Holiday Fundraising Drive

Friends,

Last winter, Ravi and Ian traveled to Kenya to volunteer with Ezekiel Tito’s Friends of Rusinga Orphans and Widows Group (FROWG). The trip was life-changing for us in many ways, and we could not have contributed so much to the community without the support, both emotional and material, of our friends and family. We are seeking your help once more in supporting FROWG this holiday season.

We’ve been in regular contact with Ezekiel since leaving Rusinga nearly one year ago. While his reports are always optimistic, it is difficult for us to ignore the drought in East Africa – the worst in half a century – and the devastating effect it has had on millions of Kenyans. CNN reports that “[t]he price of a 90 kilogram bag of maize, which is the main food source for most Kenyans, jumped from about $16 in June 2010 to about $44 in July 2011 -- an increase of 160%.” Such an increase would strain even the most stable of families, but those most severely affected are undoubtedly orphans that depend on feeding programs such as Ezekiel’s.

Many of these children were already underfed in their adoptive homes, and they rely increasingly on feeding programs as the drought continues. An empty stomach distracts students, and the feeding program provides nourishment, but also allows a child to focus on their studies.  Ezekiel’s foundation also provides a safe haven for children who have little else to look forward to each day. These are bright children who can succeed and contribute to their community, but they need our help to do so.

The boy in the picture above is named Durance. Durance’s mother and father died of AIDS when he was very young, and he has spent his life in the care of various relatives on Rusinga.

In Kenya, only primary education is provided by the state, and even this benefit is a recent development. Durance could have easily become another of Rusinga’s many undereducated, unemployed youths, destined to a life of poverty. But Ezekiel took the boy under his wing, and Durance recently earned a scholarship to high school through FROWG, where he now thrives. By investing in Durance’s nutrition and education, Ezekiel and FROWG are investing in the future of the entire community.

Durance is just one of the many success stories of FROWG, but the organization can’t flourish

without funds. Last year, you helped us raise an incredible amount of money to benefit the

foundation. That money built an outhouse; purchased uniforms, sports equipment, utensils and

bowls; and funded the feeding program for a full six months. This food security allowed Ezekiel

to focus on the children rather than international fundraising. Today FROWG’s bank account is running dry, and to thrive, the group needs your support.

While many of us may be tightening our belts this year, we ask you not to forget those who need our help more than ever. You can help by clicking the “Donate” button on the right-hand side of our blog.  The donations will go into a Paypal account that we manage, and will then be deposited directly into FROWG’s bank account via a wire transfer.  Even just a few dollars goes a long way!

Thank you for your generosity, and happy holidays!

Ravi and Ian

A Brief Update

Sorry we have not been posting very often, but now that we are teaching daily at Agiro Primary School, it is more difficult to find time to make the four mile trek to Mbita for internet access. But here we are, so here is a quick update!

Lessons have been going quite well at Agiro. Ravi and I were asked to teach classes independently, but we decided that, since neither of us has substantial classroom teaching experience, we would be better off teaming up. We teach English to class six, and Social Studies to class five. The children are very smart, but many of them are shy, and our accents are quite different from the accents of their other teachers, so we sometimes have trouble getting through and getting responses. But overall, it is going very well - at the end of our first lesson (Social Studies), two or three of the kids asked us earnestly to stay and continue teaching. Through RECESS. They're so great.

Sadly, this is our last week at the school, and on Rusinga. While we are sad to leave, we are so happy with what we have been able to do for FROWG and Agiro with the funds you have helped us to raise. The toilet is nearly complete, and today Ezekiel opened a bank account for FROWG, so that we may deposit the money we have set aside for food security. We have replaced many broken cups and plates for the feeding program, purchased a new cook pot, and this week we will replace the uniforms of about half the students in the feeding program. We provided five soccer balls for the children, and eight frisbee discs, to be shared between the feeding program and the sports program at the school. Agiro did not have a soccer ball this year, and Mr. George, the sports teacher, is very excited to train his students properly.

We appreciate the generosity you have all shown so much, as do the children, and Ezekiel and his family, in providing stability for the program for a further six months. This was a particularly trying winter for Ezekiel - the program was running low on funds, while food prices rose due to a delayed rainy season (it was due in November or December, and has still not arrived), and his fishing business, which he draws from when necessary for FROWG, has struggled due to drought. In short, this was quite the opportune time for these funds to arrive.

