Kericho Feeding Station

I planned today to be able to spend a lot of time at Kericho Feeding Station.  They people here have always been kind to us and with my mother here, I thought we would want theextra time.  Boy, was I right.  Usually we are at a location only a short time.  The Kenyans frequently complain that we should come when we can stay longer, like a couple of days.  That's not likely, but several hours here was time well spent.

 

Francis Chepkwony is in charge of the feeding station here and he runs a tight ship.  Everything here was well organized, from the water system to the improved ventilation in the kitchen.  They even had constructed a drying rack for dishes, with it's own drain channel.  The cows, goats, and chickens were doing fine and all the kids looked great. 

 

But it was the sho-shos (grandmothers of the orphans) that were the stars of today.  They all came, about a dozen of them, and sang songs and performed a skit critical of families who abuseorphans.  They really took to my mom who truned out to be the oldest of them all.  They put an award on her and wrapped her in kikois and they all danced around like kids.  They tried to teach her that whoopwhoopwhoop thing they do, but I'm not sure she got it just right.  They were really great to her and it was fun to watch.

 

After we spoke to the kids and had lunch and all of those fun things we do at these visits, one of the church members said that he had a beautiful cave on his land that he would like us to see.  He said it was "not far" (Kenyan for about 20km) and that many people came to visit it.  After we left the feeding site we took him and Francis in the LandCruiser and set off in search of the cave.  When we finally arrived, the cave was marked by a beautiful waterfall.  (This seems to be the trip for waterfalls.)  It was high up on a tall hill, so shosho Charlene stayed with Angton, and the rest of us started up the hill.

 

It was quite a climb, and when we got there, about a dozen kids from the feeding site were already there waiting for us.  Seems it was a lot shorter walk than the 45 minute drive.  We crawled into the cave, duck-walking the first few yards until the ceiling opened up.  The cave must have reached several hundred meters back into the mountain.  It was hard to tell because our flashlights couldn't really reach the walls on the far side.  They guided us to a couple of pools of standing water that were interesting, but hard to call beautiful because of the light.  I took some long exposure pictures at one that really came out well and showed the true colors in the rock and water.

 

At the second pool, Morgan discovered the bats.  They started to move as we got closer to the second pool.  There were hundreds of them, really small and very fast.  One brushed Morgan's face and later Angton told us he heard the scream from all the way down the mountain!  That was when we realized we were not walking on mud so much as bat quano.  Oh, well.  Who knew our trip to a feeding station would end up this way?

 

It just points out to me the value of having enough time to really enjoy a place.  We usually rush from site to site, meeting people and praying that we miss some of the amazing beauty of this country.  From now on I'm going to try to slow down more and enjoy the real Kenya.  Tomorrow, Londiani.

 

Pics below: (The network here at Kericho has been very poor, so we are having trouble getting pictures up.  Please keep checking; maybe it will be better at Nakuru tomorrow night.)