Hi,

I’ve finally found a couple of minutes to send you some photos

of the Christmas holidays.

The Nairobi – Kisumu road has been repaired and so it was a much easier journey that usual. This is our lunch break at the Tea Hotel in Kericho. Ella was very interested in the painter who was painting Father Christmas on the hotel windows and she kept picking up his paint pots!

During the first week we were very busy preparing for the team building with CDC – 1,100 delegates – we had to purchase our material and train our 45 staff! Many of these were old friends and it was lovely to be able to work with them all again. I must admit I really love the creativity of the people from Western Kenya. It was great for both of us to be back in such a positive, creative and fun working environment.

I miss working in such a Kenyan community back here in Arusha. Here we don’t belong to an East African community – but an International Community – and sadly I find it really difficult to integrate properly with Tanzanians – almost all our friends are from either Kenya or overseas. Working for Heshima and Jalaram meant that this was definitely not the case in Kisumu so it was nice to feel ourselves back to reality for a while!!

I was also kept very busy with lots of Jalaram students who wanted help with their English coursework. They appointed a teacher who has never taught IGCSE before and so she hadn’t a clue what to do. Four hours a day for three weeks, I was helping students with their English. I also met up with the new English teacher and shared a lot of material and the basics!! Before meeting up with the management who tried to convince me to return!! (They still haven’t found a replacement head!) Poor children! I have put Jalaram in touch with Braeburn and suggested a merge of the two schools – Braeburn could use the Jalaram building and manage the school as they are specialists in education. They met yesterday … I’m not sure of the outcome. What I do know is that the big disparity in fees could prove to be the stumbling block.

Shona (a trustee) and Lex have been working out here for Heshima. They confirmed that a small charity: ‘Shiners’ was worth supporting.

These 3-7 year old children are in desperate need – all of them are orphans and they come from the Ubunga slums – where it appears a lot of people came from to destroy Heshima on 30th December. At Shiners they are given a meal and some basic schooling.

We feel we can support what Shiners are already doing by offering an artist and the materials for some art sessions and we have also bought them around 50 books, as they don’t have any. We will see how well they look after these before adding to the collection.

We also organized a special Christmas party where we put on one of our puppet shows, played games and gave out small presents.

It was lovely for us all to share in this and our children enjoyed themselves too! (Another slight problem of our wonderful Braeburn school – the children they mix with all the time now are SO privileged and I worry from time to time that they will lose touch with reality!!)

The other project that Shona and Lex had investigated for us was the juvenile centre. There are 90 children here from as young as 5 and as old as 18 years all locked up. Most of them have committed no crime apart from being homeless but they are locked away with a couple of murderers too! There’s one big boys dormitory and one big girls’ dormitory and at night the staff lock them in and go home.

There’s only one teacher for all these children and no space to play any real game outside. It really is a very sad place to visit. They enjoy music – but they don’t have any access to music so we have agreed to support some music workshops once a week at this centre. We have commissioned a number of drums and percussion instruments and have organized some staff to run an hour’s music workshop with the older ones and then an hour’s workshop with the younger ones. We hope that music will help to bring a little temporary relief to these children.

On Christmas day, after opening pressies with our children, Steve and I left them to play whilst we went to celebrate Christmas with the children at the juvenile centre. We had a lot of fun singing and took a hundred juicy mangoes from the Heshima trees to share together. We went with some people from ‘Agape’ (the street children home) who used to use us a lot when we were open and they took the children little sweetie bags and we managed to find someone to donate some books.

It was a really touching Christmas … as it reminded us of how much we actually have.

After celebrating Christmas with these children we went back to pick up our own children and joined Ann and Peter (the Australians) and their boys for a traditional Christmas dinner – which made the day very special.

Once Christmas was over I started to focus on Heshima. Infact once I started going there again I found I couldn’t leave!! And we had to extend our stay in Kisumu by a few days! (As a result we weren’t back in Arusha as planned for Dan’s

birthday – but ironically were back at Dipesh’s where we had celebrated it last year – but this time it was a lot happier. Looking at the picture above you would never know there had been a problem would you!!

