Mahiga Hope High is moving fast! The second floor walls of the classroom building are nearing completion at the same time that the upper ringbeam pour is being set on the top of the kitchen walls. New high efficiency wood stoves from Botto Solar in Nakuru will be installed in the kitchen the first week of July. A week later, our wonderful cooks can say goodbye forever to the terrible smoke and the eye and lung problems from the old open-fire kitchen.
The new kitchen will also have hand-wash and plate-wash sinks for all students at Mahiga Primary and Secondary School, with water being recycled into a school orchard that will have banana, mango, avocado, orange, lemon and passion fruit trees.
Thanks to Safaricom for a major donation to help cover textbook costs.
We'll be moving into the new classroom building, and fitting out the library and computer library in July. Anyone who wants to support the work can learn more at nobelity.org.
Science Lab construction is targeted to begin in August, with Greg Elsner and AfH wrapping up the amazing Rainwater Court around the same time.
We've had incredible support in Austin and elsewhere for this project, and have amazing partners in Kenya - Joseph, Gerad, Felix and all the parents and kids who make our work easy and so rewarding! I'll be at the school in early July - will report again then.
best,
turk pipkin
the nobelity project
It's been an amazing year since we launched the construction of Mahiga Hope High School. AfH Design Fellow Greg Elsner has lived in the community as he designed and oversaw construction of the RainWater Court, while also lending his expertise to the rest of the school project. Working with Kenyan architects Multiplex Systems, The Nobelity Project and our local Mahiga team (the true leaders of the effort) have completed a 2-story, 8-classroom building that also houses a community library and a computer lab.
An old dirt-floor primary school building has been repurposed and rebuilt in an incredible fashion. With major termite damage in the lower structures, we propped up the trusses and metal roof on temporary supports, excavated for foundation trenches and built hand-cut stone walls back up the roof line. Each of the three big rooms has a new function. The first, complete with high-efficiency wood stoves and cement sinks and countertops, will be the kitchen for the 800-student capacity Mahiga schools (pre-school through grade 12). The next two rooms are the dining hall and study hall, with an open wall opening them for lectures, presentations and movie screenings.
A new preschool designed by Christina Tapper is nearing completion, doubling preschool space to a 60 student capacity, and we've broken ground on a science lab building that will be adjoined by the school gardens and orchard.
On October 1, 2010, 0ver a 1,000 people turned up for the opening celebration of Mahiga Hope High School, which included two local children's choirs, traditional dances by local women,
a performance about education by our 37 high school that was entitled "Now or Never", and even a new school song. We also had ribbon-cuttings on the 8 new classrooms, the computer lab, library, kitchen and the glorious RainWater Court which can be seen for many miles around.
The building of this school in just one year is a true miracle, and the local community
of Mahiga deserves much credit for both management and the work. When we needed labor to pave impassable roads with rock and gravel, over 100 men and women volunteered to do the work.
The opening weekend got more exciting with a performance by the Sarakasi Deaf Acrobats from Nairobi, and with an incredible visit by men's and women's pro basketball teams, The Storms, who conducted a hoops clinic with our high school players (all 37 boys and girls
play on Team Mahiga). Formal scrimmages folllowed, and the crowd went wild when the Mahiga boys scored their first goal against the pros (just a year after the students shot their first hoops ever with Turk). As the Mahiga girls took the court against the Lady Storms, thunder began to roll across the plains, and during the girls first athletic competition ever, the first rains fell on the
new roof and water began to flow in to our storage tanks. That was just a hint of good things to come. The next day a heavy thunderstorm poured heavy rain on the roof, half-filling our 30,000 liter storage tanks in just one hour.
Every building of the three schools has rainwater catchment, with over 100,000 liters of total storage. The Rainwater Court has solar powered UV purification, making it a true "net-positive" basketball court. Beginning in January, 2011, the school will become a part of the Kieni West Education District, and will be a great education and community-building asset for generations to come.