Sister Freda's!!

I am now staying at Sister Freda's which is only about 30 ride from where I was staying before. So far I am the only volunteer here, but it is fine because I have Emily, pretty much my care taker. I also have the projects I was working on before with CommonGround so I am staying busy with that.After about 4 days of arriving I finally met with Sister Freda. She is one of the sweetest ladies and is so thankful for everything that she has. She has asked me to design some dorms for the nursing college a kitchen and dinning room and also a kitchen and dinning room for the high school. Currently she doesn't have any funds to go towards these projects she is just praying that God will help her. If I can figure out how to start a website I am going to try and get one started so more people can be aware of everything she is trying to do. Above is a picture of the hospital.

This is the Feeding program where young kids learn the basics like numbers and letters. It is basically a program to give kids food, but they only get the food if they come and stay for class. I think there are 3 classes all of them are pre kindergarden. Once they pass a test then they can go onto primary school.

This is my room that is very cozy. I have a bathroom connected which is really nice, but the shower is only cold water. I think they are going to have it fixed soon. But "soon" is probably on Kenyan time so my guess is that it will be fixed 3 weeks from now. I have a little porch outside where I take most of my meals with Emily. This weekend there are other volunteers coming so I will soon have more company to eat with!

This is a baby clinic that I went to. Here children under 5 could receive immunizations and pregnant women could get vitamins. my job for the day was to weigh the babies in the scale below. The clinic was set up in a church, so it was pretty dirty. I was expecting more women to show up, but only about 10 people came to get medicine which is surprising because the medicine was so cheap.

Here are some of the Women from the Kipsongo slum that we are working with. They are so much jewelry that we are going to sell online. We met with them today to figure out more things that they can make so sell. Coming soon are some stuffed animals, paintings, coasters, various products made of fabrics. hopefully shoes once we get investors to help pay for start up costs. The women were so excited so get started making stuff. They came with us to town so get supplies for them to begin their businesses. The women know how to make a  lot of products but the problem is have the supplies to make them.

Here is one of the homes of the women. Yes it is made of garbage bags.

For our online store we want to have a kids line too so here are some pictures of a photoshoot we were having! The girls are so cute... pretty much all of them are natural models. esp the one above!

This past week I went to Mombasa which is on the coast. We spent a day walking around old town to see the old buildings and shops. Behind me in the picture above is Fort Jesus where the military used to be. The next night we went down the coast more and stayed on Tiwi Beach. We literally camped right on the beach. It can't really get any better than that! It was so windy though that we had to move the tent back a bit to try and give us some cover... The tent blew away a few times.

The next day we headed to Diani beach which was even more beautiful than Tiwi. I don't know how the sand was even more white but it was. There were also so many Dhows (the boat behind me) that they use for fishing. I also took a camel ride! They said the camels walk all the way there from Ethiopia and it takes them about 4 months. As i was on the camel I have one of the guys walking with us take a picture, but naturally he didn't get the entire camel or show how tall it actually was. Camels are big animals, the one I am on is 11 years old and they can live to be 35-40.

The beach was SOO hard to leave esp because we had a 16 hr bus ride back to Kitale. Also the Mangoes on the coast are to die for! I miss them already!

LOVE YOU ALL!! MISS YOU

p.s. visit our website: www.sponsorshipkenya.org

My last few weeks at Common Ground for Africa

Sorry it has been so long since I have updated my blog! It takes so long to upload pictures that I may have to start posting without any pictures... Anyways, my past couple of weeks I have been working with some more women to teach them how to make donuts and crepes. There is a Co-op in Kiminini where we started making donuts and crepes to sell and then would use the money for buying more things for the womens groups. We also wanted to see if the goods would actually sell. We did some experimenting with different prices and sizes of things to get more to sell because the co-op is across from a public primary school where many of the kids don't have 10sh to buy anything. All of the food that we didn't end up selling in a day we would pick up and have one of Joshua's daughters go down to Pathfinders to sell and she always sold the entire plate of food we sent with her. 

Below is Lindsey and I with Margaret (on the far right) we went to teach her to make crepes because she lives off of 80sh (less than a dollar) a day and takes care of 6 kids which aren't  even hers. I think they are her sons but he and his wife can't take care of them. When we went she didn't have a pan to cook the crepes on so she borrowed one from a neighbor. The pan was so awful that we decided to buy her one if she actually went out and sold them. She is the sweetest lady, when we came she welcomed us by dancing and singing. The entire time she had a smile on her face and was so happy that we were teaching her. We came back 2 days later to see how she was doing and she actually had gone out and sold them! Hopefully we will be meeting with her soon to see if she has kept selling them. There was supposed to be a meeting today, but for some reason she couldn't meet.

