Enelerai

The Baraka Health Center is one aspect of our Kenyan programming that I have been really excited to check out. It opened just 2 and a half months ago and has seen over 1200 patients since then. It is beautiful and accessible to all the FTC communities. For those communities that are still a bit far away, we still do mobile clinics. Prior to this Center, the community members had to travel an hour by car to the nearest clinic. We toured the Center and saw the emergency room, the pharmacy and lab, the general patient room, the baby room, and the prenatal room. They even have an ambulance, and I was just so impressed with the passion of the doctors and nurses and the quality of the Center. The community members pay a small fee (to keep it sustainable) and they even have the only ultrasound machine in the entire region!

There are solar panels next to the Center that generates power for the clinic and secondary school, and a garden as well that provides fruit and vegetables. We have lunch programs in the schools; we buy maize and beans and the gardens provide all the supplementary food like spinach, kale, passion fruit, cabbage and guava. It was a long and interesting tour and I learned a lot about this program that I am going to take back to Toronto with me for all the donors.

We had a fantastic afternoon in the Enelerai community. Today was the very first day of school in the new school year, which begins in January. The education system is very strong in Kenya and students are very bright. Grades 1-3 go to school from 8am-12 and grades 4-8 go to school from 8am-5pm, so it is a very long and packed day. They get an hour and a half break for lunch, and two short breaks throughout the day, but they study very hard and the school system is strong. Compared to other countries I have worked in (namely the DR, as this is the one I know the most about) the education system in Kenya far exceeds my past experiences. Since the kids are so well educated, they can all speak English quite well, which was really exciting and made it easier for me to communicate with and get to know the students.

We arrived at the school in the afternoon, so grades 4-8 were still at the school, on their break. All the students ran over to us, excited to play games and meet us. We have two babies in our group, 9 months and 2 years, and while the boys all ran to play soccer, the girls packed in a huge circle around Ella and Arlo, just staring at them and poking them and wanting to touch them and sing to them. It was really precious. After awhile we were finally able to drag the girls away from the very overwhelmed babies. A few girls attached themselves to me (several of them were named Mercy; that is a very common name here). We sat in the grass and talked for a little while and I learned a little more about the girls; their names, number of siblings (all had at least 4 siblings), what they want to be when they grow up, etc. They all spoke about Kisaruni, our Girls Secondary School, and told me excitedly how they want to go.

Afterwards, they took me inside their classroom to show me what it looked liked, and we played and sang and dance. They taught me some Kenyan songs and dances and we taught each other words in Swahili vs. English. It was nice to meet these girls that I spend my days at work talking about and fundraising for. It certainly brings me a lot of motivation to go home and push my schools to fundraise more and to make Kenya a bigger part of their lives. The girls (and the boys too, I am sure) are beautiful and intelligent and very curious to continue their learning. At one moment, I was sitting in the grass with two students crowded on my lap and another three sitting around me laughing and I got overwhelmed with emotion; so proud to be able to meet these kids and be a part of the incredible group that is making this possible.