Back Home.. For 3 Days..

(Why does this feel so familiar?)

Road Trip Uganda went off without a hitch!

Sunday Ina and I hopped on matatu #1 from Kitale, got on matatu #2 in Kandui, had our passports stamped in Malaba, Kenya, walked across the border, got on matatu #3 in Malaba, Uganda, and made it to Jinja, Uganda by 4pm. We had a great stay with 2 of Ina’s Finnish friends who are working at Jinja’s YWAM base -- ate real Indian food, saw Lake Victoria, hiked out to the Nile and it’s amazing waterfalls, walked through the Jinja markets; Ina managed to find a sauna to relax in during our last night! Oh, Scandinavians…

Uganda felt much more westernized than Kenya; people speak more English and seem friendlier. What surprised me is the massive population of Indians -- at least in Jinja, all the supermarkets and a good percentage of restaurants are run by people from India. Even though Amin booted them all out quite harshly less than 30 years ago, the government has since invited them back, acknowledging what a staple they are to Uganda’s economy. Obviously many of them accepted the invitation, and I for one am glad – having Indian food vs. the Kenyan same old same old was such a nice change.

Tuesday we got on matatu #4 to Busia, walked through the border again, got passports stamped, and got on matatu #5 to Kisumu. Stayed at the nicest hotel in town (for a whopping $10/night), walked down to Lake Victoria, ate at an Italian restaurant (that also served Indian AND Kenyan food), had ice cream for the first time in ages, and wandered through all the markets until getting on matatu #6 back to Kitale. 6 hours of dusty, bumpy, sweaty ride later, we were glad to get home.

Riding in a matatu is one thing I’m not sure I’ll miss once I’m back in the US. More often than not, it involves sharing a mini-van-ish bus with 20+ people, plus a bunch of chickens with their feet tied up, plus everyone’s luggage, hitting pothole after pothole while going somewhere around 120k/h and trying to avoid speeding semis and the other matatus driving maniacally on both sides of the road. Babies are crying, people are arguing with the conductor about fares, random old men are falling sleep on your shoulders. Being tall totally has it’s drawbacks on matatus, because when you hit a bump, your head constantly hits the metal framing on the ceiling. An added bonus on our last leg home yesterday was hitting a bump, cracking my head on the ceiling, AND having a metal screw bust through my seat right into my back. Yowzers.

Some shots:

We Heart Matatus!

Yikes. And Ew.


Obama Koikois!


Ina finally found a Kenyan wearing a shirt from Finland.


View from the matatu window...


Beans at the Uganda market.


The Nile!


Sitting by a Nile waterfall.


Lake Victoria at Sundown.

Walking the home stretch. So dusty and hot..

Now for the goodbyes.. today is the last day visiting the Nema House (where Noise is now in residence!), tomorrow is the last day at Oasis, Saturday will be the last day at HBF, and Sunday I will take my e-ticket to the Kitale airstrip, hand it man working in the office, which is about as big as an outhouse, and get on a tiny plane to Nairobi, to start a 30-hour journey home. Good times.

It Happened at the Supermarket...

On Monday, I was picking up some things at the supermarket when a girl about 12 or 13 came up and timidly asked in English how I was. I said fine, and she walked away. 5 minutes later, as I was about to leave, she approached me again and asked if she could come home with me --not an uncommon request here; kids assume you can just stuff them into your suitcase and take them back to America. When I explained I lived in Kitale, she told me her name was Joyce, her father was dead, her mother had left her, and she had no place to live. Noting her good English and plain but still clean, new-ish clothes, I asked where she was staying now. She said with an aunt just outside of town, but she treated her badly and refused to pay her school fees.

This combination of life problems is the typical formula for a street kid – no parents, relatives who don’t care, and no school to keep them educated or occupied, so they turn to the streets, and consequently glue, drugs, alcohol, and prostitution, as their only alternative. I told her to meet me the next morning and we’d talk.

She never showed up the next morning, so Ina and I headed to Oasis for a few hours. When we returned to town to meet up with Daniel, Joyce ran up and hugged me, saying she’d been waiting there since 6am. The 4 of us went out for lunch and Daniel asked Joyce lots of questions about her situation. When we finished, Dan said he wanted to take Joyce to talk to Anne, TI’s social worker.

The next day we found out that Anne went all the way out to Joyce’s home with her, only to discover she lives in a house with her birth mother, stepfather, and younger siblings. The school Joyce said she used to attend did not even exist, nor did the small town she said her aunt lived in. Also, her name is not Joyce, it’s Noise. (Yes, Noise.) However, Anne said as soon as she’d started walking down the road to Noise’s village, there was an overwhelming smell of alcohol. The house itself was in a swampy, slum area, and Noise’s parents were totally indifferent to their daughter and her whereabouts. When Anne confronted Noise about lying, she was very apologetic, but also seemed genuinely confused and disoriented about her situation. Anne told us she suspects that whenever Noise’s mother leaves the house, her stepfather gets drunk and rapes her, forcing Noise to stay away from the home as much as possible.

