It’s been raining in most of Kenya, a massive blessing after nearly two years of drought (a blessing and a curse for a few areas that have suffered El Nino’s flooding). But people are definitely rejoicing and I’m especially happy for the food growers and livestock owners – life has been most tragic for them.  These dead cattle were likely left by a Masai herder who had taken them hundreds of miles in search of pasture. This grass turned green too late.

Work with Mama Mercy on the Children’s Centre in Kiserian has taken off, with lots of community members and extended family on board using their trades and skills wherever we need them. Mama Mercy wants to engage as many “idle” (jobless) youth as she can in this project.

We’ve enlisted a new company to complete the bore-hole well and Mama Mercy went all over town last week negotiating prices and hiring lorries to deliver the stones, sand, ballast and cement to buid the tower that will hold the water tanks. (After the experience of Erick’s workshop, I’m throwing terms around like a pro.) We visited a few other boreholes in the area to observe tower designs and garner advice, but Mama Mercy is no neophyte. As she likes to remind me, “My house in Rongai? I know it from the foundation!”

Right now at the site we have a few holes in the ground and huge piles of rock and sand – pure potential. Our plan for the next six weeks is big: construct the borehole tower, build a cook house, dig a second toilet, build walls around both new toilets, finish ceilings and walls in the two dorms, have metal doors and gates built, get electricity installed, paint the exterior (I get to pick colours!), and do some landscaping to make things look like a beautiful, vibrant home.

It sounds like a lot of hard work and sweat, but make no mistake, I’m not the one toiling. Together, Mama Mercy and I plan, then she mobilizes the troops. Aside from hopefully putting some plants in the ground, I’m just hanging around, taking more snaps. (At the moment, I’m sitting in a posh coffee shop surrounded by British ex-pats. I just had a chocolate croissant. Please, hold the e-mails about my great sacrifices.)

While the wet weather is being celebrated here, I have to say, it’s messy. If it rains much more at the work site, trucks won’t be able to drive in over the muddy rural roads. Yesterday, we had to walk in from the main road; on the way back I had to help push our taxi about 100 meters. Rural areas aside, getting around anywhere in Kenya now is downright sloppy. For those of you in the Pacific Northwest about to begin your annual five months of complaining about the rain, I have one word for you – sidewalks.

With enough funds from kind Canadians to build a carpentry shop on Rusinga Island, we started the project last Monday. Well, Erick and his father started it – steps one and two were negotiating prices and buying materials, so the white person stayed well out of sight. But on day three, it was time to go to work.

I brought a friend – a young Californian I’d met who was doing some volunteer farming on the island. His name is Daniel, which he quickly learned sounded confusingly similar to the local-language (Luo) word for “I’m hungry.” We each arrived at Erick’s home compound around 9:30, after Erick, his father and his friend Enoch had already put in a couple of hours’ work. We mostly helped hold things in place that needed to be sawed or nailed, as the two young fundis (pronounced ‘foondies’) – the Luo word for carptenters -moved with experienced efficiency.

Erick’s father taught him this trade, as did Enoch’s, starting when he was a teenager. Now 27 years old, building a shop or a house with mud and iron sheets is second-nature, a series of well-practiced steps.

We were ordered to break three times during the day by Erick’s wife and mother for thermoses of sweet tea and chapatis, and a huge lunch of steaming-hot vegetables, fried eggs and maize meal on a more than 30-degree day. Secretly, Mr. ‘I’m Hungry’ and I were happy to sit in the shade and chat while the three men did the technical work of building trusses, using the string-and-eyeballing technique of course.

By the end of day one, they had a completed frame. It was a long, hard day, but they claimed they were “still strong.”

Day two was iron-sheet day, and providing two extra hands actually made me somewhat useful. I had no illusions though; my real job on this project was “taking snaps.”

More hot food and hot drinks, more hot sun. I left a little early that day as I was feeling, well, hot.

Day three: collecting rocks. I can do that! We saved money by collecting our own ballast (small stones) for the cement floor, and hauling large ones to provide the base layer. (Who knew there were so many stages to cementing a floor?!) I skillfully engaged the services of every neighbourhood child who was fascinated by my glowing white face. While most everyone in the family chipped in, my little helpers and I defnitely won the bucket-filling race.

