A Good Time Was Had by All

We finished up the Pangea part of the trip on Monday, when we drove from Kisumu to Nakuru where our driver dropped Allan, Jerry, and myself. Bob and Duane Edwards (Pangea's newest member who joined us for the last 5 days) went on to Nairobi where they caught their planes home that night. Our last few days continued the trend of visiting very interesting and inspiring projects.

We spent Friday with GWAKO, a group that does water projects for communities who are providing comprehensive services to orphans and caregivers. They are a faith-based group, which made some of us nervous, but they assured us that their water projects were to help everyone, with no strings attached. To be realistic, this part of Kenya is so Christian that any evangelism would be preaching to the choir. In the end, even the most skeptical were impressed by their work. They took us to visit a women's group in a fairly remote village--their proposal to us last year was to put in this well, but we turned them down; luckily they found other funding. Their services are very complete and very organized...we saw some of the best record-keeping we've ever seen among African groups. While we were in the obligatory ceremonial welcome, the venue was invaded by a "small snake", which freaked me out and that, in turn, amused them. As has happened several times on this trip, the women "bonded" with me, especially the leader of this group. She asked me how many children I had. When I replied "two", she looked sad and said "why so few?" She really didn't understand when I tried to explain that it was a choice and quite common in our country. Later, when Bob introduced himself and said he had 2 kids, she pointed at me and smiled, as if to say "I guess you were telling me the truth."

We got back to Kisumu about 2:30 and spent the next couple of hours roaming the market, shopping for a gift for Rabuor Village, and relaxing. The next morning, we headed out with two representatives of World Neighbors to visit one of their projects. We were all impressed by their approach, which is to provide lots of training to build the capacity of the local organization. In this case, the CBO works in 18 villages that are working together on a reforestation project to rescue their land from some severe soil erosion (there are big gullies that "eat" the land whenever there are heavy rains upstream). Again, we connected with the community members (maybe we're getting good at this?) and had some very interesting side conversations.

That afternoon, we arrived in Rabuor Village (Loyce's home) where we spent the next two nights in her parents' home. They've outfitted the former homes of her two oldest brothers as guest houses, and that's where we stayed. We toured the many aspects of the Rabuor project, had a chance to really talk with people about the sunflower project, and have the rare privilege of seeing how the family lives (pit latrine, bucket showers, and all). Loyce and her crew on the ground are starting to expand their dreams, already working with 10 neighboring villages and expanding the sunflower business.

We look forward to showing some of our pictures and telling some of the best stories when we see you all in Seattle. Best, Chris and the rest of the team