feeding program update.

Hello again everyone!

I am really happy to be writing this update about the feeding program we and the other volunteers started here. Perhaps you remember our first post about the feeding program. Since then, we have moved from doing five days a week of Ujii porridge, to doing four days of Ujii - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and one day of rice and beans on Wednesdays. With some help from an extra donation towards the feeding program, we are also able to give the children bananas on Mondays and Fridays. We also give out vitamins on Tuesday and Thursday, and de-worming pills every second month.

The feeding program serves about 100 children - 50 from an AIC (African Inland Church) pre-school that took in many of its students from our garbage slum, and the other 50 are the older children that we have been working with to get into technical schools and secondary schools. The younger kids are around age 3-6, and are working on the three years of pre-school that you have to complete in Kenya before beginning Class 1. The older children range from age 14 - 19. Before we were able to get our school going the older children were left to look through the garbage for food for their meals. Now, they are more focused and many of the parents have come to thank us for giving them lessons during the day to keep them out of trouble. 

We are so happy to have the feeding program going. Since we started it, we have noticed that the children have much more energy, and are getting sick less. We are pleased, and the kids seem to be also. Here are some pictures:

Kim eating her rice and beans! She's adorable.

Emmanuel and Joseph

One class of the younger kids having their meal.

Kyle passing out bananas in school.

Kate pouring ujii for the little ones.

 Kyle and I are getting close to the end of our time at the garbage slum, and soon we will be moving on to Kisumu - a city in Western Kenya. We will be moving on Feb.16th, and stay in Kisumu until March 8th or so. We feel good about what we have done here, but of course wish we could do more. Thanks to some donations from our friends, family members, and our church families, we will be able to fund the feeding program for at least another three months.Please know how much we and the kids here appreciate it.

We will also be giving towards another water truck just before we leave, to provide the families that live in the garbage slum with clean drinking water. We were trying to help them with a more sustainable way of getting clean drinking water, but the politics and corruption here can be unbelievable sometimes. Aside from that, we cannot build any structure for them to collect rain water because the land where they are living is not theirs. We will keep working on it while we are in Kisumu, and hopefully be able to put something in place when we visit after we are done in Kisumu on our way back.

We have lots more things to post about, so check back often as we are still catching up on some events that already happened.

Thanks,
Kate and Kyle.