Day 43

I’m going on a couple hours of sleep because last night I had difficulty falling asleep. As I came out of bed this morning, I knew I would be extremely tired as the day went on.

Pastor Paul met me at the house this morning and we departed to Tiwi. This is my first experience in a non-private matatu. Boy… it was fun! The matatu’s drive crazy and fill the vehicles to the max. There are 15 seats in a matatu. Sometimes they would fit in as many as 17 people. The matatu’s swerve in and out of traffic. They will pass cars with oncoming traffic. They get extremely close to getting into hundreds of accidents in one day.

After catching a couple of matatu’s we walked down the crowded way to the fairy. There are hundreds of people waiting to go on the fairy. Many beggars sit by with their buckets out. Some of the beggars are disabled or blind. Children are trained by their parents to become beggars. Men were pushing large wooden wheelbarrow looking carts that are packed 5 feet high with food or other goods. Cars and busses were loading onto the fairy. Once the fairy was full of cars and packed with people we took off.

As the fairy arrived across the way, Paul and I walked a short distance and found another matatu. They drove us fairly close to the school in Tiwi. From there on we only had a 10-15 minute walk. As we were walking down the dirt road, taxi’s came up to us to see if we wanted a ride. Personally I preffered to walk and we did. The taxi’s were saying that it’s dangerous to walk the distance as we may get robbed. However, they were likely just trying to get us into the car to make money. We continued on the walk. It was a beautiful walk. The sky was clear blue with a couple of fluffy clouds. The trees and grass were lushes. We turned off the dirt road to a walking path that took us to Tiwi. On the way we saw children and adults nearby their homes. The homes were made of mud.

We arrived at Tiwi and met with Vincent. He is the lead man at that school. He is also the pastor of the church in there. We went into the office area and sat down. Vincent spent a couple hours with me. He told me the story behind Tiwi’s school and church. I wrote a few pages worth of info. Tiwi’s story is absolutely amazing! They have faced violence, theft, funding being pulled away and loss of attendance and staff due to the violence. Yet, despite their troubles, they are now running a school of 276 children. They started children from nursery age and took them all the way up to their exams right before high school. I am just amazed at the success of this school with all they have faced.

More to come on that school…. You will love the story. Let’s just say, the story behind that school is something I could only imagine seeing in a movie. However, for this community it’s reality.

Once we were done, we hiked back out to the matatu’s and continued the journey home backtracking what we did on the way there. We were very hungry and stopped for a bite to eat. We also stopped at a store to get a pair of shoes for a girl named Amina from Vipingo. Then we hopped back onto a matatu and finished the ride home.

As we arrived back at Jim and Susie’s, we went to pick up a friend named Bena. Bena is closing a shop. She had some leftover food that is going to Vipingo. We drove off to pick up the food and pack up the car. Victor came with because I figured he could use a nice drive in the car. Tomorrow I will drop off the food at Vipingo.

Now I am home. Right before I came home I stopped at my friend Michelle’s house to pick a craft and lesson for the Super Saturday we are planning to do in Vipingo. I’m so glad to be back from my adventuresome, fun day!!! It’s about 8:30 and my body is telling me that I need to go to bed. It will be an early night!!!