Okay, now I'm ready to be home. The hardest part of any of my trips to Kenya has been the last day. You always build in some free time on your itinerary in case of car trouble, sickness, or the like. We've had a relatively trouble free trip, so we are left with these days of idleness here at the end.
There's a sense of letdown; shopping in the upper class sections of Nairobi is not as satisfying as holding orphan children. We're also very tired. What surprises me this trip is what I am missing. My wife and kids, of course, and hearing English more often than not. Iced tea is hard to find here, I miss that.
But to me, Kenya doesn't feel as foreign to me. I recognize streets and places I've been before. I feel like I could navigate some places, and some people have called me by name. I won't say it's home, but not another planet either.
I've bought all the souvenirs that I need, and if my flight was tonight I'd be ready. Tomorrow is our very last day. Our flights are around 11pm but we'll have to be there by 5 so Frances can get home before dark.
More later...
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Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Nairobi Part 1
Today we were tourists. You might say we've been tourists all along in the broadest sense, but we've hardly been to tourist-y destinations until today. We lounged around Kamulu this morning, not even leaving for the city until after 9am. After two quick stops to fix a(nother) flat tire, and get fuel we made our way to a couple of shopping areas and then to Java House.
Java House is a little bit of America in a strange place. Imagine a Starbucks, with a slimmer offering of coffee, but excellent service. Add in an American diner kind of food menu with burgers, chicken strips, and fries and that's Java House. You can get iced tea, with ICE, (at least until the ice machine broke). You'd be surprised how much you miss drinks with ice in them. That was the highlight of our day.
We then went to our second favorite sanctuary, the Nakumat. This is like a Wal-Mart for the third world. They have stores almost everywhere (12 in Nairobi) and almost everything you can think of. We got some essentials and generally felt more like we were at home. Strange the things you find that give you comfort.
Tomorrow, more shopping.
Java House is a little bit of America in a strange place. Imagine a Starbucks, with a slimmer offering of coffee, but excellent service. Add in an American diner kind of food menu with burgers, chicken strips, and fries and that's Java House. You can get iced tea, with ICE, (at least until the ice machine broke). You'd be surprised how much you miss drinks with ice in them. That was the highlight of our day.
We then went to our second favorite sanctuary, the Nakumat. This is like a Wal-Mart for the third world. They have stores almost everywhere (12 in Nairobi) and almost everything you can think of. We got some essentials and generally felt more like we were at home. Strange the things you find that give you comfort.
Tomorrow, more shopping.
Londiani
I"m writing this on a blackberry in the front seat of the van as we travel to Nairobi. Those of you who know me well no what a miracle that is!
Today we said goodbye to the Tea Hotel in Kericho and set out for Londiani. The road getting there is easily the worst in Kenya. Going 10 km takes almost an hour. Londiani has easily the most beautiful view in the world, at least as far as I have seen. Like all of Africa, the best of times, the worst of times.
The kids at this orphanage are happy and well cared for. We broke into our now familiar routines and set out to discover what we could about the lives of the people there. Their facility is brand new, actually not quite complete, though they do occupy all the buildings.
The biggest challenge here is water. A small stream supplies the entire area, and the orphanage is downstream of a small town. They have a small pump that we proviided to bring water to the compound, but it is too dirty to drink. So they have to go upstream and hand cary water for cooking and drinking.
We are working on a plan to improve water quality at every location and this one will be at the top of our priority list.
Cherie and Francis had a ball playing with the kids and John Cherry is pretty sure he can get Lisa to move here with him for the view alone. It is truly spectacular.
After we left, we decided to push on all the way to Nairobi tonight and try to catch a good dinner at the Safari Park Hotel. It will be good to get the Mbuvis home earlier; two small boys ina van with seven adults for twelve days on Kenyan roads is asking a lot.
I'll post pictures from Londiani as soon as I can, but that probably means tomorrow. Until then...
