Meet Philip!

It feels a long time since i saw my friends in Kenya, but i go back in just three weeks.

In the mean time i thought it would be good to tell you about one of the boys from the Sunshine Rehabilitation centre.

This is Philip. He is 9 Years old and one of the youngest boys in the Sunshine Home. Philip has been living at Sunshine for only 5 months and has settled into living at the home very well. Now Philip sleeps in a warm comfortable bed, he eats a good diet and has access to education. School is so important for these boys to escape poverty and Philip, like many other boys, is looking forward rather than backwards as he grows up. He is forgetting the past, and is hopeful about the future...

I've come home

I've had a very special few months representing Mission Care International in Kenya and Uganda overseeing their projects. Being a volunteer in a completely different environment can be a real challenge, i've faced a fair few, but facing these situations enable you to grow. Working with Mission Care International to share love, hope, peace and justice is a great opportunity.

Being at home gives me time to see my friends and family and share with people in the UK how we are changing the lives of many poor boys, girls, men and women. I will be returning to Kenya in October where I will continue to write blogs about the progress of each of Mission Care International's developments in East Africa.

Keep in touch!

Visitors...

At the moment I have my sister, Aimee, and her good friend Leonie staying with me and travelling in Kenya. The Sunshine Boys love to have guests and the girls bought the boys lollipops, which went down well!

Can you spot Aimee and Leonie in this picture?

All move...

Right now there are sixty boys attending primary school who live at Sunshine. They are spread over two sites, the old and the new. The great news this week is that with the painting of the dormitory, as you can see in this picture, all sixty boys will be moving to the new Sunshine Centre next week!

This means that they will live in a warmer, safer, cleaner and more comfortable home, and this is all thanks to the funding and project management provided by Mission Care International. So thank you all for your support - you have made a big difference! The boys will now all live next-door to me which is very exciting!

The next thing that Mission Care International will be doing is building the kitchen as for a while the boys will be going back to the old buildings to eat. The boys are very pleased though - I know they love their new bedrooms.

Pencils for the displaced children...

I visited the IDP camp in Naivasha today and took with me the gifts of pens, pencils andpaper collected by Bickley Primary School.

The teachers and the children at the camp were both very grateful. These small tokens of our interest in their lives and in their education bring hope to their lives. For us, a pencil may not really mater, but for these children it is really important. They don't have a building to go to school in, they don't have a house to go home to, and they have travelled a long way away from where they used to live because they were in danger.

The pencils given by the children in Bickley are signs of hope - they show that people care, that people know that things are difficult for them, that people want to help them. We know that the children at Bickley Primary want to help the children in Naivasha - and these pencils have shown it!

So a BIG thank you to all of you at Bickley Primary!

Other exciting news from Naivasha is that at the Sunshine Complex where I live they have bought a cow, and the cow is expecting a baby! I will keep you updated - in the next couple of weeks I hope to let you all know about the new baby calf being born.

Mfangano Island...

At the far right of this map of Western Kenya you can see Mfangano Island. The island is in the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria and is home to the Suba people. There are about 30,000 Subas living on the island and it is where I spent my Easter weekend.

By boat it took an hour and a half to reach the island from the mainland. I even got a chance to drive the boat! The island is very secluded, which means that not many people go there, and it is also quite unaffected by some of the modern changes we have seen in the United Kingdom. For example, there is no mains electricity, the showers and toilets are nothing like the ones we have in our houses, and the first car to drive on the island was only last year, on 2nd February 2007 - and even then it only drove 500m as the roads aren't finished yet!

My time there was amazing - it makes you feel free living without all the things you are used to and you really count your blessings and all the things you do have. But life for the people of Mfangano Island is really difficult. They don't have roads so it is very hard for them to get to a doctor or to hospital if they need to. Due to the diseases and sickness a lot of people die very young and it is common for grandparents to look after lots of grandchildren, nephews and nieces if their parents have died.

My friend Moses, shown in this picture with Opeia, who is one of the people on the island who he helps, is working to make life better for the people who live here. Most of the people are fishermen - but they can fish all night and only earn 50 Kenyan Shillings - which is about 40p - and you can't buy very much for that. Since they can't grow everything they need on the island they have to buy it in from other places, which makes things very expensive.

I met some amazing people like Peris Juma in this picture, who is about sixty. Her husband and two of her chidren have died so she is now looking after her youngest child and five of her grandchildren. She earns money by fishing through the night, which is very hard work and dangerous when there are strong winds and sea currents. Moses is hoping to help Peris in the future so that she is able to get more food for her family, who currently do not have enough to eat.

It was great to meet people and try new things and my time on the island made me very grateful for the things we have and want to help people who are working so hard but still find it very difficult to make sure there is enough food for their families.

Moi-Ndabi...

This photograph shows Moi-Ndabi. The people who live here were displaced many many years ago (see my post below for more about displaced people and what this means). They live on flood plains here beneath the mountains, which are areas where it is likely that the water levels can get high enough to cause flooding. As you can see from the picture, the people in Moi-Ndabi live in houses made of sticks and mud. If you think about the story of the three little pigs, and what happened to the house of sticks was in that story - then you can understand that the houses are not very sturdy.

While I was there visiting the village Chief this week, I saw how scary the floods can be. It wasn't raining in the village when I was there; it was all dry. The water comes from the nearby mountains and no one can tell when it will come or how strong the flow will be. While I visited the Chief, the water came and flooded a gully, cutting us off from the road home. If the water had broken the banks of the gully I think that houses and animals would have been swept away. It is a dangerous place to be living, but many of the people here are so poor they don't really have a choice.

Mission Care International helped the people of Moi-Ndabi by bringing water to the village. Before January 2007 people had to walk up to 20km a day to fetch water - now there is a pump right in the village for people to use. This makes such a difference to the lives of the villagers.