This morning I finally was able to sleep in & not wake up to an alarm!! My driver came at noon to pick me up, so I had a leisurely start to this rainy Monday. My hotel has an amazing array of choices for breakfast, which I so appreciated, since I had a protein bar & piece of Mama Hellen’s cake in the car as my dinner last night 🙂

My driver picked me up shortly after noon & we headed to the Giraffe Center, which is located in a small section of the Nairobi National Park. There were 2 giraffes available to be fed the pellets that tourists are given upon entering the center. It’s quite an experience to place these little pellets on that large tongue! The 1st giraffe I fed was the younger one, who was quite feisty!! I wasn’t providing the pellets fast enough & she began swinging her head. It’s good I can still move quickly or I would have been knocked over! After that experience, I gave the rest of my pellets to the older female who was much more easygoing 😊. The giraffes here are the Rothschild species, which are found a bit north & west of Nairobi. This species are in need of building up their numbers, so they bring a few to the giraffe center for breeding. There are 3 species of giraffes in Kenya. I saw the Masai species when I was in Masai Mara.

Following the Giraffe Center my driver took me to a couple of shops in hopes that I could find some fabric to bring back for a quilt. There were many great gifts, but unfortunately no small amounts of fabric.

We then proceeded to the Karen Blixen museum. That was an interesting tour of the home she lived in most of the time she was in Kenya. Her Swedish husband was a big game hunter & she managed their coffee plantation. They owned 6000 acres of land, which she sold when she returned to Denmark in 1931. Her house was sold to a British colonel in 1931 & his family sold it to the Danish government in 1959. The Danes gifted the house & grounds to the Kenyan government in 1963 after their independence. It was opened as a museum in 1985 to mark the 100th anniversary of Karen’s birth.

The highlight of my day was my visit to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, which is in a section of the Nairobi National Park. It was so much fun to see these young elephants “up close & personal”!! We were able to see the elephants that are younger than 4 yrs, since they are the only ones that are brought back into pens for the night. The older elephants that are still at the orphanage stay out in the bush in the park until they are ready to be moved into the wild at another national park in Kenya. The orphanage also cares for a young black rhino and a 3 yr old giraffe that will be returned to the wild soon.

Following my time with the elephants and my dinner, I headed to the airport for my midnight flight to Paris and then on to Chicago. I’m so sad to leave Kenya after my amazing time in this country. I am hopeful to return again someday soon!!

Today was bittersweet. We had a very fun & emotional celebration in worship this morning as we celebrated God’s presence with us this week & recognized all of the individual participants in our training as they received their certificates. Then right after a quick lunch with the congregation, we had to say good-bye to these amazing new friends!

We headed out for Nairobi at noon and drove straight through with only 2 bathroom stops! The 250 mile trip took 8.5 hours to get into Nairobi through multiple pockets of rain all day. Unfortunately as we hit the outer suburbs of Nairobi, the rain came down harder & Moses, our driver, had to drive through flooded streets to drop us at our various hotels. I was the last drop off at 9:30, and finally Moses got to head for his home 😊. What a long day!!

This past 9 days have been such a wonderful experience with the folks in Moheto! I continue to feel blessed by their kindness, their patience with us and their over the top hospitality! As a teacher, I’m thrilled by all of the new connections they made with each other & in relation to their own businesses!! It was so exciting to see each of them using the tools we introduced to look critically at their businesses & brainstorm about changes they want to do to move their business to the next step. I loved the “ah-ha’s” 😊

We also got to experience the pride each one has in their businesses as they showed us their sites & told us about their businesses. That was such a special time for me to hear each one tell the story of how he/she engages with their particular business. I learned so much about chicken farming, salon work, bodabodas, dukas, the art of selling vegetables in this area, the selling of water to families with no wells, and the vast variety of vegetables & fruits one can grow in this year round warm climate!! Such a gift!!

Here are some images from our morning together!!

