Home Sweet Home

Well, we found the kitties (two lionesses) as the sun was going down on Saturday night. We had a great day, and to top it off we celebrated Edward’s birthday in style with a cake and the staff singing him a rather interesting rendition of Happy Birthday/Hakuna Matata.

Yesterday we drove to Kirua stopping at the equator on the way, We watched a toothpick in draining water swirl clockwise in the northern hemisphere, counterclockwise in the southern, and not at all right on the equator – hard to believe that a distance of 20 m makes a difference in the way water swirls.

We are now officially settled in at our residence at St. Theresa’s Mission Hospital. It’s a wonderful little hospital run by a group of Kenyan nuns (who all speak Italian because they are the ones that founded the hospital and continue to fund it) and I feel very safe and welcome here. The sisters put on quite a dinner for us last night with lots of singing and dancing. We have access to their gardens all summer… tomatoes, kales (as they call it), cabbage, potatoes, onions, and carrots. There is also an avocado tree in the yard and a few pigs running around that apparently make quite a nice pork roast. Other than that there is a women’s market that we can get all of our fruit at for very cheap prices and once the three supervisors head home we will be provided with a cook during the week.

We are heading out tomorrow to conduct our first of 38 food security interviews with the women in the two communities. Should be pretty interesting. Crops are better this year than last, but still not great.

I do have a whole bunch of pictures to attach but am having trouble downloading them today so will try again tomorrow!