Margaret's son who said he was a professional photographer took our picture... as you can see our heads are chopped off so i'm sure he is a wonderful photographer. 

 The power went out the other night while Marium (our cook) was trying to cook dinner so she had to make a make-shift oven. It consisted of placing a pan onto of a jiko (pretty much a fire pit) and then putting another pan on top of it. She is such a great cook, I think this was a mango pizza she was making.

 Here I am with Iman, the cutest girl ever! She is Marium's youngest daughter and is almost 3 but goes to school all day and come back and sings us songs she learned.

 

I went for a walk down by the river and of course there was a crowd of kids following us. They were really cute so I had to take a picture. The kids love to follow and copy the way I walk. I must walk funny to them.

 As I was walking back the sun was setting and it was so pretty out. I attempted to capture how gorgeous it was.

 So this is Monica and her family. I decided to teach her how to make crepes to and she was so excited! I also had given her a bunch of t-shirt I had brought with me. She is wearing a Kegs and Eggs shirt from our last batch of tshirts we had made. Monica didn't have a jiko to cook on so it was just a fire pit with a chapati pan placed on top. It was like standing inside a fireplace for an hour. It was so smoky in there I can't even explain. But Monica and the other ladies learned quickly how to make them and then they wanted to have a photoshoot before I left. Below is one of the many pictures we took. Once I took a picture with one lady I had to take another one with everyone else.

 

I went for a run one afternoon and a bunch of kids started running with me. I tried to race them but they were too fast and I was getting tired. A few days after this I went for a run in the morning and there were seriously 8 other kids running with me on their way to school. Ha it was so funny...

 

Lindsey and I were invited by Mariums older daughter to go to their schools Olympics they were having at school. It was the cutest thing because all of the kids were running relay races and potato sack races. They even had discus where they were just throwing a really big rock. But as we were watching kids just slowly started coming closer to us. They wouldn't say anything, but just sat there. One of the teachers asked them why they weren't going home for lunch and they didn't answer so she asked if they had any food to eat at home and they all said no. So instead they just sat by us. 

I have also been helping Lindsey with her website for CommonGround. We interviewed a bunch of 8th graders to try and find them sponsors for when they go to high school. The kids that we interviewed don't have a way to pay for school because their parents don't earn enough money. Others don't have parents and are living with either church members or some other family member. It is sad to hear their stories because you want to help them all so they can continue with their education instead of just going to start work right away.

The high school that I am designing for Joshua is going to be just for girls. He wants only girls because he said the boys have more opportunities if they don't go to school. The girls will probably just get married and start having kids right after 8th grade. So he is trying to get the girls to have a better chance of getting a real job or going to University. The website is www.sponsershipkenya.org and it talks all about all of the programs going on with Common Ground. There is a section where you can read the bios of the kids we interviewed. Feel free to sponsor a child!! If you let me know that you want to sponsor a child then I can tell you how to do it where 100% of the fund go to the child. I think right now the website goes through VillageVolunteers and they take 5% but Lindsey is trying to change the process so it doesn't go through them.

A few weekend ago I went to Kisumu to meet Colette. She is my friend Julie's Kenyan cousin from when she studied abroad in Kenya. So I went to hangout with her and we took a boat tour that brought us out to see hippos. The boat/ canoe with a motor on it seemed like is could have easily sank esp because there was a kid on board where his job was just to bail out water from the bottom of the boat. If he would have stopped bailing we probably would have been swimming with the hippos.

On Monday I left Common Ground. I was sad to go, but Sister Freda's is very close so I can go back and visit when ever. The day I go to sister Freda's one of the nurses from the hospital had died so everyone was kind of out of it. I met freda for a second, but i am supposed to meet with one of these days to find out what I will be doing. I was supposed to meet with her yesterday, but she never came. I was supposed to meet with her today and she didn't come. So they say maybe tomorrow I will meet with her. 

While I have been wondering around the compound I have seen the nurse who had died and I saw them carrying her body out to the car. I also saw a young girl being carried in while she was having a seizure. Emily, the women who is kind of looking after me has been showing me around and keeping me company. 

There are a bunch of orphans the sister freda has living at the compound. I think there are 10 of them and most of them have either been rescued from the slums or rescued from their parents who tried to kill them. In my next blog I will try and show pictures of all the kids. They can be a little crazy, but they are all very sweet. 

I can't believe how quickly this trip is going, I don't want it to end!