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Today we said goodbye to the Tea Hotel in Kericho and set out for Londiani. The road getting there is easily the worst in Kenya. Going 10 km takes almost an hour. Londiani has easily the most beautiful view in the world, at least as far as I have seen. Like all of Africa, the best of times, the worst of times.
The kids at this orphanage are happy and well cared for. We broke into our now familiar routines and set out to discover what we could about the lives of the people there. Their facility is brand new, actually not quite complete, though they do occupy all the buildings.
The biggest challenge here is water. A small stream supplies the entire area, and the orphanage is downstream of a small town. They have a small pump that we proviided to bring water to the compound, but it is too dirty to drink. So they have to go upstream and hand cary water for cooking and drinking.
We are working on a plan to improve water quality at every location and this one will be at the top of our priority list.
Cherie and Francis had a ball playing with the kids and John Cherry is pretty sure he can get Lisa to move here with him for the view alone. It is truly spectacular.
After we left, we decided to push on all the way to Nairobi tonight and try to catch a good dinner at the Safari Park Hotel. It will be good to get the Mbuvis home earlier; two small boys ina van with seven adults for twelve days on Kenyan roads is asking a lot.
I'll post pictures from Londiani as soon as I can, but that probably means tomorrow. Until then...
Sent from my BlackBerry®
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Meeting Day
We spent today meeting with the six men we call "Orphanage Workers". This term is a little confusing so I'll explain. Remember that the orphanages grew out of a different work here in Kenya called World Bible School. The premise is this: People around the world can take a correspondence course to learn how to become a christian. The World Bible School organization partners with GCR and other churches to grade these tests, and carry on a student-teacher relationship with interested people around the world, via the mails.
GCR has been assigned Kenya as it's area of operation. Over 10 years ago, John DeFore, our GCR ministry head for WBS, decided that the course was great but that when a student sought baptism, it was difficult to get him in touch with the right people in Kenya. So he began hiring Kenyan preachers to become follow-up workers. These workers would meet with the student, answer any questions, baptism them and get the connected with a church in their area. If there was no church, they planted one. This has been wildly successful. There are now 22 WBS workers in Kenya. Every year over 1,000 students are baptized and dozens of new churches are started.
A few years ago, some of these new churches began to realize that the AIDS epidemic was leaving thousands of orphans to be cared for. Every family had some, and few could adequately care for them. They told their WBS workers, who told John, who told anyone who would listen, and money to care for orphans began to flow. The Holy Spirit is alive and well!
Now there are eight orphanages within the area of responsibility of six WBS workers. These are the men that John and I, and Cherie Creech, and John Cherry (all members of the board of directors for the GCR WBS Orphanage Ministry) met with today. Each of these men is a strong christian, a gifted teacher, and good administrators. There plates are very full. Our time was spent going over changes in structure related to all the growth that we have been having, as well as brainstorminig new ideas, and general encouragement. I'll skip the details; if you are interested, ask me or any of us when we get home.
I've posted pictures of these men on the picassa page, follow the link at the right.
After the meeting we made a leisurely drive to Kericho, once again to lay our heads at the Tea Hotel. Tomorrow we will see our last orphanage, Londiani, and begin the journey to Nairobi. Thanks for listening.
GCR has been assigned Kenya as it's area of operation. Over 10 years ago, John DeFore, our GCR ministry head for WBS, decided that the course was great but that when a student sought baptism, it was difficult to get him in touch with the right people in Kenya. So he began hiring Kenyan preachers to become follow-up workers. These workers would meet with the student, answer any questions, baptism them and get the connected with a church in their area. If there was no church, they planted one. This has been wildly successful. There are now 22 WBS workers in Kenya. Every year over 1,000 students are baptized and dozens of new churches are started.
A few years ago, some of these new churches began to realize that the AIDS epidemic was leaving thousands of orphans to be cared for. Every family had some, and few could adequately care for them. They told their WBS workers, who told John, who told anyone who would listen, and money to care for orphans began to flow. The Holy Spirit is alive and well!
