This is the first English newsletter in a long time, but
due to a special event. As you may know, we have during
the last 5 years or so been striving with a court case
about a property (2 acres) that the former mayor of
Nairobi tried to steal. This case will hopefully be
solved this year. But parallel to this we have, during
the last year, been looking for a bigger property where
there would also be existing buildings we could use. We
have now found this property – and bought it! J And
this property is 8 acres! It is situated
North-West of Nairobi in an area called Tigoni. And
during the last few weeks we have hardly been able to
talk about anything else than future plans … :-)
The property is roughly formed like a triangle, where
the entrance is in the narrowest part in the south. The
upper part is a forest sloping down towards a stream
with little water, and a small strip of land on the
other side. There is a path leading down the Western
side, crossing the stream, then along the stream on the
Northern side and up on the Eastern side across to the
houses a bit South of the middle of the property. Some
of the forest is wattle – an Indian type of wood
spreading very rapidly and not being part of the local
ecosystem. The former owner has cut down quite a bit of
the wattle, and there is not much left of it. It is an
advantage to get rid of it all, and it is good firewood
J. He has also planted about 3.000 indigenous trees.
The forest is a bit thick, but can be easily thinned.
Timber for building materials can also be taken out.
If you imagine turning around 180 degrees from where you
see the forest above, you’ll see
1) Workers’ houses (about in the middle of the
topographical map towards the border to the East).
These have five rooms, common bath room and kitchen.
The idea is to make two apartments out of this; one on
each side. The room at right where a door can be seen
is the kitchen. On the downside of this are the
toilets and showers. Behind, to the left, we see the
generator room, a house of its own and today housing a
(too) big generator (22 kW). This house can also be
made into a small apartment for a worker (for example a
watchman) if needed.
2) Hall 1 at right (30 x 7
meters). There’s a 4 meter tall wall on this building,
which is a steel structure with stone walls. The last
1/5 is a separate room. We will do the following:
The girls will have bedrooms and toilets /
showers upstairs. Windows upstairs will be relatively
low. In addition to the bedrooms, there will also be a
small living room. The central corridor gets ”lights
from above”. There will be a small apartment for the
house mother in the separate part on the other side + a
small bedsitter (bed and bathroom) for a volunteer or
others who may be there. Downstairs there will be a
large dining room, kitchen and toilets.
4) Hall 3 (on the right picture). We see Hall
1 at right, a snip of Hall 2 left and Hall 3 in the
background.Hall 3 is not really a hall, but
a part of the old building. We want to have the living
room for the kids here (75 square meters). And from
then one Friday nights’ and Sunday afternoons’ movies
will be watched here and not in our house … :-) The
part we see on the picture is one big room. The
building stretches further behind at right, containing
two rooms and a toilet section, but we haven’t yet
decided how to utilise this.
3)
Hall 2 (left). This is 20 x 5 meters, and is now
only one long room. We want to partition this into
bedrooms, a small living room, toilets and showers for
the boys.
5) House. The old house contains offices today.
We want, with relatively easy strokes, turn this into a
house for Marianne and Jonny (including three guest
rooms). The house is formed like an L. And we have to
admit that we are looking very much forward to
getting our own house where we can ’do as we want’
compared to where we are today. And just imagine
sitting in front of the house, in the garden… Nice,
isn’t it? :-)
The ground is sloping a bit towards the main entrance of
the property which is situated at the far end behind the
trees. The hedge at right is the border to the
neighbour. The path from our house down to the gate is
faintly visible in the middle of the picture. We think
you can understand that we are quite thrilled? Let’s
add that Kim (the one selling) will help us find a
builder. He’ll also help us with planning, building,
getting us local contacts and so on. He also knows
about prices etc.
We really feel we have gotten a full package with this
property, and look forward BIG TIME to move in.
The place is a pure paradise – having plenty of
rain, and being very fertile and extremely green! J. We
picture a big kitchen garden, fruit trees, hens and
maybe a cow J. We also have to stress – if anybody
should be doubting – that three parties have gone
together buying the property: Maisha Mema buys the
biggest part that will be used as a children’s home and
recreational area, Marianne and Jonny buys most of the
old house + the garden seen above, and a friend of Jonny
buys about a quarter of the property to set up a guest
house. Maisha Mama has the funds to buy the property
and houses, but rather little to rebuild / renovate the
houses to become suitable for a children’s home. As
mentioned above it is more or less “raw” buildings we
are buying. These have to be transformed into a “girls’
house” including a flat for the housemother, dining hall
and toilets (Hall 1), a “boys’ house” (Hall 2), and a
living room (Hall 3).
The big challenge is therefore to try collecting money
for all this without taking a loan. We have through the
years gathered quite a lot of money on the Building
account. For most of these we have now bought this
property in Tigoni. There is still some money left in
the account, basically reserved for Clubhouse II in the
Soweto slums. During this or next year we hope to sell
the original 2 acres we bought in 2001, and will thereby
hopefully free quite a lot of funds for Clubhouse II –
the work in Soweto continues as before and will be
intensified! J But our goal is to move our family
(the children’s home) up to Tigoni during December this
year, and the funds for rebuilding and renovating there
is needed now… We hope to manage this during
the months left until December, and you are of course
hearty welcome to contribute towards moving the children
to Tigoni J. It would be the nicest Christmas gift we
can ever imagine! :-)
In September we’ll have concerts in the Stavanger area.
More about this in the Newsletter in the beginning of
September!
Nairobi, 19th June 2011
Best greetings from
Jonny and Marianne Haldimann Mydland
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