So sorry this has taken a few weeks to update! We will try to do better! I wanted to share some of my adventure last weekend. I went with another girl and a Kenyan lady who started an orphanage out in a village called Port Victoria. It is all the way to the Uganda border - right on Lake Victoria, it took us 10 hours to drive there! This was such a fun trip for me. The orphanage is really more like a center now as they need funds badly for the building, food and many, many other things! Right now the children are from 2-18 years. The kids stay with guardians at night only then the older kids go to school - while the youger ones are taught there at the center. They kids are so precious! I think they had only one swing and just about 2-3 other toys! I keep praying about how I can help! The lady that started it "Rosemary". Has so many ideas for it, like starting a veggie garden to help with food, starting a clinic so the kids can be treated right there. That would be so awesome!

Anyway, let me start from the beginning of the trip - we left Nairobi at 7 a.m. on Friday and arrived at 5:30. We drove thru the Rift Valley, past Lake Navasha, past tea plantations, sugar cane fields and rice fields! It was so amazing! Then it got rather hilly and rocky and more dry when we got to the village. I don't think the villagers had seen any "white" people in some time - they seemed quite fascinated with us (Liz, the other white girl), when we would walk around the village we often had a crowd of kids singing and saying things! I don't know what all they said, but the word for "white person" often was mentioned! :)

This is a village that mostly survives on fishing for a living - they know of nothing else - even vegetable growing would be strange for them! Oh - mu how I just want to get out there and teach them - but its just not that easy! We spent most of Saturday walking around the village, spending time at the center, getting food for the kids, and taking a boat ride on Lake Victoria. We had all Kenyan food for the weekend which really was pretty good. The first night we had chicken with rice, for breakfast on Sat. it was the most wonderful tea I have ever had! and mandazi - a dough like thing in the shape of a triangle that is fried - quite tasty! For lunch it was suckumweki - cooked kale with onions and ugali, a kind of cooked cornmeal. For supper then it was beef pieces in a sauce with ugali and chapati's. Ok, I didn't eat any meat on this trip - but I did enjoy the rest! :) I think we had tea quite a few times and drinking water was a problem, so we had a lot of sodas! We had the same bkfst on Sunday and then left for the trip back. It really is funny how you resort back to your past when you go thru new experiences. It brought back so many memories of our first time overseas living in the Kahalari desert in Botswana! Wow!

Well, once I got back 2 says later Kurt left for an 8 day flying trip to Sudan and some of Kenya. We celebrated Micah's b-day early - went out to eat at Java House, a glorified Starbucks that serves mostly American food - we thought since he has tried many new foods he should be able to eat something "normal" on his birthday. He enjoyed a cheesburger and fries! :)

More next week on Kurt's trip!