A busy month!

August has been a busy month for the church leaders, the Hope & Kindness management and us. After the visit from the national church leaders we were taken up with preparing for and running the first Youth Encounter, and last week, another Farming God’s Way training seminar. Despite it being the school holidays and most of the children in the Home having gone away to visit relatives, it has been a challenging time for the management team here, with various issues to be tackled, and we’ve been trying to support them in this.

So after a busy few weeks we got away at last for a 2-night break in Kisumu, two hours’ drive from here. Two of the children were not going to get a holiday of any type because, in one case there are no known relatives, so we took them along with us. So together with Vivian and Mercy we visited the Impala Sanctuary (a cross between a zoo and a small wildlife reserve) and the Museum, and took the girls shopping. A new experience for them staying in a big hotel, but overall we think they enjoyed the time away. Our only problem was the hotel – we had asked for quiet rooms but where did they put us? – right above the bar, where a karaoke session (mostly populated by students from British universities on a holiday) blared out till midnight. The rotten singing made it even worse!

The news in Kenya has been dominated by two major incidents over the past week. The first arose from a festering dispute between two tribes in Southeast Kenya over land and cattle grazing rights. This escalated into outright armed conflict between the two groups and hit national headlines when one tribe massacred some 80 men, women and children in a revenge attack on their rivals, destroying a whole village. Certainly, disputes over land and cattle are common in some parts of Kenya, but this incident shocked the nation.

A couple of days later, nearer at hand (in the same county as we are), another disaster occurred. Eight girls, locked in a school dormitory at night, perished in a fire. The investigations and recriminations are continuing, but this is having repercussions for our own school here – fire safety has been reviewed and some small changes made. The school exam system is so competitive here, with Standard 8 children being given extra classes early in the morning, at weekends and during holidays to help them revise. The Education authorities have been cracking down on schools giving extra tuition during holidays, and are using this tragedy to enforce their position, because the girls who died should have been at home on holiday. Our own school takes different holidays from the state schools and was due to open today, but this has had to be postponed for another week. TIA !