Mombasa...

Last week I visited Mombasa for the first time. It took us 9 hours to drive there from Naivasha.

While I was there I visited some of the projects that Mission Care International has been working with, together with Footsteps International. The first project we saw was Timbwani, which is a school, orphanage and housing project on the edge of the city. There are 600 pupils at the school and 28 children who don't have parents living at the orphanage. There is also a feeding programme ensuring that 200 additional children get the food that they need.

I also visited a project in Mombasa called the Bombalulu Workshops and Cultural Centre. This project provides wheelchairs to those people in Kenya who need help with mobility, and also provides jobs for people with disabilities. They work really hard to produce the most amazing handcrafted jewellery.

We have had good news in Kenya because the politicians have decided to work together in government which has led to peace. Sadly, many families have been forced out of their homes after the recent fighting, and they are now living in tents like the ones below.

I am glad that the politicians are going to be working together to help the people in Kenya who have lost so much in the first months of 2008, but I am sad for all the people who have seen such terrible things and hope and pray that they can be helped through this time of change.

Back in Kenya...

I arrived in Kenya on Friday morning. I am so glad to be back!

On Saturday I went to a wedding. Mark is a former street boy (which means he was homeless for a while, living on his own in the town) who was helped by the Sunshine Centre, where I now live. His life is now very different - he has a job and his own house and he is now married to Naomi. It was a lovely day and very special to see somebody who used to have no hope so excited about his future.

On Sunday I watched the Sunshine Boys play football against another orphanage. We were all gutted when we lost 4-0! I did have some good news though as my Land Rover arrived. It is really good to have my own car out here as I will have a lot of long journeys to make. I look forward to telling you about these.

On Monday I spent a day teaching drama to the four girls on the Fuhomi Project. This is one of Mission Care International's newest projects. The girls have finished secondary school and are doing a "gap" year with the Fuhomi Project. Lots of people in the UK do gap years, and this is the same sort of thing. The girls will be learning lots of teaching skills and then going into schools to take lessons about issues that affect teenagers here in Kenya. I am going to be teaching them drama, media and film so that their lessons and workshops are really interesting for the young people they will be working with. We had a lot of fun.

Today, I am leaving Naivasha to drive to Mombasa to see the Mission Care International work there. I will be travelling with our friends Martin and Mary Print who run Footsteps International which is a charity doing lots of work to help children here in Kenya. Mombasa is over 450km from Naivasha and the drive will take most of the day. I will let you know all about this visit in my next post - please visit again soon!

Going back...

I am pleased to say that things have calmed down a lot in Kenya since I had to come home. Having spent time thinking very carefully, we have decided that it is safe for me to go back to Naivasha.

I am very glad that I will be able to return to spend time with the Sunshine Boys and work on some of Mission Care's other projects. I look forward to telling you all about them when I get back to Sunshine Cottage. Please come back to my blog next week for all the latest updates!

In the news...

You may have seen the troubles in Kenya in the news a lot over the past few weeks. As I had to come home because of the fighting between different tribes in Kenya, and some terrible things that are happening, there is quite a lot of interest in what I saw happening.

I spent yesterday talking to some local journalists about my experiences. Look out for my stories in the News Shopper and Bromley Extra next week.

If you want to hear me talking about Kenya I will be speaking at a special evening we are organising on Saturday 9th Februrary, to be held at St Mark's Church, Westmoreland Road, Bromley, from 7pm. We will be showing some DVDs of the different Mission Care projects in Africa and I will be sharing about all the things that happened. There will also be some musical entertainment and some great raffle prizes. This would be a fun evening out for your family if you want to come.

Coming home...

As the situation in Kenya is not getting any better and it is really not a safe place to be at the moment, we have decided that the best thing would be for me to come home. I am going to spend my day today at Nairobi airport, which is very safe and out of the areas of trouble, waiting for my flight home. I will be leaving late tonight and arriving back in London very early tomorrow morning.

