To Mail Me Anything:
Benedictine Fathers
Amani Conference Centre
P.O. Box 32101-00600
Nairobi - Kenya
To Donate Anything:
Southern Benedictine Society
100 belmont mount holly road
Belmont, NC 28012
(Write "BVC - Harris" in the comment section of the check)
Hey everybody!
It’s been forever I think since my last post so it’s about
time I do so. In fact, I’ll do you one better and post two! I’ll give the
general summary post, and then if you look at the tabs above you’ll see one
tabbed “MCF”. Definitely click that after reading that. I got a chance to have
a pretty in depth interview with a beautiful woman who lived through the
election violence in 2007, and the interview goes into that and what she’s had
to deal with since then.
Firstly, let’s get back on track a little bit. I got a good
amount of rest after the Mombasa trip. In fact, probably too much. I had wanted
to get going on my painting project at St. Maurus, but I was dealing with some
banking issues, so I didn’t get started until later in the week. I got back to
Nairobi on Wednesday of that week. I had stayed in Karen to help the girls pass
out all the gifts to the elderly that they raised so much money for! It was
very impressive. I think they got around 5 grand in donations, and now that
whole group is going to have a wonderful Christmas.
I got back to Nairobi and started making arrangements for
the painting job. I went down and got a decent idea of what we wanted to do.
The walls originally were painted yellow with a broad white stripe going across
the middle. In the stripe were a bunch of children holding hands all the way
around the wall. Good design and good idea. Couple problems though. For one,
all the children were white, and, secondly, the paint job was over ten years
old and the paint (as well as the wall) was horribly chipped in cracked all
over the place. So on Monday, I got the funds I needed and I bought two huge
buckets of spackle and 3 4 liter buckets of black paint. I spackled the whole
wall that day. Used up every bit I had. On Tuesday, we sanded and washed the
wall and popped open the first can of paint. I got about half the wall although
I was skipping the pillars. The next day, myself, Henry, and a bunch of random
kids who showed up to help finished painting the first coat. We finished all
the pillars and the remainder of the paint by the end of the week.
I didn’t originally plan on it, but I’ve decided we gotta
put a second coat on. On a couple of the wall segments the little children
underneath are poking through. Pesky kids. I went back to the paint place, and
they told me they won’t have the base they need for the paint until tomorrow
(12/19/2012). So I got a few other things and put the project on hold for a few
days. I’m planning on putting a red and green strip across the top and bottom
to be in line with Kenyan colors. I also want to put some good quotes from
their culture and the Bible up there as well. Maybe across the top. Big
additions that I’m planning on is putting a painted version of the Kenyan flag
on one of the walls, and then I want to take another wall segment and dedicate
to St. Maurus. Then when all the kids come back to school, I’m gonna have them
put their hands in white paint and have them put their hand prints on the wall
and maybe put their names under them as well. I’ve the creative juices flowing.
Any suggestions would be welcome!
On the Saturday, I went to Karen because I hadn’t seen them
in 10ish days, and they also wanted to see the elephant orphanage. It was
pretty cool. They facility houses about 25 elephants ranging in ages 3 months
to 3 years. We only got an hour with them though because the end game is to let
the elephants out into the wild at some point again, so they limit the amount
of outside contact to one hour a day. Kate kept scaring off the elephants
otherwise we’d have gotten some pictures touching one. I did touch one’s butt
though. That was cool. After the orphanage trip we went to see The Hobbit! I
was definitely a little surprised they even had the movie, and there were only
maybe 8 people in the theater total. I greatly enjoyed it though! I know there
are haters out there, but I think peter Jackson did a fine job translating a
great book into a great movie even if he did take some license in some areas.
I took it easy Sunday, and yesterday and today I’ve been
working on the article on the interview I got last week. I’ll save most of the
details for the actual article, but it’s an intense story of a 16 year old girl
who was just trying to get home the night after the election results in 2007.
She unfortunately got a lot more than just a little trouble. It’s a pretty
graphic story. Some people may rather not read it, but I’m gonna post it anyway.
It won’t be on this main page, but rather another page listed on the tabs above
“MCF”. I’ll also post a bit of information on what MCF(Mathare Children’s Fund)
does as an organization.
Anyways, it’s been perfectly eventful as well as uneventful
depending on the day.
Here are some extraneous thoughts.
1)
How can a paint warehouse not have the base
paint for black? Or red? They were missing that one, too. Although, I was able
to get green. Things are always at 80% here. No one is ever at the top of their
game, and it doesn’t really seem like anyone cares to be at least business
wise. When it comes to the bar, they go pretty all out. It’s just difficult to get anything done in
any sort of a timely manner. Still trying to switch to that mindset. America
did a number on me, I guess!
2)
The past two months there have been no fewer
than 3 different Norwegian schools come to stay at the Amani Center. The first
two just came and saw the slums, walked around a bit, went on a safari, etc. This
third one was here for two weeks, and they left this past weekend. They were
different. I got a chance to talk to one of the teachers last week for a
moment. They had a pretty cool little thing going. Basically, they bring 20
students and each of those students paid for one Kenyan to stay with them. They
spent two weeks basically on retreat and studying… music. A couple of the girls
kept asking me to come to their concert this past Saturday. As I already noted
above, I went to the elephant orphanage. I did, however, get an invite to a
parent’s only show. The parents of Kenyans wanted to see what they had been
doing the past two weeks. The whole group did maybe 2 or 3 different song
acapella. The real trick though was that everyone split off into groups of 4-8.
They had written their own music, and the musical talent there was
unbelievable. These were highschoolers mind you, but they were switching
instruments left and right and the lyrics were fantastic and there were some
incredible singers. I saw saxophones, basses, acoustic and electric guitars,
pianos, jimbes, bongos, and drums. They did all kinds of music. Beatbox. Rap.
Classical. Christmas. Pop. Reggae. All across the board. It was really cool to
see the kids mixed together and sharing their talents. It really was awesome.
3)
On the Christmas note, if anyone wanted to send
me some Christmas music, that’s be awesome because I’m missing the automatic
music on 97.1 WashFM for the entire month of December.
4)
Hail to the Redskins.
Remember to take a look at the interview article by clicking on the MCF tab at the top of the page.
Thanks for listening! God Bless and I'll post again around Christmas!
-Harris Moriarty
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