Reaching the top

Dear friends, it has been a while since I wrote a blog. It has been quite a busy period. We could notice that the vacation period in the Netherlands was started, because we had many visitors following each other up one after another. Also the project was quite busy and eventually we also went on a short vacation with some friends of us. So let me summarize the period.

The project slowly grows to a climax. All the initiatives we started are delivering their results. We are busy to integrate all these deliverables within our platform and this results in a more and more awesome product which is almost ready to be taken to the outside world. What kind of initiatives am I talking about. Well, first of all we finished infographics. For those who do not know what this is. This is a presentation of information with 1 picture and some short and powerful information. Youth like this way of presenting information. With the help of the picture they capture the idea and the short information helps them to understand the subject, without reading lines of text.

Second thing we finalized are animated video’s. These are giving information in a playful way. This is the most successful way to present information, but also the most expensive one. So we decided to create 2 animated video’s. Lieuwe has finished the music video clip for the music song we have created for our platform. Lieuwe is also busy with finalizing 3 other video’s (VCT testing and a positive speaker documentary). We also finalized photo shooting sessions with the professional photographer, which have become awesome pictures which supports the different text items. We also created a discussion forum and a quiz for lifeskills training. We have finalized the logo and the name, we have the domain names ready and Fred has made the platform compatible for all kinds of devices. The platform is now ready for regular laptops, tablets, different mobile phones and also feature phones. So we are getting more and more ready to finalize the platform. Right now we are busy with Safaricom and other parties to plan a big Go-live party in the beginning of October. This will be quite an event, with people from Kenyan ministries, other companies and a lot of youth, because that’s our target group . Time flies right now, because only 3,5 month left to finalize the project.

Then we also had a lot of friends visiting us. First Riewerd en Iris came along for 5 days. We went to Lake Magadi, which was a salt lake at the south of Kenya with a lot of flamengo’s. After Riewerd and Iris left, Tim (colleague of DEMB) and Tina came along. Tina went back to Brussels, so Tim stayed a week at our place. Tim helped me a lot with the project and helped me writing a sustainability report. I really think this has become a great document for the Dutch organization to start to think about the future of this project, because we all hope that what we have built will last for a long time. This is always the hardest part of a project. Once it is there you still need to invest to keep it there. This is of course the responsibility of the organizations themselves, but we tried to help them to make sure this project will be sustained after we are gone.

After Tim & Tina, some of our best friends arrived in Kenya. For me Robbert & Henri came and for Talitha Marleen visited to go all together climbing the Kilimanjaro. For us this was also a welcome break. Climbing the Kilimanjaro became an amazing experience. We were all fit enough, but altitude disease is something which you cannot train. After the second day we were already above the clouds and the 5 days after this were all very sunny. We had amazing views and it has been an amazing adventure together. But the first time we reached 4600 meters high, we all had a headache due to altitude disease. So we got scared for the final summit attempt. Eventually all the Dutchies reached the top of 5895 meters high. I had to cry when I reached the top, because it was quite an achievement for myself to reach the top. Some of us got troubles with the altitude disease, but after going down everybody felt soon better. Only 2 Kenyans in our group were not able to reach the top of the 8 people we went with. After the Kilimanjaro we went to the Masaai Mara in Kenya. This is a nature park which is located next to the Serengeti. In August and September the animals of the Serengeti are in the Mara. The lonely planet said that the Mara the Nr1 place is in the world to visit in August. We had the opportunity to go together and saw amazing wildlife scenery’s. We had seen elephants, a cheetah in action, lion welps, hyena’s, wildebeasts, zebra’s and giraffes. It was a lovely 2 days!

Now Henri, Robbert & Marleen are gone again and for me the last part of the project is ahead of me. Sadly for me Talitha has to leave the country due to visa expiration and combines this to work for a month in the Netherlands. This was benefiting several things, financially this helps us to survive this Kenya trip in a healthy way, Talitha loves to do her actual work for a while again, the hospital in Ede has a capacity problem which Talitha partly solves and Talitha will visit a lot of parties in the Netherlands. My parents are 40 years married, her grandparents are 60 years married, several weddings etc. But I will miss her a lot, while it will only be a month. I will be looking forward to see her back in Kenya, so we can finalize our stay here together.

Summarizing the last month, I can easily state that in all things we are trying to reach the top. It was an interesting time which will continue in September. Time flies …

Robert