KENYA 2023 - DAY 4

Today we took a ride from the hotel where we are staying up to the orphanage. We are not staying in the village of the orphanage because there simply is nowhere to stay in that place. There are no hotels and no B&B’s. Most houses are very small, too small to put up three guests for two weeks.

Besides these reasons and perhaps even the greater reason in my thinking, is that by staying in this hotel, we have the chance to unplug for a few hours after the day, just to relax and catch up with some other personal tasks. One of those personal tasks for me is writing this blog post.

On our way up to the orphanage, Larry asked me to point out everything there that is new since the first time that I came. That was in 2017. 

It was an easy question to answer, since when we first began the orphanage, there was nothing—no dormitory, no water collection system, no irrigated garden, and no eating/study room. There was a kitchen, but it was very small and most of the cooking was done outdoors. That kitchen was only a little tin structure with a place for a campfire over which to cook if it was raining outside. Most of the preparation and cooking was normally done outside.

In going to the orphanage, I was most interested in seeing the progress of the school building. Impressive in the photos, it is even most impressive walking on the floor that they are working on. They are in the process of wiring in the rebar in preparation for the pouring of the concrete. There is a ramp which I assume will be the first step in the concrete work, since that will be up this ramp that the hundreds of wheelbarrows of wet concrete will be wheeled to pour the floor.

The building will have a total of four classrooms on the ground floor, plus a teacher’s room, bathroom facilities, and a headmaster’s office. I am not certain about the two floors above. I would have to look at the plan for the school, which I am not going to try and find right now, although I know it is in my thousands of files someplace. But if you are interested enough, you can scroll down-down-down in the blog posts to find it.

Vivian is very happy. She is so glad to finally be able to come to meet the children. Today she passed out the letters written by the kids from her childhood church in South Dakota. Tomorrow we will have our grand birthday party for all the children. This party is sponsored by my childhood church in Wisconsin. Part of that party will be the handing out of more letters written by both kids and adults from that church.

“Grand” will be the descriptive word for that party! There will be meat, cake, and unless something has changed, a soda pop for each child!

If I have recovered enough tomorrow evening, I will try and write about it.