Arrival

Chris and I arrived safely ‪on Sunday evening here after 2 uneventful flights. This journal is provided to you so that you can learn about our experiences here which are certainly different from what is experienced in our daily lives in the USA. I have expanded the number of recipients considerably since my previous years of doing this journal. If for some reason, you do not want to receive my journals, just let me know and I will drop you out of the group.

It might be useful to give you a short summary of what you might expect in these journals. We will be in Kenya till July 12, arriving back in the states on July 13. I expect to write between 5-7 journals of 1-2 page length. Our schedule is to depart Nairobi tomorrow for East Pokot and will be there until Monday, Jun 25, when we will travel to Kabarnet and meet with Baringo County officials. We return to Nairobi on the afternoon of Jun 27 and stay in Nairobi for 2 days, departing early on Jun 30 for Voi. We will be taking the new high speed railway constructed by the Chinese from Nairobi to Voi and on the return leg on 12 July. While in Taeta Tavita County, we will be conducting training for over 100 teachers on Stem Education. Late on 12 July we depart Nairobi for London and then back to Seattle.

On Monday our first task of the day was to go to the Kenyan National Council for Persons with Disabilities. This is where they make the hand powered tricycle wheelchair. After the usual wait you experience in Kenya for anything to happen, we got our receipt and proceeded to load the tricycle wheelchair into our land cruiser. We were lucky that the land cruiser had an internal storage area big enough to hold the wheelchair and that it would fit through the door. The real challenge will come tomorrow when we load the tricycle wheelchair on the roof of our rented land cruiser. The plan is to deliver the wheelchair first thing ‪on Thursday morning.

In the afternoon, we spent a couple of hours with a lady named Jane. Jane is from Kolowa which is where one of our secondary schools that we work with is located. Jane has a remarkable story. When she was 12, she was going to be married off to man over 60 and become a victim of FGM. FGM is a horrible cultural tradition that is outlawed in Kenya but still practice. Rather than describe it I would prefer you look it up. So faced with this situation Jane ran away to another village where she was taken in but was made a servant for the next 2 years. When education was mandated in Kenya for children through grade 8, she wanted to attend but her providers said no. So she ran away again. This time she was able to covering 3 primary grades in one area. She excelled in her education progressing rapidly through primary school, then secondary school and now is a 3rd year university student. By God’s blessing a lady named Maxine from the UK became her mentor. Maxine works for a little known company called Microsoft and lives in NY City. Maxine mentorship has allowed Jane to tell her story to others through her great public speaking ability. Jane will speak at a Microsoft convention in Las Vegas at the end of July for the purpose of fund-raising for a water project in her area of Kolowa. Microsoft generously supports employees charitable contributions and matches them. Maxine had heard about Hifadhi Africa through her Mother who meet John Tumaini, a HAO volunteer, who received a scholarship to attend water training under a program called “Young Waters Solutions” in Belgium last November and learned about Collin’s book, “Leap of Hope”, published on Amazon. After starting to read the book, Maxine conceived of a water project done by the girl child could impact the Kolowa people to turn away from their horrible cultural traditions and help show that a girl child can impact her people in profound ways if just provided the opportunity. So Jane’s and Maxine’s efforts are still in their infancy but shortly it will blossom into a beautiful thing changing lives forever in an area of the world were change is desperately needed.