Its time for a few introductions.

Firstly for those who don't know I should introduce Kimilili. It is a good size town in the highlands of western Kenya close to the Ugandan boarder. There is little in the way of civic buildings as these are based in larger towns such as Kitale. The town is not particularly important and it is certainly not on the tourist trail. We had a tour on Tuesday of the town and it was obvious that few white people ever come here so we certainly were a different sight. The people are friendly and helpful and always happy to stop and chat. We were able to stop for a coke (other drinks are available) and watch the world go by. Kimilili is built along a main road and so there is a lot of passing traffic from bikes (boda), motorbikes (Piki piki) and matatu (minibus) to large trucks and lorries. It was good to have a break as this new enviroment is a little overwhelming.

The reason we have come to this town is to see Mike and Becky Nightingale. Mike is Claire's brother and Becky is his wife. They have been volunteering for over a year with a charity called IcFEM that is working across the region running development projects, medical facilities and outreach. Mike took us to the morning prayer meeting and we were able to meet many of the team as well as bring greetings from England and from Claire's parents who visited last year. The whole team was fantastically welcoming and we look forward to getting to know them better over the next two weeks.

I should now introduce Mike. He is helping IcFEM to develop their work and strengthen the structure and systems of the headquarters here in Kimilili. One of his big achievements is the drilling of ten wells though out the area to give local communities a source of clean water. I as a geologist (lapsed) am very interested to see this being done and to meet the workers drilling the wells.

Mike is married to Becky, who will be in Nairobi until Thursday. Becky is a medical physiotherapist when in England and here in Kimilili she is helping to run and develop a medical centre. When she gets back we hope to see the medical centre and find out more about their work. I should also plug the IcFEM website which has a number of videos which show there work and introduces the area better than I can.

The two other people on site are Amos the day security guard and Dorcas the housekeeper. Both are welcoming and friendly. Amos is currently suffering from malaria. It is sobering to have such potentially serious disease around and to realise that financially not working is not possible. There is no sickness benefits here. We were pleased to be able to pass on gifts to them both from Claire's parents and I know that they will both be a big part of our stay here.

We also had the pleasure of meeting some of the local children who ran up to us on our way back from town, held our hands and walked us to the compound gate. The children in town are very cute who greet any white person with a chorus of "How are you". This can happen from a great distance so we generally ignore it until we are much closer. If we did not we would be forever shouting "I'm fine" across the town.

The last thing to introduce is the plan for our time here. We will visit the water project tomorrow where I hope to photograph the work being done and to work with a journalist from IcFEM to record interviews with local people. On Thursday we shall meet up with some children and youth workers and look at making puppets to be used at church and in children's clubs. We brought a lot of puppet material with us which explains the large number of bags that we had when travelling. We shall also be visiting the market to buy other material. The ultimate aim is to make it possible for churches and projects across the area to make their own puppets both as a communication tool and to sell to generate income for the projects. We hope to do some touristy trips for example to Lake Victoria, but we will be taking the next few days to plan out the rest of our time.