Touchdown in Kenya

HOME has now raised 5339 Canadina dollars! I am so pleased and so happy to have everyone's support on this project.

First in HOME news, we are getting started with making plans for the chicken coop/cow shed. We have decided on 500 chickens, a mix of broiler and layers, so they can eat chicken and eggs. We're also looking into buying an incubator, to grow broiler chickens. I'm super excited about that. It can take up to 500 eggs. It takes 18-20 days to incubate the fertilized eggs, then they are hatched and kept for another 2-3 weeks. At this point they can be sold to the neighbours and give the orphanage more income.

We went to look at another orphanage in Ngong on Wednesday that has an incubator, with my friend Daniel. At Faraja Children's Home we met a guy named George who filled us in on how it works, costs etc. Now we just need to get Mama Tunza to agree.

Also a big thank you to Alberto Saavedra for his donation to HOME. Alberto is my friend from Portugal who was a fellow volunteer in 2007, working at an orphanage called the Sons of Manesh. And thank yous to Brett Davidson, owner of LadySport, my roommates Tom Bond and Rae Mitchell, and the best looking spectator/Funky Trunks model, Craig Simonetto for their respective donations.

In other news, Alisha and I are settling in well. This trip is already very different. We are living way out in the country, in Ngong Hills. It's a 40 minute drive into civilization, ie Junction, where I lived last time, where there is a huge supermarket and everything you would ever need or want. It takes about 30 minutes to walk to Ngong town, where there are Kenyan shops and 15 minutes to walk to the orphanage.

We are living with an ordinary Kenyan family (not a chief as previously reported) on their acre farm. They are Evans, who works in construction, and Alice who graduated yesterday as an Early Childhood Educator and runs a daycare. They have 3 kids, girls Favour who is 13 and Audrey who is 10 and a son Pistis, who is 8. And a bunch of dogs and a cat. We are settling in with them well.

It's a different world in Ngong from Kibera. The orphanage has tons of room, including a small playing field outside. They are still transitioning some of the kids, in fact we went ot Kibera on Tuesday to collect the year 8s, who have just sat their national exams. Yesterday, Cyrus, joined us. He is blind and attending a special school and will be there for the December holidays. In January he will start at a new school where he can learn Braille. Next Friday the rest of the older kids will come from Kibera and they will have nearly 100 kids at the orphanage.

I was excited that many of the older kids have remembered me and were very excited to see me again. The little ones don't, but they are pretty easy to win over. Push them on a swing, play a game of soccer with them, read them a book and you're golden.

That's probably it for now. I'm hoping to get construction started this week and the livestock out here before long.

I'm not by a computer very often, but will update when I can.