First Day at the Cura Orphanage and community school

We left the hotel fairly early this morning and headed out to the "DEPOT". The depot stands for Dan Eldon Place of Tomorrow which was created in honor of Dan Eldon who was a traveling friend of Ryan and Haydens during their travels to Kenya in the early 90's. Dan was a journalist and was killed in Somalia in 1993. There is a great website that can detail the purpose of this depot and how Dan's life inspired it's beginning (Daneldon.org) We met there to not only be introduced to the place, but to meet one of the Board members of Cura. We left the Depot and head to Cura. It is this trip that I saw some of the raw poverty of this country. I stared out the window the entire time and took photo after photo trying to capture the feel of this trip to Cura. As we turned onto the final dirt road up to the Cura villiage, I felt the tears coming to my eyes. Not tears of sadness, but of excitement, of the unknown, of the pure fact that I am a part of a group who is trying to help this very small group of 50 orphans and 200 students who have so little. When we pulled into the open field to park, I could hear the children playing on the playground and before we knew it, little faces were peeking through the hedges wanting to see us. I don't know who wanted to see who most!!! We were introduced to all of the faculty and board members and had a meeting about our purpose there. Once the meetings were over, we were given a tour of the classrooms. The children were all dressed in blue, with big anxious eyes staring at us as we were staring at them. We were introduced to the students and they welcomed us in unison. Once we were introduced to all 8 classrooms, it was lunch time for the kids and the just culdn't wait to get close, hold your hand, ask your name and share their own. We all wanted to be close to eachother, to watch eachother, and to explore eachothers each and every move. We were strangers with a sudden feeling of family. This was an amazing experience - tears come to my eyes because my heart is so big and full for these kiddos. A small group of kids followed us and I took the liberty to ask if I could photograph them - here they are:)