Through building these dams, we will provide not only water, but a completely different way of life for some of these people. We have interviewed and asked many people here, how accessible water would affect their lives. Most people say things like “ if I had water, I would make bricks and build a house of bricks instead of mud”. Wow. How can you not hear that and be affected. Even as I write this now, I have to hold back tears.
Jason will bring Western Engineering to this country. Which is huge! Many people try to build dams and dig wells, but if not done properly, will make the situation worse. Thanks Jason!
Benson took us (Shawn, Jason,Kye) to our hotel for the night. Traveling to the hotel was surreal to say the least! PEOPLE EVERYWHERE! I cant even explain what it looks like, so I will add pictures later. As a matter of fact, I will have to add a lot of pictures and video when the trip is over. The internet is very slow here, so adding even one photo to the blog takes about 20 minutes, and we dont have a lot of down time.
So this is our hotel, the Serena Nairobi. What a nice place. I have stayed in some seriously nice hotels in America, and this was just about as nice as the best ones in America. They left us house slippers, bottled water(very important),etc.
After settling in to our rooms, we cleaned up and headed downstairs for our first dinner and meeting with Ron and the film crew. What a stellar bunch of guys! They have made this trip so fun! Ill expound later on each one of them and their personalities and contributions.
The next morning we jumped in our custom safari land cruiser(9 seater!)
We headed down the highway towards an area called Kibweze(Keebwayzee). Kibweze is where we will be doing not only the first, but most of the dam work. On the way down the highway I soon realized that there is not much of a building code or even a time frame on construction here! As we were driving the highway would just end and it would be just a patch of dirt road for like 100 yards, and then the highway would start back up again! Also, in the middle of no where, on the highway, they will just add a huge speed bump here and there! It was so weird! Needless to say, the sights on the way to Kibweze were a shock. I cant even explain what I was seeing, so Ill just post some travel pics.
The first stop along the way was a place called “The Hunters Lodge” This is a place were Benson spent some time growing up. He Dad worked here. The Hunters Lodge is a social gathering joint and eatery built next to a small dam that we are trying to emulate.
We had lunch here and I ordered a club sandwich with fry’s. Wow, it was not normal! The club sandwich was turkey and egg, in a sandwich maker pressed bread envelope! The fries were good, however the ketchup was like red sugar water! Not good! And not ketchup! While we were eating(it took a long time for the food to be served) Benson kept getting phone calls from someone and he kept telling them “we are almost there!”. So we jumped back on the hit and miss freeway, and headed to a small town in the Kibweze territory where we made a courtesy call to the local DC(District Commissioner) and the area MP(Member of Parliament). When we arrived at the government offices there, we were greeted like Kings! We had a small meeting with a local board of people if you will. The DC spoke and so did the MP(Professor Kiloke). Then they asked us to tell them who we were and what our role was in this project. It was strange and surreal, cuz at this time Im still in kind of a daze! We took some photos and headed out to the first school were were were going to deliver the first complete Ton of food. This is where it starts to get deep! We got back in the Land Cruiser with our driver and we were escorted by local military and police!(This was provided for basically the rest of the trip) What! It was crazy! These guys were serious too!
We pulled up on the scene of the first school and.....WOW. The whole entire village was there ready to great us and the MP. Ill see if this video will upload but the pics will help. They were chanting and yelling and making weird noises of praise. Awe inspiring! We all followed the MP over to a row of the villages best chairs, set out for us to sit on, as if we were royalty. After sitting down, Professor(MP) was handed a microphone attached to a truck that came with us, which had large P.A. speakers on it.
He then proceeded to talk to them and they all chanted back in unison. I couldn't believe my eyes. Then they danced for us and sang praises, what a cool experience!
That concluded the ceremonial part and then we broke out a bunch of 50 pound bags of dried corn and distributed it to all of the people. Cool experience, on I will never forget! It was difficult to keep my emotions in. Trying not to cry was a constant task.
We repeated this same event at 4 more schools/communities through out the rest of the day. The experience was so unexplainable. I wish you all could have been there to feel the emotions and hear the sounds.
On the last school stop, the local counsel that had traveled with us and our small entourage, asked all of us as a crew(even the film crew) to come up one by one. They proceeded to present us with gifts that they had all hand made for us. I have never felt such gratitude from a stranger. You could see in their eyes how thankful they were. Next they provided all of the married men with gifts for our wives. They told us how honored and thankful they were that our wives sent us here to help them. They understood the sacrifice our families at home have made to have us here.
What an extraordinary moment. I felt so unworthy. Granted our wifes and kids are the ones making the real sacrifice here, and they deserve all of the praise they can get. But on a personal level I dont feel like Ive done anything heroic. Ive never pulled anyone from a burning building, Ive never performed CPR, and Ive never thwarted a terrorist. And yet these humble people act as if we had. So far all we have really done is delivered some food. Now in retrospect, some of these people have not eaten for days. There have even been a few people who have died while we were here because we were unable to get them food and water soon enough. Ill be forever changed knowing that.
At a few of the schools I was able to give out some soccer balls I brought over from the states. That was super cool to see! It is proper to present the ball to the “Head Boy” or team captain basically. Next time I plan on bringing many more!
After all of the visits, our police and political escorts took us to our hotel. The problem was, our hotel was in the middle of a National Park. It just so happened that if you dont make it through the gates before 6pm. They will not let you in due the danger of the lions feeding time! So of course we got there 39 minutes after we were supposed to. Thankfully we still had the Professor with us. He simply went up to the gate, and “Handled It” for us. We headed down the dirt road dodging lions(not really), and a few miles later, we arrived at this beautiful African Safari Resort! As we exited the vehicle they promptly grabbed our bags and took them to our rooms and directed us to the grand entrance where we were met with some hotel crew members who politely said “Jambo” and handed us hot damp towels that smelled of eucalyptus. We cleaned up with the towels and next we were given a fresh mango juice! Wow! Talk about treatment! Hello! Did I mention Im not a hero! We were treated like kings. We made our way back to the restaurant area where we come upon the view of a watering hole where a heard of elephants are drinking an bathing! Is this real!? I was blown away! It was to dark to get pictures but Ill post one from the next morning. We then had a gourmet meal and returned to our rooms. Shawn and I crashed out quick, completely drained for the day.
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