I'm gonna try to upload one or two pics from our safari...
hyenas...not laughing;(
zebras drinking
sleeping lion
Elephants!
zebras drinking
sleeping lion
Elephants!
Monday, March 21, 2011
Off to Greece...
We're at the airport now in Nairobi about to fly to Greece.
I'm gonna try to upload one or two pics from our safari...
I'm gonna try to upload one or two pics from our safari...
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Family's Here!!
Diana, Debby, Mom and Dad have arrived safely! I was SOOO excited they were coming I think I made myself sick and ended up even having to go to the hospital to get my blood tested and some meds (they gave me and L a free hat and mug too!). So Laquita went to the airport to greet/identify them while I waited in bed. It worked out great though because when you're as sick as that all you really want is your mommy and that's exactly what I got.
Me and Debby with our papaya under the papaya tree
Walking behind the shops (Diana took all the pics but she's here too)
Momma with little Hollye-- who we just found out has Malaria:(
This is one of 42 pictures we had to take because all the girls kept wanting more with mom and dad who they kept saying were their mom and dad.
And tomorrow morning we are off to Safari for three days! Debby made us matching Austrian crystal visors for the occasion. Pictures to follow soon...
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The Nile
So last weekend we took a trip to Uganda to raft the Nile with nine other Americans that are all working in Nairobi for one reason or another. We had a girl's raft and a boy's raft. These pics highlight one of the rapids the girl's raft went down. The guide steered the boat right for a whirlpool and then abandoned everyone to fend for themselves.
This was a special event because they're building a dam now and no one will be able to go down these rapids anymore. So for this reason they had a large number of visitors this day to go down the rapids for the last time. All in all there were 81 people rafting besides the guides. So 80 people went down the rapids like this, usually getting knocked out at the bigger rapids. 1 person got scared and had to ride down the whole thing in the safety boat. Guess which boat I was in?....
Actually, the safety boat was the best one to ride in because I got to sit with two middle-aged women (who I think were the wives of the owners) and watch from a safe distance while everyone else nearly drowned. I usually like water but for some reason while we were "training" in the boats I started hyperventilating and was determined to jump out of the boat, swim to the shore, and spend the next 5 hours sitting in my rapid-free hostel breathing in air and not water.
So despite that bit the trip was really fun and we had a pretty decent bus ride with only a few hours of delays, no throw-up on us, and no accidental sightings of nudity (this is in reference to a story I may not have shared before; no intentional sightings either while we're mentioning it).
Now mom, dad and my two aunts are coming to visit in less than a week and then we'll all go home!!!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Random pictures...
Happy Valentine's Day! (And Happy Birthday Leah) We had a party here but I only caught the tail end of it since I spent most of the day in Eastleigh. One of the new girls, Evalyne, wrote me a Valentine when I got back. Some
of the new kids here still don't know anything about reading/writing so they just decorated pieces of paper with random letters that looked familiar to them.
Larry being cute...
Some of the kids helped Irene with the landscaping in our compound
Good News
Thanks a lot to everyone that donated for the Bible fund. We've reached our goal and now every student here has a Bible of their own.Every Sunday Joel asks the congregation to hold up their Bibles to show that they remembered to bring them. This is followed by our students trying to pass off song books as Bibles or looking around for other's to take. Now when he asks all of the kids holler and raise their new black Bibles proudly in the air! (Some of them read them too)
So thanks again for your support.
Monday, February 7, 2011
the Burial
********Warning!! Please don’t read this next post if you are in the least bit sensitive as it is sad and a little disturbing********
Sometimes I cry here. It doesn’t happen a lot and its usually do to the fact that I’m a girl and if you give us six months we’re bound to cry at least once. Living far from home and seeing things around here that you can do nothing to help with makes it a little worse. Today a lot of us were crying.
Today we had the funeral for baby Francis.
They aren’t sure why he died but I think it could have been because the hospital he was born in wasn’t that great and didn’t take all the right precautions. He was alive for about two days and then when Mary woke up in the morning he wasn’t breathing.
Some of the older kids and most of the staff left today to bury him. They said not everyone could go since it was just the small bus so I immediately thought I'd stay behind since I didn’t think I could handle it. Irene convinced me otherwise and I’m still not sure if I made the right decision but tonight made me thankful that I went.
