Volunteers Arrive

David, Sherrie, and Avril Humphrey from Calgary, Canada, arrived at Karibu Guest House last night around midnight. They should have been here sooner, but the evening rain really messed with the traffic. Rick and I were awake (barely!) to greet them along with two clean but very barky dogs. After the formalities of greetings were exchanged, everyone headed for the beds. By the way, the fact of the dogs being clean lasted exactly as long as they stayed in the house after their baths. Once we let them out to do their business this morning they were potty dirty again. Ah, well. I knew it couldn’t last.

This morning the Humphreys and I took the opportunity to foray into Karen. There were several good excuses. We hadn’t checked the Karen PO box in over a week and there were bills in it that need to be paid. And some of the girls are changing schools and thus need new uniforms. So we took Mum Jane (in charge of clothing) and two of the girls as far as Karen from where they took a matatu on into Nairobi to the shop that has the uniforms. Kinyua had loaded one of the gas cook tops into the car to take for repairs because it was leaking gas and needed to be fixed before it blew something up. The Humphreys wanted to get a few groceries for breakfasts and change some money. Rick and I needed some items from the store as well, along with a few hand tools for hand-to-hand combat with the weeds that, encouraged by the rains, are starting to take over around here. Also a mess of new clothespins and some clothesline cord. With the danger of afternoon rainstorms, we need all possible clothes hanging capability so the clothes get on the line, get dry, and get off the line and back inside early in the day before the rain returns. In addition, I bought ice cream to go with the cake we were planning for an evening farewell party for Mum Lucy. She’s leaving us to work full time on her master’s degree. All in all, quite a productive trip to Karen!

Dave, note personal protective equipment!

Sherrie with one of the babies

We were back to Corner Baridi in time for a late lunch of githeri. Then Rick took the Humphreys on a tour of the compound. Afterwards, I folded the clothes Rick had hung out to dry while we were gone and Rick and Dave mowed and attacked weeds with the weed-eater. Sherrie had a good time with the babies while Avril took a nap.

Avril and friends at dinne

After dinner, Rick and the Humphreys enjoyed their first Hekima Place party experience. I’d call it a celebration, but we were hardly celebrating the fact that Mum Lucy is leaving! One of the older girls MC’d the evening, calling on each the girls present (not a huge number with so many away visiting family), the other mums, each of the Humphreys (to their surprise), Rick, and me to say a few words of thanks to Mum Lucy and wish her well in her future. The speeches were followed by a cake complete with candles, ice cream, singing, and farewell gifts. Mum Brendah, Lucy’s replacement, has been with us for a week now and will, I think, be a wonderful addition to the Hekima family. But we will really miss Mum Lucy.

Mum Lucy (center) honored at the head table

Leavings and Arrivals Prep

Today started early with most of the older girls dressed, bright and alert climbing aboard the Hekima bus for the drive down to Kiserian. From there they would catch a matatu to take them to visit family for two to seven days depending on their school schedule. Amazing how on prompt they were at 7:30 am. And that when getting them to show up on time for 9 am tutorials has been a tremendous struggle for the past two weeks!

Some have asked me, if these are orphans, what family are they visiting? They will be going to stay with older sisters, aunties or grandmothers. They’ve lost their parents, but most of them still have some family. Why aren’t their families taking care of them? The families they have left don’t have the means to clothe, feed, house and educate them. Often the aunties and grandmothers are trying to raise their own children as well as the orphaned children of sons and daughters. AIDS has taken a huge toll, and left those remaining with a huge burden and limited resources. Some of the girls don’t have anyone, and they will be staying here with us until school starts.

This morning bus included four of the class 8 girls - and therein lies a tale. The class 8 girls came home for their holiday with several pages of homework to do in all subjects. We told them they’d have to have it done and done well before they left for family visits. They had two weeks of tutoring and support to get the homework done. As of yesterday morning, exactly one of them had completed the work. So I got to be the heavy. I told them they weren’t leaving here until the work was done. Whoa! I am mean, I am unfair, I am unjust! They said they could take their homework with them and get it done while visiting family. My reaction was, sure, just like you got it done in the two weeks with no distractions you’ve had here! Then, a miracle occurred! By dinnertime, two more of them had completed the homework. And by this morning, a fourth had hers done! The only one not finished doesn’t have anyone to go visit and will be staying with us. I’ll have to keep after that one.

After they left, I swept the night’s crop of bugs off the Amani House porch. Here is a picture of what I collected after sweeping them all onto the first step. Can’t be here during rainy season and be squeamish about bugs!

As I have mentioned many time, we are in the midst of the rainy season. That means a lot of mud gets tracked inside. And this morning, the dining hall got a thorough mopping. It was still wet at lunchtime, so we ate in the courtyard of Dominica Hall. One of the older girls showed up carrying baby Blessing on her back in traditional African fashion. I have been hoping to get a good photo of a woman carrying her baby that way as they all do - and here it was, right here at Hekima! They wrap a kanga (long rectangular piece of brightly printed cloth) under the baby’s butt and behind its back and then around their shoulders. The whole thing is finished by wrapping a blanket around the baby and kanga (Kenyans are quite chilled when the temp dips into the lower 70’s). So you can just see little Blessings eyes peeking out of the wrap.

