The school was started in 1999 by one courageous man and has grown to include half a dozen Kenyans, an American and two Canadians. We teach 120 orphans and feed them as best we can. We arrived early November and Aaron and I dedicated ourselves to raising funds to build a kitchen and put on a Christmas party.
We were able to raise donations that included nearly 60 pairs of new shoes, 7200 notebooks, and hundreds of pounds of clothes and food. Given that so many of our students were away from the city for the holidays, we held off on giving these gifts to the students until they returned to school in January but held the Christmas party on the 23rd of December for those who remained. Word spread of the dinner and soon we had 300 children from the slums eating what was quite possibly the first thing they'd eaten in days. It was an awesome sight.
We were not able to raise any extra money, so by our personal donations, Aaron and I announced we would be able to build a kitchen before we left. Our friend's father, who had personally donated much of the clothing interrupted us and said if we built the kitchen, he would donate two bales of ugali flour (the main starch in the Kenyan diet) a week. It was such a generous offer that the crowd burst into cheering and applause. We stored our donations at our headmasters house until January not knowing the country would turn towards violence after the contested elections. Our headmaster's house was petrol bombed on the 20th of January and we lost all our donations for our students.
Aaron was joined by Adam in February, who are now trying desperately to save our school from thieves and continue to teach the students still in the city. The money we donated for the kitchen is now no longer sufficient, as the cost of building has increased ten-fold in the last month. We are trying to double our money so that we can get the kitchen built and have our children eating the ugali that was promised to them.