Hello from Nairobi :)

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your encouraging emails! This is the first time I have been able to use the internet since I have arrived. When I arrived Wednesday evening it was very late and I woke up Thursday morning at 4:30am to start driving four hours southwest of Nairobi to a small deserted rural town called Kitise. We were in Kitise for three days where I had no access to a phone or internet which was definitely hard for someone who has a blackberry attached to her hip.

In Kitise we were working with a community organization called Kitise Rural Development Program (KRDP) which helps individuals from the community with housing, water sanitation, HIV/Aids awareness, and a variety of other services. They are looking to grow their membership in the community and start a community bank to increase the savings and financial independence so Omondi and I were working on a strategic plan with them. As it stands now they are partially funded by dorcas aid international which they explained to me that if they decided to withdraw their funds from the program the KRDP would completely shatter - this is where a community bank set up could be VERY beneficial! Each individual would a) be able to save for the future b) borrow to promote a business c) use the interest profit towards building new programs/services at KRDP.

To get to Kitise, we had to drive 15 km down a red dirt road which during the rainy season is not even driveable. When you drive down the road you will see children playing and taking their donkeys with water pails to the town to fill up water. In some villages Omondi was explaining that it can be a four walk to water. In Kenya currently there is a major water shortage and if you look at where rivers and lakes used to be you will only find dirt. Families need to dig on this land to eventually reach water and fill their pails up with (usually) dirty water. This is ridiculous in my mind when Mount kilimanjaro (sp?) is a few hours away and all the water from their glaciers go to a flower plantation to help irrigate the flowers to then export to places like Europe and North America. People here are struggling to have water but flowers are still important for business reasons - this is so shocking. What is even more shocking is that one of the government ministers owns this flower plantation, a person in that area of work should be helping his civilians and not hindering them. Anyways I could rant about this for hours so I will stop.

I arrived back in Nairobi at noon today, on our drive back I was able to see wild boars, ostridges, zebra's, bamboons, and camels in the forests/fields next to the highway. Omondi says that zebras and giraffes are often hit by cars because they live in such close proximity.

Now that I am back in Nairobi I can happily load my phone and use the internet :) The number I sent out in my first email no longer works so I have sent a new number to contact me if you'd like by email.

I have great news to report - I was able to take almost all of the clothing donations with me to Nairobi which was in total 140 pounds! The airport staff at NWA were super kind and let me bring it all with only a $50 charge which is normally a cost of $300 or more. Omondi and Ken who picked me up at the airport were astonished at the amount of donations I was able to bring. I haven't given them out and will be doing that in the upcoming week so thank-you for all your donations!

On not so great news, my camera broke today as I was showing one of the young girls that I am staying with how it worked and then I dropped it on a tile floor so I am not going to be able to update any pictures today! I am hoping to get it fixed in Nairobi tomorrow before I head off to Nakuru where I will be visiting a small school and disbursing some of the donations. I really want to capture that on camera so I guess if I am not able to fix it I will need to buy a new camera which is super unfortunate :(.

Anyways I have a ton of things to tell you all but it will have to wait as my internet is running out!

Hope all is well at home! Definitely starting to miss it!

xoxo