Even though Noise’s original story was a bit fictitious, her real situation is enough to make her a viable candidate for the street girls home. Ironically, the same day I met Noise, Lillian, who was been at Nema House for over 4 months, ran away, meaning there are just 4 girls there currently, with room for more...

Party On..

The TI Christmas Party yesterday was a huge success. Around 260 people showed up, the majority of them kids that TI sponsors. Massive amounts of rice, cabbage, beef stew, chapati, and bananas were consumed, pictures taken, songs and skits shared, and – interestingly, to me – all the kids mingled easily with each other versus staying in their own groups.

The highlight of my day was having Linda on my lap most of the time, seeing her eat a huge meal, laugh at Mama Virginia on a teeter totter for the first time, and go down the slide with me. For all the ways it can ravage the body, I am thankful HIV allows those it affects to have some happy days that outweigh the hard ones.

Ina, Sarah & I cutting up ridiculous amounts of cabbage.


Sarah from Nema House in the guava tree--
consequently picked bare by the end of the party..


Getting everyone seated and served...


Mulongo, chowing down.. believe it
or not, this guy is 8. He was
malnourished the first few years
of life, so he's making up for lost time...


Beautiful Teresa, from Oasis, loving the chapati...


Linda, new Christmas dress and all,
eating mchelli (rice).


How many kids can you fit onto one teeter totter?


Mama V, getting pushed on the swing by her kids..


Linda & I on the slide.

Ina and I are off to Uganda tomorrow, with a stop-off in the town Obama’s grandma hails from. Woot woot!

Then There Were Seven.

The departures have begun. Yesterday we all ate a final banana pancake breakfast together and said goodbye to Lauren, Nate, and Drew as they headed home for Christmas. I don’t think any of us quite realized how much like family we’ve become until they left; it was a hard goodbye. The rest of us have been wandering the house in a daze wondering why everything is so quiet and then remembering that the teenagers are gone…

As we discussed over a bonfire Saturday night, the tough part about going home is having all the people who know exactly what you’ve experienced be so far away when you need them most! It will be an adjustment for all of us.

HBF Sleepover.

Before the departure, we were able to pull off a slightly chaotic but ultimately successful sleepover at HBF, sending house parents Ben and Virginia for a night in a nice Kitale hotel. They were thrilled to get a break, and we managed to win over the kids by cooking spaghetti for dinner (they love it so much they call it “super-getti”) and eggs for breakfast. To Ben and Virginia’s credit, their house of 30 kids runs like a well-oiled machine without them. Without ever being asked, the boys got firewood, the girls got water from the river, and no one fought or caused any problems. (Apart from a bunch of intoxicated Matissi tribesmen in a circumcision ceremony marching around the house yelling at 5am… that was exciting.)

It is amazing within Kenyan culture how instinctively the older kids look after the younger ones. This is especially obvious at HBF, where many of the older kids were the sole caregivers to their younger siblings before they were put in the home. So when Ben and Virginia left, all the responsible, parental instincts kicked in at high gear and we just watched in amazement! Susan, who is 13, took care of Baby Dan the entire time; getting him to sleep, feeding him (always before herself), changing diapers, bathing him. Linda had malaria again, pretty severely because of the HIV, and Elizabeth (16) slept with her and took her out to the cho 6 times during the night.

Some photos...

Nate & Martin.


Susan & Baby Dan, playing with an
aluminum can lid, as all babies do.....


Getting Ready for Breakfast!


Eggs, Bread, and Chai for 35.


Baby Dan, loving breakfast.


The Girls Bringing Water In.

Vero & I, Sneaking a Nap.

The Blanket Project.

Back in October, we were coming back from Nairobi on the night bus when Nate looked out the window and saw some street boys getting ready to go to sleep on the sidewalk. As hot as it gets during the day here, the nights are always surprisingly cold, and this got Nate thinking about all the Kitale street boys who have nothing but the holey clothes on their backs at night.

With a vague idea and God providing all the funds before Nate even prayed for them, he went out and bought 25 smallwool blankets. Each of us got 2 or 3 fabric squares, wrote notes to the boys, and signed them Baba (Father) or Yesu (Jesus). Then we took it all to Nema House, where the ex-street girls sewed the squares onto the corners of the blankets.

