Visiting Chepsigot Primary school and Ladies group - 23rd

Chepsigot Primary school is a school for both able and children with special needs, especially blind children. The children come from as far away as Marigat (more than 3 hours drive)and so have to board here. Often families will hide disabled children away as they are ashamed of them.

The school employs a teacher, who is himself blind, and he teaches the blind children reading and how to use the braille typing machines.

The school has a school farm which it uses to teach the children farming skills. They are hoping that Bees Abroad will help them to establish a training apiary on the site so that they can teach the children about beekeeping and the how important bees are for the environment and pollination. They hope an apiary nearby would improve the quantity and quality of the crops from the school farm.

The primary school we visited

Headmaster showing us a talking calculator. He needs more of these and also aspires to getting a talking computer one day.

The school farm

The ground is so fertile that, with rain , plants can grow from this

to this in 12 months.

Pupils sitting outside for class.

Teacher showing us how he teaches the children braille.

Leaving the school amongst lots of cheers from the children.

The Chepsigot ladies group has been going for about 12 months, supported by Bees Abroad. The group is 20 strong and whilst having had some very bad problems in getting access to land on which to put their hives, they have managed to harvest about 100Kg of honey this year.

The group hope to buy the plot of land we met on, it will cost around 100,000 schilings (750 pounds), so they have a huge challenge on their hands to earn that money, taking them years.

Members of the group were at the training on Monday and Tuesday and were making plans on using their wax to make cosmetics. One lady had come home and surprised her children with the candy bars, which they loved. Another had lit her candle in her home on Monday night and was pleased with the amount of light and the smell from it.

KTB hives for the group, funded by Bees Abroad.

Handing over two new smokers and one of the training manuals, written in Swahili.

Accepting gifts from the group. These people have so little yet their generosity is boundless.

I got my own bunch of bananas!

Saying goodbye to the group for another year.