I decided to extend my stay to see the whole thing finished – an easy decision, as not only was the project moving quickly, and Rusinga’s peaceful lake views a welcome change, but I was really starting to enjoy this family’s company. And after nine days on the island, Erick’s little daughter Zuela finally stopped hiding in terror at the sight of my ghostly appearance. (Bringing candy helped.)

The masons and their donkeys arrived on day four to haul water and do their cement thing. By  Monday evening, a week after setting out with a plan and a budget, Erick Odhiambo’s carpentry shop was a finished product. Well, except for watering the floor for a week and cutting windows and building the workbench and hanging up tools, etc. I explained to his wife that when men have a place to tinker around with tools and machinery, they’ll always find something to do in there. She’s probably too busy to mind. As hard as those men worked in the hot sun, I still say African women work harder.

I spent my last night in Erick’s mother’s house, leaving electricity and running water behind; the family set me up with a comfy cot and a nice, big mosquito net. When the sun set, everything became pitch black except for the faint orange glow of cooking fires from the little mud kitchen hut.

Waiting for dinner and the family send-off that 15 people would later give their visiting mzungu, Erick and I sat on the ledge surrounding his mother’s house, his sleeping daughter in his arms. A little earlier, Zuela had eaten somethig that made her suddenly violently ill. Hearing her scream, her 24-year old mother ran out of the cook house and deftly used her own hand to force the child to vomit whatever was harming her. It was traumatic to watch but an amazing display of motherly instinct. With much food still to prepare, the child was handed to me, and then from me to Erick.

As I watched him in the faintest of light staring into his daughter’s quiet, beautiful face, it was all a bit much. Here was this boy, who used to draw me pictures of flowers and soccer balls, who posed for his annual sponsorship photo in the Canada t-shirt I’d sent, now a full-grown man, capable of building a shop with his bare hands, and rocking his sick child to sleep. I turned away to look up at the billions of stars and let the crickets fill the silence.

I’ve spent the past four days on beautiful Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria in the southwest of Kenya. My connection to this place was formed long before travelling here  (see 2007 post – Erick Odhiambo Odongo.)

As good fortune would have it, a young woman I met here two years ago was again on Rusinga, as director of Kageno Worldwide. Kageno means “a place of hope.” It’s an American organization which seeks to turn impoverished villages into just that. Their first project, now thriving after a six-year presence, has created a cluster of innovative ecological, health, employment and empowerment programs in Kolunga Beach at the far end of Rusinga Island. I offered to teach an HIV/AIDS course for the community if they’d have us, which they gladly did.  By us, I mean me and my friend John, also just-so-happening to be in Kenya now.  We met two years ago while teaching these courses for ICODEI  in western Kenya. He was free for a week and willing to come explore a new place, so we have just finished a two-day training with 20 community members at the Kageno site. John is a fantastic, experienced educator on the subject; I pretty much rode his coattails.

But before any of this, I connected with Erick Odhiambo again. We were invited to a celebration lunch at his homestead – a neatly maintained hillside property with small, stepped farming plots and five houses, one for each of his father’s three wives and two grown sons.

We first sat in Erick’s house, where I finally met his lovely wife, who has an infectious smile (I wouldn’t have guessed this from the photos Erick has e-mailed to me – Kenyans don’t smile in photos unless some crazy foreigner goads them.) We drank sodas and chatted, sometimes smoothly, sometimes awkwardly. John is great at keeping the conversation going; he’s spent a lot of time getting to know the people of this country and what makes them laugh.

After a while, we moved “upside” to the father’s main house where the women unveiled what had kept them out of sight for the past few hours: an amazing array of Kenyan dishes – greens, fish, cabbage, eggs, lentils, ugali, chapatis – that would leave us rolling out the door an hour later.

Then the serious, ceremonial part of the visit began. We were introduced to each member of the Sienga Youth Woodwork Co-operative Porject, the organization Erick and his friends and family started as a result of some miniscule amount of help I was able to send last year. They elected his father Chairman. Their idea starts with Erick starting a carpentry business, and follows with proceeds that will provide basic health care for orphans and vulnerable children, agricultural seeds for grandmothers, and youth training programs, to name just a few of their idealistic objectives.

Then we were ushered back to Erick’s house where they presented me with some wood-carving gifts, and John and I were each given a mango-tree seedling to plant in remembrance of our visit. It was a beautiful, touching gesture (and magoes are my favourite!). It seemed symbolic of starting something that will, with care, bear some fruit.

