One Week at the Orphanage

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Family and Friends, Today concludes the first week of the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church's trip to the Vihiga Children's Home. In this week we have accomplished phenomenal work. Mrs. Agesa, the director, and her family and friends have extended their hospitality to us and done everything to make our stay pleasant.
We stayed in a hotel several miles over a bumpy road from the village where the orphanage is located. No paved roads here, all are dirt and have large ditches at the sides where the local people walk or ride bicycles. Cows and goats and chickens wander everywhere and there are so many people walking all over. Strange to see few cars.
It isn't so very hot here because it's winter. There are mosquitos but they aren't terribly thick. Eight of our part of twenty-three have suffered diarrhea and nausea so far, but that quickly passed. Every night we heard drums and sometimes singing. People march at night to drums; some say they are members of charismatic churches and some have told us they are having funerals at night. I don't know which is correct. This is a deeply religious country with numerous sects and religions, which seem to incorporate aspects of Christianity as well as more native practices. On Sunday the service in the village went on for 3 hours and included singing, preaching and marching in the village.
In the past week we have built a playground and cupboards for all 80 students at the orphanage; painted the existing buildings and decorated them with murals of Noah's Ark and a rainbow and representations of the buldings and landscape at the orphange. We fitted 80 children with shoes and clothes and attended to several medical conditions. Our team from TJ has worked at an intense pace and you will enjoy the slide show that is being prepared for showing at TJ later. We have bonded as a group and are coming away with a totally new understanding of the orphanage and the conditions under which people live and work here. It is also a profound spiritual experience.
People here live on less than $1.00 per day. The diet consists of mostly beans and ugali (best described as a wet white cornbread). They have delicious rice, curried chicken and chappatis available in the restaurants, and of course, cold Tusker beer, which we consume at the end of a long work day. Our days were long and busy - physically and emotionally taxing.
I met my sponsored chld, Sharon, at the orphange. She is beautiful and intelligent and can dance like a professional. The children put on a performance of local native dances in our honor. I thought it was so good that they could take it to a theater in the USA.
I am REALLY happy here, having more fun than I've had in a long time, and fascinated by the country and people.
We are leaving for safari now and will be at the Masai Mara tonight, in time to watch the migration of the wildebeest tomorrow a.m. early. You have to get up at dawn to catch the migration. It will be only tent camping from here on, for the next week.
I'll write again when I am able to get to an internet cafe.

To Lynn, will you please print this out and mail it to GG. Carolyn Peterson at Room 129, St. Matthews Manor, 227 Browns Lane, Louisvile 40207.
Love, Kathi

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Comments

[Rhonda]

Hello to everyone!
Blessings to all of you in Kenya! It was great to receive the first blog on your adventures. I can only imagine how great it must have been to meet all of the people there AND the children! What building, etc. were you able to complete while you were at Vihiga? How was the safari-you must be home now-or close to it! Love Rhonda and Hope