Our sea shipment finally arrived!

Of course our shipment came the day after Matt had to be out of town for over a week. The upside to that is that I got to decide where everything went! With about 8 men unloading the truck and putting stuff wherever I told them, plus Mama Jackie (nanny), Elizabeth (house-girl) and Cleophus (gardener/day guard), I had plenty of help. We did seem to be overwhelmed with boxes for several days, but we slowly chipped away at it and now have most unpacked. It's great to have our own things again and not just 'make due'.

The girls had their 'share-time' at school this week. It's sort of a mini-performance where they get to show us all of the things that they've learned during this unit. Ashlyn's was 'media mania', so she was learning about art and expression. Their class made puppets on sticks and danced to different music to show different emotions. Tierney's class learned about endangered animals - she was a mountain gorilla and had to say (on-stage) "I see people setting traps all around me". For such shy kids, they didn't seem to have much trouble getting on-stage and showing us their stuff.

This week our very sweet askari (guard that comes over-night), Julius, brought each of the children (our 3 plus Birch and Cole) their own plant. He speaks very little english, but when he came to work he asked for each child and then he took them each individually to dig a hole and plant their own. It was an amazingly generous offer from someone who only makes $100/month and has 4 kids of his own. Very sweet. It's understandable why the children like him so much.

Anderson is still surprising me with the things that he is eating. He'll eat a plate of sauteed greens with carrots and onions and a samosa. He even asks for several servings of the greens. Amazing!

So, on my list of things that have to get done this week is to go buy additional cell phone minutes and also more electricity. This is very much a cash society. Everything is pre-pay. You buy minutes for your cell phone and when you run out you are abruptly cut off from your call. You can buy the scratch off cards everywhere, but it's a different mindset (and I'm also now very conscious of keeping calls to the point - I am spending a ton less with this method than I was with the 'plans' in the US). Electricity is the same way - you go to the electric company and give them your meter # and however much $ you want and they give you code to manually punch in to your meter to get that amount of credit. Similar with internet, but we haven't yet paid the fee - that also has to be done this week. All in cash, of course. It takes a little planning when you don't have a local bank account and can only withdraw a certain amount per day. I'm getting better at it though (I'll miss my REI dividend dollars, but I love seeing the credit card bills now). I guess the gas is the same. Our cooking is done with a big gas canister (similar to ones for an outdoor grill, but a little bigger) that's just hooked up (inside) next to the oven. I wonder how long one of those will last. I'm sure it will run out just as I'm baking a huge meal.

Matt's been in Kenya all week for the TNC Africa team retreat (I think it's just a drinking fest for a week - I'm supposed to feel bad for him that he comes home tired...yeah, right), but he'll be home on Tuesday. Still much easier than losing him for 3 weeks at a time, but we'll be glad to have him back.