First off, Lake Victoria is stinking huge! I know we have the Great Lakes in the states, but I've never been to a lake where I couldn't see to the other side, so that was pretty sweet.
Secondly, it's a very good thing that hippos aren't organized. We rode in these hovering-right-above-the-lake boats that required small buckets to bail out the water pooling on the bottom, so if the hippos had gotten together, and gotten organized, tipping us over probably would not have been a difficult task. Let that be a lesson to us all of missed opportunities due to lack of organization.
Thirdly- people bathe in the lake. Nough said.
A few pics from this fun outing:
After our expedition to Lake Victoria, we made our way to the Jolly Kids Nursery School. This school is being run by a local church, and offers education to their village's orphans. The church provides as much as they can for these kids, and even the teachers are volunteer, but they only have the resources to provide 3 meals a week. If the kids have extended family to stay with, or if village families are able to take them in, they may have more food throughout the week, but they may not. Most of these kids are orphans of AIDS, and about 85% of them have AIDS as well.
What our team was working on before we even got to Kenya, was to help start some projects that would give the Church and feeding center the ability to provide more for the orphans, and hopefully be able to start making some of their own money as well. Part of our team has been working on a water well project for the past year, to try and get clean water to the kids. This is a huge problem in Kenya, and the cause of much disease. Things are finally moving forward, and the well should be drilled by August. The other projects we worked on that day, were planting Moringa trees, starting a garden, and buying goats. The Moringa trees are pretty much a super tree. They grow crazy fast, and don't need much water. the leaves are full of vitamin C, A, calcium, potassium, and protein. You can use the leaf powder medicinally, and the seed pods can actually be used to purify water! (Clearly, it's not going to be Dasani, but it's much better than what a lot of people there currently have.) We planted 10 Moringa trees for the school, as well as a small garden that we're hoping will be expanded on future trips. Our last project at the school were the goats that we purchased. This project will hopefully end up looking like a micro finance, small business loan. Our hope is that the school will be able to not only provide milk for the kids, but also be able to make money by selling extra milk, as well as extra goats once they start breeding the. Entrepreneurship at work! I'm excited to see how this project will progress.
The orphanage trip was hard, but so good. It's hard to see little boys running around with bloated stomachs and wonder if they'll have anything to eat over the weekend. It's hard to see babies with no energy. It's hard to hold a little girl's hand, look into her jaundiced eyes, and worry that her life won't be long enough. But it was good to see the work that the church is doing there- they are being the hands and feet of Christ. It was good to watch our team members playing soccer, and see how excited it made the kids. It was good to hold hands with 10 children at once. It was good to give out teddy bears and play catch. It was good to give hugs, and let them play with our hair, and touch our faces. It was good to show them my camera and let them see how beautiful they are.
So stay tuned- there's one more post about Kenya coming soon!
~j
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