Thanks for your donations

A Message for all those who donated to Maddison House:

As promised we wanted to update you on the projects we completed during our time in Kenya. As per our previous email, we spent the donations on four major projects, (1) buying new clothes for the kids, (2) starting a chicken project with 250 chicks, (3) building a new outdoor kitchen & (4) building a playground. In addition just before we left we bought two weeks worth of food, and purchased a TV&DVD player. We raised an amazing $3000 (£1800) which enabled us to do a lot of good work on your behalf. While we were in Kenya many people thanked us for all we had done, but we want to make it clear, that none of it would have been possible without you’re donations.

Clothes
We spent a whole day in a market going through boxes and boxes of clothes to purchase suitable outfits for the kids. It was quite an experience, especially buying over 130 pairs of underwear! Spending the day bargaining was pretty exhausting but it was so much fun to lay out the clothes into piles for each kid, and then seeing them try them on and walk around proudly in their new outfits.

Piles of clothes laid out

Emily trying to explain that these are their new clothes, donated by friends in the UK and America

Lydia was very happy with her pile :)

Some of the girls in their new raincoats

Saying thank-you

Chicken Project
With the help of Pastor John we decided to start a chicken project. The aim is that the chicks will lay enough eggs to both provide for the orphanage and to sell at the local market in order to pay for chicken feed and keep the project running, and also hopefully make a little extra for the house. We turned one of the rooms in the old barn/outhouse into a chicken coup, complete with heat lamps, a jinko fire for when the electricity is out, chicken feeders and drinkers etc. We purchased 250 day-old chicks to start the project. We picked them up from a local farm all squished together in boxes. Before we let them out we dipped each one’s beak into a bowl of glucose water to give them a boost of energy - all 250 of them! for the first week you have to regulate the temperature and check on them every few hours - if they get too cold they will huddle together and squash each other to death. So for the first couple of nights we had to get up at 2am in the morning to go check on them - good practice for when we have children, I guess! The chicks eat a LOT, and grow very fast. Within a month they are big enough to move into a bigger coup, and within three months they should start laying eggs. By the time we left they were only about 3 weeks old but had already gone from cute little chicks to small chickens, which are not quiet so cute! We took the kids up to see them in small groups and it was great to see how interested they were, and how scared some of them were!

One of our boxes of chicks

Pastor John helping us dip them in glucose water

One-day old :)

Getting bigger...

Not quite so cute anymore - this is how much they grew in 2 weeks!

Emily showing the kids how to handle the chicks safely...

Kitchen
When we arrived at Maddison House, all cooking was done outside on an open fire. Kenya has two rainy seasons, and during this time the cooking (and heating of water for bathing) has to be done in a covered area just outside the house on the jinko (a small coal fire). In preparation for the long rainy season and to make cooking and water heating easier, we built a kitchen at the back of the house. The kitchen has three covered built-in cooking stations, not only does this mean the weather or lack of sunlight will not hinder cooking, but the concrete enclosed fire pits will also save on firewood. Even just in the few weeks before we left we saw the kitchen put to very good use. The house mothers were particularly grateful for this project.

James and Lydia helping build the kitchen

nearly done

Aunty Betty and Aunty Wambui cooking in the new kitchen

the completed kitchen

Emily and Aunty Betty with the new fire pits

Playground
When we arrived at Maddison there was a swing set in place, with two wooden rotten broken seats and we always thought it was a cruel thing to have this sitting broken while the kids had so little to keep them entertained. As we raised more than we expected we decided to spend some of the money fixing the swing and extending the playground to include a slide and a jungle gym. Pastor John took us to a local ironmonger and Emily drew him a picture to understand what a jungle gym/climbing frame should look like, and two weeks later we had a playground. I let go of my need to have everything perfect, and let the kids paint the new equipment using some left over paints at the house. The result is a great colourful addition to the house.

The first day of the slide - a stampede

Martin took painting VERY seriously

John painting

Even Lydia helped

The new playground

Extras
Here are some additional pictures, of the kids enjoying one of the times we bought them meat, the fully stocked store room, and the TV we purchased:

Watching a movie

Fully stocked store room

Thanksgiving dinner - the most colourful plate they had in 3 months

Enjoying some turkey

Again, we want to say just how grateful we are to you all, and we hope that seeing these pictures makes you feel proud of what your donation helped to make possible. We feel very lucky to have been able to help the orphanage develop and to be there to see the impact of the donations.

2010: Five countries, and counting...

Here we are! We're back in Birmingham, UK for 2 weeks before the next big leg of our trip - 3 months in SE Asia! Our time in Europe was great. For me, I had never really traveled around mainland Europe, so it was a treat to see so many cities. We ultimately made it to FIVE countries, which I'd say is pretty darn good!