This is where I must pass on a message of great thanks to some generous friends in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Several people there graciously listened to my story of finding Erick 15 years after I’d sponsored him, and his ambitious plans to carve out a livlihood that would spin off to improve his community; many of them contributed what will provide a substantial start to his project. Erick says, “Thank you so much.”

We met today to talk business over tea at the idyllic lakeside place where John and I are staying (I move to cheaper accommodations tomorrow). On Monday, Erick will negotiate prices for building materials (without the white person present), on Tuesday we buy, and Wednesday, we start to build his first real carpentry shop, right on his homestead. Soon, his wife Millicent will get her living room back.

After almost a week with Mama Mercy in Rongai, I came back to stay in Nairobi where it would be easier for me to visit Rescue Dada.  Hands Up for Africa sponsors two girls from there to go to boarding school, while some friends have sponsored two more.

The gracious staff welcomed me back but it was a whole new group of vulnerable girls who were nearing the end of their year-long rehabilitation at the centre; they nonetheless treated me like a rock star. They love visitors, no matter how much of a stranger you are, and they cling to you for love and attention; makes me wonder what life is like for them outside those walls.

A few days later I went on a field trip – two of the Rescue Dada staff took me to the schools where the sponsored girls have been placed. At the first school, a convent, I saw Juliana and Mercy again. They didn’t know I was coming, and were so shy at first. But they eventually relaxed and showed me their dorm rooms, guiding me through the throngs of little ones swarming the rare mzungu (white person). One of them told me she preferred to be there – she had no family to be re-intergrated with from Rescue Dada.

Not exactly as posh as a western boarding school though, their dorms are concrete buildings with four or five semi-divided  rooms with tightly packed rows of bunk beds, keeping 10-12 girls to a room. Each bed was neatly made with a traditional masai-cloth blanket on top (despite not being in masai land). It seemed that each girl had a small metal trunk for her few posessions and change of clothes.

The convent and school strives to be as self-sustainable as possible, so there is a garden, a bore-hole well, two dairy cows, pigs, chickens, goats and cute little rabbits. I didn’t ask for details.

We left when the bell rang for class, having previously waited 30 minutes for class to finish; not even a visitor from Canada gets in the way of lessons. Education is treated with great respect here – the girls were all grateful to be there, and I believed them. They’re going to schools with smaller class sizes and lots of encouragement to work hard and have goals. I think it gives them hope.

This is just my fourth day in Kenya, but it feels like much longer.  After a day of attempted jet-lag recovery, I came to the town of Ongata-Rongia, about 20 minutes outside Nairobi (or two hours, depending on the time of day). Mama Mercy wanted me to stay with her, for which I am grateful.  I expect I’ll be with her for much of this three-month trip, if I can keep up.

It’s hard to believe what she accomplishes each day. It’s hard for me to believe because I’ve yet to come close to that level of singular focus. She wakes up each day with one purpose, to serve the poor, and of that, she says, she has no doubt. Imagine, not doubting your life’s purpose, ever….

On Saturday I woke up (in her bed as she insisted on sleeping on the couch) to the sound of children playing on her little compound; they were the first of 73 who would show up that day to have a hot meal, cooked by two hard-working Mamas in the adjacent cookhouse.  These are children who either have no parents, or whose parents cannot provide them enough food. But more than a daily lunch program, the children come here to play, sing, learn and rejoice. You see, Mama Mercy is a full-on preacher, determined to give these children something to hold them up in life besides sniffing glue.

We left the compound before the children ate, as we had a driver to take us 45 minutes away to Kiserian, the site of Mama Mercy’s land and the makings of a new orphan’s centre. She has three actual plots of land, with large portions of each ready for the third planting since Hands Up for Africa (HUFA) started supporting her work last year.

Everything is bone dry though due to drought – the difference between a farm with irrigation and one without is astounding (note the contrast between foreground and background in this photo – that land has a well).

She then showed me around the “shamba” – her one-time home which she has been slowly converting into a permanent orphanage, most recently thanks to funding from HUFA and Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics‘ Charity Pot program.

An amazingly versatile woman, Mama Mercy was once an accounts manager for a printing company, but now runs several lunch programs for 100 children each day, oversees every step of digging toilets, cementing floors, planting crops, and drilling wells, fundraises to bring food and water to internally displaced people, and preaches every moment in between. Currently, there are two long tubes of power-line wire in the corner of her living room, waiting to bring electricity to the new well at the orphanage site. This is not a woman who sleeps in.

