NOV 1, 2011 NAIROBI, KENYA

Well it's now Tuesday morning and Terry and I will be heading off to the Jomo Kenyatta International airport very shortly to take our short 1 1/2 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda where we'll be spending the next 10 days.  This will be our first visit to Uganda so we are looking forward to it very much, especially the day we will spend trekking to look for the gorillas!

We arrived on Saturday evening Oct 29 after two long flights from Vancouver to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Nairobi, and have spent two productive days in Nairobi.  The highlight for me always, and this time was no exception, was a visit to see the baby elephants at the David Sheldrick Foundation which rescues, raises and then returns the elephants to the wild, elephants orphaned by: poaching, human wildlife conflict, and injuries sustained from falling in boreholes.  It is such a pleasure to see them being fed with huge milk bottles and playing with each other.  They have to be fed every 3 hours.  Just the day before we visited, yet another baby elephant was rescued from northern Kenya near the Somalia border.

The security everywhere in Nairobi has been beefed up due to the current conflict in Somalia with Al Shabaab and Kenya's actions to make Kenya safe.  Each time we enter the Norfolk hotel there are two levels of security to enter, and the Stanley hotel downtown is the same.  There is also a much higher visible presence of police and guards in downtown, many carrying automatic rifles.  Nowhere have we seen any problems or disturbances during our two days here.

We also met with Duncan Kamau, our local Project Manager for the last 3 years for the Ndandini & Kyaithani Water project here in Kenya.  We now have a producing well (19,000+ litres per hour of clean water), a greenhouse at Ndandini primary School, a greenhouse for a Community garden, 9 student scholarships this year for the Kyaithani High School, and solar power, lights, computer, digital camera, DVD player and TV at both of those schools.  In progress now is the plan for a tractor and trailer with water tanks that will deliver water to all 6 schools in the Kyaithani cluster.  The tractor has already been purchased, next is the trailer and tanks.  This has all been made possible by 28 Rotary Clubs and many private donors.  We spent a hot, dusty, dirty afternoon in Nairobi Industrial Area visiting the manufacturer of the trailer that the water tanks will be carried on, and the RotoTanks that will hold the water. On Sunday evening we presented Duncan with a Paul Harris Fellow Award from the Sunshine Coast Sechelt Rotary Club - a very prestigious Award within the International Rotary World.