiting first the grade
school which is in a separate location
from the kindergarten. Right now they
have a first and second grade, housed in two
little huts, thatched roof huts, and when we
arrived teachers were outside with the
children. The children were jumping rope
and playing games and they seemed a
little bit shy and timid meeting us but
very curious. The teachers were young
men. This is one of the most fascinating
things I learned about the school is
that all the teachers are Samburu
warriors. In the Samburu culture all
young men between the ages of 18 and
28 become warriors and traditionally
their job is to defend the village and
in times past their job was to raid
other villages' cattle and this was
really interesting to me. What I learned
was that in their culture, women are not
respected as authorities. So that was
kind of hard for me to wrap my head
around but I was told they
believe children wouldn't behave
with a woman teacher. It was not
the role, that kind of role, for women in
their society. But it sounds like there's
a movement toward changing that
It's one of the many things that I want
to learn more about but during my time
there I had a lot to learn about the
differences in their culture. The
incredible thing was how enthusiastic
these young men were about the children
and about teaching and how much joy they
brought to their teaching. As soon as
I arrived, the first grade teacher almost
immediately asked me what songs I knew,
what songs I could share with him and the
children. Feeling a little unprepared,
and I pulled a few songs out of
my hat and sang with them and they tried
joining in with me and the teacher asked me to write them down
for him. So there's been
Waldorf teacher training for them in
Kenya and the teachers are in various stages of
their training. I'm not quite clear
if all of them are still in
training or if one maybe has completed
the training but they're very
enthusiastic about what they're doing
and what they're learning and I saw them
singing with the children and playing
clapping games and skipping around the
classroom. It was really a joy to behold
So later on, Julia took me to the other
location to visit the kindergarten.
The kindergarten classrooms — again
thatched roofs, bigger spaces,
oval shape, no walls, open walls. The
weather while I was there was just
incredibly beautiful. It was after the end
of the rainy season and very temperate,
warm and dry during the day,
cool in the morning and at night. I
came bearing gifts from Bella Luna Toys,
donations for the school, and it was so
much fun. I felt like Santa Claus
presenting them with these toys and just
seeing their faces as I pulled things out.
I brought them a dozen playsilks
because Julie told me it's very
difficult to get silk in Africa and how much she would love to have a
collection of playsilks for the children. So
I brought silks in all different colors and a rainbow playsilk and
handed one to each child. They immediately
began putting them on as capes and
skirts. And I brought a little
baby doll, a dark-skinned baby doll that we
had, and one of the girls immediately
took the doll and one of the silks and
tied it to her back as their mothers
carry babies in their village. That was
fun to see. I brought a wool felt crown
and I was wondering if they could relate to that, I imagine they didn't have
stories, as we do in the west, of kings
and queens. So one little boy took
the crown and immediately put it on but
upside down with the points pointed down and
I've got a picture of that for you. And I
brought them horsie reins, little
leather reins, one loop goes over a child's
head and the others wrap behind the
back and so you have a horse and rider.
Because the Samburu are a herding
culture, they're pastoralists and they
raise cows, that's their whole means of
livelihood is livestock and I learned
that in their culture a man is rich by how
many cows he has, not how much money he
has. But so anyway, the children knew
right away what to do with the reins and
it turns out they had a homemade pair in
their classroom already which they got
out. So the children put on their reins
and started galloping around the
classroom with silks flying and crowns
on and it was really such a pleasure.
I had lunch with them afterwards and
I learned they eat with their hands.
Julia told me initially in the early
years of the school they tried to teach
them to eat with a spoon and in a bowl
but as she went along she really learned
to adapt the school to their own
culture. The
children come to school, their lunchbox
is a plastic, kinda like a yogurt
container, that I believe they put handles
on and they bring that to school in the
morning. The teachers fill up their
containers with rice or beans and send
the children home at the end of the day, it's half-full to bring the rest of the
food back to their families. The
really interesting thing, one of the many
interesting things, about the school is
that these are nomadic people and they
don't stay in one place permanently. So
the children come to school for three
moons, and Julia told me it's literally
three moons, not three months. But after
the third full moon they pack up their whole
villages, move their houses, their cattle
families, everything to the next location
looking for more water for their
cattle. I also learned there are
three different groups that will come to
be educated at the school throughout the
year. Each come for three moons before moving on.
Truthfully there's still a lot I don't
understand. I've been back, I've been reading books, I've been reading more
about the Samburu and the closely-
related Masai people whose villages we
visited, Masai villages and Samburu
villages. Just so, so very interesting
to meet these people, meet the
children, meet the teachers.
The school is funded by the Samburu
Trust which is a nonprofit that
Julia Francombe founded to bring
healthcare and education to the Samburu
people and they were so appreciative
of my donation of toys and I know they
would be so grateful for any donations
to support the work of the school. The
children pay no tuition to be able to
attend the school. The parents and the
villagers are so appreciative. The
goal of the school is to give these
children basic literacy and numeracy
skills, teach them to learn to
read and write and basic math skills.
Julie explained most of them when they get
older will go on to herd the
cattle and do the work of their
village but her goal is to provide them
with those basic skills. So if you're
interested in sending a donation to
the school I would be appreciative, they
would be appreciative, and you can visit
their website at samburutrust.org
I'll post the link on the blog and
you can visit there and read Julia's blog and
learn more about the evolution of the school,
see more pictures and
learn about the work there. So thanks so
much for tuning in. So great to be back with you again. I'll
be with you next week with my
impressions of a visit to a very
different school in the slums of Nairobi.
So until then, hope you're enjoying this
summer. Have fun! See you next week, bye-bye