For those of you who know Biscuit, he wants to share with you his recent experience visiting Nightingale's sponsored child, Elizabeth in Kenya. (June 2008) For those of you visiting our website, Biscuit is our bear who enjoys sleepovers with our children at school.

Biscuit's trip to see Elizabeth (in his own words):

We travelled 120kms out of Nairobi (by car) and our first stop was at Elizabeth's school. The whole school came out and the children sang us a welcome song in their language 'Kikamba'. The children were using a plastic bottle as a musical instrument! (view video clip here)

We then visited Elizabeth's classroom which had no desks, just blocks of stones for the children to sit on. I listened to the language and couldn't understand a word! (view video clip here)

After visiting the school, we drove for another half an hour, parked by a bush and walked 5kms, up and down hills and through bushes and along a dusty path (for another half an hour) until we got to a clearing. Elizabeth walked on ahead and out of nowhere woman danced down the hill towards us singing "Karibuni", "Karibuni" which means welcome in Kenya. Everybody was so happy to see us! (view video clip here)

Tronie handed out clothes; shoes; crayons; food and water to the family and community and a photograph of the children at Nightingale. She explained that all these gifts came from the Nightingale children and families in Canada. Elizabeth's family had cooked us some meat; potatoes; maize meal and carrots which they had grown themselves on the land. Elizabeth showed me around her mud hut which was made of cow dung and sand.

It was soon time to go and everyone started to sing thank you. I was sad to leave Elizabeth as she had been so gentle and kind. She thanked me for all the gifts that we had brought. She was sad to see me go.

On the way back to Nairobi we had to stop on the road because cows were walking ahead of us and we couldn't pass! (view video clip here)