SAFARI

This is on our 4 day safari. This photo was taken in our first 30 mins in the park. The driver got a call that there was a kill and we went straight there and watched for 2.5 hours. It was great. They really eat ALL of the zebra and rip it apart in the process. In total there were 4 females and 5 cubs feasting on this tasty zebra. The cubs like to just play with their mother's tails more but they still seemed to get blood all around their mouths and look scary. We also saw beautiful giraffes, tons of elephants (my fav), a cheetah, male lions, hippos, crocs and many wild birds as well. It was so much fun to camp out in the "wild" haha.

Gorgeous Lions

Just glad that I was in a van the whole time. Sometimes we got so close to them you felt like they were going to jump through the van windows. But the whole experience was fascinating.

After braids

This is a photo of Courtney looking like someone related to Bob Marley. The part that is missing from this picture is the tears (well almost tears because it hurt like the dickens to get this things in my hair). It took 5 long and painful hours for 7 Kenyans to do this to my hair. Was it worth it? NO! But it's cool nonetheless and now I have a story to tell right?! They are currently still in but I will be taking them out soon (another long job).

Before braids

Jon's birthday

This is the cake that Simon and Beatrice bought for Jon so that we could celebrate his birthday together in Kenya. It wasn't a "normal" birthday but he had a great day :)

"Christmas" with a children's home

This a photo of Jon and I with one of the children's homes that we were able to have a "christmas" for. We bought them each a new shirt, underwear, scarf (made), toothbrush, toothpaste and soap. We also bought them a lot of food for the month. It was such a blessing to be able to show God's love in that way.
They are a beautiful family and were very thankful.

Simon, Beatrice, Sophie and us

This is the family that we lived with in Kitale. We travelled to Mombasa and Turkana with them as well. They were wonderful people to live with. We had loads of fun

Traditional Turkana villagers

This is a photo of a man and woman eating goat liver (Jon and I's favorite :)). They little village had just slaughtered a goat and I was so grossed out that I couldn't watch but Jon was fascinated and loved watching. He even took some photos when they were draining the blood - YUCK!. This woman in the photo is negotiating a bride price for her daughter. This is a much older man that is trying to marry the young girl but it is for his son for when he dies. Different than the way we do it, yes, but the son doesn't have any goats to pay the bride price so the old man will pay it, marry her and then pass her off when he dies. The beads around the womans neck represent how many goats a man would have to pay to marry her.

Leia and her beautiful 7 day old daughter

This is the family that we were able to buy the bodaboda bike for the husband Mark who had to drop out of school to support his family. The deal we made with him when buying his bike was that he would finish school. Simon and Beatrice are also in the photo with me. Note: that is one of the village huts in the right hand corner. They use cardboard and clothes to cover the straw so that wind and rain can not destroy their hut.

Giving out sandals in Katilu

There was a generous donation to us that we used to buy much food and sandals for the children in Turkana that we visited. This school is in Katilu that we gave out the sandals and the children were extremely excited. They danced for us and sang many songs, very loudly. This one room, open building school was in a very dry and spaced out village. The baby class of this school is under a nearby tree where they hang a blackboard and teach the class in the scorching heat. It was almost unbearable for me. We bought 60 pairs of sandals in all sizes for the children. Some will have to grow into them haha, because we didn't have exact sizes before going to the village.

Survival

This is on our drive to Lodwar. This little boy was standing on the side of the road with an empty water bottle and waiting for a car to pull over to give him some water. There were many children doing that on the way up. We only had so much water. If I would've known this would happen, I would've bought many more litres of water.

Crazy bodabodas

These are those silly means of transportation that I was telling you about. Where you sit on that cushion on the back and hold on for dear life. But it's what everyone here in Kitale (and in Bungoma) uses.

Elim nursery school

This is the building where the nursery school is held. The children were singing and dancing for us.

Crayons

This is us at the ELIM nursery school handing out crayons. They are really cute children and loved their crayon.

Feeling like celebrities

This is the Standard 8 class that we brought pencils for their exams. This is when they came to take a million photos with us haha. We felt like celebrities because they each wanted an "alone" picture with us.

Happy Painters

This is Jon and I with the new rollers that we bought. Notice the sketchy ladders. Everytime I went up on the big ladder it would shake so much because the bottom was closer together than t he top. Jon would say "please don't fall and die" and I would say "thanks for the encouragement dear". It was not the safest thing in the world, but it did the job. We finished all the 4 walls with 3 coats of paint and the money that we left for Simon (for the project) is going to buy a new front door. He is happy that we had such a big part in his community center.

