I am in love with Kenya

How do you account for love at first sight? Kenya is a truly beautiful place, filled with amazingly charming people. Everyone says "Jambo" or "Welcome" and seems to mean it. We are staying at HEART which is a conference center for AIDS education and which also hosts other mission delegations, delicious meals and comfortable rooms for $35/night and their entire staff is lovely and very gracious.

Adjusting to the time change turned out to be easier than we expected. After yesterday, when there was a resounding crash when the whole bunch of us hit the wall about 3 pm, naps were indulged in and last night most of us slept pretty good. The attitude this morning around breakfast had improved at least 200%. I do feel like I have made the switch. We did stay up the entire first leg of the trip and then some were able to sleep the leg from Heathrow to Nairobi. (by the way, I tried to post here in Heathrow, and was shut out because the site was considered to be "porn-related"... I guess I have a rep -- please be sure to report me if you see porn any where around here!)

There is a very upbeat feeling in the capitol. The country elected a new president two years ago who is cleaning out corruption, has instituted free primary education and is planting beautiful bushes and flowers all over the city, which is actually pretty clean. They haven't done so well with exhaust, very smelly, but the city looks pretty good. I saw Maribou Storks, which have got to be some of the ugliest birds on the face of the earth. There were giraffes in the field next to the airport (a game preserve). It's quite a place.

We have been doing touristy things the last two days, shopping, went to a great cultural center show today with dancing, drumming and other local music and some of the best acrobats I have ever seen. Two of our group members including our pastor Kerry Decker got pulled into the dancing -- it was great blackmail material and good for a wonderful laugh. We also bought two televisions and two DVD players for Tumaini. Paul, who is the local manager of Tumaini, was deliriously happy and nearly popped out of his skin -- he is a delightful person and we enjoyed spending the afternoon with him. We have a driver of our van named Joseph who is amazingly skilled at navigating the crazy traffic -- it's all on the left hand side of the road and lots of traffic circles. I don't watch.

Tomorrow we're off to Masii, after church. We put the Memory Books together tonight and bought supplies today (markers etc.). For those of you who donated, we will be visiting homes this week to see where the money can be used and I will be posting a report when we get back. There is a chance that I will be able to do something from Machakos (next door town), but it is slim. Check this site about the middle of the week.

Love to all.