I spent a good part of the day cleaning in Karibu Guest House. We are expecting a family of volunteers in tonight and I wanted to have everything ready for them. Part of the cleaning process involved washing the potty dirty puppies. Zwadi and Rafiki have been having a great time out in all the mud created by the rain and the “black cotton” soil around here. They bring it into the house so that the floor had become a network of muddy paw tracks. So for there to be any point to mopping the floors, the dogs had to be cleaned up. After dinner we brought them in and confined them to the bathroom so we could wash them in a tub in the shower. They may only be clean tonight, but they and the floor WILL be clean when the Humphrey’s get here!

Shellin’ Beans

I wrote about maize parties here at Hekima Place in the past. Today there was a ‘bean shellin’ party. A huge pile of beans that needed to be shelled came in from the shamba.

Everyone, from the littlest girls to the biggest along with the mums and even Rick, was called upon to help. I was taking one of the girls to the doctor for a school required physical, so I missed out on the fun. Rick took photos.

The beans were a bit peculiar looking - mainly because of the color. They were off white and pink spotted or almost all pink! We asked what kind of beans they were, but nobody had a name for them. I’ll be interested to taste them whenever they turn up in some dish served at dinner.

It’s been raining this evening. The girls all came to dinner in colorful rain gear. Some of it fit and some didn’t!

The frogs like the rain - they get really noisy when it rains. This evening, I took a video purely for the sound - but, again, I can't get it to upload. Another one you'll have to wait until I get home to (in this case) hear since there's nothing to see except the bugs flying around the porch!

Another Way AIDS Affects the Girls

Monday was a really hard day for Sophie. On Saturday evening, I got a call from the mother of one of the babies telling me she would come on Sunday to pick her youngest daughter up. Hekima Place has been awarded custody by the court in Ngong of both of this woman’s daughters. The mother is a widow who has AIDS, an alcohol problem, and mental health issues. And she is in no position financially or emotionally to take care of her daughters. We have been doing our best to keep her away from the girls, but she came and took the older one with her for the school holiday. We have all been worried about that. So I was very concerned when she told me she wanted the baby, too. The mother didn’t explain anything to me, and then phoned several times on Sunday but would hang up when I answered the phone. I think her English is poor and she didn’t want to try to talk to me.

Sophie got here after church and I explained what was going on to her. She has had pretty good luck dealing with this woman before, so she called the mother and got the story from her. The mom had some kind of court hearing regarding the girls on Monday and wanted to come get the little one to take to the hearing. Sophie convinced her it made more sense to leave the baby here and let Sophie bring her to the hearing. It didn’t make any sense for me to go because I wouldn’t have understood what was going on (much of it in Kiswahili). Sophie was really the only one here who could do it.

So early on Monday, Sophie headed to where ever this woman lives to meet her at the hearing. Apparently the woman was bringing a suit against us (not real clear on that) for stealing her children, practicing witchcraft on them, and making them ill. The authorities in that court referred the case to the Ngong court because that’s the venue that had previously handled the children’s cases when they were transferred to us. In Ngong, the woman repeated her charges and demanded both her children back. The officer of the court pointed out that Hekima Place had been granted legal guardianship of the girls, but the mother insisted they should come with her. The judge asked the older one who she wanted to go with and she tearfully said she wanted to go with Mum Sophie back to Hekima Place. At this point, the judge quietly urged Sophie to ‘run away with the girls’! Sophie felt she needed to stay and try to calm the mother down so she got the girls out to the car where Victor could drive them home. The mother figured out what was going on and pursued Victor down the street shouting at the top of her lungs that he was stealing her children. Victor said he just drove, looking not right or left, just trying to get out of there as fast as he could!

Sophie did spend time with the mother and I hope got her settled down. It seems the issue is this. An AIDS agency was providing the mom with food and a place to live as long as she had the girls with her. But now that she no longer has the girls, all she is receiving is a place to live. She has a part time job and I guess it was felt she could buy her own food. Sophie concluded the mom wanted the daughters back so she would continue to receive the food aid in addition to housing. She had some discussion with the authorities about this situation, but I don’t exactly know what the conclusion of that was.

I was in a meeting of the Trustees all afternoon while this wild stuff was going on and was receiving intermittent updates from Sophie by phone during the meeting - trying to pay attention to both at once while taking meeting notes. During the meeting, Victor returned with the two little girls and the younger ones here ran out to greet them, shouting their names in a raucous welcome. Sophie arrived much later having made her way back by matatu through a driving rain storm, completely wrung out by the events of the day. Both the girls, especially the older one who’d spent a week with her mom, seemed very happy to be back and safe at Hekima.

I tell you, I can’t say enough good things about the staff here and what they’re willing to do for the sake of these girls!

Power Returns!

