Rain

For the first time since I have arrived here I awoke to the sound of rain. I also woke up to the fact that the power was out which was not huge problem except that it meant taking a cold shower, but the water is usually not very hot anyway. Cooking is done with gas here, so there was still a warm breakfast with hot tea (chai - milk tea).

The rain continued and got stronger until about 11am - the power was out until about 2pm - that is when it started raining again! The rain was a good thing in the sense that is has kept people from going out to the rallies in Nairobi. In other places like Mombasa and Kisumu there have been some riots, but it seemed rather quiet here - I am sure I will hear more on the news this evening. 13 of 18 expected interns turned up today for orientation (we are actually 22 interns) and there was no fee for latecomers today. (I realised that I should explain the 50 shilling fee in value rather than exchange rate. 40 shillings pay for my bus fare to church and back or for a 5dl bottle of coke.) The other interns probably not feel that it was safe to come, though there was very little traffic out of fear of riots, even though the rally was only set for 2pm. We had planned to go into Kibera and visit a clinic that the church has helped build up, but with the current situation and the mud that was to be expected as a result of the rain we were not able to go into the slums. That meant that I got the afternoon off which I am enjoying as people have been warning me that we will be exceedingly busy once the internship takes off!

While I still have the time, I want to write a bit about my host family so you can imagine where I am staying.

Steve and Mary are a couple in their late thirties with two girls ages four and a half and seven. I met Mary when I was in Kenya in 2005, taking a class at Daystar University. She was then working on a Masters in counselling. She has since then also taken courses in management since she works for a project called Amani ya Juu (http://www.amaniafrica.org/). Amani ya Juu means "a higher peace" and is a sewing project for marginalized women (mostly refugees) to empower them and work towards reconciliation and peace. Steve is an Anglican pastor working for Church Army Africa, a leadership training program within the Anglican Church (http://www.churcharmyafrica.net/).

The girls, Rinna and Tanielle, are very lively girls who love to play with the two neighbour children. School has started now, but recently they were playing hide and seek with their neighbours and locked themselves in the bathroom at the other house by breaking the key while turning it! Fortunately, the seeker was able to alert someone and they got out, but only after about an hour of waiting for a new key. They are both in school, and Tanielle is already learning to read (though often she guesses words from memory rather than reading them - she has got a great memory).

Their house has four bedrooms (and an additional little room in a separate house), and besides me there have been a number of people staying here as they have a very open house. First of all there is the house help, a young girl employed to do housework and also look after the children when the parents are out. She sleeps in the girls' room. Then there were other people here, a friend or a relative coming through on the way to university or the boarding school where she teaches, or a colleague looking for accomodation in Nairobi.

My room is on the groundfloor next to the living room which means I participate at least indirectly in the life happening here because I can hear what is going on in the house even from my room. All the rooms have a few ventilation holes above the doors and the windows, which explains why I can hear everything even though the house is made of concrete. The girls have to get up at 6 or 6:30am for school, so there is no sleeping in for me on weekdays - my day off is Monday :-( My room has a bed, a closet, a desk and a bookshelf - and I get afternoon sun through large windows, so I am quite happy here!