MY BLOOD TASTES BETTER THAN YOURS!!!

This title is appropriate since I had malaria AGAIN! These Kenyan misquitos absolutely LOVE ME! This time I'm a little bit smarter with catching it though and it didn't manage to leave me in bed for a week. At this point, having malaria has just become a normal part of life for me and it seems to be entirely unavoidable in this area. It was only one week after arriving back in the village from Zanzibar that I went for a blood test and sure enough, there was a small parasite party going on. This time I caught it in the earliest stages possible though, so it's not really a big deal and now I'm almost finished the medicine for it and feeling normal again. It's SO good to be back here. I didn't realize the impact I had until I saw everyone in Shibanze after my time away. I went straight to the school before even reaching home from the airport and the kids swarmed me, fighting over who could shake my hand to greet me first! Great feeling! It's been a couple of weeks now that I've been back to my work and right now things are more exciting than ever. That's because of YOU and the donations that have been sent. The school is now a complete CEMENT structure. I have a hard time thinking back to that one room mud class that existed when I got here since we've now got three complete classrooms and an office for administration work. It's truly incredible. All that is left to do is paint and you won't be able to tell the difference between these classes and the ones we all grew up in! Last week we started the school food program that I developed and it's been such a success! These kids know how to eat. They will eat until you stop feeding them, and it doesn't matter what you put in front of them either. I've managed to get some protein into them each day with our small food budget and it's really awesome to sit and eat with them all each day. I've been helping a lot with the cooking and our cooking staff couldn't believe that I knew how to cook. They were sure I had a maid back home that did everything for me. One day we have spaghetti on the menu and the cooks had never seen it before so I taught them all about it (as simple as it is) and it's a huge success. Another new thing for them was using a can opener!!! We are even managing to feed the kids fresh fish on one of the days and beef on the other. They MIGHT get these food items every six months where they live. I wish I had of been able to start this program when I arrived to see the impact it made on them in reducing all the malnutrition in the area. I really think it will. Otherwise I've been doing a lot of work in the community with my women's group and a newly formed men's group. There is this sweet old man named Hamisi who is our day time security guard and he's always begging me to join the women's group. Every time I have to remind him that he's not a woman. So one day I told him to go get a list of names for a men's group and I'd do my best to meet with them once a week as their facilitator. He came up with a list of about 20 names and we had our first meeting last week. Just this past Monday I visited a place called Khalaba to see another community project since the director had invited me. They have been doing fish farming and have about 55 ponds now. It's a really cool project so I'm meeting my new mens group tomorrow to take a tour of what they are doing. We have a really big river that passes through Shibanze all the way through Khalaba to Bungoma so it's a perfect opportunity to take advantage of it and build some local ponds. One thing I noticed on the coast was that the kids weren't suffering from nearly as much malnutrition and this was definetely because of all the fish they were eating each day. Maybe in the near future these ponds will be successful and fresh fish will be on the menu in Shibanze regularly. Back on the school compound there are two very exciting projects going on. The first is that we are almost finished building the school play ground donated from the fundaiser that happened in Little Current over the Easter weekend (thanks again guys!). We hired a welder to put it altogether so it's steel and not going to break down any day soon. They are putting the pieces together in another town but will be transporting them sometime this week and the kids aren't going to believe their eyes. The best part is that we only used about $500 of the $4000 that was sent so there is lots left over. We're also going to put in a 'football' (soccer) field since we extended the fenceline a little to make room. Hopefully all these things will be completed very soon. The rest of the money will go towards painting the classrooms, paying the monthly wages of our 4 teachers, 2 cooks, and 3 security guards. I'm sure there will still be left over after that which we'll most likely hold onto to ensure that the food program can continue each week. The second project that I'm also VERY excited about is that we are getting a dairy cow! A lovely family from Chelmsford made a sizeable donation to the project recently and we are so so so grateful to them for that. We have had a representative from the ministry of agriculture working with us for about two weeks now. We are building a proper house for a zero-grazing fully grown, full of milk, dairy cow that will arrive within the next two weeks, if not sooner. FINALLY, some sustainability. I knew we needed a cow ASAP but the money that was coming earlier was in small sums and there were just too many things that needed our attention right away. With the left over of the money that the cow will leave, we will be purchasing school shoes for ALL of our vulnerable/orphaned children in the school which will be a wonderful thing because it'll really cut down on all the problems with their feet that I wrote about previously. And I can't forget.... there is something else. Something REALLY wonderful. Since the newspaper published my blogsite, I've had so many people reading it. I'm really happy about this because I'm able to reach so many people now and let them know what I'm doing over here in Kenya. If you have been keeping up, you'll recall a 'world vision like house' that I saw in the very beginning of my time here. I found a woman in her late 30's living inside a mud house that was barely standing up anymore with her three young children. Her husband had died right after the last one was born. Recently a woman from Manitoulin sent me an email to tell me that she couldn't stop thinking about this lady and her situation and that she'd really like to help. I've been running around for the past two weeks preparing budgets for a new house and ordering supplies and tomorrow... we are sneaking into the compound with a truck full of materials to build her an entirely new house. She doesn't know anything about it yet. I can't wait to knock the one she is currently in over. I've got a video camera right now as well so I'm going to be taping it all and will try to put it on my site (not sure if it's possible). So...... as you can see things are so great here in the little village of Shibanze. As I remind myself right now that May is coming to an end I can't help but feel so sad that my return ticket is for July 10th. I keep asking myself why I'm going back, what the rush is. And I'm not coming up with a good answer. I really don't know how I'm going to leave. I think it's going to be the most difficult thing that I do - maybe in my entire life. Yesterday we had a guest speaker who works as an HIV/AIDS counsellor in the Bungoma District Hospital. I took her to Shibanze to talk to the women and men in my groups and she couldn't believe how everyone knew me and I was like a daughter to all of these people. I never really thought about it that way but it really is true. Wow... going home is going to be very difficult... There are parts of it I look forward to but in all honestly, I really REALLY want to stay here. Even though there are so many great things happening here I can't ignore the large number of problems that I still see every day. I've got so many kids that don't have a proper home and it's heartbreaking to see their living situations. A couple of days ago I went to a funeral for the father of one of our students. He died from drinking too much of the local brew. Alcoholism is a serious serious serious (can't say it enough times) problem here. The huge sugar cane industry has taken over a lot of land by paying local people to grow it at their homes. From that, they use the sugar to create this lethal potion. I didn't know the situation at this boys home as his house was surveyed before I got here. I found that this man had 2 wives and a total of 21 children and he was in his mid-40's when he died. The first wife ran away and left 9 kids behind. Of these, 4 of them were still young - all under 12 years old. I found them living in a very small mud house with their grandmother, who if I had to guess, was about 80-90 years old. She's very frail looking and even though I don't think she can take care of them now, I can't help but wonder what will happen when she's gone. I see this all too often. HIV/AIDS has taken so many people from us now that you will often find young children being taken care of by their grandparents. It's my hope that eventually this organization can build some temporary housing so that we can care for these orphans when there is noone else left to do it. I'm busy preparing a report right in hopes of getting some funding for a health project in the area so I'm going to get back to that. I really want it to be done before I leave so that I can start them off in the right direction, assuming we are given a grant. I'm also going to publish some pictures so I hope you enjoy them. Shibanze is looking like an entirely new place these days! Thanks again for everyone's support. I appreciate it so so much!