I’m publishing this on Monday morning after falling asleep part way through writing this last night – so tired!! I begin my journey back to Chicago at midnight tonight – 17+hours in the air & 6 hours in the Paris airport! Today I will tour sites in Nairobi with a driver before heading to the airport tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to publish one more post at the airport tonight before I leave this amazing country😊

This morning, as I was eating breakfast with Steve in the dining room, a huge, vibrant rainbow appeared across the sky. Immediately we left our table to head outside to take photos, but also to marvel at it’s brilliance!! I was struck by the coincidence that this happened on the morning of our last full day with our friends in Moheto. Rainbows serve to remind me of God’s presence with me always and on this trip I have truly felt that God was guiding the work we were sent here to do!

On the agenda today was to continue working with folks on how to record their income & expenses each month. Because they have been functionally doing this with no written process to assess their financial status at the end of the month, it was a hard concept to teach. It warmed my heart, though, this morning to see people who understood the concept working with others in the group until finally everyone pretty much understood a process for recording their information…and understood why it was important!!

Our session was delayed in starting today, because heavy rains deterred folks from leaving their homes to walk to the church. Pastor Ken took this opportunity to show me the backpacks they distribute to teen-aged girls containing supplies for their monthly periods. In Africa, if girls do not have a way to manage their monthly menstrual cycle, they can not attend school. Days for Girls International, is the program that Moheto First UMC is working with. This provides for training of both girls & boys in the changes that occur in puberty, as well as providing backpacks with supplies to the girls. To date, the team of trainers at Moheto First UMC has distributed 2500 backpacks to girls in neighboring schools. They have a goal to begin training & distribution in 6 new schools in the next 6 months!! They purchase the backpacks with the supplies in them from a distributor in Kisumu, Kenya. I was so impressed at the outreach & positive response this program has had to date!!

One joy of today was the celebratory cake that Mama Hellen made for all of us. She grows a very healthy variety of sweet potato, & she baked a delicious sweet potato cake to share with all of us!! It was delicious!! …And it was baked over the wood fire using a pot partially filled with sand, then a pot containing water was placed in the pot with the sand, then an empty pan was placed in the pan with water and finally the covered pan with the cake batter was placed in the empty pan to bake. The layers of sand & water help to keep an even temperature while the cake bakes. I was fascinated by the process!!

We spent our afternoon back in groups brainstorming new ideas that folks might try in order to take their businesses to the next level. I was pleased to see so many in the groups offering new ideas to each other. It wasn’t just us Americans giving suggestions. I’m looking forward to following up in the months to come to see what different individuals choose to do to improve their business 😊

Here are a few photos to end the day:

The internet went down at the hotel last night, so I couldn’t publish this post until this morning (Sunday). The daily rain we’ve been having has played havoc with electricity & internet in this city & thus in our hotel 😊

Tomorrow will be our last teaching day with the folks from Moheto. I know the students are tired & we are tired, but still it is bittersweet to have the end in sight. It has been a fabulous week in this corner of Kenya and our students couldn’t have been more eager to learn!!

Each morning that we have been teaching, we have opened our session with a word of the day, which has been one of the fruits of the Spirit as listed in Galations 5:22. It is a word to guide us as we move into the day. We then sing a song and pray a prayer to complete our opening.

Today our teaching topics included marketing, customer satisfaction and a review of budgeting as well as profit & loss recording in business.

Following our afternoon tea today we visited a number of businesses. We wanted to finish all of the visits before our last day tomorrow.

We have been staying at the Allaxis Hotel in Migori all week. They have provided us with very comfortable accommodations all week, for which we are thankful! Since we have been here so many days, we have grown fond of the staff who have been assisting us 😊

Tomorrow will be a full day as we wrap up our teaching and prepare to leave for Nairobi on Sunday morning!

Today, we were back teaching in Moheto after spending yesterday visiting Homa Bay.

On Tuesday at the end of the day, we introduced some of the financial record keeping one should do in one’s business. These folks we are working with have been functionally working with their expenses and profits in their businesses, but not using any formal record keeping system. It has taken both Tuesday and today to help them understand conceptually and functionally how to keep financial records in their businesses. It was hard work together, but in the end, they got it!! Many expressed gratitude this afternoon for this important tool for their business practice.

