Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

Girls outside one of the classrooms at Remot School, Westgate, Samburu District, Kenya, April 2019. A note from William Rubel Summer birthdays . . . Getting older is a very strange process. My daughter, Stella, is turning 13 in a few weeks. I will be turning 67 a few days later. In many ways we are both experiencing changes in our bodies and in the way we think that are noticeably profound. For myself, I have known for years and years that I am the person who always does at least one thing too many. Whatever the situation, I always go beyond the obvious place to stop. In terms of what I can manage, I have certainly reached my limit! I won’t list all the projects that I am in the midst of! But I am for the first time becoming comfortable with this trait. Partnership with a Kenyan school As regular newsletter readers know, I have been doing research into the foods, customs, and lives of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I have been doing this for the last 25 years. Along with my Kenyan friend, Haile Selassie Lesetho, and my partner, who you also know through Stone Soup, we have created the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, a place that people can visit to study the effects that climate change and globalization are having on the culture of the Samburu. Traditionally pastoralists—in Biblical terms the children of Abel—the modern world is closing in on the Samburu and their culture is rapidly changing. There is a need to carefully document what remains so we can remember how they lived before they become just like us, people who live in permanent houses with Wi-Fi, credit cards, and jobs in offices rather than people who live entirely off of their cows, goats, camels, and sheep. Our research station is developing a relationship with a local school—Remot Primary School—which serves pupils of elementary, middle, and high school age. The school’s headmaster, our friend Boniface Nakori, has asked whether we can get science books for his school. Jane and I have both visited his school and told you about our attendance at the opening of a new classroom earlier this year. It is in a beautiful place located near Lengusaka, but it lacks so many things we take granted in our schools—like, there are very few books! Books are used and used and used until they fall apart. Books are so scarce and valuable that they are locked up in a trunk! Boniface has asked me to ask you to please donate books about science for his students. What he needs is anything. Honestly. From Little Golden Books to the lovely DK series on science subjects, and everything in between. Books about insects, snakes, trees, the human body, the stars, dinosaurs—anything at any grade level and in any condition will be used and read over and over and over again by teachers and students who want to learn. Primary education is mandatory, and most (but not all) children get at least some schooling. But their life is hard, and it is not uncommon to have a child who is 14 in fourth grade. The land is dying, and the children are not going to be able to live as their parents have. The difference between living a life of urban poverty or joining the fast-growing Kenyan middle class depends on getting educated. I can tell you that these are motivated, smart, excited students, but without books it is very very hard to make it all the way to a university. The boy whose picture I am sharing with you here is holding a container for milk. His house is in the background. This student is typical of the students at the school I am asking you to help with books. Not a single student in the school lives in a house like we do. They live in small circular huts made out of sticks that are not tall enough for an adult to stand up in. There is no electricity, so there is no light at night, as this school serves families who don’t have enough money for a solar light. On behalf of this boy and his friends, Boniface the headmaster, and all of us at the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, we thank you for whatever books you can send. If you don’t have books to send but would like us to buy books on your behalf, then please click on the Stone Soup website’s Donate button, note that your donation is for Samburu Books, and we will will purchase appropriate books for the school. (We will let you know which books and when they are delivered.) We are hoping, over time, that the Remot students will start writing a science blog for Stone Soup. We have our first university group arriving at the research station in early July, so Jane and I will be flying to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, to meet them on July 4. We will take with us any books that you can send our way before July 2. Please write to Jane to confirm the address they should be sent to. Thank you. William’s Weekend Project Which brings me (finally!) to today’s project: science and art. We have talked about science fiction in previous newsletters. I’d like to talk of other ways you might incorporate science into something you write or draw this weekend. To save your email inboxes after this long message, I’ve posted the activity idea to our website here. Do take a look, and if you are ever stuck for something to do this summer, check out our activities pages for some more creative ideas! As always, send what you come up with from this activity or any other projects to our editor, Emma Wood, via our Submit button, so she can consider it for Stone Soup. Until next time, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. This week on the blog, four-year-old Prisha Gandhi records a cheerful song she wrote on a rainy day.