Miss you all!!!

Beautiful World

I recently went to Uganda to what more Africa had to offer. It turns out Uganda is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined! Lindsey and I got to see almost all of southern Uganda in 6 days. It was a lot of time on motos matatus and buses but we eventually made it everywhere we planned!

Our first stop was in Jinja where you can go rafting and Bungee Jumping. It took us about 9 hours to get there from Kitale but it was well worth it. First we tried to go bungee jumping but the bungee master had already gone home for the day. So we went to Nile Rivers Campsite where we booked our rafting trip and stayed for the night.

This is a view from Nile River's Campsite. We could walk down by the river where they had some docks you could walk out on.

 

As we were eating dinner we got to watch the sunset

 

The next morning we got ready for a crazy trip down the Nile. It looks really calm in the background but I promise you that the rapids were not like that. We went down 1 class 5 rapids two class 4 and about 3 class 3 rapids. The class 5 rapid was so fun! it was at the end of a class 6 which looked insane, I was pretty glad that it wasn't the one we were going down.

This is a picture of me rafting.. I'm not sure if it actually attached because to me to just looks llike a blank box. Well if the picture is actually there then it is of me and the guide in the "Bad Place" it is the class 5 rapid and was so much fun! somehow I didn't get knocked out of the raft when everyone else did. the guide and I ended up staying in the raft for about 45 more seconds until we flipped. It was so scary and fun! the guide said that I had the best expression of fear on my face. Randomly throughout the rest of the trip he would start laughing and say that he got a flashback of my horrified face.

 

This is me infront of Lake Buyonyi which was about a 10 hr bus ride from Kampala where we had stayed with one of Lindseys friend the night before. We tried to get all the way to Bwindi but of course the bus too way longer than expected. We got to Kibale where we planned to get another bus to Bwindi but they weren't running anymore for the day. We looked in the guide book and it said Lake Buyonyi was like the terraced hills in Nepal so we figured we might as well stay in Nepal for the night! I was so glad we did because it was absolutely gorgeous. We stayed in a safari tent which overlooked the lake.

 

Here is the sunset over Lake Buyonyi. I swear the sunset got better and better everywhere we went.

 

So the next day we got a ride to Bwindi. It was the most ridiculous transportation ever! We traveled 4 hours in the back of a pickup truck packed with people and potatoes and bananas and wood. At one point there were 16 people in the back with all of this stuff. The drivers get very greedy and put way to many people in the cars or buses. After the truck dropped us off in a different place than they told us we had to get a moto to go the final 32 km. Turns out that after all of the time outside traveling my face turns the color of all of the dirt. Everything is soo dusty here because it is the dry season. I looked like an Umpa Lumpa once we finally got to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. My backpack was black too but it is pretty much brown in the picture.

 

This is the view at our hotel. Bwindi is the most dense forest I have ever seen. This is a great park to come and do a gorilla trek because there are so many gorillas in the forest. We didn't do one because we didn't have the extra $500 it cost to do it so we settled for two nature hikes through the forest. The first hike was to see some waterfalls. This hike was supposed to be a favorite among the visitors, but the waterfalls were pretty small so we weren't very impressed. We hoped the hike in the afternoon would be better. Before the hike we talked to a ranger and he said that we should have done the afternoon hike in the morning because you can see a lot further into the distance. We were not happy because we had specifically asked our guide which one we should do in the morning and he said the waterfall one. Oh well, I think he was a new guide... Anyways we got the second hike for free because they felt bad. 

The second hike was so much better than the first. It took us up into the tops of the mountains where we could have seen volcanoes in Congo and the Rwenzori mountain range. But because it was pretty foggy we couldn't see any of it. It was still beautiful and we got to step into Congo! At first our guide told us that Congo was 5km away and once we got to the top of the mountain he said we were standing in Congo!

 

The great waterfall

 

Lindsey and I standing in Congo

 

On every hike we were accompanied by a guard incase there where any animals that tried to attack us. Don't worry he didn't have to us the gun.

 

On the way back through Uganda we stopped in Jinga to try and go bungee jumping again! Once we got there Lindsey decided she didn't want to go because she had gone once before so I had to jump by myself! I was so scared once I actually got up there. Before the bungee master came I had to wait an hour for him to get there so the entire time i was thinking about what I was about to do. That was probably the most nerve racking part. At the top of the stand they explain to you how many tons the rope could hold and I figured I don't way a ton so it had to be fine. As you are about to walk to the edge he says don't look down. I tried so hard not to look down so I was just looking where Lindsey was standing taking pictures. I thought I was going to fall off of the edge just because I was shaking so much. 

all of a sudden he tells you to jump on three and starts counting. I knew i had to jump right away or else there was a good chance I wasn't going to go. It was SO much fun I wanted to go again once I got into the raft at the bottom. If you are ever in Jinga, Uganda you HAVE to do this and rafting! 

