Massai Mara and Mercy Care

Massai Mara was absolutly amazing! There is way too much to write in such a short amount of time, but my highlight was definitely seeing 14 lions on a big rock near a pond with small palm trees everywhere; I felt like I was in the Lion King! It was so much fun and so great to hang out lots with the team.

Mercy Care this week has been a bit hectic because there are so many things to do and not enough time, but I'm still enjoying every minute of it...except maybe not when Wayne made me film Maria dissecting a pig in class....ewwww :P

I have been doing a lot of filming and wrote letters on little kids' hands and made them all stand in a row so I could film a phrase for the new film.

Gosh there's way too much to write I don't even know where to start. Apparently someone on a street above the slum got hit and killed by a matatu and then a riot started happening. We had no idea though and didn't hear anything, our driver drove us out a different way.

Tomorrow we're going to a giraffe farm and elephant orphanage and then to the school in the afternoon so I'll try and get as much done as possible and then on Friday is Mercy Care's annual sports day which is a lot of fun.

It's been hard to find time to write a good blog with lots of pics but I am leaving for home on Saturday so I will have plenty to show you all when I come back. Hopefully I won't get too extremely bored waiting 8 hours in Johannesburg airport by myself and then catching the 14 hour flight back to Sydney by myself :(
I'll just have to make temporary friends to keep me out of my boredom haha
Anyway I am doing really great. Kate has been sick; actually a lot of people on the team have been sick with colds/coughs so I'm hoping I won't get anything at least until I leave. They are a lot better now though so that's good!

I will be so sad to say goodbye to everyone :(

Friday

I had another great day at Mercy Care Centre! I did some more filming and have got some good footage now for the next short film.

Yesterday I visited Mercy's home in the slum and saw Precious, who is her beautiful one year old daughter. She is so so cute! Mercy is the most amazing girl ever, she's now in Form 1 (15 years old) and has such a drive to live life the best she can and to strive toward a better future.

It's always hard walking into the slum because it's so, so different to anything I'm familiar with. Nairobi is a very depressing city, but at the same time there's hope. People in the slum live such awfully difficult lives; you drive past gangs of guys lying on the ground in the most ragged dirt clothes sniffing glue as a drug. You hear about all the car hii-jacks; our driver has been hii-jacked 5 times since he started driving, and all with guns pointed to his head. Some of these kids that have guns are only 14 years old.

The poverty stretches on for miles; it's seriously chaos and so complicated. There are so many street kids who have bad cases of scabies and are neglected in the day. They have no parent modelling; they just have to fend for themselves all day and resolve conflicts on their own, even though some of them are only 2-4 years old.


But God is doing something amazing in such a depressing place. Mercy Care is like an oasis in the midst of all this. It is bringing out the amazing potential these kids have and it is inspiring them to live different lives than the norm in their community. Instead of doing drugs on the street, the guys at Mercy Care are working hard in secondary school and are aiming high so they can live a better life. Instead of falling into prostitution or early marriage, the girls at Mercy Care are choosing to put their education first and to resist pressure from their friends and family to drop out.

The students are absolutly beautiful and have really developed good morals and a kindness toward others. There is a huge difference between their behaviour and the behaviour of the kids on the street.

I am looking forward to going on the Massai Mara safari weekend trip tomorrow and I'm realizing it's waay past my bedtime now so I'll finish here :)

Awesome days

I had a really awesome day today at Mercy Care! I started a new film to advertise child sponsorship and am calling it "Not Defined By Poverty" to show the hope and potential these children have. The kids were so great in front of the camera and what they are saying is powerful.

I've been having so much fun with the team; I think I spend half the day laughing :P
Today we handed out gifts to the teachers and tomorrow we're going to hand out gifts to all the kids (all 600 of the!) so we had a lot of fun making up 600 packages tonight.

I love Mercy Care so much and I always say just how beautiful the kids and teachers are. Being able to love the kids while I'm there and give them attention is the best feeling in the world because I know how that felt when people did that for me.

Good times!

On Sunday me and Kate and Patrick went to the airport to meet up with the American team. We were so excited! It was so awesome to see Caroll and Wayne again and to meet the rest of the team. I have had so much fun with them already; they are awesome people.

We got driven to the Mennonite Guesthouse, and when we got there me and Kate were gaping for a while. This is the most beautiful accommodation I have ever stayed in in Africa! It's like an old English cottage with the most beautiful big yard and gardens. It has a tennis court, volleyball net, a massive wooden swing hanging from a tree...it's like a completely different world than the places we've been staying at in Africa. It's a really, really nice place to come back to after an exhausting day.

Today was our first day to the school as a team so all the kids put on a performance for us. It was amazing staring at the sea of faces realizing just how much the school has grown. There are soo many children and the secondary school has grown so much which is really cool. They are all such beautiful kids; so well behaved and so responsive to us.

We were all really tired by the afternoon. We were going to go to the crazy markets but found out it was closed, so we decided to go to the giraffe centre but got caught in crazy traffic so we went back to the guesthouse and just had a relaxing afternoon, hanging out and planning for tomorrow.

It's so great to be part of a bigger team. Me and Kate have loved working together and have no idea what we would do without each other! But it's been refreshing for both of us to be part of the buzz and excitement of a new team.

More pics

Photos of mercy care

Tim, the secondary students are holding signs to thank you for the building you bought which they are standing in front of. Thank you!!!

Mercy Care

Wow, the last few days have been hectic so I haven't had a chance to go on the internet. I am absolutely loving being at Mercy Care again! I've had the most inspiring conversations with some of the older girls. Two of the girls I talked to (both don't have dads) said their mums had been really sick lately and there was a point where one girl didn't even know if her mum would live anymore. It must have been so scary. She's getting better now though.

The first day we were there we heard that two girls in class 6 had their mum pass away the night before. I haven't seen the girls yet; they got permission to stay at home that day. But it's so so awful the things they go through, and that death is so common here.

The secondary school has grown so much it's very exciting! I saw the labs that are in the process of being built. There will be science and computer labs.
It's been a lot of fun hanging with the kids; they are such good kids! I handed out the letters to standard 4 that the kids at Hornsby Heights Public School in Australia wrote to them. They were very excited to receive them! I got them to write back too; they wrote some very beautiful letters.

I am very excited about meeting the American team at the airport tomorrow and working with them for the next two weeks. I'm trying to upload photos; hope they work!