Rotary Health Day and other celebrations

Many thanks to Mike Eldon, for the update from Cura below!:

I drive out to Cura, for the Rotary Health Day, the only Rotarian to make it. But before joining the over two hundred children (six hundred in all participated during the day) gathered to be educated on health matters I have Will Fort proudly show me round his almost completed secondary school building. And he’s quite right to be proud, for it is indeed a wonderful structure. It’s clearly built to last, and it’s very attractively designed and exceptionally well finished. I chat briefly to Chege, who’s been doing a fine job painting the outside walls of the pre-primary school. ‘I attended that school in 1978,’ he tells me, ‘and now I feel so good painting it today.’ 


The community is about to set up a board to move the project from its building stage to its usage, and we are all determined that the school be a centre of excellence. 

Moses, Ngethe, vicar Edwin Kinyanjui and Mrs. Mwathi, the headmistress of Cura primary school, accompany me to where the children are seated, and Edwin tells me he talked to the children about ‘you and yourself’ – just what I was doing for two whole days with the EGPAF leaders, I comment.

Moses introduces me very nicely – as a ‘son of Cura’ – and I stand up on the table I’d had them place in front of us with little if any idea of what I will talk about, yet confident my usual scriptwriter will be present and on form. I say I am not only a son of Cura but a guka too, and that I am also here to represent Rotary. I say all the right things about the importance of good health, and also about the need to take their schoolwork seriously, as Kenya is a land of great opportunity, but more so for those with a good education. 


‘You see the new school going up behind us?’ I ask, ‘Some of you will be going there, but others will not. So you have to decide if you will be among the fortunate ones.’ I then point over to the ridge to our right. ‘And that’s where our university will be!!!’ 


After watching two of the visiting experts talk about oral hygiene and about the importance of hand-washing with soap my quartet of minders takes me off for a soda back at the home, and we have a good chat about matters Cura. I then visit Norman the cow, to be introduced to her latest offspring: twins, a boy and a girl, born three days ago!