Friday: community service day!

Friday again, time for community services! Today we split up in two groups to paint the Step Up Academy and the All Nations Academy, which are two private primary schools. During the business related visits we had already seen that the walls of the Step Up Academy were dirty and damaged, and we found out today that this was not different for the All Nations Academy. Despite the bad condition of the schools, we would like the children to experience school as a fun place to go to. Therefore, we brightened the classrooms with colourful paintings of trees, animals, the alphabet, etc. The All Nations group also got help from some of the pupils of the school, who made some beautiful drawings. Additionally, the Step Up group made a very nice playground for the children using tires and wood. It was a very successful day!
Nevertheless, the condition of the schools is still very bad. The tables and chairs are broken, the building of the All Nations Academy was not even finished yet and there are shortages in books and good teachers. We hope that the program that we are setting up will help the schools to also improve these shortcomings, but for now it was nice to work with our hands, really get something done and immediately see great results. The head masters of the school were very happy!
After the hard work we took some rest at the beach and spent the evening at the house, since tomorrow we have to get up very early for our trip to Kendwa and Nungwi!