Can you spare a few pennies?

We are trying hard to improve the lives of many orphans and some of the poorest families (usually a grandparent looking after their orphaned grandchildren) in Kisii, Kenya.

We are ready to start several projects:

• Growing our own food
• Clean, safe drinking water
• Alternative, clean cooking fuel
• Home-grown fertiliser
• Malaria control
  

These are not just ideas. These are real, worked out and costed projects.

But we need funds.

If every person who follows u on Twitter donated £6, we would be able to get started.

We only need about £500 to get started, so how about it? There is a PayPal donation button in the column on the right.

Make a difference to the life of a child in Kenya. Donate a few pounds today!

Our Goals for 2009

From Baba Mzungu

As regular readers of this blog already know, we have several projects just waiting to be started up, but with the food crisis gathering pace in Kenya, I have had to juggle the priorities about a bit.

We have our plot just outside Kisii, a particularly fertile corner of Kenya, which is doing nothing worthwhile at the moment. We are going to start our River Cottage project here.

Our priority at the moment must be to produce food. With luck, we will be able to produce a surplus which can be sold.

We have a band of kids who are more than willing to work, but as most are 9 to 12 years old, and the soil is never really dry as it rains all year round in Kisii, I can just imagine the state they will be in after a short while, digging and preparing the soil for planting - filthy!

So, we need a means of letting them clean off afterwards. Needless to say, there is no tap water at the plot and the river at the edge of the plot is down a 1:5 path, so carrying up enough water to wash of half a dozen muddy kids would be a big effort.

So, we need water collection off the roof of the existing hut and anywhere else we can find. Then, behind the hut we can build a simple shower with bamboo screens.

All this can be done at a minimal cost, and falls in quite nicely with another project title, Scrapheap Challenge.

There is a UK charity in Kisii who gives out gardening tools to "worthy causes". I just hope that an orphanage trying to grow its own food will be considered a worthy cause!

Kenya to declare food emergency

Here we go again!!

The BBC reports that the Kenyan Government is to declare a national emergency due to drought.

President Mwai Kibaki's government warned that nearly 10 million people - more than a quarter of the population - were at risk from food shortages.

But even where food is in reasonable supply, prices have already shot through the roof during the past couple of months and we are struggling to feed our kids, despite the fact that Kisii is situated in one of the most fertile areas of Kenya, supply and demand, I suppose.

Food shortages are believed to be caused also by suppliers hoarding, forcing the prices up - some people are willing to make a quick buck out of other people's suffering - not just in Kenya, but the world over.

We need help to buy food and also to get the River Cottage Kenya farm up and running. I am sure that we could be self-sufficient by this time next year with a little help.

Can you help us? Do you know someone who can?

This Is Our Year

2009 is going to be the year that KCIS makes a difference.

No, we haven't received a large legacy, nor have we been offered financial support from a deep-pocketed benefactor (not that we need a lot of money to make a difference).

But I have decided that 2009 is going to be our year. I have been working on the theory of our projects for nearly a year now, so it is about time I out them into practice.

So, what is it that we are trying t achieve?

We are not trying to change the world, but, we do want to help to reduce the incidence of malaria, we do want to find ways of increasing crop yield, we do want to show that water can be purified without expensive equipment or chemicals.

And I am pretty sure we can do it - in such a way that rural communities can benefit without costing the earth.

[NB - a farm worker earns about $1 a day. We want to offer the above at a cost that these people can afford.]

To make all this happen, we need funding. We are not begging for money, although if someone out there wants to bankroll us, we will not refuse. We have set up a business based in Kenya, that, if successful, will fund our projects, or at least, get them moving. Once we can show that our projects work, then maybe people will take us seriously.

Pleading to Aid Agencies

I spend all my spare time ploughing through the plethora of aid agencies working in Kenya and email them stating the plight of the refugees in Kisii. So far I have contacted all the big boys, Red Cross, UNHCR, etc. but had forgotten Oxfam.

I fired off an email on Friday, whilst holding a conversation with my man in Kisii, Vincent, on Skype.

An hour later, I checked my emails and Lo! A reply from Oxfam. It didn't say much, only thanking me for my mail and signalling the problem to them. They would be sending my email immediately to their centre in Nairobi, and they would reply.

As I said, it is not much of a reply, but it is a reply, the first acknowledgement that anyone has read an email from us. Cause for a minor celebration, I think. I celebrated with a cup of tea.

No, not really, I would have had the cup of tea anyway.

I also fired off a press release to our local newspaper, praising the people of this area for their efforts in raising emergency funds to feed the kids at the home and also donating their old cell phones, which will provide much needed shoes for them.

Because food prices shot up as transport problems hit Kenya, the "Christmas" fund at the home, usually used to buy shoes, had to be raided to pay for food. So the kids received nothing last Christmas. ever mind, when I arrive, we will sell the phones and every child will have a new pair of shoes.

And there should be enough to get some clothes for those who need them most.