December 31. Happy.

Churchill is one of the community elders. We have our first press conference today. Unfortunately, the M.P. and the deputy mayor don't show up. We have put a tent in front of our orphanage and sit there on the couches we have taken from the house to answer questions.

A pastor has come to pray for us, and we gathered inside our building where he spoke and explained the meaning of the colors on the roof. Red of course is the blood of Jesus, and white depicts the Enlightenment we are about to reach. We like this. The colors on the roof can be interpreted in so many ways. Actually, "Rainbow" is also the name of a coalition in Kenya, an attempt to overcome the differences between the two major political parties. And for us, rainbow means openness to everyone and all good ideas.

At night there is not much of a party. We sit down and watch a movie. After that, lights go out and cellphones die. We don't know the time and hence start the new decade in ignorance about the exact moment. We might have opened our bottle of sparking wine at around eleven, or one.

December 27-30. Those days before newyear.

At 7:30 we start working with five people to complete the wallframes and prepare for the concrete foundation of the brick wall. We need more cement and metal rods. Perhaps the "big guy" in the village can chip in with a little donation. Until then, I have to play the big guy myself.

We get ten wheelbarrows of Maram for the third layer of the walls. Philip gets them on his own.

Yeon starts painting the ironsheets in the colors of the rainbow. They are laid on the grass to dry.

There is a taboo in the village: if a son moves out, his house cannot be used for another family. Someone can live there temporarily, but eventually the house should be destructed. The materials can't even be reused within the same family. Sometimes they are sold to a different community. The younger generation fights those taboos, and I see them disappearing in a few decades. Until then, initiatives like ours have to buy all the materials in warehouses.

The bricking is underway. We have changed the shape to a rectangular office with two round corners. There will be an extra space for the cabinet where donations like a computer can be stored safely.

On December 30th we rush to Kisumu to buy some sparkling wine and flour for Mandazi (doughnuts, oliebollen!) tomorrow. The Luo traditional doughnuts taste just like our Dutch version, the things we feast on on New Year's eve. We also fetch some sparkling wine to assure we got what we are used to tomorrow.

We expect some high people tomorrow.

December 20. Lake Victoria!

We have a safe but exhausting Matatu journey to Kisumu, Kenya's third largest city, where we install ourselves for the first time in the cybercafé in the Megaplaza, which will become our main communication channel for the next weeks. We meet Philip, the future managing director of the orphanage, and like him at first sight.
It takes us a while to brief family and friends, so that we arrive in the village in total darkness, after a long bumpy tuktuk-ride. We are welcomed by Philip's parents and a group of children, some of them orphans, and we shake many small hands. Philip has prepared a room with a mosquito net (recall this is right next to Lake Victoria, with a real risk of malaria). To take away any worries: we are not infected, and our Kenyan friend Eric who does contract the germ will take a few days to recover to full strength. So we sleep right away, awaiting our first sunrise in the Kenyan countryside.

This photo is part of another project we do en passant. We collect portraits of people around the world with a grimace and local flowers in their ears. It would make an awesome poster. Humanity, unite. You can send your photo to kamielverwer at hotmail.com.

December 13-19. Chameleon.

Picking up Yeon from the airport early in the morning. Her flight is delayed so we wait and introduce ourselves to a British lady who is on her way to Tanzania. There she is - she has made it, and we are happy. I brief her about what Charity Travel has been doing in Kenya so far and she becomes a part of it. Let's sketch that first week together, when Charity Travel becomes a teamplay. There are lazy days back home in Kayole, enjoying good conversations over lengthy breakfasts, taking cold and warm showers, sitting next to the hens on the roof overlooking this part of the capital, doing the groceries in the small shops, buying kerosine for the stove, getting home early enough to avoid nasty murderous thugs, making peace with the landlady whose patience declines with her methylated breath, traveling downtown in a crowded Matatu to catch up with our communications, indulging in Kenyan specialties like Tilapia, beef stew, and beans, all served with the inevitable pile of ugali, the Kenyan staple. We visit Duncan's orphanage to do a tv-interview with KBC, which is never aired, probably thanks to our relunctance to pay them a fat bribe. The interview is conducted in an utterly unprofessional manner. A few journalists with an amateurish camera and an even more amateurish set of suggestive questions.

"How much did you donate today?"
-"Well, we do assess the necessity first, and then we..."
"What do you see here today? Poor malnourished kids right? Without proper clothing?"
The kids were standing right next to us in their beautiful uniforms, and they just had a rather copious meal. This is an orphanage that has to play a proud role as an example to all the other orphanages Vision Alive is going to work with in Kenya. Our Vision - to establish Community Excellence Centers, I will keep repeating it, to create useful linkages between communities so that their expertise in terms of income generating activities, in terms of how to deal with the community and convince them to cooperate with the center, in terms of writing proposals to CSR departments, and dealing with the hierarchical structures of Kenyan politics.
The KBC guys get from me a disappointing 1,000 Shillings that probably triggered them to dispose of the tape with me and Willis introducing Charity Travel and Vision Alive. I hope to find an echo of our passion in the heart of a journalist, because the movement of Charity Travel is something that is - unfortunately - more unique than you realize.

So, after that visit we go home with mixed feelings, and a couple of days later we are in Nakuru, where we visit yet another orphanage, and gather a large group of children in an ironsheet church. I buy them a meal (bread, bananas, juice, candies) and we present them the movie we use to tell them about their rights. It is a success again, and long-term cooperation with that orphanage is in the air. We have a great meal at Pauline's place - Thank you! that gives us all the energy we need tomorrow when we travel to Kisumu to do the real thing - building our own orphanage from the ground.