While in Kitale we met two groups of missionary workers who live on the same compound and work in tandem with each other and our friend Todd. Together they were throwing a Christmas Party for three orphanages with a holiday feast and presents. Yancy and Todd had worked on rebuilding a tree house that was rotted out on the compound grounds and were finishing it as the kids drove up.

The three homes came and each had dressed up in their new Christmas outfits, the girls in new party dresses and boys in button up shirts. This had absolutely no effect on the playing they would do. The girls hitched up their dresses and kept up with the biys climbing up and down the tree house, kicking the soccer ball, playing teeter totter and anything else that was available.

Jackie, and her twin brother Mulago, whose name literally means "twin" were hamming it up and stealing the show like they normally do.

The tree house was a major success and I have never seen so many kids go down a slide over and over again running as fast as they could to jump back in line, Yancy and Todd kept teasing that if the slide survives this day and we have no injuries we would be lucky. Their hard work was really appreciated by the kids, the slide was really the hit of the party.

Yancy’s other project he had tried to get going was a zip line. It wasn’t too successful when it was tried before the party because of the low quality of pulley and wires available. But the line was never taken down. Well with the light weight Kenyan kids it worked a little better and before long they climbed up the tree and were trying it too. It was too bad but the cheap aluminum pulley wore right through and that was the end of the zip line.

After that we had lunch and it is shocking how much these small kids can put down at a meal. They are all smaller than normal due to mal nourishment but their plates were heaping and all gone when I helped collecting plates after the meal!

The cake song came next. One of the homes in particular are very musically inclined and sing often. They sang as they drove through the gate and unloaded from their van, during the party and afterwards. The house mother started to sing as she cut up the cake and everyone was clapping and singing and then one by one she had each of the westerners come up and fed us a square of cake then each of the house mothers and then children. It was a nice gesture although I didn’t fully understand the whole situation it was really kind.

The rest of the pictures are coming soon, hopefully. The majority of the pictures were taken by Amanda who is with Transformed International, one of the missionary groups. We hope to get a few of her pictures as they turned out really well. So check back on the picasa site later, the kids are so cute, it will be worth looking at.