Now there are eight orphanages within the area of responsibility of six WBS workers. These are the men that John and I, and Cherie Creech, and John Cherry (all members of the board of directors for the GCR WBS Orphanage Ministry) met with today. Each of these men is a strong christian, a gifted teacher, and good administrators. There plates are very full. Our time was spent going over changes in structure related to all the growth that we have been having, as well as brainstorminig new ideas, and general encouragement. I'll skip the details; if you are interested, ask me or any of us when we get home.
I've posted pictures of these men on the picassa page, follow the link at the right.
After the meeting we made a leisurely drive to Kericho, once again to lay our heads at the Tea Hotel. Tomorrow we will see our last orphanage, Londiani, and begin the journey to Nairobi. Thanks for listening.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Ndhiwa
OK, we're all officially tired now. The equatorial sun, bad roads, and relentless schedule, have conspired to make me very tired. I can see signs of it in the others as well. So far, still no sickness, or injury, or frayed tempers yet (praise God,) but we're not home yet.
The children at Ndhiwa are not tired, however. They met us at their orphanage with a song and dance train that wound around us for many minutes. Finally they settled down and we each went to our tasks. John with the widows, and me with my cameras and checklists and sketch pad and water test kit. John Cherry followed me around and managed to help some with bringing the firewood to the kitchen. See the links to pictures on Picassa at the right.
Ndhiwa as another well-run place. We saw posted rules and instructions, schedules and menus all over the place. The Director there, a woman named Caroline, seemed quite sharp. They have a feeding station for 100 kids in addition to the 123 orphans in the home itself. They also have a posho mill, and a very impressive water system.
Alfyo, cheerfully showed us around his new water system, which consists of a 45ft hand dug well, and an electric submirsable water pump filling a 12ft elevated 8,000 ltr tank. This tank also keeps two lower tanks filled, giving them a 32,000ltr capacity, all piped together. There are water taps fed from pipes around the compound, and even showers and flush African toilets installed. No other orphanage is so well equipped.
After Ndhiwa, we saw another feeding stations, this one at Ototo. This is Alfyo's home town and we got to meet his father there. The new dining hall is well built and now houses their local church as well. They are in the process of digging a well there also. There was a man in the bottom of it, digging even as we arrived. This site also has a cane crusher, as much sugar cane is grown in the region.
This evening, all the WBS workers who have orphanages are meeting together with us here in Kisii. We'll talk about common issues, introduce some new controls for finances, and try to encourage them as much as possible. Tomorrow, I might not post a blog entry, since meetings are kind of dull, and not much to blog about, but we'll see. Tomorrow afternoon me move our base of operations back to Kericho for one night, inching closer to our last orphanage at Londiani. Then it's Nakuru for one night, on the way back to Nairobi.
The children at Ndhiwa are not tired, however. They met us at their orphanage with a song and dance train that wound around us for many minutes. Finally they settled down and we each went to our tasks. John with the widows, and me with my cameras and checklists and sketch pad and water test kit. John Cherry followed me around and managed to help some with bringing the firewood to the kitchen. See the links to pictures on Picassa at the right.
Ndhiwa as another well-run place. We saw posted rules and instructions, schedules and menus all over the place. The Director there, a woman named Caroline, seemed quite sharp. They have a feeding station for 100 kids in addition to the 123 orphans in the home itself. They also have a posho mill, and a very impressive water system.
Alfyo, cheerfully showed us around his new water system, which consists of a 45ft hand dug well, and an electric submirsable water pump filling a 12ft elevated 8,000 ltr tank. This tank also keeps two lower tanks filled, giving them a 32,000ltr capacity, all piped together. There are water taps fed from pipes around the compound, and even showers and flush African toilets installed. No other orphanage is so well equipped.
After Ndhiwa, we saw another feeding stations, this one at Ototo. This is Alfyo's home town and we got to meet his father there. The new dining hall is well built and now houses their local church as well. They are in the process of digging a well there also. There was a man in the bottom of it, digging even as we arrived. This site also has a cane crusher, as much sugar cane is grown in the region.
