KITHENGWANI & BENGONI – REPORT 5
October 1, 2024
SHAKA & KAVUNZONI – REPORT 2
September 4, 2025
Hello Family & Friends,
Here’s our first email to you (written by Rachel Matthews).
Rhett described our journey perfectly when he said, “the last two days have felt like one long day.” The GV travel team departed on Monday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. mountain daylight time and arrived in Nairobi 26 hours later. Along the way, everyone displayed great attitudes as they each hauled three large suitcases full of medical and school supplies. We are grateful for the generosity of our customers, partners, friends, and family who contributed resources to this year’s project!
We ran into some hurdles when the officials at the Nairobi airport were unhappy with the number of suitcases we had. Unfortunately, they would not allow Levi’s drone out of the airport and told him that he could pick it up on his way home. After spending the night (or, more accurately, a shower and a four-hour nap) in a hotel in Nairobi, we went back to the airport to fly to Mombasa. With relief and anticipation, we finally arrived at the Kamoti home on Wednesday afternoon around 2 p.m. East Africa time. When we landed, we found out that some of our luggage had to come on a later flight, including all of the mural supplies, so we rescheduled the painting for another day. As Steve said, “This was a day of plan Bs.”
We spent the afternoon visiting schools in Shaka, distributing sanitary pads to dozens of grateful teenage girls. When Steve Littlefield came to Kenya in July, he heard stories about how girls were missing school every month because of their menstrual cycles. He said, “today, it felt good to have something to give them.”
We look forward to spending more time in Shaka, where GV Cares built three new classrooms this year. Although the administrators could use one of the new classrooms for office space, the teachers and staff have selflessly chosen to remain in their mud structure to allow more students to benefit from the new buildings.
Although we experienced some unexpected delays, the team remained positive. We were especially impressed with how well our first-time travelers to Kenya, Aaron, Melanie, Dax, Dustin, and Steven, handled long lines and lost luggage with cheerfulness and flexibility. Levi got everyone laughing (including travelers who were not in our group) when he got frisked at security, then told the airport official, “put your arms out!” and provided a reciprocal pat down.
All in all, we are off to a great start! We now have all of our luggage and are excited to visit Kavunzoni for the groundbreaking celebration tomorrow. Thanks for all of your financial and emotional support as we serve the people of Kenya and continue to execute Plan B! (Or C…)
