Construction

Work on the new kitchen and commons building is progressing steadily!  Once this three-year-long project is finally completed, Mama Mwangi, the Joseph Waweru Home School's cook, will have plenty of pantry space for the bulk volume of food needed to feed eight teenage boys, plus a gaggle of North American volunteers, and no longer will she need to keep rice and cooking oil in her bedroom.  Right now, the floors have just been sanded, and the counter-tops are smooth, attractive stone; perfect for the rough demands of a Kenyan kitchen. The bathroom has been sponge-painted by the Joseph Waweru Home School's boys, and looks wonderfully playful.

Bev Stone, our Executive Director, has found a gas stove for the kitchen, with five burners and a gas oven large enough to cook a turkey. It costs about $1300.00 US, though, which is more than the home school can currently afford.  This year we will buy a small stove for about $500.00.  The kitchen will also eventually have an additional gas stove with burners big enough for large sufrias (Kenyan cooking pots).  This stove will have to be custom built, and Bev is still finding a suitable craftsman for the job.  

Behind the current home school, opposite of the kitchen, a new building is being erected with surprising speed. When finished, it will have two bedrooms, making room for eight more children. Bev hopes to use the extra space to accommodate more boys in the home school, as well as the constant stream of North American volunteers visiting.  When asked about the purpose of creating a dorm-block style campus instead of a larger main house, Bev says, "culturally, boys that have come of age don't want to live in the house with younger boys or parents. Traditionally, they have a place of their own."  Some of Expanding Opportunities' orphans are in their mid-teens and are fast outgrowing the family atmosphere.  Also, Bev says, "dormitory buildings are cheaper."  Thus they kill two birds with one stone.  

In addition to two twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot rooms, the dorm will have a "cute little veranda," as Bev says, hanging off the back.  The dorm isn't far from the main house, so the older boys can have their own space while still feeling like part of the family.  

In only a couple of days, the foundation of the building has been completed, and the base of the walls has been started. A group of workers loosened the ground with jembes; huge hoes used for gardening and construction.  In the same afternoon, they scooped up the dirt, making deep trenches for a foundation.  The workers then got a delivery of rough, oddly shaped stones that had to be chiseled down by hand into regular blocks that could be used to build up the walls.  The builders then mixed the cement to hold the stones together on the ground with hand tools.  It's amazing how fast the men work, even without any electricity.  Now, after three days, the outline of the floor plan is obvious.  We can clearly see the two rooms where the home school's boys will eventually live, with exits at both ends of the rooms and a little entry way in the middle.  

Of course, a new building alone will not allow the organization to adopt more street kids. Funding must be found for their clothes, food, schooling, cooking fuel and to support the home school's care-takers.  Supporting each kid costs a minimum of $70 US per month.  With all the building projects, this budget barely allows for enough food to stretch the whole of the month.  Expanding Opportunities is in great need of more donors if they're to take in more orphans.  Hopefully such funding can be procured shortly, since Bev hopes to adopt two more boys as soon as possible and eight more boys in the near future. She's looking for younger orphans, who aren't too used to living on the street, and will adjust readily to the environment of the home school. And, while the older boys are wonderful kids and appreciated family members, Mama Mwangi, who minds the boys, would love some small children running around.

Drama In Schools

Mema Secondary School, the closest high school to the Joseph Waweru Home School, has agreed to let two of our volunteers help out with their drama club.  At the moment, the club is preparing a short play for a drama festival in which they will compete against other area schools.  Mema invited Saima and Jesse to step in during the final rehearsals to offer suggestions.  Once the drama competition is over, Saima and Jesse will be doing some workshops with the school's drama club regarding improvisational theater; a type of acting where scenes are made up spontaneously. 

Solar Cooking

Two styles of solar ovens now reside at JWHS.  The first is a box cooker, using one reflector to concentrate the sun's rays into an insulated box, purchased from a non-profit organization called Trans World Radio.  The second is a panel-style cooker which uses multiple reflectors to concentrate light into a plastic bag at the cooker's center.  We purchased this oven from Solar Cookers International (SCI); an organization with its headquarters in Sacramento, California and a branch in Nairobi, Kenya whose mission is to harness the sun's energy to cook food worldwide.  Volunteers at JWHS are currently experimenting with both designs and integrating them into the home school's daily routine in order to preserve money and the energy of the home school's cooks.  

In an effort to learn how to better use our solar ovens and to spread knowledge of solar cooking into the community of Mangu, Kenya, we invited SCI to do a solar cooking workshop at JWHS; an invitation which SCI accepted.  Last weekend, volunteers stood on the road near the home school and flagged down locals as they walked past saying, "We're doing a demonstration.  Would you like to learn how to cook with the sun?"  Solar Cookers International delegate Faustine Odaba then demonstrated how to cook many local dishes using panel and box cookers.  

