Jambo!

Our host "brother", Brian, is turning 19 so Steph and I decided to have a celebration last night since Grace told us they typically do not celebrate birthdays. We bought a cake with "Happy Birthday Brian!" written on it, candles, Coke, Sprite and an Ocean's 11 DVD (Brian loves to watch DVDs). After we ate dinner, we went into our room, lit the candles and walked out singing. When we told him to make a wish, he sat there for a good 5 minutes thinking about what he should wish for. It was hilarous! I wasn't sure if he just didn't know what to do or if he was really thinking for the perfect wish. We told Grace and Stanley that we were celebrating their birthdays too because A) Grace's birthday was on July 17 and not one person wished her a Happy Birthday (she glared at Stanley when she told us this) and B) Stanley doesn't even know when his birthday is! So we had a fun night celebrating their birthdays.

Today we held The Olympics for the kids. We went out to the field and divided the children into 3 groups and had them pick their country of representation (they picked Kenya, Ethiopia and Canada). We had relay races, wheel barrel races, crab walk races, and the bear crawl. It was fairly chaotic the whole time because of the wide range of ages, but I think they all had a good time. We brought candy for the winners which ended up to be a bad idea because the kids almost clawed Steph to death trying to get their piece. Note to self: have a candy scramble next time. Afterwards we played soccer but were interrupted by the drunk man who was looking for a lighter for his joint and kept slurring about his weed farm. Of course the kids all stopped what they were doing to walk over and get a closer look at what was going on. We were about to round them up and head back to Sidai when he and his friends finally staggered away. It's amazing what these kids are exposed to on a daily basis.

Tonight Steph and I are heading to Nairobi to catch a 10-hour overnight bus ride (which I'm absolutely dreading) to Mombasa, a city at the beach. We are staying for the weekend at a place called Stilts, appropriately named because each room is a tree house. A lot of volunteers stay there which is how we found out about it. I'm looking forward to hanging out with the monkeys! Since there are no windows, apparently the monkeys come right into the tree houses looking for food. Steph is scared of monkeys so I'm in charge of keeping them at bay, just like she protects me from the spiders. :)

This week has gone a lot faster than last week, simply because we are now adjusted to this new environment. It's weird to think that I've only been gone for just over 2 weeks. So much has happened that it feels more like a month!

Until next week....

Kristin