All in a day's work

Hello,

All in a day's work.... I find myself doing so many different things in one day here. It is absolutely crazy, and lots of fun.

For example.... I am helping with the gym class and the creative art class at the small school near my house. It has been interesting finding art ideas with the supplies at hand! A little glue sure can go a long way. Here I was making some paper beads with the kids. It was really cute to see all the kids wearing their necklaces and bracelets after. I have pictures of my two favourite kids in the class, I definitely play favourites! This is Saidie, I think she was the most excited about the beads.


This little guy is just so cute! His name is Mustafa and he's pretty much the coolest kid ever.


After having a little fun with the kids in the morning.... I'm off for some manual labour for the afternoon. Rachel and I have been working with a lovely man named Anerico, who is really interested in agriculture. We both pretty much feel in love with him, he is the happiest person I have ever met in my entire life. He is also probably the hardest working person we have met here. Because of this, Rachel decided to use some money that she fund-raised in the UK to build him a chicken house. He has grand plans for a 200 chicken operation, so we have had to reign him in just a little, after much planning and budgeting on the part of Anerico and Rachel, it was decided that the house would be made of mud and would have a large chicken run outside. Most people here tend to keep their chickens right in their house at night and let them run around outside during the day. It's not quite done yet, we were a little delayed with the lack of water that the end of dry season caused, but it is well on the way!
This is the very beginning of our little project.

They did hire a fundi to make the main structure part and put on the roof. The rest, however is up to us to complete!

This included purchasing the smaller sticks from a neighbour and transporting them ourselves!
My arms were certainly sore after a few trips carrying a bundle of sticks.


Here the neighbour has come to help us, He was a welcome addition to our building crew. His name is Hamsa and here we are having a competition to see who can strip the sticks fastest. That's me using a banga!


All the sticks are then nailed to the posts to hold the mud in place. It was a lot of work, but enjoyable, with chapati and beans as a treat at the end.


Even the kids were put to work after they got home from school.


Ahh, doesn't it look beautiful! It's ready for mudding, all we need is the water for mud making.


Anerico thinks that he will be able to have about 100 chickens in here! We are gonna start him off with quite a bit less that that, but hopefully he can grow his flock quickly. He has such big plans for his compound, he really is a pleasure to work with. We are also planning on having a demonstration garden at his house. Tomorrow we are going to start by planting a seed nursery. I will take some pictures and talk about that more in another post.
For now... I'll leave you with an end of the day picture of myself and Rose. She is such a sweetie...

Family Fun Day

As part two of the well project, I wanted to talk about the family fun day.
It was a HUGE success. By having each child and parent contribute a small amount, we were able to raise 3900 ksh. That's $50 which is exactly one third of the cost of the well repair. Rachel and I split the difference, so it truly was a joint effort between us and the community.

We invited all of the parents to come to school for the morning to see what the kids have been up to and to have a little fun. Each class prepared a poem or a song to present, it was really cute. I had taught the baby class to sing the ABC's and Teacher Rebecca worked with them to present it. Here are a couple of the class presentations:



Then we had a speech from the Head Teacher as well as the newly appointed chairman of the PTA.

After that.....let the games begin. We had prepared races for each of the classes. We used all materials that were already available at the school, so that we could keep the costs as low as possible. We brought out the benches from the classrooms for the parents to watch.


This is the baby class race, the parents got really into it and were cheering!

We had some kids doing a frog jump race, some doing wheelbarrow races.


We had a wheelbarrow race as well as some other races,



One of the most popular races however, was the teacher's race. They got really into it. I think we are going to hang the winning certificate on the wall of the office.



We had a little prize (cookies) for the winners and a certificate with their name on it. It was a pretty big hit I think! A great day all around.

I keep talking about all the fun stuff....but what volunteering have I been doing!?!

Hey Everyone,

I think I've been including a few too many pictures of fun week-end trips and not enough updates on the actual projects I'm working on!

First of all...the well project! These are some pictures of the well construction. Yes...that's right, that is the fundi climbing into the well to hand dig it deeper. I tried not to think about the health and safety involved with that one. So this guy, climbs down by the rope to the bottom of the well...

and his friend is at the top, he lifts and empties the dirt from the bucket. Crazy...but that's how it's done here.


Here is Headteacher Lilian monitoring the progress. Rachel and I did most of the material gathering for the well. It was a lot of running around buying cement, sand, wire mesh, rebar, getting the lid welded, people in town were laughing at us. Rachel is the main negotiator, she was really refining her haggling skills, since everyone is always trying to rip us off. Our favourite line was 'If you came to our country, we wouldn't give you a different price because you are African, so why are you trying to give us a Mzungu price?'. The piki piki drivers also thought it was pretty funny that we were carrying around all these construction items, but, it all just gets tied onto the back of a motorbike no problem!


And ta -da! Only two short weeks later, we have a well. I'm really excited for what this means for the school. Now that we have water, next term I am going to be working on the school hygiene program with the kids. Yay for better hand washing and tooth brushing for the kids.

Here is the completely well top, we couldn't resist putting our names into the fresh concrete. We wrote, Stacey, Rachel and the Tumaini Community 2011.


