Its been forever since I blogged, but hey, who is complaining, here is something i found a LOOOONg time ago, its time it went up.
Hellooo World!!!
Greetings from beautiful and wonderful Kenya.
It has been a century since this old dragon found quilt and ink and remembered how to write. Well, thanks to a little get away trip into the city for a meeting. I found a quiet and wonderful hide away (a Baptist guest house- tucked away in a nice residential). Its practically a fully furnished and spacious apartment that costs half the price of a small room in the Methodist guest house. (I think am still dreaming, the deal is too good to be true).
Well I will not keep you guessing on where and what I have been doing?
Having decided to move into charity work from the corporate world I continue learning new things and frankly speaking am much HAPPIER  there I said it , no targets, no cut-throat competition or upset clients. Instead, I keep on wishing my days could be Longer and I had the ability to solve the many problems I come across everyday.
Oops I forgot to mention that I am working as a community educator and development consultant for a private foundation (www.kananamubichifoundation.org).

So in the last 6 months I have gone from an I.T. sales consultant (for Dell) to a jack of all trade. I have written a script for a Christmas play, been a peer counselor for the youth, collected food and clothes for the poor, raised money to build classrooms, put concrete floors in classrooms, learnt sign language, set up a community library (still working on it), put in new flower gardens, baby sat puppies, goats, calves, learnt how to cud (comb) wool, spin wool and make rugs. I think you get the picture now.

So in truth I don’t know who to blame for being a lazy blogger. I know you are sitting there saying, “boy it would be real fun to read on stuff like this as it is happening”
Well, let me give you my many excuses then you can decide if I get off the hook or not.
I work from 7am to 2am sometimes and it can be on any kind of project and most of my work is physical so I am exhausted by night fall. Unlike the US, it takes you 10 times more energy and patience to get stuff done. There is a lot of physical work and everything is slower. People do one task at a time, Multi-tasking is a foreign concept. I sometimes have to explain the same thing 3 times if not everyday. I have learnt that many don’t know how to work without supervision (which drives me crazy- whoever said I like babysitting people to do their work) Which drives me to another point, I have developed a theory that “Leaders, managers, teachers, parents (in short all in leadership positions) in Kenya don’t either comprehend the true meaning of empowerment or intentionally don’t delegate or educate fully so they can retain power”. Someone needs to test this theory and tell me.

Lessons learnt and things to think about
• What does it mean to be POOR? Did you know that even the poorest of the poor have something to give in return. When we were collecting food and clothes we walked though neighborhoods that looked really sorry in our eyes. I remember one home in particular, there was a grandmother with 6 grandkids who were between 2 and 7 yrs. The kids were wearing old and ragged clothes. One of the youth guys I was with quietly said, I think we better get out of here, these are the people who need our food and clothes, I encouraged them to carry out their mission and to our surprice, not only did the old lady know me and the work I was doing but went into her store and brought us about 4 lbs of beans. She asked us to walk down further and see if her sister was in and get her Christmas donation, well we did half hearted, we were feeling like we were pushing it. Well we did find the sister who asked us to wait a little and she went into her one bedroom house and pulled out the cutest looking pink blouse you have ever seen. It looked very new and we suspected she might have worn it just a couple of times. Last week, I picked a group of kids from a children’s home to go out on a home visit. This time we were going to take food and clothes to a family one of them had identified as being needy (As a mentor and educator- I preach active participation). We walked for almost an hour through so many hills and valleys that I lost count. Just when we thought it could not get any worse, we had another steep and dusty hill to go down and to top it all, go through a coffee plantation. As we continued sliding down this hill we came around a little shack in the middle of “no-where”. This was our host. There outside the little wooden structure was a man passed out by the door from a local brew (alcohol) while inside was a mother with two little girls visiting with her sister who had come to visit. We presented them with our gifts and were quickly blessed with an awesome prayer. On the way out, the lady asked us to wait for a minute and she returned with a bag full of mangoes. What a blessing.