One More Day of Hard Work I slept in this morning. I needed it, so I skipped breakfast and stayed in bed until 10:30 am. More cmoputer work, a little bt of a lunch, and I am off for more meetings. I meet with Rahul first and we finish up our bills and accounts, as well as discuss a few last minute final arrangement for our volunteer program. Next, I am off to see Rajinger again, along with Azim, our lawyer in Nairobi. I had some last questions for clarification on some of our work together and he was able to [View Full Entry]

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The Saga Continues I am up again early today. I met with Rahul in the morning, as well as his father Rajinder Kapila. Rahul is our Land Operator in Kenya and books all of our ground items like hotels, vans, etc. He is very savvy, extremely knowledgeable, and very concerned about making everything work well for us including security. Rajinder, his father, is a semi-retired lawyer in Nairobi with a 50 year reputation in practice. We are using his firm and he has some very good lawyers who are now working for us in making sure our requirements for working in [View Full Entry]

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A Long day of Productive Meetings There is not much to talk about today other than that I had a some meetings of which I will spare you some of the details. I worked all morning finishing my micro-finance proposal and printing out several copies. It is 10 pages long and is a good start. After lunch I have a meeting with John Amendi and his group. We have been associates of theirs for many years now and have decided to discuss with them the possibility of implementing the micro-finance program in Kenya. The meeting goes very well and we see [View Full Entry]

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This is a Day of Lasts, for Heather We're up early again and head down to breakfast. This is a day of lasts, for Heather. She flies out tonight so this is her last breakfast in Africa, her last hotel room, her last view of the Kenyan landscape, and her last goodbyes. We realize that Jennifer is probably now in Amsterdam as she left last night from Nairobi. The ride back to Nairobi from Embu seemed long, although the highway was quite smooth. I have been developing a unique new model in my head of how to implement an interest-free [View Full Entry]

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We Finally Get to Meet Heather's Foster Child - Caroline We were up early, at 6:00 am, and ready for a 7:00 am breakfast. The food did not really seem that appealing and we dined on croissants, black coffee and some eggs. Our driver, Danison, and the representative for Plan Canada (Agnes), arrived at 7:30am to brief us o our itinerary for the day. Agnes was an interesting person - short, round, and full of compassion for the children that she worked with. She carefully explained the protocols required in meeting with a Plan-sponsored child, and it was very clear [View Full Entry]

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And The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth... We are up early again today and have an early breakfast again (7:30 am). Our driver arrives at about 8:00am, and Charles arrives to meet us at 8:30am. We settle a few details and head off to the Kawangware slum today. The road is a little rough as we enter the slum, but our driver Simon is very skilled. He manouvers through the people and animals that crowd the narrow one-laned streets. The girls are silent and stare transfixed through the car windows at the sights which behold them. Open sewers run along both [View Full Entry]

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We headed out just after 6am for our final game drive. Again, it was just the three of us - Noreen went on a balloon ride to see the animals, and our married couple decided to sleep in again. On the agenda for the day were lions, the mother and baby rhino again, hippos and crocodiles. We started out with a lot of driving around, seeing the same usual animals. Looked for the rhinos for a few minutes before giving up. Came across a pile of vans, so we had to check it out - turns out it was two male [View Full Entry]

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Today was only a semi-early morning. We had breakfast, had a ‘discussion’ with reception as I needed my room for one more night and our travel agent had misunderstood our various itineraries, Charles arrived at our hotel at 8:30 and then we were off to the Mercy Children’s Centre, Kawangware branch. Mercy Children’s Centre was started several years ago by Charles, Pius who we met in Kisumu, and an American couple. The original school is in the slum of Kawangware here in Nairobi. As it’s near impossible to buy land in the city, they’ve rented several re [View Full Entry]

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Heather said that the road between Kisumu and Bumala would be a great concept for a video game - see how fast you can make the trip while dodging huge sinkholes, speed bumps, police check stops, people walking and on bicycles, matatus, goats and cows, gasoline tanker trucks, etc etc etc. You definitely have to be on your toes to be a driver in this country. One of our students who I’ve mentioned before in the Grandmother day entry, Nicholas, works in the market as a porter on the weekends to support his family. Todd and Charles ran into him yesterday [View Full Entry]

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Today We Meet Moraa We are up REALLY early today and ready for the drive by 6:00 am. We are out on the Serengetti plains long before the sun rises and we see the balloons in the distant warming up for their sunrise launch. Noella is there and we wish her a successful game drive from afar. We watch them slowly rise into the crisp morning air as the first rays of sun strike against the colourfully patterned material. It looks like something out of National Geographic…. We are back for breakfast by 9:00am and have a quick breakfast. Then [View Full Entry]

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