Here is the final picture with the two fundis. This project makes me happy. When I first mentioned the well project, I talked about how we wanted to make it the community's well. We decided to do this by having the school community do some fund raising to help pay for the well repair. We did this by having a big family fun day.... I'm going to put the pictures in a new blog post, because this one is getting pretty long already!

Kisumu

As promised, I will post some pictures from our trip to Kisumu a couple week-ends ago.
I think that the one thing I might miss the most in the village is a cold drink. Without electricity or a fridge, we are left with warm beverages. I think we are planning on getting a clay pot to store water in which will keep it more cool....but still.

So... Rachel and I were very excited for a cold beer. We went out for beer and pizza the first night we got to Kisumu. It tasted pretty good, especially since we didn't get on the direct matatu from Harambe, so the journey took use over 3 hours. I'm talking about 3 hours of sitting in a crowded vehicle with chickens at your feet and the radio blaring a station that doesn't really come in very well.



Ahh...refreshing! We ended up going to about 3 or 4 different places that night. It was really fun!



I'm not too sure how Rachel convinced the security guard to give up his baton....



We stayed in a hotel that had two single beds (with nets included), electricity, running water and a clean bathroom.....for 1000 ksh per night. That means it was about $6 each. CRAZY!
We woke up the next morning and went to the Impala Wildlife Sanctuary. It was pretty good. They had lots of animals, it was fun.


They even had a Simba! (Simba is swahili for lion......who knew!). It was good practice for me as I try to learn the swahili names for animals.



The sanctuary was right on the edge of Lake Victoria. The second largest freshwater lake in the world....anyone know what the first is?? Hint...it is a great lake.


While we were at the sanctuary there was also a boys high school class visiting. One of the guys from the class asked me if we could take a picture together. I said yes......not realizing what this would lead to. Soon, there was a line up of guys wanting to take pictures with Rachel and I. Eventually we just sat on a bench and ate our lunch while they took turns sitting between us to snap photos. This is only part of the group:


After the photos, they were very interested in finding out about us. It was actually pretty funny. Rachel and I were just sitting in the middle of this big group around us asking us questions.


After leaving the park, we decided to hire a guy to take us out on the lake for a boat ride.
It was well worth it, super relaxing!


But the best part was.......we saw a Kiboko!! This wasn't at the sanctuary....this was just a hippo hanging in the water while we were it a boat. How cool is that!


I was very very excited.



Although Hippo was the highlight, we did see ndege.....I like that word. I try to point out lots of birds, just so I can say ndege.


All in all it was a pretty fun week-end. We went to the craft market the next morning and came back to the village. We always have to get back to the village before dark, because the piki piki drivers go home so we wouldn't be able to get to our house!

In terms of other travel plans....I have some pretty exciting ones in the works. Don't worry Mom, I'm planning on heading South, not North. Rachel needs to fly out of Joburg on April 14, so we have decided to do a 3 week overland trip through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa. I might continue for an additional week in South Africa and then I will get a flight back up. I will either fly back to Nairobi, or I have been contemplating flying back to Kampala and seeing a little of Uganda. If I don't tack Uganda onto the trip, I think I will try to take a week to visit at the end of May. YAY Travelling!! It has been really fun to be in the village, so I do feel a little torn, but I think it would be a mistake not to see a little more of Africa while I am here.
This means we are leaving in 3 weeks for that trip! Yikes, so much planning to do.

Does anyone else think that Africa is just a little too hot?

Habari!

I know I shouldn't complain about the heat when I hear it is pretty cold in Canada right now, but the last few days have been a little ridiculous here. We are nearing the end of dry season, so everything is SO dry and SO hot. I'm actually looking forward to rainy season!

I am so overdue on blog posts! I have been busy busy busy lately. Kazi kama Nyuki (Busy like a Bee). There are a few things I want to post about, so I think I will do them all in separate posts.
Maybe I can make up for lack of posts by doing a ton in one day???

First of all....things that make me laugh. I am working very hard here on so many different projects, but it's been so much fun. I'm not sure if it is just because we are living in a mud hut with no running water or electricity -I have become simply amused- but I find there are lots of times where we just get silly laughing.

The other morning, Rachel and my conversation went a little like this.

Stacey: I dunno if it is the malaria pills or not, but I had the craziest dream last night.
Rachel: hmmm
Stacey: We were here, but things were different. Like the school was actually a house, but not a regular house, like a really fancy house, it had lamps.
Rachel: Wait a second, are you saying that your definition of a fancy house has become one with lamps?
Stacey: .....hahahhahha.... I guess so. It did seem funny at the time, why would you want lamps if you don't have electricity!

Another thing that makes me laugh, is this little guy from school:


Take a look at his shirt....that's right...it says 'single and fabulous' in pink! hehe.

Last one... I saw this hanging on the wall of the restaurant I was in yesterday:


The text says 'As the husband is, the wife'. Does anyone else notice that the picture is of two male peacocks?? I'm pretty sure they aren't the biggest fans of that here in Kenya.

The other thing I really wanted to add to this post was a picture of this little baby from our village. Women's hair is a big thing here, with most women either braiding their hair or wearing weaves. There is a little baby in town whose mom has somehow put a weave on....... I don't think I can describe how funny this is. Rachel and I call her 'toupee baby', that's what it looks like. Unfortunately, she changed the baby's hair before I was able to get a good picture.

That's it for now... I will talk about Kisumu trip next post!