Happy Easter 2019

Happy Easter to you all Friends,

We hope you are doing well and that you are having a great Easter celebration.
This Easter my cousin Souleymane is going to slaughter a goat, an add-on to the beef we bought from our church so you are highly invited to come and celebrate with us!!!

Grace High School will begin being built next month and we hope to finish the first level of laboratory block before 5th of September 2019. The reason we choose this is that it can be used as regular class and office. We will have 2 classrooms, one office, one room to keep staff, and two rest rooms. It is the easiest way to start it. During the school year we can build the regular class rooms and later the administration building.

We applied and paid for city electricity but we are still waiting for it to run the water pump for making the bricks. If they keep delaying the delivery of electricity we will be using a generator even though it will cost us more.
 We have enough sand on the site to start the work.

I want to introduce to you one of our teachers, Mr. Pascal Togo.

Pascal is the English teacher at Grace School. He teaches English from 3rd grade to 9th grade. Pascal is a graduate in English teaching from the University of Languages of Bamako. Since 2014 Mr. Togo has been a key teacher in Grace School. I practice my English with him, we are very good friends.

Pascal is a fervent Catholic believer. His wife Niangaly Guindo is a very nice person, a prayer warrior and an evangelical Christian. They have one beautiful daughter named Marie Jeanne. They live one block away from us. On top of what we do together at the school, we have a positive influence in our neighborhood and I am lucky to meet and live by people like Pascal.

The public schools are facing a difficulty of validation because of many strikes while the private schools are continuing their classes.

The unrest in the area has moved many into Koro. Then many people are coming to ask to enroll their kids in Grace school next year.  We are sad to not have space for them. The pressure they make on us is driving us to think of having two 1st grade classes next year and adding every year.

This year we want to organize a student day to celebrate students and teachers and to have fun the whole day.

In Mali Easter is not as famous as Christmas. Especially this year the atmosphere is not at all festive because of the war we are surrounded with.

Again it is better to view war on the screen of TV or in a movie theater but it is a nightmare to smell it in real life. I can't describe the pain, the social burden and moral stress that come with it. The tenuous lives of the survivors are just an inch away from the dead victims of the war. Many of those who run into the town from the violence, have lost everything they had and are not likely to get it back easily because they can no longer farm their lands and raise their animals as they used to.

Thank you for praying for the war to stop and Mali to rest.
 
Thank you! God bless!
 
Your friend Ibrahima Kodio and family