First day afield

We were up for breakfast at 7:00 am (midnight your time) to get ready for the trip to Solai. This is the town that had tragedy in early May. Kenya experienced severe rains in April and May, and flooding in low areas was a problem that resulted in many drownings.  The most significant of these occurred on May 9 when flooding caused a dam containing 50 million gallons of water above the town of Solai to break.  It roared through town, wiping away great portions of the village and ultimately resulting in 48 lives lost. Forty homes were lost as well as many businesses and several churches and portions of a school. Many lost multiple family members, and everyone in the village was affected by the tragedy in some way. Many families were displaced and sheltered in schools and temporary locations. 

As with most tragedies of a similar nature, there is a great public effort initially and then everyone goes away as the story begins to fade in importance. In this case, the response was similar although there was a significant rallying around those affected. Those without homes were absorbed back into the community, and people are trying to move on and put their lives back together. But that's somewhat naive of me to say, when you've lost everything you have, including some of your family members. But they are trying to move on. Bill Coble and SWOK representatives were there from the first day, and they continue to do what they can to help. They are working through the local government and specifically with Dr. Peter Mbae, a member of the County Assembly of the Kabazi Ward. He is a man of great vision, wisdom and leadership, and is driving the response to this tragedy in a positive direction. Today, we had the blessing of meeting him with the administration of the Jamhuri Primary School. They have 45 children at the school who lost everything in the flood, and at least 15 of them were orphaned by it. There are 902 students in the school, and every child received some item distributed by the team. Tom Wolff offered a prayer and a blessing over the entire school, and we were able to impart love, hope and grace to them through the mode of distribution of clothing and school supplies (cherished pencils and composition books). You would have thought we gave them each $10000! The joy in their faces, words and actions was evident and humbling for us. I want to give a big "shout out" to Helen Turner and her group of dedicated sewing ladies who did a fabulous job of making the hundreds of skirt dresses and shorts we handed out. That resulted in more joy in this one place than there has been in a long time. Thank you for allowing us to be the couriers who carried your love here and got to hand it out to a grateful crowd!

After spending the morning with the children at the school, we visited the remains of the village below the broken dam. The extent of the damage was dramatic and sad. We took the opportunity to pray in the ruined foundation of the churches. 

Since we were close to Gituamba, we went there n the afternoon to get acquainted with the various construction projects we will be starting on Friday. We will be doing a water filter distribution tomorrow to over 800 families in Rongai, so we won't start the dirty work till Friday!