Mountain View Adventure

Last Saturday John Wambu, our property manager at Made in the Streets, and I drove up to the Mountain View properties. MITS has 40 acres there, which is now mostly scrub brush and small trees and lots of rock and sand. John says it has great potential as a source of sand and rock for construction in Nairobi. As we bought the plots over time, we have been dreaming of a place for a MITS Camp, where we can bring street kids and which church groups can use for youth retreats and camps. We have our own stone and sand for buildings, and it gives a wonderful view of the area.

We walked all the way around the 40 acres, over rocks and through thorn bushes. On the way we heard the distinctive sound of a hyena, which means he had seen us. The picture shows the hillside on the east side of our property, where hyenas gather at night and have a

den. We also found where someone had put in a fake boundary marker, trying to sell our land to some unsuspecting buyer, so we destroyed their marker.

We have a project now to build a stone fence all the way around the property. Today the government surveyor is putting in boundary markers where a few of the originals were removed. We have 8 men working on the property, breaking out stone and collecting sand for the building. They are also building a house for themselves, so they can live on the property while they work.

One of the most amazing discoveries about the property is that John found a waterhole, a spring, on the property, where everyone thinks there is no water except when there is rain. This picture shows the spring. We will eventually dig it out and enclose it in concrete, providing clean and safe water for those who will eventually use the property.

While there we met a man and his wife who were looking at properties there, planning to get a bank loan and buy 5 acres there. Someone was trying to sell him one of our 5 acre plots. Amazingly, they were asking him for 1.5 million shillings (a little less than $20,000 at current exchange rates). Considering we bought the plot for about $2,500, counting our registration and title fees, the land has grown tremendously in value. We are happy that we met him and could ward off that future problem. Now we need God's help and the protective stone fence around the properties to secure them for the future.

And we did not see the big python that lives under a tree above our property. But we did see Thompson gazelles and one giraffe.