monday madness!

This a post about Monday, January 17th.

We got two new volunteers on Sunday, so on Monday we began to show them around the slum. Their names are Hannah (from England) and David (from USA). We showed them around and introduced them to some of the kids we know there.

Our plan for Monday was to continue with teaching in the morning and feeding program at lunch. Teaching went well, we covered percentages in math, and did similes and metaphors for our english lesson. The feeding program was a success, although the kids seem to be tiring of ujii porridge. Later this week, we will give them rice and beans.

We also had some visitors at the slum. Most of the people who work at Fadhili, the Kenyan organization that we are volunteering through (partners with IVHQ) came out to see our projects that we have going on at the garbage slum. They were pretty impressed with the progress, since this program is fairly new. Gioto has only been having volunteers come since August of last year (2010). They gave us some story books for the children, and a donation for a water truck. They will also be having a meeting later this week to talk about how they can financially support our projects here.

With the Fadhili donation, we were also able to have a water truck come and deliver 20,000 liters of clean drinking water to the families living in the slum. It was great for the Fadhili helpers to be here to see the families getting the water. They met some of the children, and we showed them around the slum.

Finally, we were going to take three newly sponsored children (Milka, Gabriel, and James) to Rockhurst, our boarding school here. 
We got some bad news over the weekend, that one of the older children who was originally sponsored for school and went at the start of the month was having problems and kept running away, back to the slum. Pastor Anthony said he had been having problems fitting in, as he is quite a bit older than the rest of the children at the school. Pastor said that he would start counseling with the boy. We made a last minute decision that since the boy who left the boarding school had already paid for his term, we would transfer his sponsorship to another boy that we knew at the slum. In fact, one of the three that we were already taking that day was his brother, and his sister has been sponsored since the beginning of this month. So, we now were taking four children to boarding school. (so we thought...)

We loaded up the sponsored children and their families to go to Rockhurst. Our cars were very full, and the kids were very happy.
One of the mothers- Elizabeth - was able to come along this time. She is a mom to Mercy, one of the girls who was sponsored earlier this month and already at school, Gabriel - one of the three we were originally taking on Monday, and David -our last minute switch of sponsorship. Elizabeth also brought along another one of her sons, Wilfred, who was feeling pretty down being the only one of his siblings who was not going to be going to school.

Rockhurst students.

When we got to the boarding school, Pastor and some of the volunteers discussed Wilfred's situation, and decided that he should stay at school with his brothers and sister. His tears turned into tears of joy. Four of Elizabeth's children would now be able to go to school. Because we pay the boarding school per term, Wilfred is currently using someone else's second term donation while we look for a sponsor for him. Since we still have three months, we think we will be able to find sponsorship for him within that time.

I was pretty excited to have Milka finally going to school. It was hard to say goodbye to her though. Kyle and I will try and visit the boarding school once more before we leave. 

Milka getting her things for boarding school.

Us with Milka at her new school

So that's a recap of one of our busiest days so far. It was really a very tiring, but very good day.

Oh!, I also got to play with Anastasia, she is a cutie-pie!

Anastasia - if you could only hear her laugh...

Our Kilimanjaro/Amboseli trip did not work out for this weekend, so we decided to go visit an IDP camp instead this weekend. IDP is internally displaced persons. Our next blog post will be about that adventure.

Much love,
Kate and Kyle