Giraffes at the park

The giraffes were so close to the van that when I stuck my head out the sunroof I felt like I was on Jurassic Park. Haha, they were so tall and so fasinating.

Flamingos anyone?

These are the incredible 1.8 million flamingos at the Nakuru National Park that we went to with Simon and Beatrice. They were bathing in this lake and it sounded so cool because they were all flapping their wings to get water on themselves to wash.

Wart hogs at the zoo

I just thought these things were the funniest looking animals in the world. So I thought I would pass on the photo so you could have a good laugh over them.

The famous tusks

This is a photo of the famous tusks. They are on many labels and signs here in Kenya. The most common is on the Tusker beer. They too are in Mombasa.

Mombasa

This is the view from our room at the hotel that Simon and Beatrice treated us to. It was amazing. That is the Indian Ocean in the background.

Jon swarmed with children

This is what we both experience when going to a school. The children love to touch our arms (because we have hair on them and Kenyans don't). The little ones always touch Jon's legs because that's all they can reach and they are hairy too :).

Here Jon has pulled out the video camera and all the kids LOVE it. The love any camera too.

Progressive Primary School

This is the ECD class at Progressive. This is the school that is run by a husband and wife alone, with no other funding. They have done an incredible job.

This is the school that Jon taught Math and I P.E. and English.

We had a lot of fun with this children.

Permanent Home

This is the Siabuta's permanent home. It is unfinished except for one room and a bathroom that we used. They hope to have it finished by next year. They just need to do it slowly due to finances.

C & J with the Siabuta family

This is Jon and I with Patrick, Mary, Pheobe and Faith in front of their temporary home. These temporary structures last about 4 to 5 years because they are only made of mud, cow dung and sticks and begin to erode after that many years of rain.

Courtney's "old lady" hobby

These are the scarves that I made for the Siabuta family. They all loved their scarves very much and couldn't belief that I spent so much time on each one.

"soon-to-be" clinic

Oh dear, this photo is dark too. Sorry. Patrick had to go at 5 pm to take this photo on our last day in Bungoma. Well, I'll tell you about it anyway...

This is the clinic in Bungoma that I was telling you about in my email. It's the one that I refered to in the movie Patch Adams. God has put this clinic on my heart to help support when we get home because there is no medical facility for miles and many of the children in the village get sick. An example is Elizabeth that I told you about that caught malaria and we went to town to buy her drugs but many can't afford transporation to town and therefore can't get the medications they need to treat their disease. Patrick knows 3 retired nurses and a doctor that have offered to donate their services to his clinic. There are 7 bedrooms in this house and they will be used as a waiting room, doctor's room, 2 overnight treatment rooms, an HIV counselling room, a chemist (pharmacy) and an injection room. It is such a wonderful vision. Patrick and I stayed up until 11:30 pm one night just talking about the finances that will be needed to start this facility and it got me really excited because it's not one of those visions that is unrealistic. It can be done! The National Treatment Society comes to clinics in Kenya to evaluate and when they see they are fit to be a clinic they provide all of the equipment (ie. microscopes and other medical tools). So that is a wonderful burden lifted so that facilities have hope around the huge expense of equipment. Patrick wants it to specialize in malaria because it is a "children killer". He is hoping to have enough funds to make services free for children under 10 years of age and only a small charge for others. Hopefully, next time I come to Kenya I can visit this medical clinic :)

When it rains, it pours

When I spoke to my brother a couple of weeks ago, he asked if it rained. This photo proves just how hard it rains. Jon and I couldn't help but laugh because when we were in Thailand and Costa Rica it was the rainy season and now we come to Africa and it is the rainy season to. It's not as bad at Costa Rica. There it rained everyday in the afternoon for the rest of the day. Here it is only every couple of days but it hails for about 20-40 mins leaving the village dirt roads really muddy. But it's still a beautiful country and that's why it's green.

Ndengelwa

This photo was taken with some village children as well as two school girls who walked home with me. They just met me on the road home and we walked all the way home holding hands. We didn't talk because as we all know, I don't know Swahili and they don't know English well enough. Even though we didn't communicate they still just enjoyed walking together and holding hands and it made my heart sing because I love this country and especially the children. They are so precious to me.

Dinner by lanterns

This is Patrick and Mary's home. We ate all of our meals here and at dinner when it was dark we ate by the light of laterns. It really helps you appreciate all that we have in North America because this is how they live all day everyday whereas, we only do this for a leisure activity of camping and we only do it for a couple of days before returning to our homes with electicity.

