Our final workday

Today was Thursday and our last workday before heading back to Nairobi tomorrow for the start of our flights home. It was a day packed with work and saying goodbye to many of our friends who we won’t see again till next year. 

Mark, George and Owen headed back to finish the construction on the addition for student housing at Frances’ house. They did an amazing job to complete all the roof and walls, including the interior partition. It’s ready for concrete floor and will be done in time to house the students during their break. Great job construction team!

The remainder of the team headed back to Solai for our final water filter distribution. We trained over 500 family representatives and distributed filter kits in this area that was devastated last year by the flood from the dam break that killed 48 people. They were very appreciative to receive the gift of clean water for their families. 

We followed up with a distribution of girls dresses and tee shirts and shorts made by the sewing ministry at Bethlehem United Methodist Church. The children were very appreciative and thanked us multiple times, and they showed their enthusiasm running around in their new outfits. 

My first day for construction this trip/ A great day to view God’s creation.

Today, I finally got a chance to get my hands dirty with a construction project. This was the first day without a project that needed to get accomplished, so the bulk of the team went on a game drive through the Lake Nakuru National Park. They had a great day with a lot of animals observed, including giraffes, Cape buffalo, white rhino, hippos, gazelles, zebra, baboons, a lion and many others. I only got a few pictures from the team, but they had a great day.

Mark Specht and I went with Rufus and Bill Coble to build a house addition for Frances, one of the SWOK employees.  He has four children of his own and a full house, but he has stepped up to take in some kids who have no home. They are boys sponsored in school through Bill and Chat’s efforts, but they have no homes to go to when school break starts in August. They would be out on the streets if it weren’t for Frances volunteering. So we started with a bare lot that was previously his vegetable garden, dug holes and set steel posts in concrete. A truckload of pieces of square steel tube and a welder helped us turn this into a 10’ x 20’ steel frame which will be covered tomorrow with corrugated metal sheet for walls and roof and an interior dividing wall. A concrete floor and windows will be added by Bill and Rufus after we leave, and the two rooms will be ready in time for the school break. I’ve included a few pictures of the crude structure. I’ll hopefully have a few pictures of the enclosed shell to show tomorrow.  The bulk of the team tomorrow will be doing a large water filter distribution as well as a distribution of dresses and short sets to children at a school in the Gituamba area. These were lovingly made by an awesome group of Helen Turner’s sewing angels at Bethlehem United Methodist Church! Based on past experience, we are looking forward to lots of smiles and happy kids tomorrow!

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Second water filter distribution

Today marked our second water filter distribution, this time in the community region around Gituamba. We set up at the local primary school and conducted the hygiene and water filter training to the crowd seated around us in the field. They were a very responsive crowd and asked several good questions, which is always indicative that they have been paying good attention. They also obviously were well aware of the benefits the filter and clean water would bring. We distributed over 540 kits in the span of three hours. Many of those receiving filters made the intentional effort to return after going through the lines of the distribution process to come back and thank us individually and to ask that we specifically tell our supporters back home how thankful they are for blessing them with this gift. We were just the emissaries, and those of you back home who sent money to SWOK for water filters and to support us in coming are the ones to be thanked. I also thank you that you supported me as your representative to reach these people with clean water. This gift will most certainly change lives. 

Our final vision clinic

Today saw our team head in three different directions. Tom and Mark conducted day 1 of pastoral biblical training for 26 Kenyan pastors at the Tumaini conference center.  The construction crew headed back to Gituamba to install fencing around the school facilities. And the vision team headed back to Bahati region. Unfortunately, we got back to Tumaini so late (8:30 pm) that I was not able to get information or pictures for the other groups. I’ll try to report on their activities tomorrow. 

The vision team went to the Jomo Kenyatta Boys High School to (theoretically) do vision screening on the 90 students we were unable to see when they came to our clinic in Bahati. However, they sent everyone who had vision issues, so we ended up screening 144 students. We started at 9:30 and finished at 3:00, two hours after we were to have started seeing patients at the Bahati hospital.  We quickly broke down our computer and networked autorefractor and printer and headed to Bahati. Within 45 minutes, we were up and running again. We ended up screening 90 additional patients there, ending exhausted at 7:30 pm after seeing 234 patients in total. We distributed more than 150 pair of glasses.  Because our clinic was free and available to all, we saw lots of patients with serious eye issues. Most prevalent were keratitis, severe dry eyes, glaucoma and cataracts. Because of Dr. Chris expertise, he was able to dispense medications provided by Rotary and to refer patients for further treatment at hospitals or a surgical eye team that will be coming through Rotary in January. 

All in all, the eye clinics were a resounding success. Over the four days of clinics, we saw 759 patients, prescribed and fit over 400 of them with prescription glasses and provided nearly 200 pair of reading glasses. The seeds have been well planted for a continuing vision program in SWOK that future teams will carry on. And we feel that we have grown immensely in our knowledge of how to run such a program. Each day, it took the efforts of over 20 people to do check in and initial vision screening, examination, patient advocates to take them through the vision testing of pairs of glasses and efforts by screeners to keep the nearly 2000 pair of glasses organized. It was a herculean effort that involved not only our team and SWOK staff but Rotaract members as well. And the added challenge of dealing with another language just added to the complexity of the task. But it was more than worth it! Not ever case was a success, and some of the patient conditions were heartbreaking. But the smiles on the faces of our success patients were priceless!

A day of rest

After a week filled with long days, it was great to be able to sleep in a little today and not have a full press schedule. We went in to Nakuru to worship at Trinity Vineyard Nakuru, where Tom Wolff preached as guest pastor filling in for Edgar King. The attendance is about 80% Kenyan and 20% foreign. Tom gave a great testimony sharing how he and Cindy came to the Lord and challenged us to examine ourselves and our own personal relationship with Jesus. That’s the most important question we will ever have to answer: when Jesus asks you why He should let you in to heaven, what will you say? The worship team did a great job of leading us in songs in both English and Swahili, and we shared communion. We had a great social time after the service. It was great seeing some friends we hadn’t seen in a year (although with social media, we have contact throughout the year). 

Following the social time, we had a great lunch with some of our Kenyan friends at a local restaurant that serves a mix of Kenyan and Indian dishes, followed by our daily visit to Java House before returning to home away from home: Tumaini. We spent the later afternoon enjoying time with some of the kids various team members sponsor at the local boarding school, giving us time to further connect with them and enjoy some sports and games. It was a great restful afternoon of fellowship and fun. Tomorrow, there are three different activities going on: Tom and Mark will be doing pastoral training at Tumaini for 26 pastors and vision and construction teams will be headed out again. It’s going to be another full day!