Renovation of the old Methodist Church building for the Women’s Sewing Project

This is a little story about how things work in Ribe. Here is warning that it is a bit long and some parts are overdue, but I wanted to share that the women have begun their project, and that finally occurred recently. It is not a bad thing; it is just not what we expected.

The primary purpose of the November visit from Brydie, the Director of Project Kenya, was to deliver funding and launch a sewing project for the Methodist church women. The church has a fairly new church building, and the old building was identified as a good place for this project to “create employment and eradicate idleness” and “empower and encourage the women in the church”, as well as “encourage other groups around in community developments” according to the proposal.

We had a meeting in the old church building to launch the project, and Brydie accompanied a couple of the women to purchase a few manual/foot pedal Singer machines and sewing supplies.

I (Chris) was assigned the task of managing the renovation project with the remaining funds, to be completed as soon as possible, which I personally feel I handled with mixed results due to differing cultural approaches. For example, rather than ordering and waiting for delivery of cement, we borrowed bags of cement from the school construction site, which I understand due to the time frame. However, I am still trying to pin down the return of that cement with regard to the funding and when the school needs it.

Without further adieu, here goes some of the renovation:

I forgot the camera on the morning of the first day, so I’m sorry I don’t have truly “before” pictures; you’ll just have to imagine… By the end of the first day, the front entrance of the church was blocked up, since a side door is being used. I was just focused on the end goal of the project, but our friend, who is a pastor in Nairobi, pointed out the unintended symbolism of this photo when I was showing him the project over Christmas.

The windows were also reduced, raising the level of their sill in order to enhance security, although I found it a little sad when one of the younger guys working on it with us jokingly told a friend of his who stopped by that we were converting it into a jail.


I think we had a goal of doing it within one week, or at least I did mentally, but Tito spiced things up a bit when on Friday he actually promised the women that we'd turn it over to them on Sunday. Therefore, we still had quite a bit of work, and then suddenly we had a deadline!

Now, it is not unusual for the men to work on Saturday, and I have joined them on occasion, but that was Lesley’s birthday, the harambee (fundraiser) we wrote about before, and a wedding we managed to visit as it wound down. Additionally, there was a different wedding at the church that weekend, and I think most of the workers were going to either the harambee or one of the weddings as well. Therefore, we didn't meet the Sunday deadline, but on Monday, we made a hard push to set up the sewing project by that night with work on several fronts:

Manufacturing a metal security door by welding parts of two doors together to make it larger than either one had been:

Blocking up the large gap between the wall and roof:

Finishing whitewash painting the interior walls:

Fixing stools to be used at the sewing tables (didn't realize I cut off his head while trying to center the stools in the photo!):

& electrical work!

Unfortunately, welding the door took the full day, and the electrician required some materials from Mombasa. Accordingly, it seemed to me that they would finish without my presence the next day since Lesley and I were headed to Mombasa ourselves for a few errands including shipping Christmas gifts to our families. However, the electrician underestimated the amount of wiring and they texted me in town to pick up more. Other tasks such as completing the construction of a table for measuring and cutting their fabric also took longer to complete than anticipated.

The next day, we completed the bulk of the renovation such that in addition to the front entrance being blocked and plastered, the building security is enhanced by the window adjustments and metal door, and also a wood partition wall inside to create a tailoring area and a teaching sewing area. I am still pretty impressed by all that was accomplished in about a week and a half.

All that remains today are some window grills I designed with the materials available; they were requested to further increase the security (the boys around here can apparently get quite mischievous – I was surprised they felt we needed to block up the gap between the walls and the roof!) Eight more grills require welding and painting, and then all of them will be bedded into the exterior of the walls. They are obviously not as urgent; just a to-do item that is now being bumped for other tasks lately. Besides that, the women will probably want to acquire some fans since all of our other security enhancing has reduced airflow through the building.

We turned the building over to the women the following weekend (December 12th I believe), thinking they would get to work making school uniforms for the beginning of this new school year, since “providing clothing/uniforms at a cheaper rate and help in eradicating poverty” is one of the goals. However, the Christmas time, combined with their wedding season, seems to have overruled that taking place. Besides, perhaps the women themselves never planned to try to provide uniforms this term.

After ringing in the New Year, I kept waiting to see them begin until Tito explained that they wanted to mop and clean up the place a bit more after all of our construction. Yet, they (wisely) decided to wait due to the water shortage we were experiencing when the regional pump house broke down and had to wait for repair.

The women must have heard that we were looking forward to their start, because they came to get us on the first day they were going in to set up:

We also stopped by a couple days later and found them taking measurements of a few students:

Some additional VERY EXCITING news about these women, and this project, is that many of the women also comprise the church’s choir. Well, at the same time as we were working so hard to renovate the old church building, they went to Nairobi for a choir competition and took second place! This positioned them to recently become one of the few, if not only Kenya National Choir (we still struggle to get complete information on things like this). Therefore, if the President wants to use them at an event, they would go perform for him! Additionally, some people came “to see where these women are from” and reportedly had a donation to help them begin some sort of project. Now this is where I am really excited that we have helped them help themselves already: Upon learning that they have already started on this sewing project, those people have apparently gone back to Nairobi seeking to double their donation to the Ribe Methodist Church Women.