See what we saw

A "work bench" in the Lab used for testing blood

Sewing class

Kindergarten

Cooking  a large pot of Ugali

A dorm room

Monkeying around on the one and only play structure

Where's the washing machine?

Chicken and Church

It’s Sunday, just before supper.  It’s been a real African sort of day.  We thought we might try a different English speaking church this morning.  Well, that was the plan anyways.  But at 8:00 this morning Mama Mary came in for a lengthy visit and told us we were going to her church this morning.  Sure, we’re not fussy.  So what if it’s all in Swahili and we will not understand anything.  We get there at 10:30, but of course, being white, we first have to meet all the church elders and staff, then go see the vicar’s house (it’s an Anglican church).  Then the Sunday school children sing us a song in English, then we are told (against our wishes) to sit at the front of the church in “special” chairs.  By now it’s after 11:00 and church sort of begins. .  In total there were about 50 people in church including us (the Sunday school children have vanished).  There is a very nice man – the church secretary- who translates the goings on into English for us:  so far so good.  All the various “important” people in church then stand and introduce themselves to their “special visitors”, then we have to stand and I have to introduce all of us, etc, etc.  Still, nothing too unusual.

Of course, now that we are feeling well loved by these friendly people, and there has been some real nice singing, the “Bomb” is dropped.  “Ken, could you please preach for us this morning?’  I (Marlene) could not look at him for fear I would burst out in a nervous laugh, or somehow draw attention to myself and they would ask ME to preach.  Ken looked a little shell shocked, but pulled himself together nicely.  They gave him about 10 minutes to prepare (more singing, etc) and he did pretty well – about a 20 minute talk including the translating.   And, he actually had a point in his message.

Then even more “fun”…apparently the diocese has a project in a nearby city and funds are desperately short, so they began collecting money and totalling it right there.  Today’s total came to $1400 Kenya Shillings (about $17.50 Canadian dollars) and one chicken (Who was about to lay an egg, according the chicken butt-feeling expert). The chicken then went up for bid, and it was pretty clear that the “special visitors” should bid on it.  We were told the going price would be $300 - 400 KS, so Ken gave $500 KS ($6.25ish Canadian), and we became the proud owners of a chicken.  Sadly, we have no experience handling live chickens, so when they handed it to Andrew it flapped in his face and he dropped it in surprise, and then Ken had to deal with a flapping frightened chicken.  Too funny.  The congregation was then asked to try to match our $500 KS, and they came up with $345 KS (about $5 Canadian).  This is all BIG money for them; they can hardly afford these contributions as so many of them can barely eek out a living.

Needless to say we donated the chicken back to the church in the hope more little chicks will be hatched to “sell” to the next “special visitor” or to sell at market to raise more money for the church. A church member was then assigned to the task of keeping care of the chicken.

OK, enough about our fun service (and by now its 1:30 PM, by the way).  After lunch we went for a walk along the beautiful back roads of Kimilili. We met a very kind older man who chatted away with us and insisted we go to his house which was “just ahead”.  That turned to be more like ¾ of a km, and he REALLY wanted us to come in for a visit (only 10 minutes…like we don’t know by now that really means 1 hour minimum).  It was thundering and starting to rain, and we wanted to get to the orphanage to be with the kids, so we begged off, but he also insisted on walking us back to the orphanage.  It was pouring by the time we got there, so we couldn’t stay……so we will be back another day.

Happy Birthday Marlene

Today is July 28 and it is Marlene’s XXth birthday. She wanted it to be low key, so we did not tell anyone here about it. However we did do something unusual for her birthday, go figure as we are in Kenya. Instead of spending Marlene’s birthday in the usual way and camping some where in North America, Mary and her sons James and Victor Bunyasi from Omwabini took us on a trip from Kimilili to Kisumu, Kenya which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive. When doing so you cross the equator, so we had to take a picture standing on the equator.  How often do you get the chance to do that on your birthday? We enjoyed the ride through a very unique countryside, had lunch in Kisumu, tried to do some Hippo watching at Lake Victoria, did some shopping and went home. A long day, but a good day.

Standing on the equator

Lunch in Kisumu

More Pics 4 U 2 C

A boy on a hill

Christeena Nienhuis and us at Omwabini

A 95 year old Grandmother 

Students/Orphans at Omwabini

Mary Bunyasi, Omwabini's Project Manager and founder and us

What our kids think of Africa

The sad and the good

Greetings friends and family.

Today Tuesday July 24 had a terrible start to the day. As we were waiting for our breakfast, which was late, we had a suspicion that something was wrong. We finally went to inquire what was happening only to find out the terrible news and affirm our suspicions. Only a few hours earlier the home of Victor, Mary’s son started on fire and this home is located right in the compound of Omwabini. No one died or was seriously injured, just some minor cuts from glass and metal. We do not know all the details right now but by the grace of God someone just happened to get up for some reason and realized there was a fire. Living in the house were Victor, his wife, their son and two orphans. The older orphans and teachers had to remove windows and security bars in order to rescue some of them. They also managed to save some of the contents. Some of the house may be able to be reused, however most of it is too badly damaged to reuse.

