I lied, that last post wasn't my last. This week was so frustrating. My kids are still wonderful and were so excited to see me back so soon, and a bunch of them gave me bracelets and earrings just because they love me :) But I had this brilliant idea of taking each of my kids individually to the library that we're working on and having them read to me because I had the feeling that when they read out loud as a group in class, some of them just listen to the passage the first time through and then memorize it so it looks like they're reading when really they aren't even looking at the words. Good idea, right? And my teacher was all for it. But the other volunteers and I took the first kids we all found that they had no idea what they were doing. None. As in these class 2 kids don't even know the letters of the alphabet when it's out of order, never mind the sounds each letter makes. I took out the simplest books we have in the library and I would ask my kids to tell me the letters in each word and they couldn't. So I went back to my teacher and told her how behind they are and you know what she said to me? She said "Oh no, the kids can read when I write on the blackboard, it must be the books that are the problem. They just can't read from books." Right, that makes total sense. So then we went to talk to the head teacher to tell her what we saw and that we think it's important to take the kids every day and do this and she said it'd be fine once they start getting lunch again (the school ran out of water and maize so the kids haven't had lunch in over a week) to take them for the whole afternoon and teach them to read. So that's cool, I got pretty excited because this'll be really good for them. Then yesterday I went to class in the morning and my teacher called me over to tell me head teacher wants to talk to me about how she doesn't think it's a good idea to take the kids to the library anymore. I was furious. So I went to head teacher, who told me exactly the same thing as she said the day before, that we can take them after lunch. My teacher just doesn't like that we figured out how bad she is at teaching. She's so awful. I despise this woman. She refuses to beheld accountable for the state of her class and clearly doesn't care at all about the kids or her job because she hardly ever shows up! I'm done working with her. I love my kids but I'm only going to go in to teach them to read in the afternoons and then work with my older girls and fix up the library during the day.

This will more than likely be my last post before I get back to America (sometimes I like to keep people on their toes though so there's a chance I'll get back online again in the next 3 weeks). I went to Mombasa this past week to work in an orphanage just for a change of pace, but I got there and hated it. Every second. The host mom, Tabby, is not nearly as wonderful as mama Maggie, although I guess she could be worse. The weather was so extremely hot and humid that I was miserable every day by 9:30am, and the orphanage is actually pretty nice all things considered so they didn't even have work that needed to get done. So I left. Today I get to go back home to Saikeri, to my class 2 kids, to mama Maggie, Shosho, and Julius. I get to spend my last 3 weeks in the place I'm most content with the most wonderful family. But, that being said, I won't have internet until I come back to Nairobi for my flight so I may or may not be able to talk to anyone until then. On a side note, I've now been swimming in the Indian Ocean! Yayyyy. Love you all and I'll talk to you (and see you) sooner than you know

I don't usually update this often (obviously) but I'm laying in bed fairly paralyzed and have been all day and this lovely lady, Carla, who had her flight home today, left her internet stick with us so I figured I'd use this opportunity wisely :) I'm sick as a dog. I was totally fine yesterday but then last night I woke up trying to keep myself from passing out which was very bizarre because I didn't know that in sleep I'd be conscious enough to wake myself up so as to not pass out. Weird. Anyways, I was nauseous and getting stomach cramps all night among other awful symptoms, didn't sleep at all, felt like death, and haven't left bed most of today. Not fun. Luckily (don't know if this is actually lucky or not but whatever) there's another girl who is just as sick as me with the same shit and she's in the bed right next to mine! We've been bonding all day over how awful we feel. And also luckily, I came to Nairobi yesterday and if I was still in Saikeri, although I'd have a nurse mama right there to take care of me, I'd also have to be sick in a latrine instead of a real bathroom and if I got up at night there would be no electricity to light my way anywhere. So really this situation is as ideal as it's gonna get. AND since I'm in Nairobi I have a plethora of hospitals to choose from if I should need one, whereas in Saikeri we only have mama Maggie (who is wonderful obviously, but still not a hospital). I don't have anything cool to update you on because I haven't done anything awesome today but this is life so you can all hear about it. Send well wishes my way (and for my sickly friend too) and I love you all tons

