Monday, April 2nd, 2012

We try to wake up early, get a quick breakfast and head to the lab to make some adjustments to the computers before the kids show up. It’s no use. The kids from Lela show up and start lining up outside the door of the lab. There’s well over 60 of them. It’s going to be a packed house. Some of the computers didn’t survive the trip. A video issue on one, and three that won’t power on (we later find out this is an issue with the power conversion in Kenya). We are down to 15 computers, and 60 kids. It’s going to be a fun day. We assign three kids per computer and another fifteen stack chairs behind their peers to observe. Short lessons followed by rotation to the next group. Within an hour the kids have the hang of things and are sharing machines, teaching each other, and glued to their seats. This is the first opportunity for most of the kids to use a computer and they are mesmerized. Some are playing games ranging from math and spelling, to typing, to pac man, to a Super Mario clone involving a tuxedo’s penguin. Others have found the World Book Encyclopaedia and are looking up facts on Kenya, watching videos of animals they’ve never seen, listening to music and national anthems, and searching for information on Canada. Many ask to see videos of Canada. They must think Canada is some magical place where computers are made and delivered to the village. We show them the only video we can find of Canada, a blizzard. They laugh and start to realize that Kenya isn’t so bad! The only thing to pull them away from the computers is the discovery of bubble wrap in the boxes that shipped the computers. This distracts just about all the children except the ones who are immediately in front of a computer. This is also their first experience with bubble wrap!

Our day is stacked with training right up until the late hours when the older kids from Kambilio remain to learn as much as they can before we leave tomorrow. We’ve given instructions to the older kids on how to administer the computers, and placed cheat sheets around the room of common Apple shortcuts and commands for the rest of the kids.

This will be our fourth night in Kimbilio. The time has flown by way to fast.

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Sunday, April 1st, 2012

Another early breakfast, and then a morning of church with the family from the village. The church is a short walk and is nearly full when we arrive fifteen minutes before the scheduled start. Songs, prayers, and scripture verses start the day off as more people pack into the small church. There are additional chairs being brought in now, and benches, and there are people visible in the windows staring into the church from the outside. Near the end of the service we are introduced and asked to say a few words to the crowd with the help of the translator. More than 50% of the audience understands our english, so it’s a interesting to receive two sets of reactions with each statement. We are tipped off earlier by the Brits that saying you promise to return will always receive a good reaction. Our speech ends with the “and we promise we’ll return to visit soon” followed by clapping and cheers as predicted. It’s been just over 24 hours, but we are already sure at this point that it’s unlikely to be an empty promise.

After church and lunch we have a chance to go to the Lela Home a 15 minute walk from Kimbilio Village. This children’s home was built by Agape in Action and two other partners and is home to over 60 children. We are greeted by a welcoming committee of children singing and dancing, tour the village, meet the children, and then head back to Kimbilio for more computer training. Our training session runs until late in the evening, only interrupted by a quick game of volleyball that tends to break out around dusk. It’s 30+ degrees during the day, and we are just north of the equator, so we’re grateful these games don’t occur any earlier.

We close the lab down close to 10pm and head to bead. We’ll have the kids from Lala visiting the lab tomorrow for their first training.

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Saturday, March 31st, 2012

It’s hard to sleep in with so many animals taunting you. There’s no separation here from the farm and the sleeping quarters. Cows, goats, roosters, dogs, and children. All eager to start the day at the beautiful hour of 5am. I resist the morning until around 7am when were awake and ready for breakfast. The meals here are much more basic than Kakamega, but we are well fed. Toast, bread that resembles donuts, and coffee.

This morning we are starting work on the computer lab, and with the help of Crispine, Shadrack, and Caleb (three boys who are friends of the village) we start to setup each machine. Today we are teaching some of the local kids from the village. Mostly Justus and Annette’s family, but the children they’ve taken in over the years. There are almost 30 of them, we are told, but we only see maybe 15-20 kids come through the lab. The rest are working in the village, farming, cleaning, and cooking. The kids are learning incredibly fast. They almost require no training, just a few questions here and there on how to open programs, use the mouse, and how to beat a particularily tough level in Super Tux. We’ll use some of these kids to teach the rest throughout the next few days.

