Jambo!

Indian Ocean - Mombasa, Kenya

This May I acted on this crazy idea that it would be fun to go to Kenya for a month before I got married. Luckily, I have wonderful family and friends who I could literally dump the rest of the wedding plans on as I packed up and left for a month to a place void of technology that would permit communication. (Ok, I did make Brandon pay an arm and a leg to call me a few times towards the end when I was about at my wits end with being isolated).

Unfortunately for you, I am blog-handicapped and cannot figure out for the life of me how to get these in any order or how to make that stupid camel picture come AFTER the text...so there it will sit above the rest. Sorry.

School Classroom at Nyeri (I think...) Primary School. This school is very undeveloped compared the school Koins for Kenya has been working with Bahakwenu. The lack of desks, supplies, space, teachers seems to have zero effect on their motivation and excitement for learning.

This sweet boy invents musical instruments such as this one which, I kid you not, make beautiful music. I swear there is a deep-rooted talent for music/dance/rhythm/art in every Kenyan. Listening to him play was one of my favorite past times when we were at the school. He was very happy and I think surprised to see us taking pictures.

People and animals suffer side-by-side during this drought. We watched these elephants (there is a long line of them that you can't see) trek for miles to reach this pathetic watering hole. I was with a local Kenyan, Joseph, as I watched this and I wonder how it made him feel to watch this, I wonder if he could relate to the unquenchable thirst and weariness of these elephants. They took turns covering themselves in mud, it was adorable watching the mothers soak their babies in water and mud to protect them from the sun.

You can't come across these colors anywhere else!

I love this picture because it is just two women chatting and shopping to make dinner. It cracks me up that they are "feeling" vegetables to find the best ones just like we do every time we buy groceries. My mom would like this picture.

At Bahakwenu primary school they are very fortunate to get one meal a day that is provided by the government. Just last year they had to go without this meal because of the extreme drought and lack of food throughout the country. This is very often their only meal for the day.

Boys being silly and making faces at me while they eat their lunch under a tree.

I keep a few Africa pictures in my kitchen to slap me in the face when I start whining about cleaning, cooking, doing homework, or being a poor newlywed :) This is one of them, she cheers me no matter what.

This is another one I keep on my wall to remind me how lazy I am! This hill they are walking up is LONG and those buckets on their head are filled with water and HEAVY! Oh, and they're barefoot and the African sun is beating down on them in the middle of the day. Wow.

Oh hi, go ahead.

This is the 3rd picture I keep in my kitchen. It took him a few tries to lift this heavy bucket of water onto the back of his bike, and then he had a long ride uphill before he was home. This is water he spent hours collecting from a very muddy looking puddle.

There are not words to describe how precious Salama is.

This picture looks posed but I swear it's not! Afia helped me sort through thousands of books. We put them in piles according to reading level. More often than not she was distracted. These kids have never seen or read any book outside of their classroom study books (which are picture-less and boring). My project while I was there was to implement two school libraries.

Hanging the laundry out to dry. We wore these Kangas every day.

This canal ran through the village....Just kidding, we stopped in Amsterdam on the way to Kenya. I want to go back and spend more time there, it is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen.

Cool fishing boat. Blurry picture. Sorry.