The more I get to know these beautiful people the more I realise how strong and courageous they are. Would I walk miles to fetch water, and then walk one hour…. on hilly terrain, carrying a one year old baby. Then sit and soak up a days training, only to walk all that way back home. Well Lucy has done it every day this week. We need to get The Training Centre built!! The photo of the tree is a Moringa Tree, every part of it is nutritious. Don’t you just love the Adam & Eve pit latrines!! Linden x
How I love spending time with the ladies in Miti Mingi. They have very low self esteem, some have had no education, and yet they long to learn. Today we have talked about English, family planning, parenting and marriage….. so many revelations and myths to dispel. I can’t forget how hard they work before they get to the teaching, fetching water and firewood to cook on. It is such a blessing for them to eat a good hot lunch provided by PottersHeart. Today we shared our custard creams and pear drops from UK. Once again we are humbled by the lack of things we take for granted, including standard medical care and medications. This week I met a young women who has four young children, her husban
Such an exciting day…….a group of Pastors started the first module of a training course for Pastors. Most of these guys have had no training of this sort at all. They work hard in small village churches, too poor to pay them any living……. so they all scratch an existence with farming. This training will be such a blessing to them, especially as the Kenyan Government is moving towards compulsory training for Pastors. We are thankful to David & Lesley Illingworth who are teaching them this week. Marion & I have also had a great day! Another first…… we are training all this week with village ladies and no interpreter! Which means no men around. This is so encouraging for the ladies, helping to
Gathima School, mud class rooms, no proper provision of school books, one text book for all subjects, lots of children with no shoes and uniform, and yet…..,.. There is determination and hope for the future, there are children who walk an hour each way to receive the education, they dream of being Doctors, Pilots and Engineers. Huge thankyou to everyone who gave us red tops for the children, especially Redway School. There were even more children this time with no uniform. Thank you to Potterspury Preschool, the children loved the drawings and the song you sang to them….. they were dancing along to it! There is poverty but HOPE is huge at this beautiful, happy school. Photos speak loudly!
Wow what a hot day, way over 30 degrees inside the wriggly tin church. How we all stayed awake I don’t know! Teaching sessions have been so powerful ranging from eyes, to family planning, to parenting! Amazing feedback, we have laughed and cried together. This stuff will make ripples in the water, be taught by the villagers far and wide. John’s Group of young men finished making their tables and presented them to the church….. these guys are so pleased to be learning….. two of them Ibrahim and Danson emerged as leaders, they plan to start a business….. great stuff. They love getting a PottersHeart Certificate
Wow what a day teaching in the village of Olrongai. We were able to explore together the rights and wrongs of cutting the uvula out of a new born babies throat……. this is what tradition ‘Country Culture ‘ demands. It is carried out, for a payment, by some old men in the village……. babies suffer and some die. Teaching saves lives! Another tradition is for pregnant Mums to eat lumps of mud, they believe this is how they will get the iron they need. We talked a lot today about spinach!!!! Much safer and nicer than mud. The Group have had great success with the Moringa Trees, bought by PottersHeart. Their challenge now is to give some of these miracle, life saving seeds to every house in the vi
On our way to the airport came the dreaded text ‘Your flight has been cancelled and will not leave Heathrow until tomorrow ‘. We carried onto the airport to meet up with other team members, and were greeted with an enormous queue of people needing to be in Kenya like NOW! Three hours later we were installed in a very nice room in The Hilton Hotel curtesy of Kenyan Airways, Plus meal vouchers…… apart from letting people down I was quite excited!! The Hilton is not our norm!!! The flight was very full but uneventful, I watched a lovely film called Maudie, a true story….. loved it. Because of the flight change we arrived in Nairobi at 21.16, too late to safely travel the 4 hours to Nakuru. Our
When we acquired the plot of land on which to drill a bore hole, and build a Youth & Adult Training Centre, there was not a road in sight! Access was via a red mud track, dusty in the drought and often impassable for vehicles in the rains. And yet this plot, at the crossroads of four mud tracks, felt right. It is accessible in all weathers to hundreds of people whose only vehicle is their feet, and we thought that is what matters. We always knew that getting building materials to the site would be difficult, but we believe that nothing is impossible! Things don't happen quickly in Africa, frustrating but true! Bear in mind that this plot is way out of the village and the tarmac road is not
