Well, hello and welcome to our new website !!!!!

Please note - as we're only getting started there may be spelling mistakes, and other little glitches as we develop. We hope to continue developing the site as we move forward, and, for those techies out there, we may even include a blog of all things!

We hope you enjoy your visit to our little corner of cyber space.

Enjoy......

Fr. John

My name is John Fortune, I'm from Dublin and I am a Rosminian Priest working in the parish of Ewuaso Kedong, in the Ngong Diocese of Kenya. While I have been in East Africa for almost 20 years I have come to this parish just 3 and a half years ago.

So far we have a small self help/development project going in our compound. About 3 and a half acres have been given over to interested people from the local community to grow vegetables and fruits. We have set up a drip irrigation system so as to best use the little water we have and hired a trained agriculturalist to manage the project and also to train the local Maasai people in agriculture. We hope in a few years to be able to duplicate the project in other areas if the local people are interested. For the Maasai their herds are their wealth and their status how ever since we started cutting and saving silage three years ago a number have shown interest and we now hire out 'brushcutters' for the purpose of cutting grass to a few people. that is of course when there is grass to cut.... this last year has not been too successful with rain and so no grass to cut. We hope to get a grade cow and keep it on zero grazing and maybe also they will take this up as well.... if not getting rid of their herds but at least having one good grade cow for milk. To this end we have the silage and also we have planted three quarters of an acre of Napier grass under drip irrigation. We have just completed a cow house and hope later in the year to get a cow.

A pure bred breeding buck was bought about a year and a half ago following a request from some of the local community. This is with a view to helping them to upgrade some of their goats. The people select some of their females to bring to our buck and already quite a number have given birth. I am hoping to enlarge this project

These are the sort of things we are doing and slowly the people are gaining interest and trying to imitate what we do. I try to help in any way I can but my resources are limited as I have a large parish with demands for building and development in so many areas.