Ten Days to Home

April 14, 2009 – Just 10 days from now we should be home, not counting the 10 hour time difference. That seems a little hard to believe. I’m not thinking about it to much right now, it least not to many vitale things, more of the things I want to do and eat when I get home. Lasagna, a good hamburger, some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, or perhaps some B & Rs. It’ll be tough to choice the flavor. A tender steak, maybe polish sausage with sweet hot mustard. Even sushi is sounding good to me. To do – visiting people is the biggest item on the list, at least during the first few days in-between jet lag naps. My parents, Joyce’s mom. Bros and Sises on both sides of the family. Some of those little ones I’m sure are going to have changed a lot. Friends from church and work places. Neighbors. Others a-list items – the praise service at church, getting a few pictures printed. Many more items will be joining the list, but most can wait to be put onto it until we actually arrive home.

Follow-up on the last story – no critter in the ear, that leaves old age as the most likely candidate.

Joyce and I are now in Kisumu. We’ll be here until a day or two before our last day. We are not sure whether we want to spend a couple days in Nairobi at the end or not. Will play that one as it comes. We are slowing working on helping out at the Kiwanis Pre-school. They plan on moving during the break and we are helping with painting, both the new place and some of the old furniture.

The paint here is painful to work with. I don’t do much painting back home, but I know it’s never been this tough to get a decent coat on a piece of furniture, no matter how rough or dirty it was prior to starting. We did find out one secret we didn’t now before – use water base emulsion paint first on bare wood before covering it with the enamel paint. I wonder it this would have helped us in Mbita painting the Polytechnic doors and signs. At least the tables will look ‘fresh’ for now.

We are staying with Dick and Sandy Schabel. They are the owners (renters really) of the first place we stayed when we hit Kenya 5+ months ago. We met the finally in late January when we returned from Uganda. The timing makes sense since they were in India during our first stay but graciously invited us to stay at their place anyway. Here is one of those God putting the right people in your life connecting stories. Last summer Joyce had a Partners in Kenya booth at the Day of the African up at the Forestry Center. Kelsey, a New Yorker who happened to be spending the summer in Portland with her aunt, attended. She and Joyce had a chat and she told Joyce to e-mail Rachael, a mazungu living in Kisumu that she had met in a trip to Kenya last year. Joyce e-mailed Rachael asked about a place to stay in Kisumu for a couple of night when we first arrived. She knew Dick and Sandy from Bellingham Washington where she first worked marketing Sandy’s Chiropractic business and soon became fast friends. Separately from each other they decided to come to Kisumu. They offer up their home for us when we first arrive. We hit it off with them when we did finally meet and they made that ‘anytime you are in the area offer’ you can stay with us. We’ve taken them up on that a couple times already. Careful what you offer us once we are back. We seem much more likely to take people up on offers then we use to.

More critter stories or a non-critter story. I’ve not been feeling up to par for over a week, mostly a rumbling stomach and the fun intestinal things that go on with that. When we hit Kisumu we decide to go to the clinic to have ourselves checked out for little critters – amebas, worms, parasites including the infamous Lake Victoria Bilharzias, and malaria. Happy to report we gat a clean bill of health. We were a little surprised based on our swimming, bathing, drinking cooking with Lake Vic water and all the other not quiet sanitary situations we have been in. I may still take the worm and Bilharzias meds we bought in Arusha after we get home.

Easter, like Christmas, was anti-climatic here. We had discussed various options here in Arusha with Dick and Sandy. Lutheran, Catholic, Sikh and others. Come Sunday morning we bagged all of them and decided to stay home. Until about 10:30am and Sandy suggested going to the Catholic Church because they often have good music, and sitting in the rear so we could exit if it got way to long. Didn’t work out so well and the church was overflowing and it was standing room only pouring out onto the steps. So not to waste the trip, we did the vegetable shopping at the open air market across the street. According to Dick, it is the largest open air market in East Africa.

10 days – that’s less than 1 ½ weeks.

Reporting from Kisumu,
Paul