Miliki Children's Home

This is a children's home that we visited. It is run by one women named Violet. It is one of the poorest children's homes and the city wants to close it down. But then where would the children go? It's better to have somewhere other than the street. But Violet struggles because mothers (and others) just drop children off at her doorstep and she really has no choice but to take them. Some of the children were very skinny from malnutrition and many had fat tummies from parasites in their tummies. One little girl had signs of ringworm on her head. This is one place that I had to leave for a minute because I was going to fall apart. They sang to us when we arrived and you could feel the love. They enjoyed our company very much. They are beautiful children and deserve a chance. They have so much potential and that's what is difficult for me. I want to give them the clothes off of my back because I know that they have nothing. Sometimes, I just stand and pray because I don't know what else to do.

Doing the Hokey Pokey

Sorry so dark again.

This is at Grace Community church with New Life Academy. I taught them the Hokey Pokey and they wanted to sing it at least 4 times everyday. That's me in the back (against the wall), that dark spot.

Courtney and Daniel

This is my favorite little buddy from New Life. His name is Daniel and he is an orphan. You can't really see his super cute face in this photo but in the one where we are playing football, he is the one with his arms out. He loved being picked up. This was my one pick up for the day haha.

Courtney attempting to play football with a very flat ball

At New Life it was so much fun just to play with the children. They loved for Jon and I to play football (soccer) with them, but that ball was so flat that I tripped over it many times. We got it pumped up while we were there so that was better.

Jon playing with New Life children

This is my beautiful husband playing with the wonderful children. He is so great with the children.
They always love Jon because he is strong and can pick them up, swing them around and things like that. When they come to me I am spent within one lift and then I say "go see Jon, he would love to pick you up".

Just incase you forgot what we looked like

Haha. Need some humour sometimes. We were at Patrick and Mary's home.

Courtney and Steven

Sorry this photo is kind of dark but the story to this photo is that one day I was teaching at New Life Academy in Bungoma and this university student came by and explained his story to me. He was in a car accident in 2003 that killed his mother, father and sister and left his left side of his body paralyzed. He had one more year of his business degree but had to quit school for a little while because he was in the hospital. The ministry of education donated 28,000 ksh for his last year but he was 4000 short. I walked back to our place and got some money and was able to help him out. I felt very happy because he was so thankful and couldn't stop saying, "May God bless you". To us it's not very much money but to them it makes a world of difference and can change a person's life. Praise the Lord for the provision of money.

Village boy playing with buckets

Original title, I know but I couldn't think of anything.

This is one of the boys playing with buckets. He was entertained by these forever. That's another example of Kenyans using what they have to play a game and entertain themselves.

Ndengelwa village

This is Pastor Patrick, who we lived with while in Bungoma, with some of the neighbour village children. They were all so darling. Many of the young ones ran around with no pants on :). They were the ones that taught me how to say "how are you?" and "I'm fine" in their mother tongue. That was all that we could say to eachother but that was enough. We enjoyed that. I gave them all stickers and candies everyday when they would come to the fence and say "mzungo, mzungo".

In the background is the house that had a finished room that we stayed in. They hope to have the brick (permanent structured) house done by next year.

Jon and Pheobe

This is a photo of Jon with one of Patrick and Mary's adopted daughters Pheobe. She is the older of the two (and they have a 3rd sister that is at boarding school), she is 9 and she is the quieter one. Faith was 8 and she was a talker haha, just like me. She loved to play with a nylon made ball with Jon. They would just try to hit eachother with the ball haha, fun game hey?! The girls played some savage games with the neighbours where you try to pick up cups before the other person wails the ball at you and hits you. Jon and I just stood in amazment. They have to use simple things to make up games.

Supplies bought by Seb, Luke and Trevor

Sorry I forgot that they go sideways teehee.

These are the notebooks, pencils and erasers that they bought and we have had the opportunity to bless so many students with these supplies and they are soooooooo excited when they get them.

Porridge

Sorry that I don't know enough about this silly Blogger thing to put all the photos together but they don't seem to go nicely when you put more than one on so I will just have to break it up. The important part is that the pics are online so you can all see them and experience a little bit of what we are doing.

So...this is still at BFM (bible fellowship ministries) nursery school. This is the snack that they get at 10 am, a cup of porridge. Everytime we observe a feeding program it breaks my heart because at home we just know that there will always be food (I will never take that for granted again) but here there are many who never get anything to eat and are starving. Others that come to school and they only get what they are served at school because at home there is nothing.