In Between Holidays

In Between Holidays

It’s hard to be away from Kenya RIGHT NOW.

Galen and Nate are on vacation; road-tripping around Africa. The puppeteers have travelled to their relatives homes in the countryside of Kenya. I am visiting my folks in Washington state. It’s the holidays. We are supposed to take a few weeks off, right?

Humf.

I think we all agree that we can’t wait to get back to work. We’ve had such engaging and successful series of shows before the holiday hiatus. We’ve gone through heart-aching drama together this year. We’ve celebrated birthdays. We’ve worked long hours. We’ve attended three funerals. We’ve loved so much of our work.

I miss it.

I miss the crew. This has got to be one of the few holidays I’ve ever spent in my life where I was itching to get back to 12-16 hour work days.

Yet it is calm and quiet up in the Pacific Northwest of Washington state. I’ll spend some hours tinkering on the website. I’ll schedule and prepare some presentations for Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs. I’ll sell some animatronic lions.

It looks like we’ve got a few more end of year donations. That’s nice. Great, even. Keep ’em coming folks – we’ve just about got our costs down to .50 cents a child – every dollar contributed now counts more than ever!

So I am busy – busy trying to stop daydreaming and accomplish things while I still have fast internet and zero interruptions – but every inch of me is itching to get back to work on the field.

Up next for 2016:
Finish the next 5 months of the Rotary Global Grant by:
Editing, Recording, Producing the college/adult show
Collecting data on the college/adult show
Putting on four weekend training workshops
Filming three Public Service Announcements for airing on Nairobi TV
Recording a pure Swahili-only version of the primary school show
Distributing 20,000 follow-up, take home booklets to primary schools

Also for 2016:
Finalize a pre-packaged show kit, complete with training DVD, so other organizations and volunteer groups can replicate our program.
Raise enough monthly contributions so we can keep baseline operations running at all times. I would love to have enough regular donations coming in to keep us doing shows 5 days a week with at least one team.

Oh the list goes on – and I need to get back to more productive work, I suppose. But if you are reading this: Thanks – from all of us to all of you, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year – LETS GET BACK TO WORK!

-Darren

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