Trip to Port Victoria and Western Kenya

We had the privilege again of traveling to another orphanage and a couple of churches this weekend. Our truck was loaded up and we took off on Friday morning with the Scheck's (Rob, Char, and little Micah) in their car. Our trip was to go look at one of the orphanages that we've been helping out a bit as we can. Angie had been to this one last year, but we were interested in seeing some other ways we could possibly help out some more. So we put all we could on and in a Samaritan's Purse truck we borrowed and headed out for our 9 hour drive toward the Ugandan border.

We bought some of our produce along the way. We had to put it at our feet because we just didn't have anymore room in the truck and car.

At one point we had to divert on some small paths, through people's yards, because some trucks decided to dump their loads of gravel in the middle of the road.

We finally got to Rosemary's house in Port Victoria. It's a pretty nice place which doesn't have electricity but does have running water when they are able to pump the tanks full. We stacked up the boxes containing the shoe boxes in her living room until we needed them. Rosemary is one of AIM's receptionists who has worked there for 25 years. She runs two different orphanages along with her job at AIM. She stay's pretty busy.

Her house is about a quarter mile from the shore of Lake Victoria so we took a walk on Saturday down toward the lake. There were lots of fish drying on netting. They call it herring, but it's just basically small little fish that they catch in nets during the night and put out to dry for the day.

The boy is sorting the size of fish and turning them over to dry faster.
We loaded up for the orphanage and headed off for the distribution.

We arrived at Sheryl's Orphanage Children's Center which is just about half a mile from Rosemary's house. The orphanage is actually a day center for about 120 children, because the children all stay with guardians. About 95 percent of them are orphans because of HIV/AIDS.

This Mzee (old man) is the guy who offered up the land for the orphanage. His house used to be on the land, but chose to build another one further up the hill after he gave the land.

We had a few extras that we loaded up to take on to some churches the next day.

This is the kitchen where they cook at least one meal for the kids each day. They usually eat beans, corn, rice, or maize meal.

The kids eat their meals under this cactus tree. They all have to wash their own dishes as well.
The little kids were really fun to watch sing us songs.

They all come together for a picture.

This cute little girl kept coming over to shake our hands and feel our skin/hair.

Then they all lined up outside to get ready for the shoeboxes.














They filed in and little Micah handed out the shoeboxes.














Angie helped them find seats to wait for everyone to get their boxes.

We couldn't believe how patiently they were sitting there with their unopened boxes.

The smiles and excitement were building.

Rob was showing them their pictures on the camera. The kids especially love to see themselves in the camera.
After that we went back to Rosemary's house. Big Micah was enjoying his DS for some of the afternoon.

The next morning we were off to a town called Kakamega about three hours away.
On the way we passed through surgar cane territory. Lots of big trailers on the road that we passed.

We arrived at a little country church for our first distribution.














There was hardly enough room to park our truck, but the congregation was warm and we enjoyed their singing and warm welcome.

Again, the kids eyes and expectations were so much fun to watch.

Getting ready to leave to the second church.














The little path we drove down to the next church.
We arrived at the next one.














Micah said that this lady leading songs was doing it "rapper" style.
The distribution at this church was a little more difficult. We had about 75 boxes and there were probably about 200 children. We did our best to give out to the orphans first, however things ended up getting pretty confusing and a little strained with all of those kids who didn't get any boxes.














The kids ended up pushing foward which made it very difficult to hand out the boxes. What a great trip we had though. We felt privileged to be able to take part in the weekend. What a tremendous amount of things we saw on this trip.