As I said in the previous blog, we started in the Czech Republic with some of my family. It was me, Si, my dad and his wife Blanka, and my brother Abe and his lovely lady Jennie. As a most wonderful Christmas gift, my dad and Blanka rented us this incredibly beautiful apartment in the Old Jewish Town. Haha, no, not because we wanted to get closer to our Jewish roots! The apartment did make spending time relaxing at home and cooking good dinners a lot easier than it would have been had we stayed in a hotel. In the Czech Republic, Christmas Eve warrants more celebration than Christmas day itself, so Blanka cooked us a traditional Czech meal of carp and potato salad. With my brother in town, we of course had to have some eggnog in the house. When I poured them for everyone, Blanka was given her virgin drink, and the rest were doused in rum. However when Blanka turned her nose up as she took a sip and said i had added too much rum (none added), we realized that I had just added a rather large shot to each full glass of Czech egg nog that apparently comes with 20% alcohol included! haha, needless to say, the rest of the night was filled with fun and laughter, and a couple of slightly drunk people! The rest of the week was wonderful. Prague most certainly had the Christmas spirit, with a beautiful huge Christmas tree in the Old Town Square, a great but over-priced market, lots of lights, and beautiful sights. We spent most of our days wandering around different parts of the city, taking thousands of pictures of beautiful castles and buildings built back in the 11th century and of old Jewish graveyards with tombstones laid on top of one another after the graves were uncovered, and new bodies thrown on old during the war, as the death toll swiftly rose. Almost everyday we made our way over to the Vlata River, home of many beautiful bridges, and incredible picturesque views. Blanka also took us to the town where she grew up, a couple of hours north of Prague, which gave us a better prospective of what the real Czech Republic looks like, and included a real home-cooked Czech meal. In total, the trip was amazing. And it was so great to see at least some of my family for the holidays.

On the 2nd, we made our way to Nuremburg, Germany. IT WAS FREEZING! It snowed the entire time we were there. And it was that thick, heavy, big snowflake kind of snow. It was great! The first full day we had was Sunday, and in this old Catholic city, that means the entire city shuts down. Even Starbucks! Geeez. We visited the old Imperial Castle, where we intended to take a tour until we found out that the tours were only given in German. The nerve of those people! :) We then went to the best museum we visited during our trip - the Documentation Center for the Nazi Rally Grounds. And the following morning, we returned back to the site, to take a walking tour (in the snow!) of the rally grounds themselves. It was pretty mind blowing. Simon and I were surprised by the way Nuremburg has chosen to treat the memories of these national monuments. In part, like many German cities, they have tried to disregard the place, by turning them into sports stadium and parking lots. For instance, the Great Road, a 2 km long/60 metre wide road designed to be the central axis to the Nazi Rally Grounds was half covered by a new parking lot, however was still pointed out to the public by plaques and signs. Same with the ever so powerful Nazi Rally Grounds. The are now in part the backdrop of a new sports stadium, however, the bleachers people Heil Hitlered from, and the stand where he gave so many speeches still remains, in tact, and very available to the public. I stood in the exact place I have seen Hitler stand in so many pictures, and looked out into an empty field that was once filled with hundreds of thousands of people saluting that man. It was pretty incredible.

On to Munich we went. Still, very cold. We stayed in a great hostel we definitely recommend - Wombats. The hostel offers free guided tours of the city, so we took them up on that the first day. Although it was almost too cold to enjoy, we got to see the whole city, and had a great guide to lead the way. We also visited Dachau Concentration Camp. Even after all these years, the place has such a cold, unhappy, and scary feel to it. We were able to see where the people slept, and the conditions in which they did, we saw the gate where numerous people tried to escape and ultimately killed, and the crematorium, where thousand of bodies were taken and burned. It's just so hard to imagine that something like that could have happened in the 20th century. Before leaving Germany, we made it a point to go to a real beer house, where Simon and I took our best guestimate of what the words on the menu meant, and ordered...something. We were served 2-3 HUGE hunks of meat, and about 3 potato wedges as our 'vegetable.' And just to add to the experience, we were sat at a table across from two German men, complete with their authentic huge German mustaches!

Innsbrook, Austria. We booked a B&B here. It was a cute place, up on a hill, looking over the valley of Innsbrook and up to the Alps. The first afternoon we arrived, it was clear blue sky, and we were able to appreciate what Innsbrook is so famous for - turn around 360 degrees and you will always be facing the beautiful Alps topped with snow. Unfortunately, by the time we woke up the next morning, it had snowed and with that came low grey clouds that completely engulfed the mountains. Our view was gone. We didn't do too much, but did take a nice hour long hike up one of the mountains. It was a more pleasant and laid-back part of the trip.

Geneva, Switzerland. We visited Simon's old colleague Anca, her husband Teo, and their beautiful 2 yr old son Alex. They live in a beautiful old farmhouse just north of the city, so needless to say, we spent a lot of time just lounging around there. In addition, we all seemed to pick up this nasty tummy bug that left Simon being sick all day Sunday, Alex sick Monday, Teo sick Tuesday, and me sick Wednesday. However this was just the excuse we needed to do just about nothing other than play endlessly in and out of the snow with the 'cutie patutie', Alex, just relax and catch up. Si and I did make it out a couple times, doing a walking tour of Geneva nad heading to Chamonix in France. There we visited France's largest glacier, Mer de Glace which is 7km long and 200m deep. We were able to walk inside of it which was very cool.The glacier receded 7.5 metres last year in part because of global warming, so people, seriously, STOP! :)
So that's the end of our European journey. We are now preparing our bodies for the change from cold to hot hot hot weather (about time too). The visas are being arranged, the volunteering in Thailand has been signed up for, and now we're just waiting! We will do our best to write as often as possible while there.

Lots more pictures from the trip posted here: http://picasaweb.google.com/simonworkman/Europe

P.S. we miss our family and friends back in the US so much! please know that we are forever thinking about you!