Morning at Daylight

Daylight is perched on the top of a hill. And despite being on the equator, mornings at Daylight are cold. Not cold enough to see your breath, but cold enough to make it hard to get out of the warm covers.

But by 7 o’clock in the morning you can already see the dormitory kids making their way out of the dormitory across the field and down to breakfast. Our kitchen staff was up with the rooster. Feeding logs into the stove since before sunrise.  By the time the children show up the stove is roaring and the vats of milk and porridge are boiling. The cups have all been rinsed and the stove exhaust is fuming.

Daylight only feeds breakfast to the 70 kids who stay at Daylight full time.  And as the dorm children  drink their tea and slurp their porridge the rest of the children wander into class for their first lesson.

At 7:15 am the teachers check in at the office with Daylight Manager Terry who hands them their chalk for the day’s lessons.

The week’s classes are posted on the wall.

And each morning begin with a morning meeting.  The students greet one another and singing a morning song to start the day.  The 1st Grade class is led in a counting song by the leader of the day.

 By 8:30 am classes are in full swing and the 8th graders are already finding the perimeter of the figures drawn below!

Nathan Roberts
Daylight US Director

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Daylight Co-Founders Interviewed about New Book Poor Millionaires

Daylight Co-Founders Nathan Roberts and Michael Kimpur visit Jay Bakker’s studio to chat about Poor Millionaires, a book that follows Nathan and Michael through their heartbreaking and hilarious misadventures across two continents on their way to founding Daylight Center and School for orphans of war in Kenya (daylightcenter.org).

FYI: They made the podcast producer tear up. So get ready to be inspired!

Or listen on iTunes

You can purchase Poor Millionaires on Amazon.com

You can read and watch excerpts at poormillioniares.org

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A Day in Town!

Going to Town!

Daylight is on a hill just a stones throw from the main road into town. A trip into town is treasured by our students. Like many small towns, what it lacks in inventory, it makes up for in people! Daylight students and staff can hardly go ten feet without running into someone they know. And Kenyan’s are not willing to stop at “How are you?” “I’m good!”. They want to the WHOLE story. So you can imagine a quick trip to town can turn into a quite a social affair!

Well we wanted to give you a little taste of what you would see if you were at Daylight and told the driver “Take me to town!”

The driver will take you to down the main road to Makotano.

The town is called Makotano (Ma-Ko-ta-no) and like so many towns in Kenya it is a city in transition.  When we started Daylight seven years ago the downtown was lined with cement shops. Inside these shops you will find a few local staples like cooking oil, gravy, and bottled water. 

These family owned shops are still the life-blood of the community. In front of these shops you will often find people sitting down selling their vegetables or small goods in an informal market. Many of these family shops are made of wood and tin.

Like most small towns you can’t miss the gas station on the way into town. But when we stopped, unfortunately Total was out of gas! This is actually quite common for a gas station in a rural town to run out of gas after a caravan of semi-trucks make their way through town.

 So we went down the road to fill up at the gas station on other end of town. Daylight Outreach Assistant Peter helped get the car and an extra gas can filled up!

Recently a more formal “Farmer’s Market” established in town. Local farmers rent out stalls to sell their fruits and vegetables.

This is a big step towards more sanitary foods! But the biggest change in the last two years is the opening of the local Supermarket.

From Coca-Cola to Corn Flakes you can find many of the international foods (or Kenyan versions of them).

We hope you come to Daylight so you can have your own day in town!

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