It's fantastic to be living in a country where we can enjoy extensive sunshine and where I can get the first decent sun tan of my life. Well, that was the original idea, but the continuing rain does keep threatening to shatter that illusion! The locals say that it's been one of the wettest years in living memory...how nice of them to make us feel at home! The typical routine is for blazing sunshine until 2pm or 3pm, but the clouds come across quickly after that bringing our daily monsoon. We're certainly We're expecting the weather to warm up during the next couple of months, so we're bracing ourselves for 35+ degrees at some point.

So far we've developed very little in the way of sun tan, in the case of Becky because her supplies of melanin seem to be missing in action, and in my case because I spend almost my entire time inside the office rather than heading out into the community.

Becky's been heading out to the villages at least twice a week for some time now, normally as part of the medical outreach teams, but she has increasingly been doing other visits in tandem with our two Dutch students - Menno and Nikita - who are with us for 3 months. Both are orthopaedic technologists, which for anyone who doesn't speak medic basically refers to spending their days creating and adapting useful stuff like wheelchairs and other walking / movement aids. Having finished specially adapting chairs for particular patients, they've started going out with Becky and her colleague Mellan to hand them over to the patients. Many of these people have been bed-ridden (or floor-ridden) for several years and then suddenly have the ability to move around and see some people at eye level, so it's been a life changing development for the patients and their families. It's pretty amazing stuff really, yet many more cases are emerging and so there will be a lot more work to do.

My world has typically consisted of trying to equip other people to do all the work; preparing action plans for my two departments, research and writing funding bids, networking and contacting potential partner organisations, and also writing a training course which is designed to empower local leaders in over 1000 villages to carry out the work independently. Frankly the area of work of IcFEM is so extensive that our internal focus has to be on training and equipping people in the local to take ownership and lead the work, as otherwise we'll only be able to support a handful of the villages we try to support.

I did step out from my normal routine last week, spending 3 nights away lecturing at the first East African sports ministry training course. My colleague Simon was one of the first 11 students selected from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Rwanda for the 3 week residential course, preparing him to lead the sports department work. The 11 leaders were great lads and they kept coming back for more even if the course was very intensive. it was also a new experience staying with a Kenyan family who were customarily hospitable, and the experience from the 16 hours of lectures I delivered (and preparation beforehand) forms the basis for the training course I've been writing.

As the clocks change in the UK we'll have the novelty of not changing our clocks, which also means we can't play our traditional clock-changing game of seeing who arrives an hour or two early (or late!) to church looking very confused. Who said that little things please little minds...?! The changing UK time will also cause us more issues with contact back home since we'll move to being 3 hours apart; quite a difference when an 8pm phone call from England is arriving after 11pm here! By the same token, we'll try to avoid calling anyone before we start work at 7-8am...

Having had our vicar from Highfield Church - Graham Archer - and his daughter Amy with us for a few days at the start of September, we've had another exciting instance of our home lives colliding with our new life here. Becky's family friend Richard Anderson has been with us for the past 3 weeks, having signed up for the IcFEM GAP programme since hearing about our experiences. He's tried lots of different activities, getting involved with everything possible and as a result has seen a wide variety of the work IcFEM does and experienced 'real' Kenyan community life too. Yesterday I had the chance to work with him as we introduced the sport of ultimate frisbee to over 100 young people in one of the local communities. It was great fun and we'll pop some pictures of that day and other recent events on the blog soon.

It's fair to say we've both been getting tired having worked pretty much flat out for over 5 months. However, we've been looking forward to mid-October ever since we arrived as Becky's parents are travelling out to see us for a couple of weeks. We'll pretend to be tourists and have the chance to see a bit more of the country - hopefully lots of animals when we go on safari and then a few days on the Eastern coast - and then bring them up to Kimilili to show them our new home. My parents have recently arranged to visit us in December this year and we can't wait to spend some quality time with both sets of parents. We feel so fortunate to be out here and the work feels very worthwhile, yet of course we really miss family and friends. Thanks for all your support and messages, and please keep sending us news so that we keep in touch.

Mike