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.