Back to the Training Institute

One week left.  I’m remembering today how hard it is to be gone this long.  This is the point in the trip when I start to really long for some American things, food especially.  I really need a pizza.  Kenyans don’t know cheese.  I asked my worker today, how many had had cheese and the answer was, “What is cheese?”  Might be fun to learn how to make a simple cheese, since they all have cows. Hmm.

Last night, Bernard Kibet and David Koech met me at the Dados.  These men are our workers in Kapsabet and Londiani, respectively.   This morning we waited at the hotel for the other orphanage workers to arrive.  The plan was that we were all going to drive together to the training center.  I had told them all to meet us at the Dados Wednesday morning early.  To some of them, early meant 8am, to others 10:30 was fine, and one we picked up at the bus stop at 11:45.  Kenyan time.

We made the drive from Kisii to Sondu with no problem. The highway is paved, but full of holes, forcing me to weave and dodge traffic to miss them.  At home it would have been 25 minutes to go that distance, here it took an hour.  Once to Sondu, you weave through the stalls and kiosks of the town’s market area to pick up the bad dirt road to Dirubi.  It takes 15 minutes on this road and it’s only 1.5 miles.

At the Institute, we toured the place.  Most of the workers had never seen it, and they were amazed that so much had been done.  It seems they were not as upset as I was with the delays, that kind of thing is normal here.  Like me, they are all excited at the potential this place hold for our work.  God will do some amazing things here, I believe.

After a very late lunch, we started our meeting.  There were many things to discuss, mostly about how we plan to begin measuring all the expenses of our orphanages for the first time.  Currently, each man accounts for all of the money we send him, but we know that we do not send enough.  We expect that profit making ventures and church donations will make up the rest.  What we don’t know exactly is how much we underfund them.  This makes it difficult to know weather to say yes or no to all kinds of requests that I get from them.  Hopefully our new system will be simple enough for them to use and give us in America better information to act on.

We also discussed various ways to reduce the cost of food, even in the months leading up to harvest when the maize prices are very high.  We made some progress there, but we still have a lot of work to do.  As our system of orphanages and feeding stations has grown, the numbers for maize alone have gotten to be pretty staggering.  At our current size, each year we buy about 14,560 kg of maize.  (That’s 32,100 lbs or just over 16 tons) The low price is 30 shillings a kg, but the high can be as much as 80!  Lots of potential savings there.

Later, after dinner, we were able to join the orphans for evening devotional.  Each of the workers encouraged the orphans, as did I.  These devotionals have definitely been the highlight of the trip for me.  100+ redeemed children and widows, singing praises to the king in the near-dark.  It reminds me of youth group or Single Parent Family Camp, only for them it’s every night.   On future trips I think we will plan on at least one night of “camping” at an orphanage.  Many mzungu need to experience this.  As we walked back to bed-down at one of the dorms in the training institute, it was sprinkling.  As we closed the door, the rains came.  Sleeping under a metal roof in the rain is very cool.

This morning we continued our meetings and finished about lunch.  After we ate, I drove all of them except Kibet and Thomas to Sondu to catch their busses home.  Kibet and I will stay here again tonight and leave tomorrow morning for Eldoret, and a night of rest at he Shirikwa Hotel.  Then it’s on to Kapsabet, Ngenymesut, and our newest orphanage, Kipsenene on Sunday.  I’ll write more when I can.