Rift Valley Academy & Beyond

The actual ICEC conference was held on the grounds of Rift Valley Academy.  This school, with over 100 years of history serving missionary kids and their families, is located in Kijabe, Kenya.  To get to the school you had to descend down a steep road with lots of sharp switchback curves. (For my family:  Imagine the road between Franklin and Harrisonburg and then fill it with potholes!)  It's one thing to navigate those kinds of curves and potholes in a small van or car but a large bus is an entirely different matter!  I was happy when we rolled to a stop in front of this building Wednesday evening.

The school is built on the side of the mountain going down into the valley and as afternoon faded into evening the wind began to blow down the mountain.  Kijabe means "place of the wind" and I would say it was aptly named as the wind howled all night.

Thursday I participated in a pre-conference workshop on Biblical integration.  Thursday evening was the official start of the conference and by Friday morning there were over 250 teachers, administrators, dorm parents and other school personnel on site participating in workshops of all kinds.  It was encouraging to network with others, to ask questions and find out how other schools are working through problems that we also share.  It was also good to be reminded that no matter how green the grass looks on the other side (and the grass does look mighty fine in Kenya) there is no perfect school!

While at RVA I enjoyed the beautiful views of the Rift Valley, the huge variety of plants in varying colors and the wonderfully cool weather.  It was refreshing.

We even got to take in a little Masai dancing which was very interesting.  Here are the dancers prior to their performance.

And a little bit of video of the action.

Sunday morning after church we boarded our bus and headed back to Nairobi but not before we took one more group picture.  

In Nairobi we were given a short tour of Rosslyn Academy, another christian school serving families in Nairobi. It also has a beautiful campus.  It was a former coffee plantation and this administrative wing was part of the original plantation.  

Other buildings including their high school building were built with rounded sides to mirror the architecture of the original plantation buildings.

From Rosslyn we visited a mall and then we headed back to Mayfield to rest for the night before beginning our trip home and what a trip it was!  Actually, before I get into that, just blogging about all of the things that we got to see and do in a few short days is a really good reminder that I have so much to be thankful for even if the trip did take a turn for the worse.