What is the life of girls in the new building of the orphanage like? What new is growing in the school garden? What do the kids do in their free time? What are the future plans? We are bringing news and actual information from the Island of Hope from our co-ordinator Joash.
New Orphanage
At the beginning of February children moved to the new orphanage building. Girls are happy and satisfied because the new building is only for them. Boys stayed in the original building and are happy too because their rooms are not overfull and they are not obliged to share their beds.
The new building has dramatically changed the life in Island of Hope. Before we had space for only 32 children, now there are 44 kids in the orphanage (23 boys and 21 girls) in total. The capacity of the boys' section is 32 and the girls' section 40. This means that we still have space for other children. The demand is still much higher, therefore we try to carefully evaluate situation of each individual child to select carefully those that need the place in orphanage most urgently.
You can get the impression of the situation in the photo below.
School garden
You can find actual photos attached. School farm supports diet program a lot. Right now the soil is being prepared for new sowing season. This season floads occurred in Russinga and therefore the harvest was not very good. We have harvested bananas, which make breakfast of kids more nourishing. We had around 30 papaya trees but the floads have destroyed most of the plants. We have only 15 left over now. Besides, we plant cassava (manioc); root vegetable resembling our potatoes, which you can see in the pictures (behind papaya trees). Manioc belongs among kids' favourite breakfast dishes.
School and kinder garden
Children are busy with finishing the first term of the new school year as you can see in the photos.
We are enclosing also a video from the Island of Hope which was made in November 2012 and which brings closer life and atmosphere in Rusinga Island a bit at least.
