Making Way for Progress
How time fly’s, its been 15 years since we arrived in Kenya and now we are beginning to tear down some of our old wooden buildings that May and I and Ben and Danielle built when we first started taking in children.
The picture here shows the old dining room that eventually became a classroom coming down to make way for the much needed library for our EAMO Academy.
One of our ex Gecko’s safari campers who then came back some time later to volunteer is raising funds for us to build this Library. Thank you Ann sooo much for the hard work you are putting in to raising these funds for this needful project.
You can contact Ann at – ann.treloar@gmail.com
New Classroom:
The new Nursery Classroom is finally opened, yeah!
Thanks to donors, we are now using the 1st of two new classrooms. The children have been attending school in one of our very old original EAMO buildings like the one pictured above. There is still painting of fancy things on the the walls to come along with new cupboards.
Just as a matter of fact in case you did not know, all the buildings and furniture are made on site on the EAMO campus by our very own stone mason’s and carpenters called “Fundi’s”.
The Nursery:
Just had to put this picture in of the little one’s in the nursery. They are all little bundles of joy. But don’t forget, they were not always this happy. Mostly when they come they are struggling with some health issue or many health issues.
Doctors Day:
EAMO has been blessed by a regular visits from a team of Doctors from Canada. This is their 3rd visit and the 3rd time many kids line up for a check up. Most families will have 2-4 kids to care for, try looking after 222 kids with health issues. But we must say, the kids lined up are usually the new one’s that come that are suffering from malnutrition. EAMO kids are generally healthy. Due to the fact that they are mostly vegetarian of course 🙂
New Kids:
Since the last newsletter we have taken in close to 10 children.
Most of the time upon admission the details are little as they come from the Children’s Court through the District Children’s Office.
Following is a few cases:
Two brothers, Jeremiah, we were not given the name of the other boy, the sisters name was Sara. Jeremiah and Sara were malnourished, but the “no name” boy was seriously malnourished with a terrible case of measles.
We admitted “no name” to the hospital 3 days after he arrived. After another two days we requested the hospital to release him so as we could take him to another hospital as he was not getting better. They told us he would die if we took him out of there, well, that night the boy died in that hospital!!!
Two boys, Steven and Joel not from the same family, were brought to us by the Children’s Dept. Both boys were malnourished and covered with boils.
Ernst and Noah were not able to be cared for by their mother which left them severally malnourished. Noah, the two year old was so sick and weak we had to put him back on baby formula. Both boys are doing better now.
Again from the Children’s Dept, one boy and one girl were taken out of the Court’s Remand Home were brought to us. Sorry we can’t give the details as nobody knows them!!!!
More Good News:
The ever helpful Eric Rajah from “A Better World” Canada, introduced us to an organisation that is going to install 20 computers for our PC/Lab. Not only are they supplying and installing, they are even going to give training to all our teachers and then on top of all that, they will maintain them and even replace them after a certain period of time. What a break through for us. This is what we have been waiting for for soooo long. Thank you again Eric for looking out for EAMO once again.
Only problem is now, as you can imagine and understand, this organisation has stipulations to the setting up of such a deal. They need a certain size classroom that is dust free, with full security, 20 electrical sockets and UPS’s (Unlimited Power Supply) before they will install.
At the moment, EAMO is using up every one of its rooms for its 220 plus kids, so we are looking for a donor for the new PC/Lab building that will be 8m x 7m that will be attached to our own high school. We are looking for roughly $20,000 Aud to complete this building.
Once this building is finished, the PC’s will be installed and all of the EAMO high school will have access to the internet (restricted of course) to further their studies. Great news hey!!
Urgent Needs:
EAMO financially operates mainly on its sponsorship program, but it is still not enough to cover the monthly budget. The balance still has to come through generous donations in which there is no control over. Consequently, every now and then, our accounts get a little low and now is one of those times.
So, if anyone can assist us right now, it would really be appreciated by all here.
Thank you all so much for understanding and supporting EAMO for the past 15 years.
Thanks, and kind regards to you all.
Ralph & May Spinks
Founders of EAMO.
Swimming Pool
Since now we have our own bus to take the children out on out-ings and sometimes to the hot springs where there are both hot and cold water pools where the kids have been learning to swim, the children have been pestering me to let them start dig-ging our very own swimming pool. I kept telling them that we need more buildings before we can even think of a swimming pool. After a long time they convinced me to let them get started! I thought, well it won’t cost us anything to dig a hole in the ground.
I have inserted a few pictures of our “Jolly Barnyard”. This is some of our big boys delight. It all started with Nathan coming to me and asking if he could have some used wood and nails to build and small pen for some chickens. I agreed so he went and built him rough little chicken coup. The I found out that one of the other boys was getting a chicken given to him. I wondered where he was going to put this chicken and thought he would come to me and ask me for wood and nails like Nathan did. But he didn’t come so I suspected the chicken never came. Then I found out later that Nathan had built more than one pen and that we had many chickens down there and that Nathan was showing traits of becoming quite the business boy.
They say to me Dad, have faith that we will get money to build our swimming pool just like the purchasing of the property and the bus that we prayed for for some time. How could I refuse to let them start digging? Attached are a couple of pics of the big boys digging and the progress so far. You may think to yourself that that is a big job for them to do. Don’t worry, they just love to dig. We are currently digging a new pit toilet that goes down about 20ft, and they love it. In fact if I did not stop them from digging deeper, they would keep going!