Mukaa Children's Home

It’s hard to believe that our trip is coming to an end. On Friday, we leave our last children’s home of the summer. Where did all the time go? In one way, i feel like we have been here for quite awhile but on the other hand, time has been flying by. Mukaa is up in the mountains and the view here is breathtaking. I think the whole country must be beautiful because i know i say “it’s amazing” every single time we go to a new home. This home and the experience we’ve had here has been a little bit different. We not only added Tim and Mary to our group, but we met up with 2 other wazungu from the U.S. They are the ones that have run the VBS in the past. They come as a part of AIM (African Inland Mission) and without warning, the organization changed their flights on them so that they would be leaving country before the referendum voting on August 4th (the last time Kenya had a big political vote, there ended up being a lot of violence so people were taking precautions...but this time the country remained peaceful. The area we are in is the safe side of the country so we had no reason to worry—there was just a recommendation to not be travelling during those days (so no worries!)). Anyways, since the 2 of them had to leave early, we ended up running a lot more of the VBS than we originally thought we were going to do. Tim and Mary were the ones who planned out the curriculum so they delegated Ashley, Jessica, and I to run the craft station together until Kristin and Cody had to leave. It was...fun? How could paint, glue, sand, a million little pieces of construction paper cut into fish scales, and over 150 children not be? The last 2 days Jessica and I took over the game station. During steal the bacon, we were afraid someone was going to die (maybe we shouldn’t have given fighting for it as an option...maybe we should’ve let the slower person have absolutely no hope in winning it...but we didn’t) but TIA. They’re tough. And they loved it. VBS ended on Thursday and many of the kids that came from the community left. It was kind of nice having a smaller group again but even still, Mukaa is a large home. It has about 80 residential kids. On Friday, Armstrong, the manager, took all of us to buy wood carvings. The region we are in is home to the Kikamba tribe and they are the ones that do the carving. It ended up being an all day affair and it was a lot of fun. It was cool to see the process a bit. We first went to an actual shop where tourists go, just to look around at the options and note the prices. Then Armstrong took us to a little row of shops, which were the actual workshops. There we were able to buy things for a much reduced rate and also see some of the things in the process of being made. On our way home while stopping for gas, Armstrong disappeared for a few minutes and came back with sodas and hotdogs for everyone! After not eating of drinking for about 10 hours it looked like a high quality meal. I don’t think i’ve ever been that enthused to receive a hot dog before...i’m a bit wary of them at home...and this is Kenya. But it didn’t phase me. The rest of our time here has been spent hanging out with the kids. They have off of school in August so we have been with them every day all day. They’re a great group and a lot of fun but it gets tiring. We have been playing games, going on long walks, and watching movies like American Karate, which is as good as it sounds. Tim and Mary left on Monday and it was really hard to say goodbye. We’re going to see them again in just 1 week but they had become a part of our team. It was great having them here...as Ashley said, they were fresh meat. It was almost like having a bit of home without actually being there. I think that it will also help us in our transition back to the states. So the schedule for the next few days: tomorrow we leave Mukaa and travel to kijabe where we will stay for 2 nights. We then go to Nairobi for 2 nights and we fly out on Tuesday, August 17th. During those days we will be saying goodbye to a few people, shopping, and beginning our debriefing process. There’s much more i could say but for now that’s all. Be looking for a newsletter update in the next few weeks! Thank you all so much for your prayers, continue praying for us as we prepare to come home. It has been an amazing summer and i am excited to share more of it with you!