A non-stop day!

The sunrise was beautiful.

I arrived at our “surprise” distribution site on the northwest edge of Kibera by 6:15am. Because multiple agencies were involved, there was less control, and not everything happened as planned, but it still went remarkably well. I had to do a quick training for the volunteers to make sure that we had an orderly and accountable system (I forgot how nice it is to have a team that already knows what to do!). Fortunately the police arrived and were very helpful in maintaining order, too. All said and done, we were able to get food and supplies to nearly 400 vulnerable mothers; including children that came to 1,850 individuals.

I then went straight over to the UN office and was in meetings for several hours…that’s one of the frustrating necessities: meetings. I made some very important contacts, though, that will pave the way for the next 48-72hours, before WFP, et al, are able to get their pipelines up and running.

Bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be loading and taking a truck with food and supplies to reach about 5,000 individuals who are deep in some of the insecure areas of the Nairobi slums. They have been without food for days, some having lost shelter, too. I’ll only be able to take it a certain distance before having to hand it over to another group who has quite an extensive and efficient network in these areas. Then, throughout the day they will be doing a stagger distribution, to minimize visibility and any consequent repercussions. Depending upon the security on my route, I may be able to get two runs in tomorrow, but that is an unknown at this point.

I’m off to get some sleep…

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