Dear all,
Thank you for your continued prayers and support. The past few weeks has been a shock and uncertainty in Kenya. Some pats were more affected than others and Kenya generally became so small. Thank you so much for your initiative to help on humanitarian crisis due to displaced person in Kenya and Kandaria. We […]
For the past five days the country has experienced its worst dark days in its 44-year independence history. Many Kenyans have died and property worth billions of shillings destroyed. Thousands have been displaced while others have fled to Uganda and Tanzania. Food has become scarce and some people are on the […]
Gift cards and T-shirts can be purchased this year at the Historic Texaco Station at the corner of 7th and Madison in LowerTown or at Market Square Coffee near Kirchoffs. The Texaco is open from 12 - 5 pm Tu-Sat and 12-3 Sun. The phone number is 270-408-4130.
We all know that it’s not just Oprah and Bono who are working to improve the lives of Africans through improved medical care and education. Millions of Americans have answered the call of Africa’s need. Have you ever wished for an opportunity to hear firsthand, ask questions and learn about the great need and […]
I have always wanted to be an adventurer. As a young boy, you could find me running around in the forest with my pocket knife, my imagination and a coil of rope through my belt loop, just looking for an excuse to use any of them. Since then I have been lucky enough to take on many adventures. I’ve thrived on traveling,hiking, bicycling, skateboarding, kayaking, rappelling, spelunking and mountaineering. I’ve been a studen, a friend, a coach, an artist, a teammate, a boss, a rock & roller, aboard president, a husband and a father. Nothing prepared me for Kenya.
I suppose on some level I could have imagined how Africa might look, with abject poverty mixed with the occasional giraffe or acacia tree. i must have had some sacharine sense of what to expect. Perhaps a pixilated screen shot of Sally Struthers, or a romantic verse from Hemingway lingered somewhere in my memory, painting an abstract portrait of this dark continent in my mind.
What I discovered was a country full of life among this myriad people of people walking and working…peddling their wares and pedaling their bicycles in a diesel-fumed blur of dust and donkeys. Kenya is alive with women and children selling potatoes by the bucket, young boys tending their goats on the roadside and grown men hawking cell phone cables and roasted corn on a stick to the passing trucks. Families live here. Mothers carry their babies for miles and miles while kids play soccer in the school yards with bare feet and soaring spirits.
I do not pretend to understand the people of Kenya. Rather I WISH to understand them To an outsider, this landscape is bare and bleak, with misery and hardship as far as the eye can see. But I have seen a Kenya steeped in promise and inhope. I have gained a new perspective. 
Eventually Paul and Nathan made it to Kenya about 24 hours behind schedule. Not bad considering the alternative which was going to be 48 hours behind schedule. Thanks to a very helpful airline check in guy who worked with Paul and Nathan for over an hour, they only lost one day of their 10 day […]
September 26th - Day two
“30 hours later - 300 miles from home”
We left Paducah around 10:00 AM on Tuesday. By 4:00 PM we were finally in Chicago Illinois. It may not seem like much, but we had spent the night in Nashville, and flow down to Dallas (I think), and now we were […]
This is a post by Paul Bilak who traveled with Nathan Brown to Kenya . Both are board members of Project AIDS Orphan. Paul used to live in Kenya and Nathan wants to live in Kenya. They are going to watch the progress on current projects, meet with the community and project leaders and hopefully […]
David and Justine had a vision to support the orphans and we thank you so much for the community in Paducah for the encouragement and support to House of Hope Kandaria. The orphans in Kandaria have expressed their thanks and love to you for their support.
We have been able to deliver food clothing, treated mosquito […]
The picture above is of school children waiting for food rations to take home and share with their families. They were doing this becauue back in January 2006, there was a drought in Kenya. In Kenya when there is drought, it gets downright scary. I know this because the entire time I lived there we were experiencing varying degrees of drought. Our water levels from the bore hole we drank, washed and cleaned from were terribly low. So much so that we had to place a bucket in the tub when showering (which could last no more than 3 minutes tops) to catch any extra run off of water so that we could then pour it in the toilet to eventually flush. For us, it wasn’t so bad, we did have a bore hole after all. But for those in the valley below and the hilltop above, who relied on water from rain, times got desperate. First, none of the seedlings in the shambas (home garden) would be able to sprout and grow causing that immediate crisis - hunger. The stress is palpable. It flows through all interactions, even the animals get tense. And everyone grows hungrier and hungrier.
Thanks to some very dedicated teens at Paducah Tilghman High School and some lovely folks at St Matthews Lutheran Church (who didn’t know the need existed but gave a donation cause they just had some extra money, which by the way was the exact amount needed to feed the community for one month), PAO was able to get food and get it to the neediest as fast as we could. Donkey transport. At the time we didn’t have a car, so we used the next best thing. Deliveries were made to Nyakach and to surrounding schools to help ensure that each child was getting at least one meal a day. Thank you, Paducah, Kentucky!
Monica