KENYA09
Kenya 2009 Joined: August 8th 2009
Logged in: September 24th 2009
Logged in: September 24th 2009
You can find out more about the project at St John's Hartford web site
We left on 16th August 2009 and returned on 29th
Travel Blog Posts
Doug and Ann (and Tim)
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
Paul fitting light fittings
Today we all started back working after our weekend of rest. There is still lots to finish. At the Eshimuli Guest House many of the walls in the common areas still need a second coat of paint, the Kitchen needs painting, the Building work is ongoing, and some new lighting needs to be installed for the new rooms. Over at Shiatsala school the electrics need finishing off, the wood for the benches needs its final prep, and the windows need glazing. It also seemed to be a bit of a day for wildlife in its various forms. Back at Eshimuli the Monkeys were out in force and over at Shiatsala it seemed to be insects! With so much to do we could only pause briefly to examine the wildlife though as we need to finish by ... read more
The Church we visited
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
Ready to leave
I apologise that it has been a while since the last update but unfortunately I also succumbed to the err ‘health issue’ that many have already experienced so I was out of action most of Sunday and Today (Monday) has been rather busy! So today is our day off. We started out relatively early with breakfast then it was off to Kakamega. It was ‘about an hour’ to Kakamega town where we stopped off to have a wander around the town market. A couple of us were brave enough to make purchases. Jeremy saw a hefty looking adjustable wrench he took a fancy to, he says he needed it for a plumbing job, but it was rather large and shiny so I suspect there may have been a bit more too it than that. In the ... read more
Shiatsala School
Quite a lengthy one today but before we get to the update we would all like to let you know that your comments and messages are a great help to us out here in Kenya. It might only be for 2 weeks and we are of course having some amazing experiences but we never forget about those of you we have left at home and on many occasions wish you were here to experience them with us (The good ones of course!) so please keep the encouraging messages coming to help keep the homesickness at bay. Today started out on a low note. Nobody’s phone seemed to work (something to do with last night’s thunderstorm) and a number of the team was feeling unwell. This was a lot to do with us not getting proper sleep ... read more
On the way to the School
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
Guess who that is with a Laptop
Wednesday started a little earlier for me then most. There are quite a lot of roosters and chickens wandering around the guest house grounds (although they do seem to be reducing in number for some reason…) and this morning their dawn chorus started about an hour before dawn. This goes to show that even the chickens have the same concept of time as the rest of Kenya! Anyway it gave your humble blog master the chance to write up most of Tuesdays blog entry before the rabble woke up. Well after breakfast, Cornflakes with warm milk (nice) , sausage, egg, and toast we met in the Library as usual and did the first chapter of Nehemiah as a quick bible study, talked a bit about the first chapter of the book we are all reading (Extreme ... read more
Break on through....
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
In Flight
Well the flight was comfortable enough, we were all grouped together which was nice and after 8 hours we made it safe and sound to Nairobi. First job was to queue up and get ourselves Safaricom SIM cards. Then it was off to a shambolic immigration process and on to collect our bags. We then made our way to the carpark where we met up with our driver Elias and his sidekick Anthony. Elias drives a nice distinctive aqua blue minibus. It was a bit tight but we squeezed everyone in, prayed and we were off on our second long bus ride hoping it would be a bit more interesting than our bus trip to Heathrow. Well we weren't dissapointed as the strange sites started almost straight away as we saw Maribu Storks nesting in the ... read more
arrival
Well we made it to heathrow with plenty of time, only to find out our fligh is delayed 3 hours. So we stoicly did what men do in this sort of situation and adjourned in the pub.... read more
