Plumbing, electricity, and precipitation

This week has been crazy! I cannot even include everything that has happened; broken toilets, pooping in bags, visiting the hospital that is as sanitary as a dirty bathroom, building adobe stoves, eating the 9 foods which make a combination of 300,000 some odd meals (I calculated 9! in my head during dinner, thank you very much!), sleeping under the princess bednets (mosquito nets), waiting 3 days to shower, building clay creations during the adobe stove building, touring the school, playing ball with kids in the street…. Every day is an adventure. I am discovering that I will never have a dull moment while I am here—we are busy sun-up to sundown.

I’m including some pictures; as you can see, rain falls almost constantly. We are gone by 9 in the morning and get home at 5/6 at night to eat dinner that our cook, Rose, makes. I helped her make food a couple days ago! By the time I get back, I’ll be a master chef. I’ll get started on my cookbook—I’m sure it’ll be a hit! She is in one of the pictures with me; the dude next to me is our guard, Morris. He sleeps seriously 4 hours during the day and then is at the house with a gun the rest of the time, watching traffic patterns, seeing anywhere the security could be breached and fixing the premises so we don’t die while we are here. Really, we are not a huge threat because the likelihood of someone jumping the fence and breaking through the huge padlocked doors is unlikely to say the least, but we take every precaution. Security is huge here—we were told of how if a person breaks into another person’s house, the robber will be beaten to death on the streets because the people know if they call the cops for help, the cops can be paid off by the robber for as little as 100 shillings. Divide by two and move the decimal three. 50 cents. The average income is to live on $2 a day per person in the household. Crazy. Cops will sacrifice the security of a job for as little as fifty cents.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to send pictures again—I may have just sacrificed my flash drive to the virus gods. Although we are told we can reformat them, so I think I’ll be okay. The one boy in our group, Kyle, just informed me I may not be able to. Prove HIM wrong!! Ha ha

I usually can think of a bajillion things I want to share, but now that I am in the internet café I am brain dead. I ate grasshoppers! I felt a little guilty eating Hopper, but I quickly got over that and rather found that I was more disturbed by it.:) They were okay, but not a recommendation.

I decided somewhat tentatively that I’ll focus mostly on working with kids—a lot of what we’ll do is outreach to smaller villages. Some are working in schools, some are helping at the hospital and by the way we got a tour of it, and oh my gosh Buckwheat would have a baby! The place was pretty dirty and I just felt closed in. They let people WATCH the surgeries! Ummm dubs!!! I’m going to volunteer there probably quite often—definitely in pediatrics. And they would like people to help in the maternity ward, so yep to that, too! They legitly want to train us to be midwives!! BAH HA! I’ll be a birthing professional! And we got to visit the ladies who had given birth THIS week, as well as the babies who laid in the same bed. Things definitely run a little differently here.

I am really fine with the grunge and the dirtiness of living, surprisingly. You just HAVE to adapt. I mean, with 15 of us under the same roof, things are bound to get pretty dirty pretty fast.

ALTHOUGH we have avoided dirtying the bathroom by taking bucket showers out in the rain. JOYOUS!!! The water was off for 3 days, and that was an adventure. We learned to have a backup water supply—we have plenty of drinking water, but we don’t use that for showering, dishes, showers, or flushing the toilets. Our “American toilet” is a tragedy—I attached a pic. ;)

I am learning so much every day spiritually and mentally. The people on the team are so brilliant, and I am constantly asking questions and learning so much. Spiritually I am amazed how much time I can allocate to reading the scripts, reading “Jesus the Christ”, and working on Personal Progress for the second time through. Man, I feel so good being here!

What is most amazing, though, is knowing that we are not just providing immediate relief—the PEOPLE are what make things happen. I am in awe by the caliber of the people here. No lie, coming into this I had the stigma in the back of my mind that the people wait idly for help to come to them. Not so. In talking, many are involved in projects that keep the people involved and I see they are trying to raise their standard of living day by day.

Love you all!!!

Cecilly

p.s. Mom, what is Isaac's e-mail?