Five Years of Work Come to Fruition in East Africa

By Ali Nagle, 5th Grade Reading Teacher, TEAM Academy

Last week I traveled to East Africa for the sixth time in the past five years. However, this trip was a first—we officially opened the library at Kyandili Primary School in Kenya! It was the first huge milestone in our five-year partnership with the school and I traveled almost 16 hours to walk inside the building TEAM Schools students and families had funded. My heart was bursting.

The post below shares my diary entries of the most awe-inspiring moments from the trip. Read How East Africa Joined Our Team & Family to learn more about TEAM in Africa.

February 16, 2012 – Arriving in Nairobi

The journey eastward across the Atlantic fills my body and soul with happiness and excitement. I find myself slightly giddy as the wheels touch down in Nairobi, an unconscious smile creeps across my face and I breathe in the warm East African air. Amidst the crazy existence that is being a KIPP teacher, everything slows down and time stands still when I arrive.

February 18, 2012 – Machakos, Kenya

The day has come. The library is opening! Four years ago I stood on the red, dusty grounds of Kyandili Primary School and made a promise to the students, teachers and community. I promised TEAM’s students, teachers, and community would work as hard as we could to provide funding to reconstruct the collapsing buildings. In turn, the parent committee at Kyandili promised if we built new buildings, they would raise the salary needed to hire three additional teachers to teach in the library and classrooms.

Holding firm to our commitments, TEAM students sold cupcakes and brought in spare change while the Kyandili families donated goats, a few eggs or a chicken, sold extra cassava, offered to help with the building construction and hauled water to save precious shillings for the teachers’ salary.

Slowly, the original building, constructed in the late 1940’s before Kenya’s independence, carefully came down; salvaging any decent bricks that could be reused during the renovation. And slowly, the building came up again.

Tears well up in my eyes as I stand in the most beautiful building I have ever seen. I don’t just see pristine plaster walls and beautifully crafted tables for small group instruction—a revolutionary idea in Kenya’s school system—or the plush couches for readers that earn the privilege, I see Zahnik’s face—a TEAM Schools student who came to me four years ago with an idea to fundraise for the schools in Kenya. Her Penny War project raised almost $8,000 over the years.

I also see the faces of all of the students, teachers, and family members from Newark who have helped us raise funds and who make the conscious choice to be the change they wished to see in the world. A change most would never actually physically see, but that they believe in with blind faith and pure goodness. I’m filled with their selflessness and compassion and only hope I can be a worthy representative.

Part of me never actually thought the library would ever actually come to fruition. I guess I just figured we would always have fundraisers at TEAM and it would just go on forever—not for any reason in particular, but just because  who would have ever thought a few schools full of middle and high school students could change a community? Jane Newman, the woman responsible for connecting us to Kyandili, stands next to me at the opening of the library and says, “It’s not a library, it’s going to be a reading factory!”

The opening is a wonderful display of pride and pageantry for the Kyandili community. There are hours of student performances, speeches and a grand feast. Every speech talks about how the library is an inspiration to others, a beacon of hope and motivation for Kyandili’s current students and for all future generations—everyone is so proud. Parents, community members, teachers, the district government officials cut the ribbon and step inside. Words can’t do it justice.

After all of the students and their families walk through the library, I sneak around to the far side of the building to take some photos. Three fourths of the beautiful rectangular building is covered in painted plaster, reinforcing the walls in beautiful earth tones, but the far side is exposed brick. Bricks from the original structure, hand packed red clay from the 1940s, which have been carefully preserved and used again. “To remind us what used to be and how far we have come,” Jackson, the school headmaster, told me. “We want the community and students to remember what was so they can work hard to make the future better”.

As I snap a few photographs, I spot Christopher, a father on the parent committee at Kyandili I first met three years ago. We were at the school in July of 2009 checking in on progress and meeting with teachers when Christopher walked up to the building and picked up a tool. Steadily, for hours, he carefully deconstructed the building. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “my part.”

Jackson later told me Christopher lived a few kilometers away and his kids attended Kyandili. Every day after he tended to his farm, he came to the school to work on the building for hours. He couldn’t donate extra crops or money and so his contribution was free labor. Today, as he walks through the library, Christopher gingerly drags his hand over the walls he built for his children and his children’s children. I have never seen a more beautiful and well deserved smile.

Learn more about what it is like to teach at KIPP, where teachers have the power to lead.

Read How East Africa Joined Our Team & Family, by Ali Nagle, to learn more about TEAM in Africa.