Eventually we were able to get away and make it to the Kimilili gym.  We pumped some iron and spent a few hours on the stair climber.  Oh wait – never mind-what we really did was go to the site of the protected spring construction.  They already had dug a huge trench to start the diversion and new feed for the water. We made a gazillion trips up and down the hill bringing heavy bricks to the bottom where the spring is.  It was probably harder than going to the gym. Ken also constructed a set of stairs in the mud/dirt of the hillside immediately before the spring – which made it a lot easier to get down there! Concrete and sand and rocks were mixed to begin the foundation of the well. We should be going back there tomorrow. We also have three houses on the go and at different stages; however we can not work on any of them due to rain, or drying stage of the first layer of mud and or a death in the community where they are preparing for the funeral.

Victors house. Note the missing bars in the bed room windows on the right.

Cement crew and the bricks we were hauling

Steps made in the earth

The trench and base for the reservoirs for the protected spring. Note the current water flowing above on the left.

This and that

Today is Sunday July 22 and we have been at Omwabini for one week now. So far it has been a wonderful experience, we are having fun and we are so blessed.

We went to the same church that we went to last week. This time we listened to a guest preacher from the Congo, who preached in French while the regular pastor translated into Swahili and some members of the congregation translated into English for us. That being said, the sermon was good, it had a good visual illustration and again surprisingly had a point.

A typical day for us starts with the local roosters crowing at 4:30 AM, us “waking up” at 7 AM, having breakfast at 8 AM and we begin to go to work by 9 AM. Tea time is at 11 AM and the Chai (Swahili for tea) is made with milk instead of water and has lots of sugar in it (Kenya style). Lunch is at 2 PM. and like most meals here, it has a lot of carbs and starch. We work till about 4:30 PM and second tea time is around 5 PM. We then typically rest, play cards, write in our journals or play with the kids at Omwabini. Supper is at 8 PM and we go to bed between 9 and 10 PM with full stomachs. (We think we are gaining weight here, sadly).

Breakfast is usually French Toast with one sausage for each and if there no sausages, it includes regular toast; or we have a type of pancake(s) with a sausage for each. Lunch and supper are typically similar and include boiled kale or fried cabbage mixed with onions and tomatoes and carrots as the vegetable. Then we have noodles in some type of tomato sauce or potatoes or rice or a combination of any of them. Meat could be a small piece of “free range chicken” from the back yard or a few small pieces of chewy beef. A couple of times we had stew and rice which was well liked by all of us. All in all the food is very good and tasty. The orphans at Omwabini eat boiled kale, and Ugali (ground up boiled corn that looks like white play dough) for three meals each day. Most locals also eat the same meal as it is the only thing they can afford.

Thursday we took the Omwabini farm tractor and trailer out to manually load at least 5 yds of sand that was hauled out of the local river and 5yds of rocks from a local farm. We then manually unloaded them at the site where we will be building a protected well. We will write more about how a well and home are built in the coming days. We then went to Gladys’ house to start building her new home. The local community there is very good and active and already had the post holes dug. We helped with the posts and strapping of the walls.

Friday we went back to Gladys’ to continue working on the strapping and completing the roof. Then the mudding and mud fights began all over again; the mud walls were mostly completed, wooden doors and windows were installed and we seriously needed showers.

Saturday we got up at 4:30 AM to go for a hike and to watch the sunrise. We were lead to a rock plateau where we had a spectacular 360 degree view of the country side. This view consisted mostly of farm land and some forest as we are in the food growing belt of Kenya and for most of Africa. As the sun quickly rose above the horizon (as we are 1 degree north of the equator), we witnessed a beautiful sunrise. Not only was the sunrise so beautiful, so was the ever changing landscape appearing before us. Again we were amazed at our Lord and how complex and beautiful this earth and creation are and how blessed we are. After the sunrise we went climbing in 100ft fig trees, ventured into caves and strolled through the country side meeting many local people and saying Jambo / Hello. We also went to Omwabini to play soccer again while the girls got their hair braided by 5 to 6 “hair stylists” working on each head of hair. We held a geography lesson with some of the kids with the map of the world we took along with us and together we learned more about the Rift Valley with information we took with us.

On Monday Christeena Nienhuis from Ontario will be leaving for home after volunteering and teaching in Uganda for 7 weeks and for 5 weeks at Omwabini and we will miss her.

Beautiful sunrise

Some of the view from the rock where we watched the sunrise

One of so many businesses in Kimilili....

Kimilili taxi service

And we now have a new saying that we learned from Moses, our construction supervisor from Omwabini: “Lovely jobley” and it gets repeated many times in a day J

Picture day

Following are some pictures showing just a few of the ways that your donations have helped. (Plus a couple other pictures just for fun)

Charlene, daughter of Moses who works for Omwabini received life saving surgery.

Omwabini orphans/students received work books and other school supplies(in boxes).

Omwabini orphans received much needed food (corn/maize).

Omwabini orphans received much needed  medicine.

A destination location?

Happy and cute!

Lunch for the Canadian workers: Chicken and broth, rice, kale and ugali (maize and water cooked up).

Gladys with nine kids who lost her house to a fire 5 years ago will receive a new house.