I will post more about how I feel about this soon. It is a very difficult and sad time thinking about what has happened in the place where I was living, which this time last week was full of people going about their every day lives.

Being in Kenya...

This time last week I had just arrived in Kenya. I had thought I would be in Uganda for sometime longer but there was a sudden change of plan. Last week we were not sure whether we would be able to travel to Kenya at all.

An election took place in Kenya on 28th December to choose the president of the country. In many African countries this can be a difficult time, and this has been the case in Kenya. Most African countries are made up of lots of different tribes; these are ancient families that have traditions and rituals of their own. Today in Kenya they no longer live together in one place but are spread throughout the whole country. Most of the time they live peacefully alongside one another, however during a government election, tribes will vote for their own candidate, somebody from their own tribe.

The election here didn't go well. Some people believe that it was "rigged" meaning that the results were not the truth, but were changed. The winner of the election was a man called Kibaki, the same president as before. This caused people to become upset and angry with each other. Since 28th December there has been some violence in the towns and cities where different tribes live together.

Because of these problems we had cancelled our trip to Kenya because the British Government had said it was not safe. Last week, things had calmed down a lot and so the government told people it was ok to travel, but sadly, this weekend, things have become dangerous in Naivasha, where I am living.

I am safe in the Sunshine Boys Centre, which has gates and good security at all times. The British Government here in Kenya are telling people not to go out of their houses at the moment, so for now I am staying in.

My new house, Sunshine Cottage, was built for me by the Kenyans. When I arrived here to move in I was amazed at how big it was - they have done a great job in making it really cosy as well. Here is a picture of me outside my front door, with Colin Bloom, the Chief Executive of Mission Care, and Simon Kinyanjui Chege, who is the director at the Sunshine Boys Centre.

I have already done and seen some amazing things while I have been in Africa. While I was in Uganda I went to Jinja, and saw the source of the Nile. The Nile is the longest river in Africa, and passes through Sudan and Egypt. You may have learned about the Nile at school if you have studied the Ancient Egyptians. At the end, the river flows into the Mediterranean Sea. Uganda has the biggest lake in Africa too, and the source of the Nile flows from this lake, which is called Lake Victoria. There is a spring, which is an underground source of water which causes water to shoot out from beneath the Earth's surface. The spring makes the water in the lake begin to flow, and from the source of the Nile in Jinja it takes three months for the water to travel into the Mediterranean Sea - it travels a staggering 4000km. Here is a picture of our boat at source of the Nile:

Maybe you can leave me a comment with any facts you can find out about the Nile or about Lake Victoria. I would be interested to hear what you can discover about them as they are both truly amazing.

I also went for a drive to Nakuru National Park where I was really excited to see lots of animals in the wild - wildebeest, warthogs (like Pumbaa in The Lion King!), zebras, giraffes and even rhinos to name a few of the things we saw.

I am now hoping that the police and the Red Cross can sort things out in the town of Naivasha, where people have been fighting, so that it is safe for me to continue my work with the people here, especially the boys at Sunshine.

Arriving in Africa...

My flight on Sunday night from London into Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, took just over 7½ hours, it was a night flight meaning I was supposed to sleep, but I watched a film.

Moving out for seven months meant my bags were very full, so full that my hand luggage was almost too big to fit in the overhead locker on the plane, I really had to force it in.


The first two days here in Uganda were spent in a rural town called Kanganda; Mission Care will be working in this village hoping help the people there who are very poor and needy. I met some of the children here, their clothes are dirty, torn and shredded and most have no shoes. Lots of the children were smiling and laughing but they were malnourished, which means that they don’t eat enough and have a poor diet. They can’t afford to buy food like we can.

We were there to survey the land, measuring it before we can build on it. We had some very odd equipment that I didn’t know how to use, but Andrew, Mission Care’s architect, knew what to do and I helped him. While we were there it rained very heavily, and we had to run for shelter. Since they have little clean water in the village I took a picture of a rain collecting device one man had made. Very clever!