It’s been nearly two years since I left Kenya, and I’m about to embark on Round Two.

The gist of what has happened since can be read at handsupforafrica.org – the site for the organization a group of us started in Vancouver, mostly to support the work of Mama Mercy (see my 2007 post How to be a Human Being).

It has been a remarkable couple of years working with this small group of dedicated volunteers who have really started to make this project cook. Our immediate goal, aside from sponsoring two girls from Rescue Dada, is to help Mama Mercy create a children’s centre in a rural area where dozens of orphans from her Kenyan community can be housed and cared for.

My role is less clear this time, which is a little unsettling; on my first trip I had a structured HIV-education program laid out for me to step into with a well-oiled organization. This time, I will have to do some surveying and communicating in terms of accountability to our funding partners, but my personal goal is to learn from a true master how to serve. Mama Mercy has dedicated every day of her life to serving the poor, so it will be a privilege to work alongside her.

Being at home with family, just in time for Christmas, is a gift in itself. But my time in Kenya was simply too short. I am, however, reminding myself that the alternative was no trip at all.

The two worlds are so vastly different that it’s proving difficult to keep my focus on the people and projects that occupied my last seven weeks and will continue to be part of my life. Before the New Year, my daily routine will return to what it was before I left, but I’ve vowed to dedicate some time to furthering those projects from where I now sit. That means establishing a web presence for new projects looking for volunteers, and connecting people in the western world who need some direction on where and how to help, to people and programs that are worthy of (and endlessly grateful for) their time and resources. If you’re one of those people, or just beginning to contemplate the idea, let me know; I can hook you up.

It’s difficult this time of year, to reconcile our lifestyles within the grand scheme of the planet; there’s no greater contrast than that of street children in Africa and Christmas in North America. There is joy in sharing gifts and feasts with family and friends, but it takes a concerted effort to accept and enjoy annual traditions when you have a direct link to what could otherwise be provided if we skipped over just 20 per cent of it all.

I spent my last day in Kenya visiting the lunch program started by Bart Sullivan, with thanks to his Vancouver yoga community for donating funds, and Mama Mercy. After I left for my month in the western province, the two decided the funds would be best spent on feeding the children of Kware and Rongai during their five-week break from school (and their only guaranteed meal they get each day). What evolved in the vast, dusty church ground was a place for more than 120 children to run, jump, skip rope, play football, pray, sing and laugh for hours before being served a hot meal. And the women who cooked are being paid for their work. As a bonus project, Bart decided the children should all get baskets of food for their guardians or families to take home after their Christmas pagent. He put the pledge out to his online community for donations, and they answered in spades. Here’s how well it worked: http://blip.tv/file/560050. I was sadly en route to Newfoundland by the time the pagent happened, so I’m grateful for technology giving me a taste.

Having seen first hand, the act of giving in this part of the world can elevate joy to a whole other level. I highly recommend it.

Sitting in a quaint, historic coffee shop in the heart of Nairobi, my good friend asked me how I felt to be back in the big city. I told him my shoulders had definitely dropped this time around; I felt much safer than at the start of my trip, being able to communicate a little better and with the full realization that Nairobi is not the danger zone it used to be. I told him how guarded I’d felt at the beginning of this trip, having heard and read all the dire warnings. I told him it doesn’t seem to warrant the old nickname “Nairobbery.”

A few minutes later, I stood up to greet Mama Mercy’s son Kimani who’d come to drop something off to Bart. He left after 60 seconds, and I sat back down, rummaging under my big bag, looking for the smaller cloth one. Gonzo. I’m open to interpretations on this life lesson, but I’m going with “Don’t get cocky.”

So once again, Hilary Cole is cell-phone-free. But I also lost the lovely blank book my mother and sister bought for me, now filled with the names, addresses, e-mails and phone numbers of every contact I’ve made across this country. Also snatched was a book I was reading, ironically entitled “Becoming Human.” I’m niaively hopeful the thief might read it.

Here are the list of positives Bart and I came up with while calling my phone on the street to try to hear it ring and checking garbage dumpsters:

#1. The thief didn’t take my other bag, containing passport, money, credit and bank card, clothes, and malaria meds.