Next week Ravi and I will be traveling for a while, so this blog may not be updated for a few weeks, but please keep an eye on it - when we have time to reflect more deeply on our time in Rusinga, we will certainly have much to say.

Thank you,
Ian and Ravi

More Photos!

Ian playing with 3 year-old Javi

Ravi serving one of the students from the feeding program at lunchtime

Diggers hard at work on the new toilet 

Ravi and Durance admire the Rusingan sunset on the way back from town

The New Year

Hey everyone!

Sorry it has been so long since we have updated the blog. We have been quite busy on Rusinga, and also we both caught a nasty bug for most of last week. If you can think of a clever name (ie Delhi Belly, Montezuma's Revenge) for the African bug, let us know.

As I mentioned, we've been busy. We did some quick napkin math and found that, as of around two weeks ago, we had almost exactly enough money to set aside six months' worth of food funds, and to build the toilet for the kiddos. So, what the hell - we broke ground!

If you were curious as to why a toilet costs nearly $1500, while a kitchen is only $500, well, so were we. Rusinga is rural. Very rural. There is no plumbing, and only the clinic and a handful of businesses have electricity. So, everything must be built by hand. A toilet here is basically an outhouse, and it must be dug 20-30 feet into the ground - all by hand. And on top of that, more often than not, diggers hit rock at around 15 feet. Unfortunately, our diggers hit rock - SOLID rock - at around 12 feet. So, it is a lot of work compared to a stick-and-mud kitchen (I would love to write more about the native architecture techniques, but I am a bit strapped for time. Ask me when you see me!).

On the subject of traditional architecture, we have some other big news. Ezekiel moved to a new property last week, and with him the feeding program must also move. His new property is just a few hundred yards from his old home, so it is not a terrible inconvenience; in fact, nearly all of the materials from the old structures can be easily salvaged. However, the cement floor of the feeding program must be replaced, which will cost something like $800 USD. On the upside, the new property is MUCH larger than the old place, so the kids will have a lot of room to play! Their old football (read: soccer) field is maybe five by ten meters, the new place has probably half a field of open space.

Finally, we have a few small items to add to Ezekiel's wish list. Once all the kiddos came in for lunch on the first day of school (over break only about half showed up every day), we found that there were not enough bowls and cups to go around, so we went ahead and bought ten of each for the time being, for around $12 USD. We will probably buy many more, so that they can be replaced when broken in the future. Additionally, around ten students are in need of new school uniforms, as theirs are severely worn. These cost around $10 each, so if we have $100 to spare this will get taken care of. The school year starts with the calendar year here, so now is the time to buy new uniforms.

Ian and Ravi

Photos

Ezekiel's Wish List

In our last post, we mentioned that Ezekiel has a number of projects in mind that would improve the effectiveness of his feeding program. Last night we sat down with him to itemize and price these ideas, and we though we would share them with you:

Food: $300 per month
To recap, the food that Ezekiel provides (lunch each school day) costs around $300 per month for thirty children. The previous figure we listed of $250 was a rainy season cost; $300 is the cost during the dry season, so we will use this figure from now on, so as to err on the side of caution. On Christmas Eve we helped Ezekiel purchased two months' worth of food, and he has decided that it would be best to set aside a further four months' of funds to ensure food security for the next six months. This amounts to around $1800.

Outhouse: 110,000 KES, or around $1300 USD.
Ezekiel allows the children to use his family's toilet, which works for now, but it would obviously be preferable for the children to have their own toilet.

Kitchen: 40,000 KES, or around $500 USD.
The food is cooked under a open air, four post structure with a tin roof. Ezekiel would like to install a more permanent and sturdy kitchen structure with a chimney, to protect from the elements.

Tables and benches: 7,000 KES each, or around $100 USD.
The children currently sit on the floor to take their meals. Just six tables would be needed to allow the children to eat properly (five for seating and one for serving).

Water tower: 70,000 KES, or around $900 USD.
Water can be collected from the lake, and purified, or it can be collected from roof runoff via a system of gutters. Ezekiel has a small water container but a larger one would allow more water security, as a large amount of water could be collected during the rainy seasons.

Fence: 150,000 KES, or around $2,000 USD
Ezekiel would eventually like to install a fence around the orphan's dining area, to secure it and differentiate it from his family compound.

Farmhand: 6,000 KES per month, or around $100/month.
Ezekiel is often busy with his own business, so he would like to hire a permanent farmhand to ensure that the farm can be fully utilized. The farmhand would serve as a permanent cook as well.

