Completed Goals

Following are Completed Goals for My Savior Lives Orphanage in Ogembo Kenya, Ritare Village.

Cancelled on April 5, 2017  News of this Goal had spread through the orphanage and some of the kids were interested.  Maybe later as we observed a complete lack of bicycles in the Ritare Village and all the way to town and all around Kenya.  The hills, the matope mud, the rains, all reasons bicycles just don’t work well for transport as we thought.  Our visit there made it plain that other forms of transportation were better.  Motorbike was the most seen item of transport in the village toward the city.

Pastor Douglas Makori needs a bicycle.  Currently he walks everywhere he goes.  Sometimes of course he gets $2 for a boda taxi, especially on Thursday when getting food for all 24 people living at the orphanage.  A bicycle made in India called a Neelam is perfect for this job.  These are readily available for purchase in Kenya.  It comes with a rear rack to haul food, and a stand to help it stay erect when not in use.  It will need to be stored inside the house to keep it safe.  Cost for this bicycle is $135.00.  For comparison, a 110cc motorcycle costs about $1200.  Douglas has never ridden a bicycle nor driven a motorcycle.

UPDATE, Douglas made it to Kisii via motorbike and bus, fee was $5, then Samsung Power Bank for recharging his phone cost $33.  Applause.  Thanks to Team MSLO members for helping with this need.  It will save Douglas many hours and miles of walking and waiting as below.  I will post photo of the unit below.  It also has a torch, we call flashlight.   Update 2 Well we went to Kenya to visit and all of us had the same idea, leave our powerbanks with Douglas and Damaris.  I had one that was 1800 mAh, enough to bet my iphone  to 75% then I gave him also a new pink 4,000 mAh which has cool light indicating 25% increments of charge.  Then David left his wife’s 10,000 mAh unit as well.  So they can now leave powerbanks to be charged instead of expensive phones unattended.

Jua Power Bank, 12,000 mAh is a power cell for recharging phones.  Douglas walks 50 minutes (from the orphanage and back) to get his phone charged.  His Tecno smartphone has a 5,000 mAh battery so this should charge it twice.  So by having this it will save an hour and 2/3 each week, just in walking time.  Douglas and others, wait for their phones to be charged and he tells me it takes 5 hours to charge it.  So by having this $20 power bank, it will save another ten hours weekly waiting at Tendere phone charging kiosk.  The cost to charge a phone is only about 20 cents.  So the walking time 1.66 hours weekly, plus the charging time 10 hours weekly,  is almost twelve hours Douglas will save having just a small powerbank like this.  Cost for the power bank is $20.00.

4.  Update, we were able to get every child a pair of rubber boots.  It is the rainy season and matope is bad.  MUD.  I got one inch taller just crossing the compound one evening.  We were always scraping mud off our shoes on anything that would hold still.  For now we are good on footwear, but later we my need to upgrade to dress shoes that will go with needed school uniforms.  Yeah I know, but it is their tradition, to look not only nice but dressy in a ten dollar uniform and  12 dollar shoes.  God’s blessings to all who assist these orphans, amen.  We need shoes, only $12 a pair and socks are $1 a pair.  (current need is 15 pair)

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Update, as of April 1, 2017 Douglas is in possession of 20 Soccer Balls, Wilson NCAA Size 5 Official balls, from Walmart in my home town.  They fit nicely in a large suitcase along with a bunch of other stuff.  The worn suitcase was donated so a family of Pygmies could live in it as well.  (yes I’m Joking)  It was a big suitcase, but would require a hip roof constructed of sheet iron to really be functional as a home.  Yes I am Still Joking, April Fools to you.  April 1, 2017.  We did get the soccer balls in with 50% fee of Customs Agent.  But I bought them on sale for $60 bucks, fee was $30 bucks.  90 dollars will buy 4.5 balls for an orphan.  We did well.  Soccer Ball not holding air.  They really use these balls.  Other than walking to get water it is their form of exercise and play.  We used to buy these two at a time for $13, now the price has edged upwards to $20.  We have even bought fake balls, as the shortage hit Kenya about a year ago Christmas.  We have even seen one large church group clean out a Walmart Super Center in Arkansas, buying every soccer ball, an overflowing basket full, headed to Kenya, not our group.  Currently we could use one ball, cost is $20.

Questions:  Why don’t these people have jobs to buy their own food.  Unemployment is rampant in Kenya, Africa too, people are unemployed and under-employed.  There is grinding poverty in Kenya.  Then, there are orphans who have nothing.  MSLO is a place where Christian folk (Douglas and Damaris) and other members of the family, reach out to the orphans found so commonly among the poor and dying of Kenya.  Malaria kills, but it costs three dollars to treat, ten dollars to own a mosquito net.

Goal 6.  A wheelbarrow.  Update we bought one while on our Spring Trip to Ogembo 2017.  Time for more goals.

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Goal 10.  Chicken related ideas.  We built a pen and coop on Orphanage Property Spring of 2017.  We considered mature birds but now also are considering just raising our laying hens from the four hens we own and borrowing the landlords rooster alternating three days each pen of chickens.

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