While in Merritt, Lori, James and their friends Ron and Sharon helped provide many opportunities for the Maasai to get into the local schools. In a heavily First Nations area, our first stop was an elementary school.

The kids had lots of questions

I love kid reactions to Petro's yell at the end of songs.

From the elementary school, we went to the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology campus to get a tour. This was a unique school in that it formed as a private institute for the five First Nations bands in the area. The vision for this school was very similar to the vision of the Maasai: to create a school for their own people.

We toured their classrooms, which included a medical training room.

The elders of NVIT presented the team with gifts

From the college, we visited a local high school. We toured all the classrooms, talked with the Social Studies class and sang as the bell rang for lunch.

After a lunch break, we were off to a middle school to talk to another couple of Social Studies classes.

Mathayo as he walks the halls of the middle school with kids his age