5 Miles

We’ve made it to Kenya! We are sorry it’s taken so long to update the blog or to let people know what we are doing. As I write my draft of this, the internet keeps coming and going. I’ve overheard that it’s being maxed out –so we’re not able to get online easily to update people nor to put up the pictures we want right now.

After a long series of flights, we were thrilled to be on the ground. It took some time to get the correct guest house but we were finally there around 1AM. Most of us slept very well that night.

Tuesday was a wonderful day to explore NEGST and do a few touristy things. We all loved the warm sunshine (does it rub in it to say we were even hot at times?)
James, Michelle, Colleen and Ed stayed at NEGST in the afternoon to help with their planning for their website update and 5 year plan. The rest of the team got to go to the Kazuri Bead Factory. You can look up their website and find examples of the beautiful necklaces they make. Most of us who went on the tour have lots of pictures showing how the beads are hand made. The most impressive part of it is the entire operation is for single mothers, to give them jobs. Each woman works at shaping the clay (from the soil of Mt. Kenya) into different bead shapes, then painting them once the beads have been fired. They then refire the beads for the glazes to set and then string them. Each one is beautiful and we were a bit overwhelmed with all the options.

We got back to NEGST and met up with the rest of the team members. Then it was back to our guest house for supper. After supper we were able to watch the Inauguration live—they were broadcasting BBC’s feed on the Kenya TV Station. While it was 8 at night for us, it was nice to share in something we knew many people in the US were doing at the same time.

Wednesday was our first teaching day. The computer teaching team has been busy getting everything ready and are starting to work with students. The VBS team did final planning and we’ll do our first VBS tomorrow.