Women's group

Lindsey and I had been working on ideas to help with the women's groups around Kiminini. We came up with the idea for the women to make crepes so they could sell them outside of schools for 10 shillings. We had to come up with a very inexpensive recipe so they could make the most profit. We filled them with bananas because they do not have to pay anything for them because they grow them in their backyards. 

In these pictures we are having the ladies try out making and flipping the crepes. They aren't exactly like the french crepes but they are close enough. They actually taste really good too.

This is Linet who is the leader of different women's groups. She was the first one to try and make a crepe because all of the other ladies were to nervous to try.

The other ladies were so good at making them and they all wanted to have their picture taken while making them. At first I just took a picture of the first couple of ladies but then they all asked to have their picture taken. 

These ladies were very grateful for having us teach them how to make crepes. They asked us to teach them how to make other desserts too, so we told them next time we come back we will give them another recipe. At the end of the lesson they made us stay for lunch of beans and corn. This is what they eat all of the time it is a staple for them. I'm not the biggest fan of it, but I couldn't say no.

I am excited to find out if the ladies actually started to sell them. Some of the women are very timid so I'm not sure if they will actually go out and sell. If they do sell they should be able to get a pretty good profit of 100 shillings which is a little more than a dollar, but still better than nothing. It is the dry season right now so many of the women do not have any crops to sell so they are in need of new projects. 

We started the ladies with some of the ingredients so they can start up the business and be able to pay for more ingredients. I will let you know how the business goes!

Recent activities

This is the compound where we stay.. The building on the right is the dorm area wHere I sleep. The other buildings are where Joshua's family lives.

This is the games area where the kids from Pathfinders play. They have a soccer field and a basketball court here. The cows and sheep also hangout in this area... Not the cleanest for kids to be playing in.

Next to the school there is a water filter factory. The filters are made out of a combination of sawdust and clay. I made two filters in the time it took one of the workers to make 5. I guess filter making is not in my future. It was fun to make though. Each filter gets a serial number and the date it was made. Each lasts for about 4 years and they save a lot of people from getting sick from the water.

This is Manu and he is Joshua's youngest kid. He is two years old and just walks around hitting the dogs and playing with a soccer ball all day. He is so cute even when he is having a fit and throws himself on the ground.

These are some kids who were playing after school and of course they wanted some pictures. They LOVE getting their pictures taken.

The other day Joshua had me go tour a girls high school so I could get some ideas of what they were like. The buildings on the right are some  of the class rooms and the building in the back is the kitchen. To the left is a big soccer field. This school has won a couple of trophies in soccer which is very exciting for them. The principle has them all in her office. I got a lot of ideas for the design of JOshua's high school from here because I had no idea what I was going to do before.

These are the other volunteer who are here too. On the left is Lindsey and the right is Dan. Lindsey has worked with Village Volunteers a lot and also with Joshua. She has been showing me the ropes around here. Dan had been here for about  a month and he was teaching juggling and knot tying to the kids. This morning he left to go to Masi mara for a week before he heads back to the states.

On Sunday this Kenyan Dennis wanted to take Dan and I on a walk to see some cool rocks. He said it wasn't far, but it was pretty far for me. I was boiling because it was so hot and it took us about an hour and a half to get to the rocks. This is what the roads are like around here. I don't understand how the cars can drive on them, but they do.

Here is Dennis and I on top of one of the rocks. The view was better from my right, but the person who took the picture didn't capture it.

Here are Dan and Dennis sitting on the "awesome" rocks

More kids going crazy for getting their pictures taken.

While we were walking back from the rocks a bunch of people wanted their picture taken. They all just ask to have it taken as soon as they see a mazungu "white person". Everywhere I go they scream mazungu like I didn't know i was white. haha

This is just some of what I see everyday

A nice sunset two nights ago. The clouds were gorgeous. My picture doesn't even do it justice.

Here is a little friend that I found before I was going to bed. I tried to kill it but it was way to fast. Last night it fell into one of my bags when I tried to kill it on the ceiling...

Yesterday Lindsey and I made basketball nets out of old maize bags so the kids could play basketball. Yesterday be had them playing with a soccer ball, but we are in Kitale today trying to find some basketballs so they can really play.

I just thought you should see how close the animals are to the basketball court.