This evening, all the WBS workers who have orphanages are meeting together with us here in Kisii. We'll talk about common issues, introduce some new controls for finances, and try to encourage them as much as possible. Tomorrow, I might not post a blog entry, since meetings are kind of dull, and not much to blog about, but we'll see. Tomorrow afternoon me move our base of operations back to Kericho for one night, inching closer to our last orphanage at Londiani. Then it's Nakuru for one night, on the way back to Nairobi.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Uriri, the "sweetest" of them all
Uriri was our destination today. Set in the rolling hills of sugar cane country, this orphanage is a neat place. Kenedy Chandi is the WBS worker here, and he has done a great job leveraging our dollars to help this orphanage thrive. The kids looked great here, and the facility was first rate.
We arrived in time for a quick inspection and for John to visit the widows before time for worship. All the kids start singing in the hall, about an hour before church actually starts. They are happy, motivated, and loud. Although they couldn't understand a word that was sung, Cherie happily sat ad listened to them until time for worship.
Worship here was similar to Kamulu last week except there was less singing during the service and more preaching. John was invited to give the sermon, and he did a great job. They were a little disappointed that he only went 10 minutes, they are used to 45 or so. So the man doing communion thoughts made up for it, and the Kenedy said another sermon in preparation for the contribution. I was trying to think to myself what would happen if someone stood up at GCR and preached for 30 minutes on giving before the contribution every week. I'm guessing someone would get an "elder call."
After lunch they showed us the "juggery" operation. This is the field refining of sugar cane into raw sugar for later processing. Cane is cut by machete, called a pongo here, and hauled to the site by ox drawn wagons. Then it is fed, a few stalks at a time, into a machine that crushes the stalk and squeezes out the liquid sugar sap. This is collected in buckets and taken to a huge cauldron that is heated by a fire of crushed cane, and boiled to reduce it's volume to a sticky syrup. This is poured into cone shaped, metal forms and cooled to a solid form. These cones are then bagged in 90kg lots and sold to a Saudi Arabian sugar company for further refining into white sugar and molasses.
It's a unique money maker for this orphanage, and they do well with it. It will never yield enough to make the orphanage self sufficient, but every little bit helps. It allows the some of the able bodied, and otherwise unemployed, church members to contribute to the orphans and everyone gains.
We stopped on the way "home" at the curio store where soapstone carvings are made. It's cool to watch them work, but our shopping was cut short by a sudden, fierce rain storm. We managed to make a pretty good dent in their inventory before we left, soaking, for the lovely Mash Park.
Tomorrow, we will head to Ndhiwa, the second-to-last orphanage on our complete tour of this ministry. Tuesday we will meet with all the orphanage workers here at Kisii, and then we will load up and head for Kericho, for another night at the Tea Hotel. We've managed to shave a couple of days off the schedule, so we will have a little time to be tourists in Nairobi, before we get on the plane next Saturday. Thanks for living this with us. Be sure and comment if you can and check out the pics on the Picassa link to the right.
We arrived in time for a quick inspection and for John to visit the widows before time for worship. All the kids start singing in the hall, about an hour before church actually starts. They are happy, motivated, and loud. Although they couldn't understand a word that was sung, Cherie happily sat ad listened to them until time for worship.
Worship here was similar to Kamulu last week except there was less singing during the service and more preaching. John was invited to give the sermon, and he did a great job. They were a little disappointed that he only went 10 minutes, they are used to 45 or so. So the man doing communion thoughts made up for it, and the Kenedy said another sermon in preparation for the contribution. I was trying to think to myself what would happen if someone stood up at GCR and preached for 30 minutes on giving before the contribution every week. I'm guessing someone would get an "elder call."
After lunch they showed us the "juggery" operation. This is the field refining of sugar cane into raw sugar for later processing. Cane is cut by machete, called a pongo here, and hauled to the site by ox drawn wagons. Then it is fed, a few stalks at a time, into a machine that crushes the stalk and squeezes out the liquid sugar sap. This is collected in buckets and taken to a huge cauldron that is heated by a fire of crushed cane, and boiled to reduce it's volume to a sticky syrup. This is poured into cone shaped, metal forms and cooled to a solid form. These cones are then bagged in 90kg lots and sold to a Saudi Arabian sugar company for further refining into white sugar and molasses.
