East African Mission Orphanage - An Overview

Two of the past three weeks, I spent at an orphanage just outside of Nakuru, Kenya. It's a beautiful place, not just the location and the physical plant, but even more so, the children and what the orphanage has done and is doing for them.

East Africa Mission Orphanage (EAMO) is home to 203 children who have been orphaned or whose families are unable to provide for them. It was founded and is still being run by an Australian family who moved to Kenya 14 years ago. The children at EAMO are hard workers, well taken care of, and happy. It was a privilege to be able to volunteer part of my summer to work with them.

Here's what the orphanage looks like:

The little house on the private compound that I stayed in with Sarah, another volunteer

The dinning hall in the centre of the orphanage

The cook shack just to the left of the dinning hall

The garden where the kids help to produce a good majority of the food they eat. There are also large wheat and maize fields that also supply the orphanage with food.

Another part of the garden, as well as greenhouses

This dam was recently dug to help water the crops

This is the nursery where I spent quite a bit of my time helping with the toddlers, ranging from 2-5 years olds. The nursery was recently built by a Canadian who visited the orphanage a few years back and then raised the money for it to be built.

This will be a classroom for the Pre-Primary aged children. This is the age group that I was teaching 3 days a week while I was there. They are currently meeting in the dinning hall for classes.

The building to the right and in the middle (behind the trees) are classrooms and the building on the left is currently the boys dorm but will be used as classrooms as soon as the new boys dorm is finished being being built.

Boys dorm in progress

Girls dorm

Staff huts (called bandas)

Banda on left is the office & banda on right is used for guests and volunteers

The tiny little church that houses close to 200 people each Sabbath (the toddlers don't have church here).

Singing lots of songs on Sabbath!

Junior Sabbath School (in the dinning hall)

The toddlers having their own worship time in the nursery.

The view from EAMO of the city of Nakuru below. It was so nice and peaceful to be up in the hills away from the chaos and pollution of the city. EAMO is such a beautiful place doing wonderful things for the children of Kenya!