That was a big one. That should be #s 1, 2 and 3.

#4. I’ll now be in touch with only those people I’m meant to stay in touch with, and who decide to contact me. Streamlining; I like it.

#5. My bag is lighter now; more room for the wickedly cool cowboy-shirt clothing line Bart and Kimani have started and want distributed in Vancouver.

#6. I get to see good fortune turn things around. I have a loaner cell phone for my last two days, and Mama Mercy gave me a brand new blank book this morning, ready to be filled.

That name has been in my consciousness for 15 years – that’s how long ago I started sponsoring a young boy from Rusinga Island, Kenya through Christian Children’s Fund (CCF). After three years of letters, pictures and updates, CCF terminated the sponsorship for some administrative reason – something about the Canadian office falling out of the Kenyan catchment area. My 22-year-old self was devastated. But Erick’s name and that of Rusinga stuck in some little recess of my brain, thinking I might one day meet him.

I left the farm in Kabula three days ago with tears in my eyes; the Lubanga family had been so lovely to me, and I met dozens of wonderful people who were working and volunteering for them. But looking ahead, I was on my way to Rusinga Island, on yet another Indiana-Jones mission to find someone with only the smallest of leads. I drove most of the way in ICODEI’s SUV with a couple of volunteers who were going to visit a friend’s project. We spoke to a group of teenagers there – an area with a 30-40 per cent HIV prevalence – many of them either orphaned or themselves infected. I stayed the night with my friends in Homa Bay, and then hopped on a very, very crowded bus over an unbelievably bad road to Mbita, the town connected to Rusinga by a little causeway.

My accommodation options were limited to a 5-star, $500-a-night exclusive resort, a dive behind the bus stand, or a little lakeside oasis called Lake Victoria’s Safari Village. (Guess which I picked.) My three nights at Safari Village cost as much as 10 at the hostel in Nairobi, but it was a slice of heaven. As life’s little non-coincidences would have it, a friend-of-a-friend was staying on Rusinga to work on a latrine-building project, and was given a near-gratis hut at the afore-mentioned 5-star. So after my own cup of tea by the water, I took a taxi over to visit her. A swim in a pool felt like pure luxury.

On the way back to my own digs, I asked my cabbie (read: guy with a car who will take you somewhere for a random price) if he knew of the Rusinga Island Family Development Project. “Yeah, CCF – right there,” he said as we passed by a little sign. So that was where I headed the next morning. I arrived after a long walk from Mbita at about noon. They showed me into the director’s office and I threw down my crap-shoot of a request. The older man and the two younger ones who had showed me in looked at me like I had 10 heads when I told them I wanted to find a boy I sponsored 12 years ago. I hadn’t been here long, but I’d already learned that Odhiambo is the Smith of this region of Kenya, and Odongo is a nickname. And did I mention there are many Erick’s?

They told me it would not be possible without his ID number (there are 1000 children currently registered in the program), and even still, they didn’t keep records back that far. The two young men just shrugged their shoulders after a brief check in their files. But the older man wouldn’t let it go. “Odhiambo Odongo…. Odongo Odhiambo….” he kept saying, looking up into the air. “How can we help this lady?” Then he said he thought he remembered someone by that name who served as their treasurer many years ago. So as I’ve learned these searches go, we went for a walk down the road. A man in the Rusinga Greening Initiative office said he knew of an Odongo, and gave us a cell number. Alphonce, one of the young men, borrowed my phone and went outside to make the call. He returned three minutes later and said he’d just spoken to this Odongo . He’d confirmed his son Erick had been sponsored through CCF. The son was there and they were expecting us. An hour after being told it would not be possible, the whole family was waiting.

What followed was not a Hollywood reunion, but a very enjoyable lunch with Erick and his parents. At first I thought Erick didn’t remember, although the parents seemed thrilled to meet me. He was quiet and very shy; I learned he left school after grade seven. So much for him being on the priority list for a new sponsor. He wasn’t speaking much, and his father told me his communication was not good, due to his schooling and something to do with an illness and back problem. I was confused by that and, being the brain-injury therapist, wondered if he was aphasic. Then Erick left the little room without saying anything. I was starting to feel awkward. But he returned a minute later, just as silently, and handed me a 13-year-old photo of myself playing field hockey. It was tattered and wrinkled, but my writing on the back was still legible: “I’m the one in the blue shirt – number 14.” I laughed. Then his Mama from the corner blurted out “Mount Saint Vincent University!” Apparently I’d sent him a t-shirt from my school. Just a note: don’t think that the tiny little things you do for people far away don’t matter.