Silo: $150 USD.
Ezekiel would like a grain silo for food storage, to protect from pests, so that he may purchase food in larger quantities. Currently he is only comfortable storing two months worth of food, in case of infestation or contamination. This would also allow him to stock up when food is cheap, and save money rather than being forced to buy food during the dry season, when it is far more expensive.

Secondary Education: 40,000 KES/year, or around $500/year.
It costs, on average, $500 per year to send one of these children to a secondary school, which is often away from home and thus requires boarding. Costs vary from school to school - if you are interested in sponsoring a child's secondary education, please notify us and we will provide you with more detailed information.

To date, we have raised around $3,400 for the children here. Some of this was spent on soccer balls and toys, so the remaining figure is something like $3,250, and as we mentioned, around $1,800 of that will be set aside for food security. This leaves around $1,450 to spend on Ezekiel's wish list. We will keep you all updated as we speak more with Ezekiel, and decide what project he believes is most important to the feeding program.

If you would like to sponsor one of the projects, please email us and we can provide you with more details. If you have any suggestions or queries, please email us right away - we may not reply for a few days, as we must go into Mbita to get internet access, but we will answer as soon as possible.

Ian and Ravi

Rusinga: First Impressions.

We are finally on Rusinga, after a very, very long journey from Cyprus - layovers in Cairo and Addis Ababa, the latter of which was an 18 hour stay; a few hours in Nairobi, scraping together some last minute items (soccer balls for the kiddos, cheap cell phones for ourselves, and cameras, as we both managed to break ours on the way to Africa); then a 12 hour country bus, a two hour matatu, and a half hour motorbike ride to Ezekiel's place.

Unfortunately we don't have any photos for you all yet, nor do we have time to write anything particularly substantial, but we just wanted to post something letting everyone know we have safely arrived, and to tell you about our first impressions.

Nairobi was a particularly stressful city, a condition that was amplified by our severe sleep deprivation. We hired a cab driver to guide us around for the day, which was not only affordable but a veritable lifesaver. He knew where to go to purchase the things we needed, showed us some local food joints, and even managed to squeeze in a trip to Nairobi National Park's animal orphanage.

Our journey to Rusinga was stressful as well, but Rusinga is a wonderfully peaceful place, and we have managed to settle in quite easily and quickly. We arrived at Ezekiel's home at around 8am yesterday, and he has provided more comfort than we could have imagined. Throughout the day we were fed generously, and through our conversations with Ezekiel we have learned much more about the current state of Friends of Rusinga. To recap, Ezekiel feeds lunch to around 30 orphans that attend a nearby school. He has also managed to find funding to send a handful of students to boarding schools for their secondary education. The orphans are fed in part with food grown on Ezekiel's property, but he must purchase other food to complement his yield. Now, especially, his costs are especially high, as it has been a particularly dry fall on Rusinga. He says they have not had substantial rainfall since August. Even so, it costs just 20,000 Kenyan Shillings to feed the children for a month. This is about $250 USD, or less than $10 per child.

Beyond this, Ezekiel has a number of projects that he hopes to complete in the near future. The children take their meals in a large structure on Ezekiel's property, but the structure has no seating, so the children must eat on the floor. Additionally, the structure's doors are in disrepair. The meals are cooked under a sheet of corrugated metal held up by four posts - this is fine for the dry season, but when it is rainy it is far preferable to have a closed structure with a chimney as a kitchen. Finally, the children currently use Ezekiel's family's toilet. Construction was begun recently on a toilet for the children exclusively, but it stopped because of a lack of funds. As the next few weeks pass, I am sure that Ezekiel and ourselves will discover other projects that could be completed, but Ezekiel says that these four are his priorities.

We have yet to go over the costs of these projects in detail, but it sounds like at least two of them could be funded with the money you have all donated to this cause. For instance, it took only $3000 to construct the structure in which the children take their meals, which is around 200 square feet, and another toilet down the road.

Our tentative plan is to set aside a good portion of the funds raised, perhaps half, for a few months' food security, and put whatever is left toward these construction projects. We will have more details of these plans as time passes, as well as photos, so keep an eye on the blog! And of course, we would love to be able to provide more aid for these children, so if you have any last minute Christmas gifts left, please consider donating to Friends of Rusinga!

Ian and Ravi