Ongoro

We traveled safely from Kisii to our orphanage at Ongoro.  In the local area, “Ongoro” means “dry place.  Indeed the place is far from surface water and wells are very scarce.  The soil is very sandy and the water table is deep, so we have struggled to dig wells here in the past.  But not today.  Healing Hands International, in cooperation with Christian Relief Fund have partnered with us to drill a deep well here to serve the orphanage and the community.  They arrived Tuesday and began drilling.  When we arrived, they had reached the water table and were installing casing for the new, 110 meter deep well.

Soon we were joined by Ebenezer and Tom Opondo from Healing Hands, who had come to check on the progress of the new well.  We had a nice visit with them and discussed ways we that may be able to partner with them in the future.  They are a great organization, which has helped us with a well at Londiani and has conducted agriculture training at several of our sites, as well as distributed food aid to some of our more remote locations.

At Ongoro, we also got to see the progress of our expansion project.  We will be adding an additional 64 orphans and widows here soon, and Tobias is hard at work building a new dining hall to replace the smaller hall that will be converted into a dorm.  He is also building two new latrines and doing some kitchen upgrades.  It wont be long before this place is bursting with 154 souls, making it our largest Orphanage.

We got to spend some good time with the kids, as well.  We kicked the soccer ball around and played, while most of the kids were transfixed by the well drilling operation.  Things really got exciting when the drillers began purging the well, causing a vast stream of water to shoot into the sky!  It was a momentous day.

As darkness fell, Susie went to the hall to answer questions from the kids, while I took care of the pictures and blogging.  Soon we will have dinner and the evening devotional.  We will be staying here tonight and hope to see the flow test from the new well tomorrow morning before we leave.

Be blessed.