Keep on truckin'

HELLO! I've not had time to do an update for a while so here goes! Wow I've been busy. Today is Sunday but that doesn't mean that it's time for a break. I was up at 6:30 am and in Shibanze by 8 to pick up some sick people and take them to the hospital. I brought a 29 year old woman who had been sick in bed for 2 weeks, her 3 month old baby, and her sister-in-law who has a very very large growth on her stomach which I've never seen anything like before. The mother was too ill to stand up on her own so I got the job of carrying the baby around since the other woman was quite old. Of course getting to town for the hospital involves a 10 km bike ride so this time instead of a chicken under my arm it was a very small baby that I was just hoping would not wake up and cry for fear I'd have to figure out how to make it stop! Anyhow the mother was admitted and I insisted that the child stay with her because I knew the situation at home... while the other woman was sent away and asked to return on Wednesday when there will be a specialist in to deal with her. I'm just finishing up at the internet cafe now as I had to update the house to house survey that we complete for all the children in the school. There have been a few changes since I last wrote and a lot of stress. I had to run a meeting with the entire village because there was so much confusion about why some people were asked to pay school fees. It was really because I've found out that some were pretending to have orphans who don't so it's either pay the fee or go to a different school which I think is fair... after all, we have to pay the teachers somehow. So, I might not have been on the favourites list for a few days but they couldn't have been too mad because two days later I still had an attendance of 52 for my womens group. As for construction at the school - LOTS has been done but there is still so so much to do. Things are at a stand still right now as we've used all the donations I had in my account so I'm just waiting for some people to deposit the rest. The kids break will come soon in the month of April for 3.5 weeks so I want to implement "Project Play" and have a big jungle gym built as a surprise for them when they return. Right now they just play in the sugar cane fields beating each other!!!!!!! Other news is that I'm trying to find a place to live in Bungoma because things are getting tiresome at the house. I'm finding now that I've finished 2 months there that I'm having to learn about all the families personal problems - and trust me there are many. I just can't seem to cope with all that the project gives me to think about and then feel as though I have to deal with other things at the end of the day. So, hopefully there is something for me in town that will be cheaper also as I'm running low on dough quickly!!!! Yesterday I brought my neighbours six year old Diana to town with me. That was quite the experience itself because she'd never been. They are a very poor family so the mom dressed her up in her best outfit and we went on a kidogo safari (small journey in swahilli). She had never even been inside a grocery store so she couldn't concentrate on anything but thinking 'wow, where does all this stuff come from'. I brought her for french fries and soda after making her sit through my internet session.... and the we went to a dressmaker who's making me something out of some material I got in Uganda. I also got Diana a pair of new school shoes because the ones she has, she has been wearing since 2004 when another volunteer got her some... and obviously kids at that age have growing feet so they weren't very comfortable. When her parents saw that she was wearing knew shoes her mom started crying and telling me how much God was going to bless me. I've never seen someone be so happy over a pair of shoes. Even though I've been here for quite a while some things still surprise me. Right... Uganda. I went there for one day with one of the teachers from the school a couple weekends ago. Her mother and many many many siblings live near the border but here on the Kenyan side. When we arrived we walked across the border and I bought some material that is super super cheap so that I could have a real African dress made! We slept over at her moms house for the night and I got to share a bed with her 4 month old baby which decided to keep me up all night long. Good times. Note to self - babies are hard work. Since the teachers family knew I was coming for about one week in advance they decided what better time then now to invite the entire HUGE family over to meet the Mzungu. After all, they'd never had a mzungu visit, and certainly not sleep over. Also, since the whole family was there they decided it was also a good time to have a remeberance celebration for the old grandfather who'd passed away a few years ago. Basically they go to the grave which is beside the house - I mean approximate grave because they've forgotten exactly where it is... and they build a tent to fill with chairs for the party. So... the next big thing was to make the african brew... this thick beer followed by some concoxion of vodka that if you stood to close to you wouldn't know your own name anymore. All the men sat around in a circle sipping from a giant bucket of it for the entire day. They used these long hollow sticks that they just found on the ground and then they attached some sort of tap to the end and drank away. It was quite the site to see especially since they'd even gotten a DJ and rented a car battery to make music... so every so often one of these very elderly men would randomly stand and start dancing.... which was normal enough except for the fact that nobody else around him seemed to notice that he'd even started and he'd just be doing this alone for up to 10 minutes. Strange world this is I tell you. The next morning after Uganda a woman called me to come see her baby which she'd just delivered a few hours before... so since the hospital was on the way I stopped to see it. She was sad that it was a boy because she wanted to name it after me since I was the first to see it other than her. That reminds me.... the first child in Shibanze has been named after me. As we were doing house survey's one day I poked my head into a house to find that a woman had just delivered twins the night before - a girl and a boy. The mother immediately asked me to name them but I told her I didn't know any appropriate names because they were a muslim family. They settled on deciding that the girl would have my first name and the boy would have my second - which they would refer to as the nicknames which are also quite common here. So... there is a little girl and little boy named Amanda and Flanagan about 3 days old somewhere out there in Africa. Well.... I need to get out of this place and relax at a decent hour today since this week I've got a million more things to do. I'm trying to get a lot done in the next 2 weeks so that I can try to escape for a couple weeks in April to head to the coastline for a much needed break! Hope to hear from you all soon so don't be shy with emailing! Amanda :)