We end our day with another day of volleyball, dinner, and a late night card game with two volunteers from the UK. Rat Slap it’s called, and these girls are competitive. It’s just after 9pm, when we head to bed exhausted. Tomorrow we’ll join the village at their local church and do more training in the afternoon.

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Friday, March 30th, 2012

Up at 5am to prepare for our sunrise tour to the Langhatta Hill in the Kakamega Rain Forest. Our guide, Job, picks us up at 5:30 for the walk in the pitch black through the forest. The stars are incredible in the morning, and the walk is very peaceful. There’s almost no noise coming from the forest. The guide points out the smell of a family of baboons as we walk through our territory. We are almost guaranteed to see them on our walk back in daylight.

The hike up the hill is difficult. The elevation makes it hard to catch your breath. We reach the top of the hill under very dim light and now have a chance to relax and wait for the sunrise.

The sunrise on top of Langhatta Hill is too spectacular for words. From the top of the hill you can see in every direction. There’s rainforest on all side, and at this height the canopy looks more like a field then tree tops. As the sun rises it lights up the rain forest and the birds, and animals come alive with noise. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend the morning on my 30th birthday. We defended down the mountain and took a tour through the bat cave, an old gold mine dug into the side of the hill.

On the walk back to Rondo we came across the family of baboons we passed earlier. We weren’t prepared for just how many there are in a family. The guide suggests that there are 45-50 on the road, digging up bugs and warming their skin after a cold night. As you walk towards them, they eventually retreat in the the forest with the leader waiting until each and every member of the family is safe before leaving the road.

We headed back to Kakamega for a nap and day of relaxing before our cab ride to Kamakuya.

Later in the day we are picked up in a matatu filled with five men from the village. Included is Justus, his son, and three of the young men that will be helping us setup the computer lab. The two hour drive from Kakamega to Kamakuwya is rough (there’s not much suspension in a matatu and the roads are even less forgiving) but very enjoyable. The countryside in Kenya is beautiful, and there’s no shortage of interesting scenes taking place on the road between small villages, outside shops, in vehicles, and everywhere else you look.

When we arrive we meet Justice and Annette (the mother and father of the village) and two field workers from the UK, Jenny and Hanna. We settle down for a dinner of japati, rice, tomato, and lentils. A meal we’ll become very used to over the next four days. Annette’s cooking however, is incredible.

We turn in early after a long day. Tomorrow we start to setup the computer labs.

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Thursday, March 29th, 2012

Myself and John decided to get up before sunrise to travel to a nearby waterfall with two new friends volunteering in the village. The view from the rocks at the top of the waterfall are incredible, and view from the base of the falls even better. There’s something about this area that keeps bringing me back. I keep picturing a future home on the top of the falls overlooking the valley. One day.

After the walk and a quick breakfast it was time for some final work on the computers then a taxi ride to the Kakamega Rain Forest on the way to the Agape in Action High School. We were picked up by Taxi Douglas, a local driver in Eldoret, and arrived at Kakamega a few hours later. Kakamega is the largest rain forest in Kenya and home to several species of monkeys, hundreds of types of birds, butterflies, and other animals. We took a quick stroll around the forest near the Rondo Resort, had dinner then waiting for evening where the animals become very active. At the Rondo Resort, Blue Monkeys visit in the evening every single day. They move closer and closer to the grounds jumping nearly impossible distances between tree branches. Within 15 minutes of spotting them out in the jungle, they are at the perimeter of the resort within a few feet. Myself and John stayed to record the visit while Popy and Ashley took a tour to the Lirhanda Hill to see the sunset over the Rain Forest.

The experience sleeping in Kakamega is incredible. Very few lights means an amazing view of the stars overhead and the bugs and animals noises from the rainforest at night make for a great backdrop for sleeping.