There was partial sun for the first day of the two-day workshop, and Faustine demonstrated how to cook sukuma wiki, a local variety of kale, along with beans and peanuts.  She also showed us how to pasteurize water using SCI's Water Pasteurization Indicator, or WAPI.  A steady stream of curious passers-by came through, marveling at how hot the plastic bag at the center of the solar oven could get.  

On the second day of the workshop, the clouds refused to subside, so Faustine taught indoors, using posters and pamphlets as visual aids.  A few people were very interested and stayed all day, a couple of them even purchasing solar cookers.  Others were skeptical, saying, "Nataka kuona," meaning, "I'll believe it when I see it."  But they still took the handouts explaining how to build their own solar ovens. Hopefully their curiosity will get the better of them and they'll begin to experiment with solar cooking on their own.  

Mangu Children Need School Sponsors

The eight boys living at the Joseph Waweru Home School are fortunate to have their educations paid for by donors in the United States.  Before coming to the home school three to five years ago (depending on the boy), none of them had completed more than two years of school.  Now three of them have just started their last year of primary education, and are preparing to take a test next November that will determine whether or not they can go on to high school.  

Mangu, Kenya has many more needy families than Expanding Opportunities could possibly support single-handedly.  The chief of Mangu has compiled a prioritized list of families whose kids are most in need of sponsors for their educations, and Bev Stone has agreed to act as a North American contact for donors who would like to pledge their support to a child.  

Only about 30 percent of Kenyan secondary-school-aged kids are actually in school.  Although there's no tuition for primary school (grades one through eight), parents need to buy uniforms for students.  The net cost is only about 1500 Kenyan shillings per year, or twenty one US dollars.  Sadly, this is still out of range for a lot of families.  Once kids are in high school, they also have to pay tuition, raising the cost to between twenty and thirty thousand shillings, the equivalent of around 280 to 420 US dollars, making it even harder for parents to allow their kids to continue their educations.

Barbara Witherly, a resident of Hermon, Maine, was lucky enough to be able to come to Kenya and meet personally with a high school-aged boy before beginning to sponsor him.  "For me, education is very important," Barbara says.  So she found George, who was just about to start his freshman year of high school.  Barbara has spent two months each year in Kenya for the last two years, so it's been easy for her to keep track of George's progress.  Additionally, she and George's school also have an agreement by which the school is supposed to keep her informed while she's in the United States.  "At the end of each term…they will send you a record of the child's grades and a comment from each teacher, just like they do in America!" Barbara says.  George also writes to Barbara, keeping in touch with her on a more personal basis.  

Sponsoring a student can truly make a difference in his or her life, as Barbara has experienced.  "Hope," she says.  "When you can give money to provide an education…you are in essence handing [the sponsored student] hope."  

If you're interested in sponsoring a student, please contact Expanding Opportunities.

Our Gardens

Our seeds are sprouting!  Although the rainy season, which coincides with the growing season, won't start until mid-March or early April, we've started preparing.  We have tomato, squash and broccoli seedlings that will be ready to be transplanted by the time the rains come, and many more seeds waiting to go in the ground.  

By the time the rains end in May, we hope to have a drip irrigation system installed so that we can extend the growing season.  Our one-acre property could support a lot of food, but only if we have a way to water the plants that won't be outrageously time consuming, as watering by hand would be.  

Raphael, our neighbor who has just graduated from high school, has been a huge help to us in figuring out how to garden in this strange climate.  Having the advice of someone who has experience with farming in such hot temperatures and who knows when the rains will come has been invaluable.

What Our Kids Are Up To

The kids have been working hard in school and at home, but they've also been having a bit of fun.  If you've donated to Expanding Opportunities lately, you should be expecting a thank you card from one of our eight boys.  Once a week, we assign each boy a donor to write to, thanking him or her for their support.  These thank you card sessions also double as English lessons, helping the kids to improve their spelling and grammar.  So be checking your mailbox!

Usually we take the boys on a fieldtrip once a year to thank them for being such good kids.  Because of the kitchen construction, there isn't enough money this year to take the boys on a full-length fieldtrip, so instead, we're bringing the kids to a swimming pool at a nearby hotel a few times.  Most of the boys never learned to swim, so they crowd into the shallow end, kicking their legs off as they try to stay afloat.  A few of them are really getting the idea, and by April when most of the volunteers leave, they'll be doing laps!  

Collins, one of our older boys, says he really likes the swimming fieldtrips.  "I think I could go again the same day!" he says.  He doesn't even mind the cold water.  "It's nice and cold!" he says.  Although Collins had never swum before, he says it's not hard to pick up.  "Going like this," he says, waving his arms, "it's not hard."

Vincent who, like Collins, has lived at the JWHS for five years, agrees that swimming is fun, and says it's just as good as the other field trips the group has taken.  Vincent most enjoyed watching the little kids playing in the kiddy pool, whom he says were very funny. 

Take care everyone!  Until next month,

Saima, Jesse, Bev, Barbara, Jordann, Ian and Luke