Visiting Davis and Alice

Sorry that I haven't blogged about our trip in a more timely manner. This trip was truly important and significant and I just want to make sure that I give the proper time to each post. I have not had much time at all lately to sit at my computer. So if you can stand this dragging out, I will eventually get it all out there!

So, to recap and review we flew to Mombasa on Tuesday, the 26th of October. We enjoyed an evening of swimming at our lovely beach house and Wednesday morning the Compassion reps from the Mombasa area came and picked us up to take us to the Compassion project where our other two children, Davis and Alice are enrolled. Remember that the project has around 250 kids that come from a large surrounding area. We had sponsored Davis 2 years ago when we started sponsoring Maisha. CJ chose Davis as the child he wanted to sponsor. Davis is exactly 3 months older than CJ. At the time we chose to sponsor Maisha and Davis, Piper was too young to understand or choose a child. But when we decided to make the trip to Kenya, we wanted him to have a child as well. He wanted a girl, so we asked the Compassion offices to select a girl from one of the same projects of the children we were already sponsoring so we didn't have to try and travel to yet a third location (which would have been really crazy considering our limited time.) So, Alice was chosen primarily because she was from the same project. But God truly had his hand on her as meeting her and going to our home was the hardest and yet most meaningful visit we had.

But back to the beginning of the day on Wednesday. Thankfully, we only had about a 20 minute drive to the project. We saw this woman and her child carrying water on our way. This is pretty typical and we saw women and children carrying much heavier loads. Can you imagine that all the water you consume every day - washing, cleaning, bathing, drinking - had to be carried for a mile or more each day? I have to remind myself daily just how good I have it with not only running water and electricity but many time-saving machines to help with my daily chores as well.

We arrived at the Mwatundo Child Development Center where Davis and Alice go on Saturday for the Compassion programs.

Here we are inside the center, next to us is Alice, and her father, Joseph. Behind us are the filing cabinets full of children's folders detailing their home visits, health lessons and screenings, spiritual lessons, notes to and from their sponsor and any other information they have on the children. All of it is done by hand as they only have intermittent electricity and no programs to enter and retain all of the information.

Tea time. Alice's dad, Joseph and a CDC worker on the left and Davis's dad and Davis are on the right.

The CDC also has a school on site, this is a parents' meeting that was proceeding during our visit.

Children from the school at the project.

This is the 'kitchen' where the women are preparing tea for us and the children. This is also where they cooked our lunch meal. Again, a little more effort here than say putting the prepared foods into the ovens like in the US. The French may almost rival the effort here simply because they serve the children 4 course meals at school and it's all prepared fresh.

The children having tea in the shade. It was quite hot and unlike our beach house on the sea, the breeze was not constantly keeping you cool inland.

I could have taken this one home. Well, a lot of them, really. My heart was truly touched by so many of these beautiful and bright eyed children living in extreme poverty.

This is the church at the project. Every Compassion project partners with a local church to reach the children in the community.

Inside the church. This would be the definition of a simple church building. It is also used during the day for classes for the older children.

Alice, E, Piper, CJ and Davis sitting on one of the church benches.

Then we let the kids run off some energy on the play ground. Here is a series of the 5 of them playing on this push merry-go-round. I know, they're kind of repetitive, but they were having so much fun I couldn't stop taking pictures. Be thankful I only posted 5 of the 30 or so I took :)

Still going pretty slow...

a little faster...

and faster...

and faster! The faster E pushed the bigger the smiles became..

Here's a great picture of Davis. He was very sweet and quiet and yet it was easy to get him to smile when he was playing and swinging. He is just 6 years old and I am sure we were a bit intimidating at first.

The 3 fathers - Alice's father, Joseph, Kevin and Davis's father, Francis.

This building houses two classrooms for the children and a small teacher's office in between them.

This is the classroom for the younger children. They sit on mats.

That's Martin, the Compassion rep, pretending to be the teacher.

The blackboard in the older children's room. This is their homework written out for them. (Weather terminology, draw a tree, name the fruit and name 3 things we get from a cow.)

This is the classroom for the older students. Note the gaping hole in the wall.

While we were checking out the classrooms, our children were still playing with Davis and Alice on the playground. I looked over to see this sight. We certainly drew a crowd wherever we went!

More gorgeous children...

Not shy at all ;)

They always loved to have their picture taken, and I quickly became even more interesting than my tow-headed boys.

This big sister is watching her little sister while her mom attends the meeting at the school.

More less-than-camera-shy kids (and maybe one or two shy ones dragged into the picture). A lot of joy on these faces of children from such a poverty stricken area.

Two of the mothers walking home after the meeting.

This project center is only a few years old and already they have around 250 kids. This area just has so many living in dire poverty. Just a few miles down the road is another CDC, or child development center that this one split off from because they have so many children in need. We were very impressed by this project's center ability to make the dollars we send stretch. They are involved in so many aspects of the children's lives. We just received letters when we returned home from Davis and Alice thanking us for the matresses. Little did we even when we were visiting that the matresses (in Alice's case, the only one the family had) were from the money we sent every month. This area is also at a high risk for malaria, so each Compassion child is given a mosquito net to sleep under.

I know I have said this in earlier posts, but would you consider sponsoring a child through Compassion? We can personally attest to the amazing job that they do with just $38USD a month. Click on the link. Look at the faces of the children in need who you can, for a little over a dollar a day, bring hope and joy to during this holiday season.

Next stop... visiting Davis's home....