Hi there!
We have now been in Kenya for a week and just got working internet yesterday! Sorry for the delay of the first blog post. We are loving our time here so far and have 2 friends living with us from Pepperdine, Marylnn and Casey. They showed us the ropes of Rafiki and we will miss them so much when they have to leave us next Wednesday. Wageni, the house we are living in, is quite nice, although we have found 1 tarantula and a snake in our bathrooms…Other than that, we feel quite safe and protected! We wake pretty early every morning for devotions and then head out for the days activities. There is a tea break at 10:15, which is a Kenyan tradition, and after that we return to activities til’ lunch and then again between lunch and dinner. The food here is interesting.. A very cultural experience. We eat many similar meals which consist of spinach, ugali, lots of beans, rice, sweet potatoes and sometimes chicken or ground beef and the occasional dinner roll, yum! We also covet the yummy pieces of fruit that we sometimes get for “dessert” at lunch. We eat each meal with an assigned “family”/cottage which consists of a Momma and then 14 or so girls or boys. The mom’s serve our meals, which seems to be one of the biggest challenges we have faced…boy do they eat here! The meals are quite an experience to be a part of and it is really fun to see the kids work and interact with their families. The interaction is very minimal at meals and talking is not very encouraged. It is a quite time because apparently people of African culture have the fear that if they talk and eat at the same time that they will choke.. Us Americans don’t have much of a problem with that, huh?
It is still Winter Break for the kids here, so we have been participating in GAMES (Games, Art, Music, Enrichment, Sports). Each of us lead different activities throughout the day and although it is quite tiring, it’s very fun. We play a lot of kickball, basketball, and frisbee and organize many obstacle courses and games for the younger kids as well. The kids could not be any cuter! We have started to get to know the staff and children very well this week and are loving the play time we get before school is back in session on Monday.
For the most part, we are very healthy…Katie unfortunately developed a skin rash to which we cannot find the cause. She went and got some medicine and cream and it is starting to subside…Hopefully it will be all healed for our departure to Safari on Friday morning. This is a picture of us (with Marylnn and Casey) at a fun weekend outing we had to an Ethiopian Restaurant on Sunday after church.
