Out of Canada, Into Kenya - Shawn's Journal

Photos - Building a Church in Kijabe

I spent the day working on building a church in (old) Kijabe. The small village is about a 20 minute drive down into the Rift Valley on a really bumpy one-lane dirt road. I had no idea what I’d be working on, but I ended up bending and tying re-bar most of the day. It was great to be able to see village life first-hand and to have a chance to talk to some of the people throughout the day. The new church is being built out of stone and is expected to be completed in about 2-3 weeks. Below are some photos from the day, along with my comments following them.

This is the new church. The stonework will be completed tomorrow and they’ll start the roof on Saturday. All of the stone is cut by hand.

This photo and the one below are what the current church looks like. It is constructed similar to most of the houses in the area and is actually made out of mud. The inside is very small and dark, and there is a firepit just inside the door on the right.

The old church from the back.

The Rift Valley is beautiful and there are cows and goats roaming everywhere. Giraffes, Zebras and Monkeys wander through periodically and there are quite a few Cape Buffalo around (they’re very dangerous), though we didn’t see any today.

This is what the inside of the new church looks like. The floor will be cement, however they don’t know how to float it, so they will put plaster down (on top of the rough cement) on the floors which means they have to re-plaster it quite often. The roof will be wood (they call it timber) covered in corrugated tin.

This is what I was doing all day - tying re-bar. We first had to bend all the steel bands that go around, then tie it all together. My hands were raw at the end of the day, but it was actually pretty fun.

The kids here are great. They (and a lot of other things) remind me of Mexico. They loved the camera and made it difficult to take pictures without them in them!

One of the boys who was helping all day today.

The street/path through the village is lined with buildings like this that house multiple shops. In this picture the shop is closed. You can also see their fences that they make out of sticks.

Posted by slvrfrg at June 10, 2004 03:22 PM