On a Sunday morning at 3am, Drew, Nate, and Alex loaded up a pick-up with the blankets and met Geoffrey, who runs the Oasis school and knows most of the places the street boys sleep. The guys were able to cover 25 sleeping boys with 25 blankets without a single one waking up. Before leaving yesterday morning, they were able to do another successful run with another 25 blankets. There is a chance the boys will pawn the blankets off for glue, but Nate decided to risk it and give them at least one warm night knowing God hasn’t forgotten about them. The only annoying part was that it was too dangerous for us girls to go with so we had to stay up in the livingroom waiting for the report…

2 more weeks left in Africa. Trying to make the most of it even though school is out and most of TI’s projects have finished for the year. This week is TI’s Christmas party, with over 200 kids coming from all of the projects! Next week Ina and I go to Uganda to visit some friends for a few days. And somehow the next week is Christmas… the heat and sun here has me convinced I’m stuck in a perpetual month of August.

See many of you very soon!

Life's a Beach... for a week.

Jambo from Kitale! 24 agonizing hours of hot and dusty bus ride later and we are miraculously back home. During the 24-hour bus ride down to Malindi, we were beginning to wonder if the trip was really worth it…

Boy were we not disappointed.

Hello, Indian Ocean!

It was kind of hard to believe Malindi is in the same country as Kitale. For starters, it is incredibly humid and hot with no rain, versus Kitale’s dry heat with downpours every few days. It’s very touristy, with a massive population of Italians – it is nicknamed “Little Italy” because of how many Italians visit and have summer homes there. When you walk by Kenyan kids on the street, instead of typical Swahili greetings you hear ‘ciao’. When we asked them “sasa?” (the slang way of asking what’s up), the kids didn’t even know how to respond! Weird. Instead of bodas bodas, they use tuk tuks to get around. There is white sand everywhere instead of red dust, and food prices were through the roof because of tourism. And the sun is about 15 times stronger than in Kitale.

Not that we’re complaining. Spending every day at the beach AND the resort swimming pool, eating Mombasa mangoes, and sleeping in an air conditioned room was pretty much paradise for everyone (horrific sunburns aside). For the record, the Indian Ocean is WARM (like bath water), and the sand is gold and silver. It’s beautiful.

Some shots..

The Silver and Gold Sand on the Beach.


All wearing our kokoi skirts before going out for Thanksgiving dinner.


On the wine list: BELLINGHAM!?!


Two Massai men watching Lauren and Drew build a sandcastle.


Turtle Bay in Watamu, where we snorkeled.


Boys Running on the Beach at Sunrise.


Sunrise over the Indian Ocean. Not too shabby...

As great as a vacation as we all had, we were surprised at how quickly we got antsy to get back to Kitale. It was strange being at such a ritzy resort and eating such expensive food while you're missing street kids back home and the beans and rice we eat everyday.

This weekend we are wrapping some projects up before Nate, Drew, and Lauren head home on Sunday. Last night we took the Nema girls out for dinner, and this weekend 4 of us are babysitting all 30 kids at HBF and sending house parents Ben and Virginia to a nice hotel for the weekend. This involves cooking massive amounts of spaghetti for dinner and eggs for breakfast, which is a very special treat for them… and for us... to be cooking in such mass amounts…

More next week!

The Good and Bad.

Linda was taken to the hospital Monday and tested positive for HIV. She also had severe malaria, pneumonia, malnutrition, and dehydration. The doctors predicted up to 2 weeks in hospital, but after 3 days of meds, IV, rest, good food, and TI staff taking turns spending the night with and entertaining her, Linda was ready and rearing to get out of there. (Her grandma refused to even visit.) We went to see her at HBF yesterday (where she’s staying temporarily) and she is a completely different girl – laughing and active and full of personality.

Linda will most likely have to go back to live with her grandma due to having HIV, because there is nowhere here that accepts orphans with AIDS. The closest is a home 2 hours away that only accepts toddlers under age 2, meaning there are really zero options for you if you are parentless and HIV positive. Which is ridiculous, since an orphan with HIV is obviously in even more urgent need of help than a healthy orphan. We’ve been talking a lot about this issue this week, and the possibility of TI opening a small home for kids in this situation. I’ve felt a lot of excitement about it.

Last year, TI did this for a few street girls, renting a small place in a quiet area nearby and calling it The Nema House (nema is ‘grace’ in Swahili). Every Tuesday, Lauren and I walk a few miles to visit the 6 ex-street girls – Sarah, Rebecca, Metrine, Lillian, Catherine, and Sharon -- the house Mum Janet, and teacher Nancy. The oldest girl is 15, the youngest is 12, and they come from varying degrees of poverty – Lillian is a total orphan and has spent her entire life on the streets; Catherine has family far away and was only on the streets for a bit before she came to Nema House.

The girls stay fairly sheltered in the home; the first few weeks they work to clean up, get off glue, and figure out what level they are at in school. Then they are given school supplies and uniforms and work with Nancy to get up to their appropriate grade. All the girls have been at Nema for 4 months and counting and have made great progress, in everything from study habits to cooking to how they act towards men. It is exciting to watch.

