Blogs from Butere, Western Province, Kenya, Africa

Since have been mainly concentrating on finishing off there’s not a great deal of exciting things to talk about! Everybody has been working so hard it’s been all hands to the pumps to get everything completed. We even had to cancel our football rematch although we rescheduled it for Thursday evening. Here’s a summary of what’s been accomplished over these 2 weeks. Over 1500 KM have been driven by Elias in his bus through 1 monsoon and many torrential downpours. At Eshimuli Guest House more then 3500 bricks have been carried over 40 meters and up 3 flights of stairs and then laid to make 6 new rooms with bathrooms. Nearly 200M of electrical wiring as been laid to install 30 new lights, and 19 new light switches. To brighten the place up over 60 litres ... read more

Sunday being the traditional worship day is just the same here in Kenya. Doug recommended a church that was 10 minute or so drive away that had an English service. The churches here will hold up to 3 services each in different language, English, Luyha, and Swahili. Since this part of Kenya is dominated by the Luyha tribe the Luyha service is the most popular one. The English service is actually considered to be the youth service! The service itself whilst having some similarities to traditional services back home felt completely different. The singing wasn’t in English but the preacher spoke in English and covered a number of passages, Psalm 115, Revelation 1, quite quickly, very different from Tim and Mikes sermons! There were also some rather unusual distractions to the service due to the Goats ... read more

Today was business as usual breakfast, bible study, prayer and discussion. Then work began in earnest. Over at the school we started by speaking to the Principal about Internet access. He was incredibly keen and had already given it great thought. He had already planned how they will use it as a resource for not only the current pupils but also to run computer courses for people in the local area as well for a small fee. That would enable them to continue to finance the continuing costs of the Internet connection when our initial donation run out. Jerry and I then continued to work on the preparation for the construction of the computer room benches. First off was planed the edges of the worktops since some of them were rather wonky, then we worked at ... read more

We started a bit late today. After our mammoth 30 odd hour commute many of us hadn't had much sleep (with the exception of Mike who seemed to hibernate the whole way) so many of us had a lie in until 7:30 ish then it was breakfast around 8 am (Weatabix, toast, sausage, egg and tomato). We then adjourned to the Library for a short talk from Doug on Philippians then some prayer and a planning meeting. Well I say meeting but that implies some degree of democratic discussion but in truth it was more like a benevolent dictatorship with our glorious leader Tim at the helm. We then split off into our teams to tackle the various projects we wanted to complete. Mike, Me (Andrew), Paul, Danny, Jerry, and Ian went to Shiatsala Secondary School ... read more