Gumboots and Back to School

It's been raining more lately, and it is MUDDY! I wore gumboots (rainboots) all day yesterday and still needed them up at Sidai today. It's been impossible to keep the floors at the children's home clean, and my socks are completely red from the mud. Also, the stairs leading up to Sidai are so muddy that it's practically like a slip and slide. Luckily, I've managed to avoid wiping out on the mud so far.

I visited the school where I'm enrolling Frances today. I wanted to put him in the best school I could realistically afford to commit to paying the tuition for. I ended up enrolling him in the 3rd best school in the area, so I'm really happy and excited. He starts on Tuesday. Matt and I will be on safari on Tuesday, which will be amazing, but I'm a little sad that I won't be able to take him to his first day of school. Yes, I feel like I'm his mom!

I leave Kenya two weeks from today. Although I miss all of you, I'm starting to get really sad about leaving. Frances has been waking up in the middle of the night calling my name. Another girl didn't leave my side for 2 days after I got back from Uganda/Rwanda, and the oldest boy surprised me by saying that he's going to cry when I leave. I know that they have volunteers come in and out, and also know that they bounce back really quickly after volunteers leave, but I still feel terrible about it. Plus, I simply don't want to leave them! I feel like I grow closer and more attached to them each passing week. Hopefully, I come to terms with leaving in the next couple of weeks.

One bit of sad news - the boy that Austin and I met outside Sidai (who was living on the streets b/c his mother is a drunk who beat him) is no longer at the home. While I was in Rwanda, his mother showed up (drunk) with his younger sisters and took him home. Apparently, she was beating him and the boy (Daniel Joro) was crying b/c he didn't want to go. If he comes back to Sidai, Lucy is going to take him to another children's home in Kibiko where hopefully his mother can't find him. Since the mother has legal rights to Daniel, there is unfortuately little else we can do for him right now.