Time has run away from us and we are now getting prepared for the long journey home. We are looking forward to seeing all our family and friends but wonder how much we will miss our friends here in Kosele – they certainly say they will miss us!
The last few weeks have been busy and gone quickly and there are still some things undone on our “to-do” lists, people we hoped to visit that we have not seen.
We feel the church here is in a stronger condition than when we came in June. A lot has been done in practical terms – two of the leaders employed part-time to do church work, the start of a discipleship programme (Encounter), the launch of Farming God’s Way training, a bicycle to help Kennedy get around his pastoral visits, and now use of an office for the church leaders complete with computer and internet access. More importantly, God has been working in people, not least the men and there is a more positive, “can-do” attitude amongst the men. The young mums have also been encouraging – there were 11 of them here this week and they are now branching into crafts and hope to form a co-operative.
Hilda spent most of last Saturday trying to find a local hospital that could deal with an emergency – a little boy who had signs of an obstructed bowel. Finding a hospital that can do an ultrasound and even blood tests at a weekend is nigh on impossible, and after trailing round 5 hospitals in Oyugis and Kisii we eventually sent him with his parents back to Kisii in a taxi. This was on the strength of a promise that a doctor would be there. We expected him to have to be transferred to yet another hospital on the Sunday for an emergency operation but the Kisii hospital actually did it at midnight on Saturday night. This gave us hope that he would soon be well again, but something went wrong and he sadly died on Wednesday. We can forget sometimes that this is a third world country and the resources and standards of healthcare are very different from what we are used to in the UK.
The construction work at Hope and Kindness has been completed. The four new school classrooms are now occupied by the junior classes and they are finding the accommodation very spacious after the small rooms they were in temporarily. The visitor centre is also finished and is looking “very smart”, as they say here. It has a large lounge, a good kitchen and 6 bedrooms and could sleep up to 24 people. It has its own showers and Ecosan latrines – outside of course! The standard of accommodation for visitors here now is not luxurious by Western standards but it is very comfortable and great progress from what it was like on our first visit here.
It was finished just in time for the first group of visitors that we were expecting – a team of 5 people from the multinational IT company Cisco. They were only here for a few days, but did a lot of work and enjoyed themselves so much, especially getting to know the children. They are now on their way back to London but another Cisco team, this time of just 3 people, have arrived today. Also, a lady called Barbara from South Africa is here for a month to work mostly with the children in the Home. She has a lot of experience and we believe will make a real contribution to the work here.
We had a nice little break in Kisumu a few weeks ago – we acted like tourists for a couple of days and visited the impala sanctuary (actually a small zoo – really interesting) and the Museum. It has been really hot here and we didn’t have any rain from early December until mid-February but there are signs that the long rains are now approaching. We aren’t looking forward to a cold wet Paisley but it will be so good to see you all again soon.
