ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA NOVITIATE - NAIVASHA

St Anthony of Padua Novitiate, Naivasha, is one of the three formation houses of the Franciscan Missionaries of Hope in Kenya. Novitiate is the second stage of formation where students (Seminarians) spend a year of intense reflection and discernment. The students spend most of their time within the formation house as they get to learn more about the community even as they are trained in self-reliance. Novices (as the students are referred to) cook for themselves, clean for themselves, and grow most of the food they consume (vegetables). Established novitiates will have small scale projects such as poultry, goat, pig, sheep and cattle rearing. It is from such projects that the seminarians learn the art of self-reliance and responsibility.
The location of our Novitiate has limited us when it comes to the projects that we can have. Naivasha is located on the bed of the Rift Valley, a fact that sees Naivasha receiving minimal rainfall. It is windy and dry (arid) all year round. Such scarcity and unreliability of rainfall makes it almost impossible to rely on the rains for success of the above mentioned projects. Currently, we are making do with harvested rainwater as you can see from the photos. However, the unreliability of rainfall makes it impossible to rely on harvested rainwater for the running of any project. The water that we harvest is restricted to house use. This challenge will be overcome when we shall have drilled a borehole. With a borehole, it will be easy to initiate and maintain the small scale projects that are very vital for the formation of our seminarians.