Work since then:

The 6th of April:
The good Sheppard Sisters live and work on a farm which I help them with. On the 6^th of April we were planting maize on the farm. This is the staple crop in Kenya and is a huge cash crop. To help us do all this planting we hired 30 women from the slum in Kipsongo. The work involved were digging trenches for the maize seeds, planting the seeds there and then placing the soil on top of the seeds. These women do a lot of work for us when it comes to things which must be done on the farm and they are given payment for their work.

On April 14^th the workers and I dug many holes which bananas would be planted in. These hole have to be very deep and requite a lot of work to dig them, therefore this was very tiring work and in total about 70 banana trees will grow here.

Table Banking: April 15th

 I went to the school because there was a meeting held here for the women of Kipsongo. The sisters have set up business groups with these women in order to help them establish their own businesses so they can become empowered and generate an income of their own. There are 3 different groups that meet up and each of these groups has about 10 people in them. They are largely comprised of women but in each group there is one man. The sisters are hoping that these men who are part of it will encourage other men to join also. Each member of the groups has now established a small business of their own with the help of the sisters and the aid workers. These businesses are widely different from clothes cleaning business to selling things such as fruit. The meeting today was called table banking and the sisters were teaching the women about the different methods of banking and how they can benefit from banking. These meetings which discuss many different easy the women can develop their businesses are held every month.

                                                                                                          
13th of March:
I went to another of these meetings on the 13^th of March. This time I found out that the women take a short term loan from the people who run it, this loan is for one month. Since these meetings are on every month they return for the next meeting and they pay back the loan. They also give the money they have gotten as a profit and the people running it will put it in a bank account for them. They can then take out another loan if they want depending on how much of a profit they make.

                         In this room there are many other meetings held such as on April 16^th they held a parents meeting there which took place to educate the parents about the different ways they can discipline their children to ensure that they attend school and that they work hard. Here the sisters and aid workers all gave their own ideas and opinions and then after there was a time allowed for the parents to speak up and give their own opinions on the matter. These meetings are also held every month unless an urgent matter occurs and they need to be held earlier. If a person is late attending the meeting if they want to join in they must pay a 50 shilling penalty which is the equivalent of around 50 cent. I think this is a very good and fair policy because many people turn up late, some of them turn up as late as one and a half hours some times.

                                                                                                                                                 The sisters have also employed women from Kipsongo in the workshop they have in the compound. In this workshop they have many sewing machines and they make many things such as clothes, bracelets, bags, necklaces as well as many other things. These are then sold at a local shop in town or sometimes they receive orders from places such as a church or a school and they must complete the order. On April 7^th I visited this workshop and they had to complete an order of 200 dresses for a local school.

                                                                      
21^st of April 
I went to a funeral for a local priest whose mother had passed away. This was a very interesting experience for me because I had never been to a funeral outside of Ireland. In this funerals in Kenya there is a lot more singing and clapping. The entire crowd joins in which is different because in Ireland when people are asked to sing they usually shy away even if it is in a crowd. However if they are signing doesn’t mean they are happy and ok with the person having passed it is just the way they carry out their funerals. It was a huge event with around 300 people. They had it outdoors in the house that the person lived in. There were also 25 priests and the local bishop who is also Irish called Bishop Crowley.   

                                                                                  

Trip to Killgoia: 25th April

On the 25^th of April we left the house to go down to the area of Killgoia. This is because one of the sisters was having a church ceremony and a celebration for her having being a sister for 25 years and they were holding this celebration in her home. Half of us travelled in our jeep and we also rented a mini bus to bring more people who wanted to come. All the sisters came as well as staff members who work for us such as the people who do work on the farm, in the workshop making clothes and the women who runs the shop in which they sell these clothes.

                                                                                                                                       It was about a 12 hour drive so we left the house at around 8 p.m and travelled throughout the night. We arrived at their house at about 9 o clock on Sunday morning. We were given breakfast and talked with people there and the ceremony started at 12.

It went on for 3 hours and we were then given lunch before leaving to head back to Kitale. What struck me was the amount of people who went. From my experiences if someone was asked to go to a celebration which was very far away, as far as 12 hours, to not stay the night but have to come back again many people wouldn’t go. However for this loads of people arrived, most of them having to travel very far. One of the sisters said this wasn’t uncommon in Kenya and that for a celebration people will travel very far to spend it with you. I thought this was a really good thing that this wasn’t out of the ordinary and that people were willing to do this, different from what I had experienced. However after all the travelled I was very tired at the end of it and had to take it easy for the next two days.

April 30^th:
We went to Hekima Day Care today because one of the sisters had a meeting because there is a boy from the local slum and they want to send him to boarding school so he can be educated. His family wants this as well but he has been very reluctant to go before this. He spend a lot of his time scavenging at the dumping site and he is happy to stay there because it is now the situation and the way of life that he is used to and it is hard for him to break from this. Even though his family want him to be educated they don’t make a huge effort to encourage him to go to school or to stop going to the dumping site so it has been hard to encourage him to go. Now he has agreed to go so we were meeting to sort out when he will start and things like this.

                                                                      However a few days later when all the students were getting on the bus to go to the boarding school the boy was nowhere to be found. This was after he had agreed to go and the sisters had bought him everything he needed such as his uniform, books, pencils and pens. This is an example of how frustrating it can be for some of the sisters when they are trying to help someone but they are reluctant to be helped. We have met with his mother and have contacted a few of his other family members but none of them have seen him. We are thinking he is staying with one of his friends or many one of his more distant relatives.