Sunrise, Sunrise

The expedition group with the staff and children from Sunrise Education Children Center

This field update comes from WHOlives founder and president, John Renouard.  He shares the group's experience visiting East Africa's largest open air market and a small orphanage in Nairobi.

We have crossed into our last week here in Kenya. I'll be honest, it's hard to put into words the experiences we have had.  This week has been less taxing from the grind of the Village experience but everyday we see and do something new and amazing.  

I hope everyone will find a way to look at the pictures we have taken, available in full on our Facebook page, so they can see a little into the experiences we're having. Even the mundane, like going to a grocery store, is intriguing. But then we experienced the very crowded and right on the edge of our comfort zone visit to the open market, the largest in Eastern Africa.  There are not a of visitors to the market so the introduction of eight outsiders garners a lot of attention.  Like in any society, we received a variety of responses to our intrusion to their daily lives, some very pleasant and others bordering on anger.  After our visit we chatted a bit about the experience and drew some conclusions to what it might have been like in other eras where the presence of outsiders was not always warm and many times extremely hostile and unfair. 

Our visit today to a small orphanage did much to build our faith in the future of Kenya.  We visited with 20 of the most well mannered, grateful and cheerful children you could ever imagine.  They would sing at the top of their lungs and share their "sweets" with each other.  As each of our trekkers finished teaching them a cool science project they would break into this cool little jingle, thanking the "teacher" for doing such a good job. It was very cool.

Tomorrow will be a banner day. We are returning to the school in Kilifi where we started drilling a well the first week we were here.  We will be dedicating to this village the first and only clean water source for 10 kilometers (or 6.2 miles)!   I'm not sure, even now after two weeks, that the Trekkers will totally grasp the impact our efforts will have on this community.  This well was made possible by an extremely generous gift from the Barker family from Washington State, along with some funds from the cost of this expedition that was donated to this project.

It truly is amazing to see the "Ripple Effect" so many people can make.  Thank you for all of your support. We love and appreciate you so much.

Thanks,

John

Founder John Renouard with the children from Sunrise Educational Child Center

Most of the children at Sunrise have lost one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS.  They all had this poem memorized

Some of the sweet children at Sunrise.  They love to sing and laugh

Expedition team member Mariah brought a stethoscope with her to give the children the chance to listen to their heartbeat for the first time.  This little one can't get enough of it.