We had decided we would leave at 7 AM from Kamulu and be back home by about noon. Its funny that I still think things will actually work out as planned here. We didn’t leave until about 8:30. When we arrived at Eastleigh we had a flat tire that delayed us another two or three hours. From there we drove to the city morgue to pick up the baby and bring him with us to the cemetery. We had the tiny casket with us in the bus. The morgue is what took us so long and I really don’t want to get into the details but I geel like its necessary to understand this country and the corruption that people face here. After arriving at the morgue they arranged for us to park our large bus on the side where people come to pick up the deceased. There were a few other families there, which were slowly getting their loved ones delivered to them through this large door. Every so often you could hear women wailing in grief.
Jackton had been driving the bus and was giving me a few updates of what was going on. He said how the morgue used to be very corrupt under the old presidency and how people would steal clothing or jewelry from the bodies or would hide the bodies and expect a bribe before releasing them. Its nice that people think the government is changing and putting a stop to corruption but after today I don’t think that’s the truth. We arrived before noon and had to wait until 3 pm- when they close- after frantically debating and asking and searching for the baby before he was suddenly “found” and given to us. Part of the reason we thought it was taking so long was because they have so many babies that die then sometimes they get mixed up. So for a while we were under the impression that Francis was given to another family. Jackton, who’s always very chipper and enthusiastic, had to go an identify the body while they were “searching” for him. (Note that this is not necessary- they do have tags and id’s they use but pretend to have lost them). When Jackton came back, with no success, he looked very disturbed and didn’t say much for the next few hours. Finally a guy that worked somewhere in the back came by and gave us a tip as to who knew where the body was. He was too scared to lead us to the person so he just showed us the door and then quickly disappeared. Susan, one of the MITS staff, is from the Kikuyu tribe and talked with the man since he was also Kikuyu. He lead her along with Mary and Mama George (works with the girls at Eastleigh) through a back room that had bodies in it so they could again try to identify the baby. These were not bodies that were placed nicely on tables with sheets over them like we see in the movies. They saw everything. Some were in fridges and others were simply lying on the floor. Some still had their clothes on and others had the cuts and stitches from the processes that go on in the morgue. Susan is only 19 years old and Mary is 16 and just lost her child.
After identifying Francis, they put the clothes we brought on him and placed him the casket. We then drove another thirty minutes to the cemetery. The service was very nice and all in Swahili. Everyone took turns shoveling dirt onto the grave. I finally realized as we were leaving that there were onlty two people with us that I didn’t recognize. It was Mary’s mother and sister. Both of them stood a good distance from Mary and I didn’t see either give her a hug or hold her hand during the whole process (Perhaps they did when I wasn’t watching though). After everything was done Mary then came home with us to Kamulu where she wants to stay.
All of this probably could have been much quicker and less painful if we had just given the first guy at the morgue a bribe. But because we don’t contribute to paying bribes some of our members had to go through the disturbing process that the workers (who are all on drugs) put people through just for some extra cash.
There were times when I kept saying to myself- ‘why am I here?’. Everyone’s speaking Swahili, I don’t know what’s going on, its super hot and we haven’t eaten all day, I can’t contribute to the funeral at all, I feel like I’m taking up space in the nice front seat while others are standing on the bus, everyone keeps asking me if I’m doing okay and apologizing for the wait that they all have to endure too. Then later tonight Susan came over because she was too scared to sleep after what she saw today. After we talked for a long while she said before leaving “It’s so nice of you to go through all of that today and come to the burial. Not many people would wait with us like that. It means a lot.”
And then I wanted to cry for the fifth time today.
Sometimes I cry here. It doesn’t happen a lot and its usually do to the fact that I’m a girl and if you give us six months we’re bound to cry at least once. Living far from home and seeing things around here that you can do nothing to help with makes it a little worse. Today a lot of us were crying.
Today we had the funeral for baby Francis.
They aren’t sure why he died but I think it could have been because the hospital he was born in wasn’t that great and didn’t take all the right precautions. He was alive for about two days and then when Mary woke up in the morning he wasn’t breathing.
Some of the older kids and most of the staff left today to bury him. They said not everyone could go since it was just the small bus so I immediately thought I'd stay behind since I didn’t think I could handle it. Irene convinced me otherwise and I’m still not sure if I made the right decision but tonight made me thankful that I went.
