Blog 1
Well, this is my first blog ever, so I’m just going to ramble about my experiences so far. Each blog tells of experiences over multiple days, so don’t get confused by the change. Okay. So, my mom and I arrived in Kenya yesterday (that would be June 25), and pretty much Matthew has just been orientationizing us to the local culture and activities. IcFEM Mission is one huge organization. Apparently there are over 16,000 members, with 9 different “transformation” groups split up over a large area. A transformation group is made up of forty or more fellowship groups, which in turn are made up of at least 25 people. Wow. Anyway, we arrived at the guest house, with me sleeping in the van from the airport (If you can call it an airport; more like a small building bordering a long strip of concrete) and set up shop in the house.
This is a picture of the compound, with the Guest house courtyard guest houses behind me, so you can’t see them.
We met Helen, and Catherine who are to be our cooks through the duration of our stay, and Martin and Peter who had just filmed 12 hours of raw footage about the IcFEM Mission, and now had the daunting task of editing it. Nothing else really happened, except for the constant annoying dog(s) and the rooster which likes to hear itself crow. Not fun. Especially after having lost like 9 hours in our flights over here from Spokane (that= extreme tiring). I’m pretty sure that my mom and I didn’t sleep for roughly 30 hours straight on the way over. That was even more fun than the rooster. Other than that, however, the people are extremely kind. The thing I really noticed, however, was the fact that everyone walks/bikes. Vehicles are scarce, and when they do appear (like our taxi) they’re forced to weave through the whole road, avoiding civilians, potholes, other cars, and other hazards o’ the environment. I took a run this morning with Matthew when it was still cool, and, although we took it easy, the fact that we are at 5600 feet compared to Spokane’s 2000 or something made it pretty interesting for the whole issue of breathing. Hopefully within a couple days of running I’ll be used to the big change. The tour of the IcFEM headquarters was full of people always welcoming, shaking hands, and pretty much going out of their way to greet you in the best way possible. Apparently, my program for the next four weeks includes full orientation to the workings of IcFEM- I’m going to be showing it to various people who might be interested when I get back to Spokane- constructing a house for people whose original burned down, and are now living in a shed (should I even call it that?) no larger than the space your bathtub takes up in your bathroom. Oh yeah, did I mention that this is a family of eight we’re talking about here? Anyhoo… I’ll also be doing some field work among some of the transformation units, and for the last week, I’ll be teaching kids cricket, even though I don’t really know how either (that would be Matthew’s job to teach). Oh, by the way, Matthew is from the UK and has been here for 3 years, and is the leader/ setter- upper of the Gap Programme, where college kids take a “Gap Year” to do mission work. He lives at IcFEM quarters, which is where we’re staying. I’ll try to get a pic later.
The hospital at Dreamland.
These two pictures show the primary school and hospital at Dreamland, where an eighty year old man had a repeating dream to give his land to aid Christ, and gave it to Solomon (the director o’ IcFEM), who had been having a dream about building hospital, school, and other needed facilities.
These are the kids at the school in Dreamland close up. Happy group.
We went to Kisumu today, (three hour drive) to pick up a UK couple, Jan and John. That was interesting, especially when our driver, who is actually very nice and experienced, hit a ginormous speed bump going at like 65 kilometers per hour. I’m pretty sure we got some air on that one, but aside from that, the trip was uneventful. So far we’ve lost power twice, but only for a short time each occurrence.
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