Kenya

We left Friday night at 8pm and arrived here on Sunday morning at 4am....that was a LONG trip. We came to Maureen's apartment and slept for a few hours, then got up and headed to Rehema (Mercy) House. So a quick catch up:

Sunday: we went and picked up the girls and house mother and we all went to church. Church here lasted 2 hours (in service) and that's a "short" service! The music was wonderful but by the time the preacher got up and started talking I was SO TIRED....had a really hard time staying awake. I might have even pullled a NaNa during prayer time ;) Afterwards we went back to the house for lunch, toured the house, visited with the girls and just did a few things around the house before heading back to the apartment. The babies were not real keen on us "white ladies"(muzungu) this first day thankfully a few of them have warmed up to us.

All the girls and babies

 

 Monday: We are currently in negotiations on a home, about 30 minutes from our current home. This means MH would own the home and be out from under the landlord who is continuing to raise rent and even raised the deposit after 2 years of being in the home (which is well maintained). Say what?! I don't think I have ever heard of asking for more deposit money. SO we got up bright and early to miss traffic and went to see the house. The owner is moving back to Uganda and is a wonderful woman. The home is so neat...I love it. It is smaller but has enough rooms to house all of our girls and will be wonderful. Afterwards we headed to the home, had lunch, did individual portraits of the babies in their new outfits, portraits of the girls, I worked with Deborah on some sewing items and watched some monkies who came into the yard to eat the guava :)

 Baby Maureen

 Me and Precious. She was snuggling because she was more scared of the monkies then of me :)

 

Today: This morning we got up early to head into the city center to buy fabric. This took about 45 minutes with traffic. We came back tot he apartment to get our bags (we left them at home...didn't want to be a target) then headed to Rehema house. This took 3 hours!! It was crazy...it has been raining for about a month on a daily basis and it is flooding roads, filling huge potholes....it was a mess. On the bright side it was good company :) When we got to the house Maureen's mom and Oliver were there....we had lunch, did some sewing and then Maureen got engaged!! It was great - Kristen did the video and I photographed it, I was so happy this happened while we were here. Traffic home wasn't as bad but it took about 45 minutes....so all in all about 5 hours in transport - ugh. Houston traffic has nothing on Kenya!

 





We got bored in traffic....so Kristen decided to see how deep the ditch was :) 



A happy ending to our day!