We had decided we would leave at 7 AM from Kamulu and be back home by about noon. Its funny that I still think things will actually work out as planned here. We didn’t leave until about 8:30. When we arrived at Eastleigh we had a flat tire that delayed us another two or three hours. From there we drove to the city morgue to pick up the baby and bring him with us to the cemetery. We had the tiny casket with us in the bus. The morgue is what took us so long and I really don’t want to get into the details but I geel like its necessary to understand this country and the corruption that people face here. After arriving at the morgue they arranged for us to park our large bus on the side where people come to pick up the deceased. There were a few other families there, which were slowly getting their loved ones delivered to them through this large door. Every so often you could hear women wailing in grief.
Jackton had been driving the bus and was giving me a few updates of what was going on. He said how the morgue used to be very corrupt under the old presidency and how people would steal clothing or jewelry from the bodies or would hide the bodies and expect a bribe before releasing them. Its nice that people think the government is changing and putting a stop to corruption but after today I don’t think that’s the truth. We arrived before noon and had to wait until 3 pm- when they close- after frantically debating and asking and searching for the baby before he was suddenly “found” and given to us. Part of the reason we thought it was taking so long was because they have so many babies that die then sometimes they get mixed up. So for a while we were under the impression that Francis was given to another family. Jackton, who’s always very chipper and enthusiastic, had to go an identify the body while they were “searching” for him. (Note that this is not necessary- they do have tags and id’s they use but pretend to have lost them). When Jackton came back, with no success, he looked very disturbed and didn’t say much for the next few hours. Finally a guy that worked somewhere in the back came by and gave us a tip as to who knew where the body was. He was too scared to lead us to the person so he just showed us the door and then quickly disappeared. Susan, one of the MITS staff, is from the Kikuyu tribe and talked with the man since he was also Kikuyu. He lead her along with Mary and Mama George (works with the girls at Eastleigh) through a back room that had bodies in it so they could again try to identify the baby. These were not bodies that were placed nicely on tables with sheets over them like we see in the movies. They saw everything. Some were in fridges and others were simply lying on the floor. Some still had their clothes on and others had the cuts and stitches from the processes that go on in the morgue. Susan is only 19 years old and Mary is 16 and just lost her child.
After identifying Francis, they put the clothes we brought on him and placed him the casket. We then drove another thirty minutes to the cemetery. The service was very nice and all in Swahili. Everyone took turns shoveling dirt onto the grave. I finally realized as we were leaving that there were onlty two people with us that I didn’t recognize. It was Mary’s mother and sister. Both of them stood a good distance from Mary and I didn’t see either give her a hug or hold her hand during the whole process (Perhaps they did when I wasn’t watching though). After everything was done Mary then came home with us to Kamulu where she wants to stay.
All of this probably could have been much quicker and less painful if we had just given the first guy at the morgue a bribe. But because we don’t contribute to paying bribes some of our members had to go through the disturbing process that the workers (who are all on drugs) put people through just for some extra cash.
There were times when I kept saying to myself- ‘why am I here?’. Everyone’s speaking Swahili, I don’t know what’s going on, its super hot and we haven’t eaten all day, I can’t contribute to the funeral at all, I feel like I’m taking up space in the nice front seat while others are standing on the bus, everyone keeps asking me if I’m doing okay and apologizing for the wait that they all have to endure too. Then later tonight Susan came over because she was too scared to sleep after what she saw today. After we talked for a long while she said before leaving “It’s so nice of you to go through all of that today and come to the burial. Not many people would wait with us like that. It means a lot.”
And then I wanted to cry for the fifth time today.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
We had a Baby Boy!!
Mary W had her baby yesterday morning! She was complaining of pain on saturday but we all told her it wasn't time yet because the doctors had said she wasn't due until March. It wasn't until monday morning when she looked a little weak that they decided to take her to the hospital and about an hour later she gave birth!! All of us we're so surprised because we've seen people in labor and she definitely did not look the part. Apparently the doctors were wrong because she really was due about this time.Today we went and visited her at the hospital and a
re moving her and the baby to Eastleigh where she will stay for the next three months. Baby Francis (named after Mbuvi- the director here) weighed 2 kg and was so bundled up in blankets you could barely see his tiny face. (I took a picture of mother Mary but it was too blurry to post).
Everyone is happy and healthy!
Just to give you an idea of the hospital we went to here's a hand written chart in the waiting room showing the prices for services- (1000 shillings is about 12 dollars).
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