Blue Bell

Upon arrival in Mombasa on Friday they 28th June Robin Balser and I Biko Huester were introduced to the blue bell nursery school by two flight attendants of the condor flight crew who have been working closely with the school since it was founded in 2006. During this introduction Grace Mutunga the proprietor of the school showed us the school facility which is located in Mtwapa a town on the outskirts of Mombasa. The school which consists of a kinder garden and primary school that goes till class 5 is in a very basic neighborhood and on a plot that is roughly the size of a football field. Grace explained us that currently 270 students attend this private school that has been growing over the past years. After learning more about the history of the school and viewing the facilities Grace introduced us to Gideon Mtuwa the person in charge of the administration of the school. 

The following day Robin and I took a Matatu which is a mini bus and is the most common public transport mode to Mtwapa.  At the entrance of the school we were warmly welcomed by Emanuel, Gideons son and a student of the blue bell nursery school who is currently attending the nursery class. Grace and Gideon also warmly welcomed us and we chatted a bit about the first day before moving on to an in depth explanation of how the school operates and the Kenyan school system. The school is an all-day school starting at 7.00 AM in the morning and going till 5.00 PM in the afternoon. The students usually have classes for 40 minutes and two long breaks consisting of 20 minutes in the course of the day. After an extensive explanation of the daily cycle of the school we explained our background and purpose. In the course of our stay in Mombasa, Robin and I will be working closely with Gideon together and try to optimize and simplify the book keeping system. 

During the course of the first week Robin and I familiarized ourselves with the current book keeping system. The fact that we arrived at the end of the month enabled us to work together with Gideon on the income statement of the June.  During this week Gideon was very open and willing to explain us how the income and expenses are journalized and at the end of the month consolidated. The expenses that occur throughout the month must be allocated to certain categories in order to create a simple overview at the end of the month. This overview is then forward to Condor Flugdienst GmbH and help-alliance who support his school in various ways among them financially. Both Condor and help-alliance want a transparent overview at the end of the month indicating where their donations have been spend on. 

Towards the end of the first week Robin and I fully understood the book keeping system and discussed the possibility of using excel to simplify the system. We presented Gideon with a demo excel sheet in which income and expenses have to be entered and then the overview is automatically calculated. This excel book keeping system shortens the procedure of consolidating all entries and eliminates multiple intermediary steps. Gideon was very impressed by the efficiency of this system and suggested a couple of changes he that we are going to incorporate in the course of the week into the demo excel sheet.