August '08 | September '08 | October '08 | November '08 | December '08 |
During the first week, we attended a two day planning and evaluation seminar for Ripples’ International (RI) senior staff,
conducted by an AED/USAID facilitator. These seminars are only held for organizations that are already functioning well. The RI staff
is young, motivated and extremely professional and the quality of the discussion was as good or better than John has ever heard. RI is
helping
over 5000 children and is accountable to donors to the “who got a bar of soap” level. There monitoring, reporting and accounting
systems are adequate for their current activities (in fact they are considered a model by their donors) but they have identified the
need to upgrade to meet future growth. John is now working with the staff to streamline the monitoring and reporting systems and the
associated databases. A library of over 1500 of Marilyn’s digital photos has been created. The photos will be available for brochures, the web site and for possible use in a new documentary showing the good work that being done by RI for people in the Meru area.
Marilyn has also visited the homes and met the families and neighbors of HIV+ and vulnerable children. These trips have been “real”
safaris – to places where tourists never go. It has often been quite shocking to see how these people are living in houses with dirt
floors and walls with openings so big that when it rains, everything inside has to be wet. Marilyn has also seen shambas (small farms) in semi-arid areas where beans and maize will only grow when there is sufficient rain. Without boreholes (wells), these crops cannot be irrigated – and water for drinking and cooking has to be carried for several kilometers, in plastic containers on the backs of women. If you would like to fund the drilling of a borehole in the Meru West area (near Isiolo), please let us know – parkerma@juno.com.
Often the only source of income for these families is casual labor – women do laundry and wash floors in other people’s homes, and both women and men dig in other people’s shambas.
Some of the children Marilyn has met are amazing – they are so eager to go to school that they get up at 5 am and leave home at 5:30 (when it is still dark) to walk for an hour to get there on time. To sponsor a student and make his or her life easier, please see www.ripplesintl.org.
We now know many children – and women and men too - who are HIV+ and are living fairly normal lives, with help from support groups, and medication and good food.
We had three houseguests this month. Lucy came from Mombasa, and her sister Jane from Thika, for a weekend. They spent most of Saturday
filling out forms for their visa applications, and then Sunday morning, they visited with their youngest sister Martha at KEMU. And
Carolyene, a student at Daystar University, stayed with us for a week while she volunteered at RI and learned what community development
is all about. One Friday evening, our Kenyan Gourmand Group, consisting of 6 Canadians and 3 Americans, gathered for a lasagna supper. Asante sana Tanya for making the lasagna from scratch.
Finally, we couldn’t be here in Kenya for 3 months and not go to see the animals, so we went off to Samburu for a few days and did
some game drives. And we saw a new-born elephant (maybe just a few hours old), two male Reticulated giraffes sparring for turf (one old, one young),
a lioness waiting by the river for her breakfast, lots of Grevy’s zebras, gerenuks standing on their hind legs to eat leaves, oryx,
impalas, Thomson’s gazelles, water bucks, cape buffaloes, dik diks, Vervet monkeys, baboons – a couple of crocodiles - and lots of birds,
including an owl, an eagle, male and female Somali ostriches (he was keeping the eggs warm while mama was out looking for food), vultures,
superb starlings, hornbills, a blue heron, a secretary bird, bustard birds, guinea fowl, Maribou storks and lots of weaver bird nests in acacia trees.
Please pray this prayer with us during the coming month.
that Christ has no body now on
earth but ours, no hands but ours,
no feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes to see the needs of
the world. Ours are the hands with
which to bless everyone now.
Ours are the feet with which,
He is to go about doing good.
~ Maryknoll/St. Teresa of Avila
John and Ripples’ Managers
Marilyn on a Home Visit
Carolyene in the Field
Welcome to the Herd