Back Home

Well, after a layover in Amsterdam (complete with a visit to the Anne Frank House) Matt and I made it back to the USA safely yesterday afternoon. We had an amazing vacation. We went on safari to Amboseli (park in front of Mount Kilimanjaro), Ngorongoro Crater (Tanzania) and Lake Manyara. We saw tons of zebras, baboons, wildebeast and elephants; lions mating; and 5 rhinos (very rare)! I'll try to post some pictures on Facebook tomorrow. We then spent a few days in Ngong before coming home. Matt was able to spend a few days with the kids and my host family, which was great.

Leaving Kenya was really hard. It's strange being back. It's so calm and organized here, and I sort of miss the chaos. I'm definitely having some reverse culture shock, but mainly I just miss the kids (so much!!). It's been a little rough, but I think it may be worse once it all really sinks in. I'll write a final post in a couple of days, but I wanted to let everyone know that we made it home okay.

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.

News from Kenya

Since I heard this hit CNN, I thought I'd update about the latest Mungiki news.

As I've written about before, Mungiki is an extremist/terrorist group that is part of the Kikuyu tribe. The mainstream Kikuyus, however, are very against what the Mungiki stand for. This week, a group of Kikuyus decided the police/gov't weren't doing enough to stop the Mungiki and attacked a number of suspected Mungiki members in Karatina (abt 2 hrs from Nairobi; where I was originally supposed to be placed, actually). The Mungiki then retaliated...and you can see where this is heading.

A news crew went into the area and found a suspected supporter of Mungiki, a woman, close to death on the grass outside her home. They asked their police escort to call an ambulance, but the police refused saying it was too dangerous. They watched the woman die.

All of this is extremely sad, obviously. The people aren't happy with the police response to Mungiki. Taking the law into their hands, however, is scary. Their acts of revenge are most likely going to spur additional acts of revenge from Mungiki...and so on.

It's very frustrating to see this on the news every night. Tension b/tw Mungiki and the Kikuyus (which my family and many of the kids at Sidai are part of), not to mention the rest of the country, is getting worse and worse. Combine this with the political tension here (people of certain tribes will never vote for people from other certain tribes; people are extremely unhappy with gov't; etc.), and I'm really concerned for the future of Kenya. I would not be in the country during the next election (if they even make it that long w/o major upheavals or violence). You can see how there is the possibility of tension and violence continuing to expand.

I'm not trying to worry anyone (sorry, Mom). I feel completely safe here. My concern is more for what is to come in the upcoming years. I really hope the government can come up with a way to dissipate some of the tension, but my confidence is the government is definitely lacking.

Here are a couple of news articles if anyone is interested:

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/590848/-/u64bc3/-/

http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1144012430&cid=4

Back home in Kenya

After the worst bus ride EVER, I'm back in Kenya. I'm in Nairobi checking email b/c 1) it's faster here and 2) to avoid getting back on a bus for a little longer. It was only 12 hours (short compared to the 24 hrs to Kigali) but was definitely a worse experience. We were on a crappy bus, and we know just enough Kiswahili to know people kept talking about us. Now the roads in Kenya are terrible - sometimes they don't even really exist and you have to drive on the shoulder. However, if the driver had not felt the need to drive like a total maniac, I probably would not be sore all over from all the bumps! Oh well, despite having no seatbelts, we made it safely back to Kenya.

ANYWAY, besides the bus ride home, our trip was amazing. After Rwanda, we went to Uganda. We spent the last couple of days in Jinja. We rode kayaks in Lake Victoria and up part of the Nile. I also went swimming at the source of the Nile. I skipped the Class 5 rapid trip (I place blame on a certain float trip in Tahoe where I almost died), but it was absolutely beautiful. A year ago, I never would have imagined that I would have been hanging out around the Nile River!

I still need to post on Rwanda, but I need some sleep to deal with that one! More soon...

Safe in Rwanda

We survived the 24 hour bus ride and arrived in Kigali, Rwanda on Thursday afternoon. Rwanda is AMAZING! I hadn't even realized how stressful Kenya was until I came here. People don't harass us nearly as much, and I'm also much less scared of getting hit by a car here. :)

We've been to a number of genocide memorial sites (it's the 15 anniversary). I have so much to write about all of this, but I'm going to wait and write a longer post when I get back to Kenya. It's amazing how Rwanda has been able to completely turn itself around in just 15 years. I can't describe how meaningful this trip has been so far and how impressed I am with this country.

We are leaving Rwanda early tomorrow for Kampala, Uganda. Happy weekend!

Off to Rwanda and Uganda!

Yesterday morning, Dannie and I took a motorbike to visit Letoya and Moses (2 boys who are being sponsored to go to private school) in Maasailand on the other side of the Ngong Hills. Although we primarily just played keepaway w/ Letoya's shoes, we had a lot of fun. On the way home, we saw giraffees and baboons. Even though I've seen both here before, it's still really cool to see them so close to where I've been living.

Jen, Chris and I leave for Rwanda and Uganda this afternoon. We're on a 24 hr bus ride to Kigali, Rwanda today. We don't have any other definite plans for our trip but will be stopping in Kampala, Uganda on the way back to Kenya. We'll go to some other places in Rwanda and Uganda as well, but we're just playing it by ear for now.

I accidentally knocked the camera off a table yesterday and now won't turn on :( I'm really bummed but will make Jen and Chris take lots of pics for me.

I'll try to update while I'm in Rwanda/Uganda but will definitely update when I get back in 7-10 days.

Miss you all!

Who has the right of way in Kenya?

Pedestrian or vehicle?
Answer: Vehicle

Pedestrian or cow?
Answer: Cow

Cow or vehicle?
Answer: It's a toss-up.


Well, I'm in Nairobi. A bunch of volunteers are staying at the volunteer house, and I'm having a really nice weekend. It was a tough week. Not only was there the bad news re Angelina's test results, but there is also some drama about where two boys from Sidai who are starting boarding school next term (which itself is amazing) will be staying during school holidays. Currently, they are with their family who did not treat them right, which is why they were at Sidai in the first place. I had to say goodbye to a boy who was crying when he walked away from me, so things have been tough. Anyway, it's nice to get away for a couple of days and just relax.

HAPPY EASTER!!