The generator is off and the power is back on! Our repair man, Victor, saw 3 or 4 power company employees working in Kiserian today and told them they must come out to Corner Baridi, that we’d been without power for a week. The guys said they couldn’t do that, that they’d have to get their work order changed with the office. Victor insisted they come out anyway. They said they’d have to call the office - he said fine, so call them. He prevailed upon them to come and insisted on following them out to the transformer that supplies our power. They found a single blown fuse and replaced it - and then our power came back on. This in spite of the fact that every time someone from here had phoned KPLC (the power company) we were told that they were working on that same transformer!

During the time the power was out, from Apr. 17 thru today, Apr. 23, Rick estimated the generator ran more than 100 hours and consumed >300 liters of diesel fuel. That’s about KSH 26,000 worth of fuel. Annualized it would be KSH 1.5 million or $19,000.

I asked a couple of our Kenyan trustees if they would call power company executives they know and complain. Their lack of responsiveness cost the orphans here at Hekima Place about 26,000 Kenyan shillings (about $300) they could ill afford to do without!

Tonight I let the girls watch a movie, “Cheaper by the Dozen” with Steve Martin. The little ones were rolling around the floor together waiting for the movie. It was probably in the upper 60’s out and the girls were wearing snowsuits! Kenyans don’t suffer cool weather lightly! Soon eveyone had gathered before the TV set, leaving a pile of shoes in their wake.

Nothing Works Around Here!

One of the things we have discovered, is how poor much of the workmanship and materials are around here. The structures of Hekima Place were built less than a year and a half ago and the plumbing is already shot. Some of the problems are attributable to the water that is so hard we had to put in a desalinization unit after about 6 months because it tasted salty and it was corroding the plumbing. But some of it is just shoddy work and poor materials. The local products you buy are cheaply made and don’t hold up. Rick was sweeping out the bugs one morning not long ago and the thin tubular handle of the broom just collapsed. In all honesty, though, most of the locals are very poor and if you made high quality goods to sell, they just couldn’t afford them.

Water tank repairs in progress

As a result of the poor workmanship, Rick has been doing a lot of plumbing repairs since he got here. The shower handles are poorly made and designed and come off relatively easily due to losing screws - he’s replaced two or three of those. Today a valve for one of the showers broke in the wall and water came spewing out of the shower flooding the bathroom floor. It’s Sunday, so, even if there is an appropriate replacement part in Kiserian, the store wouldn’t be open. To stop the flooding, Rick went up in the attic and shut off the water supply to the house. The girls staying there will either have to move to one of the houses that is not occupied during the school break or, at the least, they will have to go to another house to use the showers and toilets. Several of the toilet flushing handle assemblies have also broken, apparently due to corroded metal parts that attach the handle to the plunger. Rick bought several new handle assembly replacement kits and has been going round proactively replacing the corroded metal parts.



One of the two elevated tanks that provides the water supply for the compound developed a substantial crack. So water has raining down from above 24/7 for several days, creating a virtual bog beneath the platform. At first it was just a drip, but after a couple of days it was just pouring down. A pump keeps the tanks filled from the bore hole, so there was always a supply of water flowing. Today, men from the company that sold us the tanks came out here to repair them. They said the crack was a big one and was about 2 feet long. They’ve patched it and the tank is refilling with water.

Laundry Cows

I was out watching the guys work on the tanks earlier today and turned around to see the cows grazing in the middle of the laundry. I certainly hope the cows are clean!


One of the thorniest problems is the electricity. In the best of times the supplied electric power can cut out at any time because we can’t fix it. As I have said earlier, the generator comes on when the supplied power isn’t available. But the generator uses about 45 liters of diesel fuel per day and, with the cost of diesel fuel being what it is, running the generator is much more expensive than paying for the supplied electric power.  The generator has been running constantly for a week now with only a few short intervals of supplied electric power. When I explained the situation to Sophie today, she said she’d call someone from the power company and have them out here tomorrow. Someone came last week but claimed they couldn’t figure out what the problem was. I hope the next person can so better!

When the rains came, we discovered problems with roof leakage problems and with the gutters. These are purely a result of poor construction practices. One of the lengths of gutter on Yellow House fell off in a heavy rain. Upon inspection, you could see they had nailed it to the house with nails too short to support it! They repaired the facing on the side of the roof, but still have not replaced the gutter. The gutter on the back of Amani House (office building) came loose in a heavy rain but did not fall off. They did nail that one back on. Amani had serious roof leakage so that water ran down the front wall and left quite a puddle on the floor. The paint is now peeling due to the water damage. Supposedly the construction company will repaint. Another leak meant water came down the kitchen wall and puddled on the counter where all the small appliances are. The girls’ houses, too, suffered leaks. The construction company sent guys out here who applied tar to the places where the leaks occurred. Not sure that’s the best solution, but it seems to be working for now. There’s never time to do the job right, but always time to do it over!


All that said, it is a beautiful and comfortable facility, so I suppose needing to make all the repairs is a minor inconvenience. I'm just glad I married an engineer - next best thing to a plumber (and without the butt crack!).