"sounds like someone's got a case of the Mondays"

So just in case you find yourself in rural East Africa and you're feeling adventurous, like perhaps you may want to visit community members with field staff... if you ask them, "where is the group we will visit?", and they reply, "not very far" it is more than safe to assume it is beyond walking distance. If you ask when something will be done and are told "in one hour" (or better yet, "tomorrow") you can know that it will be probably sometime next week. Or the person really doesn't plan to do it at all and just wants you to leave them the hell alone.

Went on a field visit today to a large women's group and accomplished basically nothing. Except learning a critical lesson: never get on a moto with the field staff before asking them if we have fuel. Though I love walking, I don't enjoy doing it in the hot sun, carrying a moto helmet, without water and in ankle deep dust with careless truck drivers whizzing by. It's also much less charming to be on that type of "adventure" after being told we were looking for someone to repair the moto's side mirror since evidently its driver didn't want to explain he ran out of gas. Unfortunately for him, since I have a brain, I figured it out after walking a couple of miles and after he paid for a jerry can of gas and carried it back to to moto.

On this walk I am told that we are also going to visit a children's home. This is the first I am hearing of visiting a children's home today. And it is, today. I explain I am surprised and he acts surprised at my surprise and asks if I have things to do back at the office. Yes, I tell him.

Back at the center I jump in on a cooking and food preparation demonstration for some of the staff. I write "guacamole" in permanent marker on a white board and help smash garlic and cut cilantro while others cut avocado, onions and tomato. It was unbelievably fun and I'm still breathing flames from the onion and garlic.

After lunch I made the truly disheartening discovery that mama Simba, was literally covered in ticks. I never dreamed in a million years I would become such an impromptu, amateur veterinarian. I will spare you the details but it was a gory, bloody affair I wish to never in my life re-live. Within the span of about 10 minutes after the disgusting battle of Kate vs. Virtually all of the ticks in Kenya I had: personally lectured the dog's supposed owner on how unacceptable this was, that ticks spread disease, and how he cannot keep 5 of the 10 puppies when he is not even caring for their mother. then i rounded up the carpenter and explained we needed a dog shelter built big enough for her and her puppies. he listed all the materials later and gave a quote for the labor. we are buying the supplies in the morning and i'm paying for the labor (about $14).

Yesterday I made a super fun investment. I got my own wheels. They hold up my very own, Chinese manufactured (naturally) bike from a grocery store (pretty bizarre). After bringing it home, I rode the fancy green thing around the unpaved dirt roads in the neighborhood with Karanja on his bike that has no brakes while about three other neighborhood kids tagged along smiling like crazy at me the whole way. When we reached a point where Karanja began to turn back to the house and there was a small river crossing the road I stopped. I asked him if he was planning to go back to the house that way. He told me yes. I asked him where all of that water came from. He tells me, "in fact, it is not water". For a split second I try to imagine how many herds of cows would have to urinate to create such a stream and while I'm doing the math he enlightens me that it's actually human sewage that is leaking from a broken pipe somewhere. Ah the joys of living in a place where people put up with living in their own waste.

Upon returning home after work today I open my bedroom door to a floor covered in broken glass. Since I so brilliantly left a window not even cracked, but unlocked, the violent winds that swept Thika today caused a clock that was on my curtain rode frame just inches from the ceiling to dive to the floor before shattering. As our helper Christine joined me in picking up the glass, she mumbled something to me. "What's that?" I asked her since her English is pretty minimal. She repeated herself. "Satan". "Sa-tan?!?" I ask? "This is the work of Satan", she said. Quite matter of fact-ly. I laughed like a crazy person and she didn't. Awkward.