December 20, 2010

Well, I woke up at 2:30am this morning hot & nauseous and feeling completely awful.  Lots of fun!  I finally got back to sleep around 5-5:30 but had to be up at 7 for our first day at the project.

We caught a matatu to mweshamoroni for 20Ksh, which only took us part of the way to school.  We then had to walk what I would estimate to be another 0.5-0.75miles to the school.

The towns we walk through are pretty amazing.  Quite literally shack upon shack, some of them held up with what looks to be large tree branches.  The local children are taught to say, "how are youuu?" but understand little else.  They get very excited when they see muzungu's walking & come running out to yell...."how are youuuuu?".

Once we arrived at the school Japheth, the director gave us a tour.  The children share beds and sleep 2-3/bed depending on their size.  The bedrooms double as either classrooms or food storage and have dirt floors, and like most other buildings in Mombasa, do not have glass windows.  They just have bars on the window openings.

The childcren are so sweet and welcoming, not to mention extremely well mannered.  Lillian (5), loves to braid hair & managed to doll out a few knots that Meri & I will have to deal with later in the shower.  Muhammed and Michael (two of the older boys) are so smart!  Their knowledge of world history is simply amazing.  They were asking about Bush and Sadam, and the differences between DC and LA.  The girls were enjoying themselves by taking millions of pictures with our cameras.

The school is currently on winter break, so we only have the 33 children of the orphanage.  When school resumes on January 3rd there will be over 300 students!  I can't imagine!  Tomorrow we will begin working with them on art projects and any other activities we'd like to do.

Our trip home was interesting, as we missed our stop and ended up on the way back out to the project.  Then we managed to walk in circles for about an hour before finally finding our way back to the volunteer house.  The roads are not marked at most intersections making it quite difficult to orient yourself if you're lost.

I had an "encounter" with a crazy beggar who asked for money, I refused then continued to follow us and spout crazy half english half kiswahili banter, then proceded to try and trip me!!  He then tried to touch my side for some reason? and Meng promptly got in the way & shoo'ed him off!  Good thing we have security! :)

Quite an interesting day!  I drank close to 3.5L of water while at the project and still feel dehydrated.  Now time for a cold shower, dinner & bed!