On Friday we visited the IMANI program and the Chaminade Training Centre, both are Marianist job training and empowerment programs focusing on hairdressing, knitting, sewing, dressmaking, carpentry, metal working, electrical work and cooking. These are amazing programs with about 200 student’s total.

Welcome to our Africa Blog and Photo Sharing website! We are very excited to be able to share our experience with you. Thank you to everyone who has been so encouraging through their support and prayers!

We will be trying to update this site at least once a week whilie we are in Kenya. We leave on June 18th and will return August 5th.

More about the School we will be working with:http://www.marianist.com/video/video1.htm

Gallery pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 > >>

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RayandJulie > Welcome our Africa Blog and Photo page!

RayandJulie > Jambo from Kenya!

We have not brought the camera out too much since we got here, but here are some of our first week’s experiences.

We arrived late Wednesday night, and rested for most of the day on Thursday, adjusted to the new time zone and got settled into the Marianist District House. We live in the Makadara Neighborhood in community with 12 aspirants (a one-year program for Marianist Vocations), 5 Novices, 1 Scholastic and 2 Marianist Brothers. The Marianists all live upstairs while we live in the guest quarters of the house. Pictures of the House and Marianist will come soon…

RayandJulie > On Friday we visited the IMANI program and the Chaminade Training Centre, both are Marianist job training and empowerment programs focusing on hairdressing, knitting, sewing, dressmaking, carpentry, metal working, electrical work and cooking. These are amazing programs with about 200 student’s total.

RayandJulie > On Saturday, we visited the boy’s rehabilitation center, where many of the Marianists aspirants work. This program is geared towards working with ‘street kids’ into a school environment, where they then can begin to learn and develop carpentry skills. The boys were a lot of fun and full of energy. At the end of our visit they preformed for us by singing, playing drums and dancing traditional African dances!

RayandJulie > This was also our first visit to the Mukuru Slum, where we will be spending most of our time at OLN, Our Lady of Nazareth Primary School. This was a very powerful experience for Julie and I. The Slum is difficult to explain, it is a somewhat of a shanty town of 200,000 residents, small shops, and some schools. It is a very poor and undeveloped area; to give you an idea of the conditions, we drove halfway to the Chaminade Training Centre and had to meet another brother with a 4x4 jeep to manoeuvre the streets of the slums…

RayandJulie > Kenya, East Africa; June-August 2007 photo

RayandJulie > All and all, our experience has been very blessed. On Monday, we begin our time at OLN (primary school). Please continue to keep us in your prayers as you are in ours…

RayandJulie > Teaching:

This week we started teaching at OLN.

Julie is teaching Kindergarten (Pre-Unit) and Ray is teaching 6th, 7th and 8th grade English, Social Studies, Science and Religion. The school, teachers and students are very delightful. We have about 35 students to each class and class lasts 30 minutes.

This is compared to the public schools with 90-95 students per class. This is what happens when the President mandates all children to attend school until age 12, gives no extra money to teachers or classrooms, and if you choose not to send your child to school- you are arrested. I guess that is one way to approach the illiteracy problem.

RayandJulie > Lunch with the Pre-Unit (Kindergarten).

On Friday we visited the IMANI program and the Chaminade Training Centre, both are Marianist job training and empowerment programs focusing on hairdressing, knitting, sewing, dressmaking, carpentry, metal working, electrical work and cooking. These are amazing programs with about 200 student’s total.