Throughout the week we have been well fed for morning & afternoon tea and lunch. The food has been deliciously prepared by our cook, Samwel and his assistants, William & Angeline. These folks are cooking food for 25 people over a wood fire, since this part of Moheto does not yet have access to electricity. This problem of no access to electricity is not uncommon in this western corner of Kenya. Today I took time to visit their “kitchen” to see their cooking process 😊. I’m so impressed with all that this cooking team does for us!!

After our class and afternoon tea was finished, we visited 2 more of our class members’ businesses. Julian & Boke are husband and wife. He runs a bodaboda business, taking people where they want to go on his motorbike (…a motorbike taxi service). Boke has a duka (very small retail establishment) and sells fresh vegetables & dried fish. They were so excited to have us visit them!!

In our session this morning we heard 2 stories from a couple of women that really warmed our teacher hearts! The first woman, who farms a small farm, told of how just recently she bought a calf with some money she was able to save from her vegetable sales. It was a great example to the group of the importance of growing your profits in order to expand your business in new ways. After our discussion on Tuesday about competitors, another woman shared that yesterday she decided to wash her vegetables before taking them to the market & as a result she was able to sell all that she had brought to market! She witnessed customers preferring her clean vegetables over others at the market.

It’s been so great for our team to see how folks in the class are trying to apply various elements of what we’ve been teaching in their businesses! I can’t wait to see what the future holds for these individuals😊

Today we set out early to head to Homa Bay with Pastor David, Elnora, Pastor Carol, Alice & Alphoncine. Steve, David & I had wanted to view Lake Victoria since we were so close to it. Today’s trip offered us all the opportunity to see the lake & take some time mid-way through our training to assess where we were & determine how to use the remaining 3 training days. It was a fun group to take a road trip with!

Our journey was quite the driving adventure for our driver… and us!! It’s hard to describe how different the roads are here, compared to the US. We left the hotel in Migori at 8:30 & made one stop of about 30 minutes at Carol’s shop along the way. It took us about 2.5 hours to travel the 37 miles to Homa Bay!! Between the construction, speed bumps & traffic stops at the county lines, it was a long journey!! After Homa Bay, we crossed the peninsula to Sori on one of the worst paved roads I have ever seen. Even our driver said it was the worst he had driven on. That took 1.5 hours to go 35 miles. I have never seen so many potholes on one stretch of road before. In places we had to drive off the road & alongside of it, because it was so hard to navigate. That lasted for about 19 miles, then thankfully the last 16 miles were on a beautifully smooth road! At the end of the day we did like the Wise Men and went home by another way :-). We came home on a dirt road for much of the way before we got pavement, but it was SO much better than the potholes & construction on the other roads! It took less than 2 hours to get back to Moheto & after dropping everyone off, another 30 minutes to get to our hotel in Migori.

We began our morning by stopping at Pastor Carol’s shop just outside of Migori. She is the youth pastor at Moheto First UMC & she has an interior design & fabric shop. With my love of fabrics & sewing, I was fascinated by all she sold in the store as well as hearing about what she sews to sell! She has electricity, so she can use electric sewing machines. She lives in the back of the shop with her child.

Homa Bay is a city of 900,000 people on one of the large bays in Lake Victoria. That bay has very good fishing. The tilapia that is served here at the hotel comes from there. Here are some of the scenes I saw at Homa Bay and Lake Victoria:

Once we got to Sori, we stopped at a hotel that had another beautiful view of a different bay on Lake Victoria. We gathered on the 3rd floor of the hotel to have our meeting and eat lunch. We placed our order for lunch as we arrived & proceeded to discuss our training. Three hours later our food finally arrived!! It turned out that they had to go to the market to get the food we ordered & then cook it! We all agreed that they needed some help with their business plan, because it certainly was not serving the customers well!! That being said, though, the food did taste good 🙂

As we were driving home we were blessed with the retelling of the stories of the day and laughter and an amazing sunset to end the day!!

