20 Sep 2011: Snapshots of Kids at School in Children's Garden Home
It's delightful to photograph children in action.
Nursery Class: everyone read aloud together.
Ah, but Annalisa was distracted somewhat...
Lower Primary - no teacher today...
Lower Primary - cheerful bunch.
Older kid teaches younger kids...
Upper Primary - great to see a teacher in action.
20 Sep 2011: Shopping for Cows
After lunch, we went cow-hunting and viewe some cows with Moses and Lazarus at the Muguga village.
Moses conducting an interview to pick the right cow. We learnt how to judge a 'good' cow from the size and freshness of its udder. The cows seem to just eat and eat, then urinate and poo-poo non-stop, and produce 8 to as much as 30 litres of milk daily.
20 Sep 2011: Organic Farm Tour
Robyn went with the children to a full-day organic farm tour organized by Eugenio and Alessandra.
21 Sep 2011: Short Break at Arusha, Tanzania
We left Kenya for a short 3-day break in Arusha in Tanzania. We took the coach from Nairobi at 8am and arrived Arusha at 2pm.
At Arusha, we stayed at the Kundayo Service Apartment, a nice place with full facilities and breakfast provided. It's just 20 minute walk to the city centre. Manager Mazo is friendly and helpful. Highly recommended.
Tanzania is less developed compared to Kenya.
After 3 weeks of minimalist stay in Children's Garden Home, this was considered luxurious.
> We took advantage of the kitchen facility to cook pasta dinner. However, power cut was a daily affair so during outage, we were provided with a gas stove.
We relaxed, read our books, cooked and enjoyed simple 'home cooked' meals.
Kundayo offers free Internet so Alvin took full advantage to update our website!
We met Kiran Shah on the bus from Nairobi to Arusha and became friends. He invited us to his home for Indian chai and snacks. He's so kind and nice.
Kiran invited us to join in his Gujarati youth gathering at his Hindu temple in Arusha city centre. We made many more Gujarati friends that Wed evening.
Kiran runs a gem stone wholesale business. The next day, we visited his office and witnessed his interesting business operation. His buyers are all from Jaipur in India and they purchase directly from the Masai who walked in with all kind of raw gem stones.
23 Sep 2011: Visit to Watoto Foundation
Thanks to the recommendation by Monika Fauth, we contacted Noud, her former boss and founder of Watoto Foundation, an NGO set up 7 years ago to help provide home, school and vocational training to street youth in Arusha.
We took a cab from Kundayo Service Apartment and arrived at the Watoto Foundation at about noon. Its programme is known as "Child in the Sky". We learnt a great deal here.
Robyn, Jin and Noud, a dutchman and founder of Watoto Foundation.
The 54 kids here attend school in the morning and undergo vocational training in the afternoon.
Student dormitory
8 kids share one dorm.
The kids learn how to operate a dairy farm.
They rear pigs and this brings in income.
They have a chicken farm with 600 layers!
They learn carpentry for furniture making.
They learn metalwork and car/bicycle repair.
This is the first boy to go to university next year.
25 Sep 2011: Visit to Amrita Children's Home (Amrita Watoto Boma) at Athi River
On invitation of Kirit and Raj, we visited the Amrita Children's Home Openhouse. The event was also a celebration of Amma's birthday. Built on an 11 acres of land donated by an Amma devotee, this home adopted 54 children of age 6-14 and provides them with shelter, school and a safe environment to grow up with empowerment. Compared to Children's Garden Home, the facilities here are 5 stars!
Sharon, Keziah, Moses, Jin, Robyn and Alvin.
Children performance.
Fibregalss prefab classrooms, library and offices.