We booked a sunrise tour to Lirhanda in the morning and made it an early night.

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Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Today was all about working on computers. Myself and John started to assist Alpha, Open Arms local IT person. We spent the day installing new software, troubleshooting issues, and answering Alpha’s questions. Alpha went to school for computers and IT, but had never working on Mac computers. 8 out of the 10 computers are functioning great, with 2 machines needing parts for repair. We came up with a plan to ship Alpha the parts required, tools, and manuals and allow him to start completing the repairs himself. He was very keen to learn, and were very excited to have a contact on the ground with the potential to complete computer repairs. Another challenge we faced is many of the DVD drives on the computers were malfunctioning due to dust. Another creative solution including wrapping the DVD bays and vents with ceran wrap when not in use, and showing Alpha how to rip DVDs donated by visitors into digital files for distribution via USB drives. Movie nights at the children’s homes are saved!

While were were fixing computers, our other two travellers, Popy and Ashley had the opportunity to travel to the slums of Eldoret and assist with the local feeding program. The local feeding program supports children in Eldoret that lack the needed food and water for daily life.

We ended the night with a dinner joined by Rachel and David and two volunteers from the village Rachel and Kelsey.

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Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Today we were up early for the long drive from Nairobi to Eldoret. This drive takes us through the Rift Valley in Kenya with spectacular views from the road along the way.

During the drive we passed over the Equator at 9100 feet. This is the first time any of us have every passed the equator on land. There’s a small sign marking the transition from south to north. We managed to snap a quick picture from the car, before any of the locals had a chance to tell us there was a charge

We arrived in Eldoret at 3PM and grabbed lunch at a Sandros, suggested by Metrine at Open Arms. Chicken, fish and french fries were the specialty and we decided to give it a try. Enjoyable, although greasy meal, but perfect after a long drive across the country.

Soon later we arrived at the Open Arms Village and were greeted by children as they finished school. The accommodations at Open Arms are incredible. Through donations made in the UK and United States, Open Arms was able to build three beautiful guest houses on the side of the valley, overlooking the river. These homes can sleep up to 10 people and are incredible even by western standards. These homes give Open Arms the opportunity to collect a fee from travellers wishing to visit Kenya giving them income to support the village. We were humbled to be allowed to stay there during our visit and were consistently amazed by the hospitality and and stunning views.

Later we were able to visit with Rachel and David Gallagher, the founders of Open Arms International. David and Rachel split their time between Portland, Oregon and Kenya. We were excited to be able to provide them two new computers for the village as well as a HD video camera donated by Christina Kim and an electric guitar donated by Bob Egan. They had been just talking about the need for a HD camera to document life in the village as well as ways to help cultivate the musical creativity of the children and were excited for the new equipment.

A nice sleep after a long day and ready to assist around the village in the morning.

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You can read about it here. 

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When we arrived the kids were completing the exams, so we took the opportunity to receive a quick Swahili lesson from the school’s head teacher. From the chalk board, we could see the kids had been practising a song for our arrival!  

This school is supported by the Help Kenya project and has a computer lab of PCs that the children use.  They were in need of a laptop and a printer, which we were so happy to be able to provide.  The computer we gave to them will be used by the school administrator to record school grades and upload them to Kenya’s National Database for admission to secondary and post-secondary school.  This was a huge challenge for the school due to its remoteness and we were so happy to be able to help.  The printer we provided was purchased at a local Nakumatt (50% off sale!) using money raised at our fundraiser at THEMUSEUM.  Thank you all for your support.  The teachers and students at Metuma Primary School are very grateful! 

Tomorrow morning we are up early again to make the 6 hour drive from Nairobi, through the Rift Valley (and past the equator!), to the Open Arms Village in Eldoret, Kenya.  This will be everyone’s first time driving through the Rift Valley and crossing the equator on land.  We are excited for the trip, and very excited to see old friends at the Open Arms Village.

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Computers at the Open Arms Village

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