After an hour visit and taking a bunch of photos, we left in a cab, Erick accompanying us, to drop me where I would meet up with my friend. I talked with him a little on the way there – he told me his wife’s name is Millicent, but unfortunately she wasn’t there today. I gave him some simple exercises for a back problem I wasn’t sure about, and said goodbye. It felt way too quick and insignificant, but I felt like that was the end; I was disappointed and still confused. I spent the rest of the day with my friend and another volunteer I’d met touring their projects in a little fishing village on a beach, then took a taxi back to Mbita before sunset.

As I was driven at warp speed down the dirt road, I spotted Erick at the last second, just as he spotted me. We both stuck our arms out and waved. “Stop!” I yelled to the cabbie/guy-with-a-car. Erick ran up to the car and I told him I would be hiking up a big hill to see all of Rusinga the next morning with one of the CCF people, and asked him to come. “Yes, I’d like to come,” he said, and gave me his cell number. So the next day, Erick Odhiambo Odongo and I climbed a mountain together. We chatted the whole day by the way – no communication problems that I could tell. It was a remarkable place, and a remarkable day. Erick had never been there (Alphonce was our guide) and he loved the view from the top – a stunning 360 of the entire area and surrounding islands. We walked back to Mbita together, and I bought some fruit for him to take home to his mother and wife. He’s since sent me three text messages.

I’m killing time now on my way back to Nairobi. I need to see all the people I met there the first time around, and then it’s off to St. Andrew’s en route to Canada for Christmas; again, looking forward to the next adventure.

I spent yesterday with Reverend Chris’ family near the town of Kakamega. It was about an hour matatu ride followed by 30 minutes on a boda boda into his family’s rural compound. The beauty all around was astounding. The lush rolling hills of sugar cane can take your breath away, and easily disguise the disparity they create between the farmers and sugar manufacturers; when the latter group actually decides to pay, they are far from fair.

Chris’ father is a former school headmaster – an educated and wise man who showed me great respect as his visitor, and took the opportunity to enlighten me on the ‘real’ Kenya. He believes the country is deceiving the world into seeing it as a democracy, with its multi-party system and free elections. But his definition of democracy goes much further. He posed the question of whether primary education is really free if the public schools have one teacher for 80 to 100 students, making every parent desperate to find the fees to send their children to private schools. And according to him, no one gets treated at a public hospital, regardless of the level of urgency, unless they first produce money, and that, to him, does not make a civil country.

But the purpose of my visit was to see and photograph the family’s compound to help promote Chris’ vision: a volunteer organization which aims to empower young girls, enabling them to make choices in their lives by learning about health issues and women’s rights, as well as skills and trades. His father has already given him land – two acres – which leap frogs him over the biggest hurdle to getting something going.

Since I last wrote about it, another volunteer from ICODEI named Eric has joined heads with Chris on the problem of young boys in this area – there is a plethora of homeless boys who spend their days scrounging for a few shillings to buy a little bit of food and a whole lot of glue for sniffing. There is, quite possibly, nothing worse than seeing a shoeless boy in completely rotten and tattered clothes as high as a kite, grabbing your hand and asking you to buy him food. So Eric and Chris are adding a boy’s orphanage to the vision. We’re all beginning by trying to establish an organization to receive donations and volunteer support from abroad. The first job will be to erect a structure or two on the land to house volunteers and then build a home for boys. A relative of Chris’ has already offered some unused classrooms nearby for teaching space.

After enjoying a wonderful lunch prepared by Chris’ perpetually-smiling mother and lovely sisters, and meeting virtually everyone in the area (Chris cannot walk by a single soul witout being summoned for a chat or a soda), I’ve seen how much support he has for his vision. He is driven, and with more people making micro-movements, I really see it happening.

Tomorrow I leave Bungoma/Kabula and head for Rusinga Island before my trip back to Nairobi. I’m sure more adventures await in the week ahead, but I’m still looking back with gratitude for the hospitality, education, and teaching opportunities I’ve had until now. The people here make it remarkably easy to build relationships, with their openness, grace and constant greetings; I hope those ties are only just beginning.