Out of Africa

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers guys. Tina and I are back from Africa . . . an incredible experience. I won't bore you with a lot of details, but I learned much and was delighted to see the project we were involved with (building and staffing a preschool) is now a vital part of the village of Ngernya. The school is providing vital education, health care, and community stability. Within one year it will be entirely self-sufficient. This school, along with other indigenous efforts, will help sustain people in their rural village, keeping them in their community instead of migrating to the city (Nairobi) and ending up in horrific slums.

Here's a few pictures:


These are some of the 100 children in the school.


My wife Tina holding an orphaned child


This is the house of our new friends, Simon and Rachel




That's me and a beautiful little girl


This dugout canoe was the closest thing to a CC I could find



I literally took this picture from about 20 yards away in central Kenya, not a zoo!


This is the tallest mountain in Africa, Mt. Kilamanjaro. This was our view one morning when we woke up.

Chuck

Welcome home to you and Tina and welcome back to your second favorite site.

Can't wait to talk in person.

john

Glad you guy's are home. I KNOW you've made unforgetable memories.

Gary,
Yes, a very similar experience. I found the Kenyans to be very welcoming, and they were so generous to us. Tina and I were invited to lunch one day to Christopher's house. He took the great extravagance of buying us fish to eat. Of course when they serve fish, they serve the whole fish: tail, head, and guts. But, it was quite a sacrifice for him.
Most of the Kenyans in poverty are really "stuck" and were not talking about people who are living in a welfare state--they get little, if any, help from their government. It is a problem of overpopulation, drought, famine, corruption. I don't know the answers, but where the rural communities are given a chance the people have a great quality of life, albeit far from the style of life we live . . . and they are content.
Our prayers are for those who are victimized by malaria, trapped in the slums (about 800,000 people are stuck in the Kibera slum of Nairobi with no sanitation), and caught by drought.
The community we work with is working so hard at improving things, they take great pride in the school and are already planning on enlarging it.

Chuck

Greg, thanks--we've had some groups in Jamaica also, lots of third world living there too once you get off of the resorts. As you know up in those hills its another life.

Chuck

The Lake wrote: Greg, thanks--we've had some groups in Jamaica also, lots of third world living there too once you get off of the resorts. As you know up in those hills its another life. Chuck

Chuck you are dead on about the tourist trail. We didn't plan it but spent near half of our honeymoon on the less beaten trail.