Well, the internet is out at the orphanage, so we hvae been doing all our emailing from town (with a bad keyboard, so pardon typos). This is fine, as we have claire's blackberry (lara's blackberry continues to be quite hte issue but we don't speak of this) to at least read emails and send back two line responses. This is how claire emails from computers anyway, so people haven't really noticed a change.
it is AMAZING to be back--the kids are all jsut teh same, but bigger. Except the ones who haven't actually gotten any bigger, which is alternately because they're grown or because we should be concerned abotu them. But Tumaini putters along as usual--the elders are eldering, the runners are running, the kids are yelling--it's all as we left it, happily if anything better for the wear.
The highlights of our return have included:
The First Annual Inernational kono kono Marathon: (kono kono is a slug)which included 13 slugs gathered from the garden, and about 45 screaming kids, and two squealing lara and claire's. We had lots of prizes for the winning slug (named Douglas after one of the running coaches) as well as some speeches from myself. Unfortunately, the slug named Claire because it was so white kept taking off in the wrong direction, and the slug named Lara just went to sleep. Oh well. At least time the kids did not trick Claire into giving the slug salt as its prize. Sad Claire has fallen for that trick before.
2. A great arrival lunch--I really missed kenyan food and tea. The lunch also included an in-depth disucssion of obama and hillary and their recent antics--everyone here is surprisingly pro Hillary considering Obama is a Kenyan--however, then we found out that Obama is a Luo (rival tribe) so he is less liked around here than one might expect.
3. WE hve spent 6 hours in the BArclay's Bank--Nyeri Branch. We discovered when we got here that there was some complex college tuition fee stuff happening, and we've been trying to negotiate the issue (thanks mom and dad!). All will be fine in the end, but lordy. These Kenyans are killing me. In order to take otu money this time, I required a letter of introduction from a Kenyan "of good standing." So we went to take the truck to find Cucu, the elder at Tumaini, but ended up running into an elder from the church instead. He climbed in with us (there were 13 of us in the car at this point), and he came down to both provide his signature, and a public shaming at the bank for giving us "who were helping the church" a hard time. After this "good fathering" as Eunice explained it, the bank was much more amenable to our issue.
But things are good--we have had story hour, lots of tea, and while I have yet to partake of any githeri, I'm sure it's coming soon enough. The reunion five K run is tomorrow--everyone hope it goes well, and that no one notices that Claire and I can no longer run well.
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