It's a unique money maker for this orphanage, and they do well with it. It will never yield enough to make the orphanage self sufficient, but every little bit helps. It allows the some of the able bodied, and otherwise unemployed, church members to contribute to the orphans and everyone gains.
We stopped on the way "home" at the curio store where soapstone carvings are made. It's cool to watch them work, but our shopping was cut short by a sudden, fierce rain storm. We managed to make a pretty good dent in their inventory before we left, soaking, for the lovely Mash Park.
Tomorrow, we will head to Ndhiwa, the second-to-last orphanage on our complete tour of this ministry. Tuesday we will meet with all the orphanage workers here at Kisii, and then we will load up and head for Kericho, for another night at the Tea Hotel. We've managed to shave a couple of days off the schedule, so we will have a little time to be tourists in Nairobi, before we get on the plane next Saturday. Thanks for living this with us. Be sure and comment if you can and check out the pics on the Picassa link to the right.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Ongoro in a Fog
Last year when I made this trip, I recognized that after several days in a row visiting orphans, you can get a little numb. I confess that numbness set in today. However, if your going to be a little slow and foggy, Ongoro is an OK place to do it. This place just works.
Last year when we visited here, it was brand new, only open for two months, and we were amazed at how nice it was. It was clean and organized and the children were really happy. I honestly expected that this year it would look and feel older and less clean and organized. Boy was I surprised.
Tobias, who is the WBS follow-up worker in this area, runs a tight ship. They have added a tailoring room with 15 sewing machines for the older orphans and widows, greatly upgraded their water collection system, added a posho mill, and a really nice clinic with space for 6 beds. The original buildings still look great and everyone seems happy.
John spent most of his time with the widows again, making sure that they are satisfied caring for the kids. Cherie spent most of her time with the kids. John Cheery followed me on an inspection tour and then kind of wandered off on his own. I caught up with him later, just hanging out with the older boys. He has a way of putting them at ease and having a real conversation with them. Wish I could do that.
They have also added a feeding station nearby that serves 50 more orphans that they do not have room to house. When we went there, the kids were all waiting for us. It was 10:30am on Saturday and they were all there. I got some of the most amazing pictures there, check them out on Picassa, the link is on the right.
Speaking for all of us, I want to thank you for reading this blog and caring enough to keep up with what we are doing here. God's plan for his church was to do just exactly what we are doing, caring for the helpless, loving the hurting, and being the hands and feet of Christ in this world. May he bless you today.
Last year when we visited here, it was brand new, only open for two months, and we were amazed at how nice it was. It was clean and organized and the children were really happy. I honestly expected that this year it would look and feel older and less clean and organized. Boy was I surprised.
Tobias, who is the WBS follow-up worker in this area, runs a tight ship. They have added a tailoring room with 15 sewing machines for the older orphans and widows, greatly upgraded their water collection system, added a posho mill, and a really nice clinic with space for 6 beds. The original buildings still look great and everyone seems happy.
John spent most of his time with the widows again, making sure that they are satisfied caring for the kids. Cherie spent most of her time with the kids. John Cheery followed me on an inspection tour and then kind of wandered off on his own. I caught up with him later, just hanging out with the older boys. He has a way of putting them at ease and having a real conversation with them. Wish I could do that.
They have also added a feeding station nearby that serves 50 more orphans that they do not have room to house. When we went there, the kids were all waiting for us. It was 10:30am on Saturday and they were all there. I got some of the most amazing pictures there, check them out on Picassa, the link is on the right.
Speaking for all of us, I want to thank you for reading this blog and caring enough to keep up with what we are doing here. God's plan for his church was to do just exactly what we are doing, caring for the helpless, loving the hurting, and being the hands and feet of Christ in this world. May he bless you today.
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