We woke up this morning to the realization that the water in the hotel was not working! The hotel staff reported that there was a fluctuation in the power grid in Migori overnight, which caused one of the circuits that powered their pump to crash. Thankfully they figured out a way around it after about 90 min., so we had water before we had to leave for the day 😊

As a result of the water issue, we were an hour late in starting our lessons today. That caused a change in what we would cover, which led to a bit of confusion for the team as we began. Our class spent the morning working in groups to complete charts identifying elements about their competition & the effects those elements have on their customers. It was such a joy to experience the way they worked together & came up with many great ideas.

Everyday, we have tea twice a day – at 10:00 & 3:00. Tea in the morning is accompanied by great baked goods and/or boiled eggs and/or sandwiches. There has been a cook hired to cook for tea & to cook our lunch. A college student, William, is assisting in making the food. All of our food in Moheto has been so delicious! I’ve really appreciated the extent to which they have gifted me with vegetarian choices! Some of the food that we are eating has been purchased from some of the people we are training this week. We have several people in the class who are either farmers or vegetable sellers.

After lunch individuals reported on what their groups wrote on their charts. It was great to see the confidence each speaker had when they were in front of the group.

Again today the group played a game for a few minutes after lunch. This one was a cat & rat game that involved some chasing. I love being present to their laughter!! It set the stage for a productive afternoon talking about profit & loss, and assets & liabilities.

We ended the day as we have on previous days with a gratitude for the day. For me that is a special time in which each person stands to speak their gratitude. From what these folks say, they are each so grateful for being introduced to this material. Each day they name specific elements from the training that day that have meant the most to them.

Tomorrow morning we will travel to Homa Bay to see Lake Victoria. We will spend some time reflecting on our sessions so far and review the business assessments & SWOT analysis that everyone turned in yesterday, as well as spending time enjoying the lake. We want to be sure that we use the remaining time we have in Moheto to the best advantage for the group. Pastor Ken & 2 people from our class will join us. I’m looking forward to spending time with the team and seeing another new part of Kenya!!

Today was one of the longest days we’ve had so far. We left the hotel shortly after 8:00am and returned about 7:15! It was a very full day with lots of reasons to be grateful!

Our group added 2 students today who weren’t able to join us on Saturday, so our class is now 24 in number! We spent the beginning of the day going over the business assessments they each completed about their individual businesses over the weekend. This was the first time many of them have had to articulate specifics of their businesses and it was difficult for them to initially understand the concepts through the translators. Once those elements were clarified satisfactorily, they really got excited about what they were discovering about the current status of their businesses! It was so much fun to see their interest in working on their own forms and helping each other with the forms. We have a couple of students who do not have writing skills & others in the class were wonderfully supportive in helping them to complete the forms!

One of the highlights today for me was hearing each person’s gratitude for the day! Everyone ended up mentioning specific “ah-ha’s” and learnings from their work today that they feel will positively impact their businesses!

At about 5:00 we headed out with Pastor Ken & 2 women from the class to visit the businesses of 6 people in the class. First we arrived at the shops of Eustine & her husband. They own the land & they have built the mud building which houses their barber shop, a small caffe & a small general store!

Next we drove to Dorice’s home. She sells new & used shoes from her home. Dorice travels via the night bus (12 hour ride) to Nairobi to buy shoes for her business and then returns to Moheto that next day. Traveling this way, she is able to avoid hotel charges in Nairobi. She usually purchases 100 pair of shoes at a time on these trips to Nairobi, bringing them home in a large cloth sack on the bus.

Finally, we went to 2 farms belonging to our students. These folks farm the land & sell the vegetables that they grow.

There was such positive energy in our group today, which was exciting! I look forward to what tomorrow will bring!

We started this morning in Moheto being treated to tea at Pastor Ken’s house, as we went over the plan for Steve’s sermon in the worship service and for David’s and my participation in the service of the consecration of the well. Such amazing hospitality in the midst of a very busy morning for Pastor Ken’s family!

The worship service at the church started with music sometime after 9:00am. When we arrived at 9:30, the church was about 1/3 full, mostly with children. I really enjoyed seeing so many children in the service! The morning was filled with much singing by various choirs of different aged children & young adults. And always movement is involved with the singing – by the performers as well as the listeners!

