The Children's Home in Meru

"Oh how wonderful it is to see all of you again, god bless." Dr. Karambu welcomed us to the IPI (International Peace Initiative) complex where she had organised a home for children in need over the past years. Children that have some kind of family problem and can't grow up in a healthy environment with members of their family. They get support for school, food, clothing and any other needs they might have.

"How great to be here - what a wonderful place you have, a little hard to find on the road but now that we are here it feels like a little oasis in the midst of dust." One of the travelers answered as we all got our bags out of the vans and into some of the guest rooms on the top floor of the building. This strenuous activity is followed by a much needed meal with the children.

"Hello everyone." One of the young girls presented after the dinner. The group of young children had lined up in two rows behind the young presenter.

"We are the children of KACH and want to welcome you with this dance we prepared for you." She announced and loud music started blaring out of low-quality speakers. Every single one of the children started to move in synchronicity to the sounds of the music, following the movements that they must've practised countless times before hand. They continued this seemingly natural dance for a whole six minutes at which point the rest of the guests had joined the dance and continued enjoying themselves until the exhaustion of the trip started to catch up with people and pulled them into bed.

The following day we embarked on a little tour of the place we were staying at and some of the other projects in the surrounding area which was followed by people leaving to go to the airport and back to their home country. Felix and I played football with the children and set up a little treasure hunt just before christmas, most of them would leave for a week to go back to their families. None the less there was work to do even during the time of not many people being present, our task was to repair the goatshed. The buck was getting too wild and continuously raged his body towards the roof and slammed down onto the wall that separated him from the other goats with all his power and weight.

"Just look at him, Christ... good that we don't have to work on that part of the shed." I said while starting to look around some of the banana trees for James, the repairman of IPI who would help us with the little project.

"Eh guys, there you a'e - come wit' me, get one of de wheelbarrows and I will show you whea to get de wood for repairs." James called out from in between the trees as he walked towards the shed with two hammers and some nails. So we walked for about 10 minutes to get to one of the other project buildings where we picked up some wood.

"AH man, stuck again - let's try getting it out of the mud with one of the planks." Felix said and I started to fumble about in the pile of wood to pick the best plank for the purpose. After a little odyssey we managed to get back to the shed in one piece and with some pieces of wood.

"Right, now we pull out de nails from de wood, den we break two of the walls and put t'ree dere to keep young and olda goat apart." James told us as we arrived on the scene and passed us some tools to pull out the nails and make the planks usable. Felix and I managed to complete the task after a couple of hours and we went on to start building the three new walls.

"We just mesure dis' and den we can put dese planks dea and start nailin' de boards on dem." He said as some sweat pearls fell off his face. The heat had gotten intense and with nothing but a metal roof above our head it felt like a sauna. Some of the children had now joined us and viewed interestedly as we finished building the walls. Shortly after one of the little boys, Newton, ran up to me and with the most innocent look on his face.

"Noah, you give me camera please?" He asked in such a cute way that I couldn't but pass him the camera. He ran off to some of his friends and showed off what he had just hunted down.

"Haha, dey' kno' how to get u eh." James said laughing as he looked at us and jumped down from the shed.