Vihiga Children's School

Jambo! We made it to the children's home after 40 hours of travel. A stopover in Calgary and Amsterdam, we arrived in Nairobi late in the evening. A long lineup to get our Kenyan visas, we got our luggage around 11PM. Our next flight out was at 7AM, and we wanted to stay the night in the airport as we didn't want to travel in Nairobi right now. So we found a bunch of chairs we put together for makeshift beds - the expressions on all the customs guards that passed us thru the night was quite priceless. Then at 7 we caught our flight to Kisumu, a small town about an hour west toward Uganda. It was a beautiful flight over the Rift Valley. From Kisumu we hired 2 cars to take as all the hour drive to the Vihiga Children's Home.

Everything looked exactly the same as a year and a half ago. But as well it was all new, experiencing it now thru the eyes of Ute and Nikki, and the other new people in our group. It was great to see Priscilla and her family again. She took us over to the school where everyone waited in anticipation. They happened to be having a huge ceremony for the grade 8's who were about to write their provincial exams next week (to see if they can move on to higher eduction - if they can afford it). They were so honoured to have us there at this ceremony. There was singing, dancing, many, many speeches (including the on-the-spot speeches we all gave), and so much love and encouragement to the grade 8's who were about to embark on a new chapter in their lives. The ceremony was several hours. That afternoon we hung out at the school with the kids. They all followed us around, asking us about Canada, and showing us their school and dorms. The best for me was seeing Nikki and Holly interacting with the children, as these children have hardly seen white skin before, moreless having seen white teenagers before. When the children found out Nikki and Holly were 16, they were amazed that they were still in school. Nikki and Holly's words of encouragement really seemed to resonate with them. They spent alot of time with the kids, Nikki even played soccer with them during a torrential downpour. We slept well that night, and went back to the school this morning. We all spoke at their morning service with a hugely captive audience. We handed out the letters written to the children from schools in Vancouver and Tsawwassen. They loved them and right away got to work on letters for us to bring back. We handed out many school supplies for them to write the letters with. Included was some glitter stuff to put on their papers. We came back into the classrooms a few minutes later and they had covered their faces in glitter, thinking it was the funniest thing. Oh, so cute. We had many conversations with Priscilla over the meals about the state of the school and Kenya, and how best to help the children, as we gave many sustainable ideas that she seemed very interested in. So we'll see what we land on. We found an internet cafe in a nearby town. Til later!

Paul