November 7th

Finally got an e-mail from one of the staff (must keep confidential, lest the management of the Manor find this blog) and they are incredibly excited about this weeks election. What an experience to have gotten to meet a people half way around the world who were so vested in what our election was going to do. They were so excited about Obama. Every day's headlines had articles related to the election when we were there. In fact, one day I found myself giving a civics lecture to about five of the staff on the electoral college system in America. Needless to say, on Tuesday after McCain's concession speech and my subsequent yelling for joy outside...we made probably a very expensive phone call to the Manor. Unfortunately, we were only able to leave a message. We hope that they got it.

Anyways, we are still trying to send $ to some of the staff. We are running into the problem of $30 fees per wire-transfer, so we are modifying our plans to transfer every 6 months or so. Thankfully, with a first e-mail, we can move forward with our plans. Hopefully, we will be able to help 3-4 of the families eventually. Julie and I (with any friends that want to help) are planning on making some hand-made gifts for the holiday season and using the proceeds to send back to Kenya. We are going to use the pattern from a stuffed Giraffe that we bought at the Giraffe Center as our model. Hopefully, we can get Made in Chico to sell them perhaps. We are looking into setting up a Non-profit to help facilitate all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah...bleeding heart liberals is what some of you might be thinking, right? Well, just think about that in a very small village on the western edge of Kenya a man was born who earned a scholarship to study in America, and that man was the father of the most powerful, hope-inspiring man in the world at the moment. Julie and I believe that there is no limit to the possibilities of helping out. Preaching to the masses I am sure, but you never know.

Cheers and Asante Sana, the Parker Family