This last week – the same day Linda tested positive for HIV – Sharon ran away from Nema, which took everyone very much by surprise. The girls said she’d been talking about missing her boyfriend the night before. There is always a big risk when one girl runs that others may follow, but when Daniel spoke to them about it, each girl was sad about Sharon’s choice, saying they don’t know why she would go back to the streets when she had so much at Nema. Sharon was turned into child services a few days later and is staying at a local orphanage until she’s willing to open up to Daniel and Meredith about why she ran away.

In other news… tomorrow Nate, Andrew, the 2 Laurens, myself, and our friend Alex are making the trek down to Malindi, on the coast of Kenya, for a weeks’ stay. This involves 2 or 3 taxi rides, 7 hours on a matatu, killing 4 hours in Nairobi trying not to get mugged, another 8 hours on a bus, and 1 in a kangaroo van. Thanks to a friend of Daniel’s, once we get to Malindi, we have free lodging in a military resort condo near the beach, so as long as we get there in one piece (or 6 respective pieces) and can scrounge up some food each night, we’re good to go. Pretty stoked to finally see the Indian Ocean…

...particularly since the dry season has finally started in Kitale and we have been out of water for 2 days now. We are all trying to go without showers until we get to the beach condo early Tuesday morning. Should be a lovely smelling bus ride.

More from Malindi!

Some pictures from the week:


Nate walking back from an Oasis soccer game with
"Soldier" Dan and James.


Standing in some just-harvested corn
drying in the sun.


A Days Inn! In Kenya! Who knew..
Also, yes, that is a boda boda with 4 crates of soda
bottles tied onto the back...


More maiz being dried out on the side of the road.

This was a sign on the window of a matatu we took.

NO idea what it means, but that's definitely Obama below

it. (This one's for you, Corey.) Only in Kenya...

The lovely Metrine and Cathrine from Nema House, standing

near their garden, in dresses they made themselves.

Catherine & I at Nema.

Ina & Mere dancing with the girls and Mama Janet.

The Weekend.

This is me and Linda.

She is 7.

I met Linda on Saturday, when Ina and I went to spend the night again at the kids home. and Dan brought her and big sister Stella there after he found them living in bad conditions with their grandma. Both parents died a few years ago, and the grandma is very old and has no way to support the girls. Stella is happy and healthy and fit right in with the rest of the 26 kids; Linda is very quiet and does move around a lot, mainly due to this infected wound on her leg (not for the faint of heart):

Even when the bandage is touched, she flinches.

Along with this, Linda is very malnourished and withdrawn, tired, and fatigued. Although no one knows her parents cause of death, because they both died so quickly within such short time time, it was most likely AIDS. And because of that, there is a very good chance Linda is HIV positive. She goes in for the test today, and to have her leg treated.

If she tests positive, she cannot live at the kids home because of the risk of infecting others. She will most likely be given the ART medication and sent back to her grandma’s with food provisions.

We all prayed very hard for her this morning, that God would give her peace either way. I prayed for God to give me peace with this. As Dan says, a lot of things are easy to understand and make sense of here because of the corruption and lack of resources, but a 7-year old orphaned girl with AIDS is not one of them.

On a happier note, we had another great sleepover at the kids home. We decided to try a ‘grieving exercise’ by giving everyone crayons and a small blank book, and having them write what they remembered about their parents, other siblings, former house, etc. Because every child at HBF is an orphan, I expected this to be a bit emotional, but thanks to their great house parents - Ben and Virginia - who discuss it often with them, they were all very open and excited to draw their old homes and write down the names of their parents and family. After ugali and sukumowiki for dinner, we all sat around the candlelit table and Ben asked each child about their story. For nearly all the kids, they lived good lives with their families until their parents deaths, and then went to live with grandparents who were either abusive or neglectful, or simply lacked the resources to feed them and/or get them to school each day. Every child said they felt peaceful at HBF because they didn’t have to worry about food, and happy because they knew someone would take them to school every day. Just those 2 things alone give them a world of security.

Some pictures from the weekend:

The kids reading their stories before bed.

Valentine with baby Dan on her back,

and Simiyu, with the most stunning smile in the world.

Mama Virginia making sukumowiki
in the kitchen with Caro and Susan.


The luxurious bathroom facilities, called the 'cho'.


Oscar, Emily, Mwangi, Valley, Jackie, Loya and I,
goofing off before dinner.



Teddy and Stella doing dishes.


Patrick and I, eating lollies in the wheelbarrow.

With Mama Virginia and half of the crew before we left.

In other news, this week I got stung by one of these!

I was eating dinner and felt something cold and wet on my neck, and when I reached up to flick it off, a bunch of the his evil little hairs lodged themselves into the skin on my hands. Meredith got most of them out with a rag and kerosene; the rest of them itch like craaaaaaazy. Good times.