I couldn’t stand seeing all the rubble in all the buildings and so I took my gardener from our house along with his friends, Dan and a picnic down to the site to clear up and bury the rubble. It was hard work (and possibly pointless!) but it made me feel better!! And I was a little less sad every time I went there. It also made me realize that some buildings like the toilet block are definitely salvageable. The only floor tile broken in the boys and girls is the one seen in the picture here. Unfortunately our spare tiles were kept at Heshima and so I’m not sure if we can get a replacement but nonetheless after all that damage I felt this was quite amazing! And Elijah, the fundi reassured me that the pipes to the sewage are still intact.

Ella enjoyed running around the art banda once it was cleaned up! And we could sit here and enjoy a picnic!

And I bought some cheap barbed wire and filled in gaps in the hedge and then got my gardener and his friends to plant bougainvillea etc.

The garden had really grown and I think plants will heal the look of the place – I didn’t want to lose all my palms and trees I had planted through the weeds and plants that were taking over and so I have now employed a gardener to live there and at least protect my palms and remaining plants.

I felt a bit more positive this time because the land was no longer being used as a public park by everyone! Once again it felt as if it belonged to us. I have ordered a gate to go back on – which will be good. So things have progressed in a year.

I still love the plot, and love gardening and working there – but it obviously still upsets Steve so much as I only got him to go with me a couple of times – He preferred not to go and Dan only came the once as he said going made him feel sad.

Since we have been back in Tanzania our friend Rashid has phoned us to say next time Steve is in Kisumu a couple of people want to meet with him to see if they can open a tented camp there – so we will see of what comes from that discussion. And we are still waiting for the quote to plant 10, 000 eucalyptus … apparently if we harvest in 8 years time we should be able to pay for the children’s university fees!! So let’s see what we make of both these ideas.

I could be spending my summer holidays planting thousands of Eucalyptus!!

On Boxing day we went to ‘New Life Homes’ where we usually donate all our baby things. Ella certainly enjoyed the visit as you can see in the picture overleaf. This is a centre for abandoned babies run by a friend from church. They have over 45 abandoned babies there at the moment … all wanting a hug! One was only 3 days old. I wanted to take them all home with me!! We had such a lovely meal with this family – they housed and hid so many Kikuyu families during the

crisis and showed tremendous bravery – it was stories like theirs that has helped us to feel better about returning.

The picture above is of Ella working on the computer. They start ICT so young now-a-days!! I am behind her working on the ‘Tackling Tribalism’ pack. This was trialed in a rural school after we left! The picture above is of one of the activities:

From the feedback it seemed the week went well but we need to do an introductory course with teachers first to challenge any prejudice they may have.

I enjoyed being back in Kisumu, though both of us recognized there was still tension. People are getting fed up in Kenya – they are feeling cheated by the politicians who are paid enormous salaries and don’t even want to pay tax. Basic food is expensive and people are struggling; the media have been gagged and now the teachers are on strike. I wouldn’t be surprised if people reach a point where they rebel against the government. The children and I still see Kisumu as home and we all loved being back – but recognize living there properly will not be possible for us for a long time. For Steve, I don’t know whether it will ever be possible – he has detached himself from the place much more fully, although he ironically returns more often than we do!

Nevertheless the children, especially were excited to be returning to Arusha to see all their friends and since we have returned they seem to have really settled. Layla used to cry from time to time for Kenya – but she hasn’t done this since we have been back. The two pictures overleaf are taken at the Nakuru club where we stopped for lunch!

Since being back Steve has been busy looking at land for another Heshima… We like this one seen below – but we have a few more plots to look at before making a final decision and before committing to buying!

It’s not really the best time to bring sterling over – as it’s worth so little but we are desperate to start again!

Meanwhile Steve has been offered some temporary part time work at Braeburn Boarding – which is helping financially (as they pay in dollars – which are strong at the moment!) whilst still giving him time to sort out all the paper work for re-starting a business. Braeburn has also said we can run team building at the school if we use school caterers – once we are registered – so that will help too!

The children continue to be busy. Dan is growing up fast and is having a sleep over at his friend’s tonight. They have horses and he is learning to ride.

Layla has just performed in assembly today – she had learnt lots of words and was very good – she also won the skip-a-thon competition having skipped over 3000 times! And was very excited! She has also been picked to represent the school in a Nairobi swimming gala and so seems to be training a lot in her spare time.

Anyway that just about seems to be all our news for now! I need to start writing my three courses for my UK visit over Easter. So I’ll leave you with a happy, sticky picture of Ella!

Love and hugs,

Ali xxx