After all of the singing, towards the end of the service, Steve from our team gave the sermon. Pastor Ken translated what Steve said into the local language, so that everyone could understand. Just before the sermon, we were introduced to the congregation and we were able to bring greetings from First Church to the congregation in Moheto 😊

At the end of the service each week, everyone exits the church in such a way that they shake everyone’s hand as they walk around to make a large circle outside on the church grounds. It was amazing to see such a grand circle with everyone joined together as the service came to a close!

Immediately after the worship service, we all gathered around the water faucets and engaged in a short liturgy to consecrate their new well. Pastor Ken, David & I led this service of blessing. I was so thankful to be able to be present with the Moheto UMC congregation as we blessed this important water source for their community!

After lunch we met with the Moheto church’s SACCO group. This is a group of 21 men and women from the church congregation who have come together to form a table banking group in order to provide small loans to individuals in the group for their businesses. They have been together since November 2018 & they meet every 2 weeks. It was very interesting to learn more about the processes for borrowing & repaying the loans and how they increase the pot of money they have to work with. The average loans they make are 3000-8000ksh each (about $30-80 each) and right now, the average length of the loan is 6 weeks. Ten percent interest is charged on each loan. They shared with us their challenges & their goals for the future of the group. I was so excited to hear from group members how being a part of this group has positively impacted their individual businesses! These micro loans are so important to this community!!

Tomorrow morning we reconvene for our next training session. I am so enjoying getting to know the people of this community!!

This morning we finally got to Moheto!! It was about a 20 minute drive from Migori, where our hotel is, to the village of Moheto. This was our first day of training with the 21 business owners. We will continue again next week Monday through Friday – 6 days total for training, visiting their businesses and doing individual coaching.

We received such a warm welcome from the folks at the Moheto church!! Our day began with the folks from Moheto singing a very engaging African song. Then Pastor Ken gave a devotion from Luke 5:1-11 and explained the origin of this project’s name, “Moheto Go Fish”. During each of the training days, everything that is shared verbally is translated into the local language when we speak, and then also translated into English when folks from Moheto speak. There are 4 people in the Moheto group that are fluent in English, and were able to help to translate. They were kept very busy with all of the sharing that took place, which we were excited about. 😊

In the training today, after introductions, we talked about some perceptions around gender issues in small businesses. It was very enlightening to hear the different perspectives from the women & men in the group.

Pastor Ken and his congregation are very involved in bringing improved services to the community. He walked me around today to show me all that they have on this property adjoining the church. This church has been building a health clinic since 2003. It just opened on Dec 26, 2019. They have hired 1 nurse & 2 nurses aids to staff the clinic & they have seen 21 patients since they have opened their doors. The generator for the well provides electricity for lights in the clinic at night.

The other big project this congregation has been involved in was the drilling of a well for the community. This project was facilitated by a generous donation from a family in my church in Evanston. The well was dug 745 meters deep & the water has tested safe to drink! The well was completed on Dec 5, 2019 and will be dedicated tomorrow after worship. This water is available to any resident of this community for a fee of 2ksh (less than $.01) per 20 liters. This fee helps to offset the cost of fuel for the generator that runs the pump. There is a water committee in the congregation that oversees the operation of the well.

We ended our day together by giving the business owners a business assessment to complete by Monday. This information will help us individualize the upcoming classes to best meet their needs. As we were finishing, I noticed 2 small boys who were standing in the doorway watching & listening to us. When I went outside to talk to the boys, they ran over to where many children were gathered under a tree. I couldn’t help but take a photo of them 🙂

One of the highlights of the day was visiting 3 businesses. We will eventually be visiting all of them before leaving. We’re hoping to get to 3-4 businesses each of our teaching days. Today we visited a beauty salon owned by sisters and 2 businesses that sell vegetables & a variety of packaged food products.

This was a really fun and productive first day!! We are all looking forward to building deeper connections with each other as this next week progresses!!