I don't know how many people actually read this but for anyone who looks forward to my updates- sorry it's been so long! I've been living in Saikeri which does not have internet which is actually kind of nice but inconvenient when you want to tell people how everything is going. So where do I begin? This past month has been pure bliss. Life is incredible but most Americans would find it less than enjoyable I'm sure. Nothing much happens in Saikeri. We have market on Tuesdays and Fridays and people walk from hours away to come to that and they're all dressed in their traditional maasai best which you'll all be able to see as soon as I upload any photos to facebook (don't hold your breath though, internet here is not usually good enough for that). So Tuesdays and Fridays are kinda cool for that. All the other days are pretty monotonous- wake up around 6:30 because it's finally light enough for me to pee in the latrine (at night I can pee outside but when it gets close to the morning I'd risk being seen by all the schoolchildren so I figure that's not such a good idea haha). Then I read in bed for an hour or so until I ahve to get dressed for school, get dressed, brush my teeth and throw my hair up. Then I go to the house to eat the daily breakfast of white bread with blueband spread, jam, or peanut butter and chai tea. At 8:15 we walk over to the school and I go to my class 2 kids and teach them (usually) all the subjects- math, english reading and writing, science, kiswahili, and occasionally social studies or religion although I'm not so good at those so I try to get away with not doing them haha (I know, you're thinking "what? she can teach kiswahili but not social studies or religion? that's ridiculous." but it's not. kiswahili is easy because I'm not expected to know anything so I just hope that the kids know how to pronounce their words correctly and write and shit and it's good. This is Africa, it's good.) So we have tea break for a half hour during the day where I go home and relax, and then I go back and do the remaining lessons until lunch. At lunch I let my kids go because I'm such an efficient teacher that I get everything done in the morning :) Lunch varies every day-typical kenyan food though. Then because it's so hot I get really tired so I take a nap or at least rest just about every day after lunch for an hour or 2. Then we read (we being me and the other volunteers), play cards, or sit around for a while. Sometimes we go for walks but thats rare because it's so freaking hot here. This past week April and I ran a girl's education class after school for the ladies in classes 6, 7, and 8- that was awesome! We taught them all about puberty, safe sex, STIs, especially HIV/AIDS, and we found out that they had no pads donated this year so we gave them some and then we found out a lot of them didn't have panties so we went to the city and bought some of those for them too. They were so happy. Then at 8 or 8:30pm we have dinner and then go to bed sometime after that. It sounds really boring and its dry, dusty, and dirty. The kids love to touch mzungus- I don't know if they expect us to feel different or something but I've learned that my body belongs to all of them, not just me, and they will constantly be all over me. They've got grubby little hands but I love them all and honestly have no problem with it. We've also been re-doing the library which was complete shit before but is looking much better now and will be wonderful in a few weeks! The kids don't even use it now because it's so bad. I'll also post pics of that at some point. Hmm, what else? Shosho (my grandma) taught me how to bead and I helped her make some keychains the other day which was awesome. Nini (mama) is gonna have her baby seriously any day now. Yeah I guess that's about all the news I have. It's not much to talk about but Saikeri is a dream come true for me. I've never been happier.

Giraffes in my backyard; the most beautiful murky, muddy, parasite-infested bodies of water; waking up to the sunrise every morning; falling asleep under millions of stars every night; saying supa and ipa almost constantly; science classes about why it's important to poop and pee in a toilet or latrine; red, dust-covered skin; missing teeth, elongated ears, beads all over, and clothing that consists of just blankets and a belt; meals cooked outside; the most painful but wonderful boda boda rides of my life; communicating with nothing but smiles and pointing; herds of cows and goats all over; hundreds of aunts, uncles and cousins; the most beautiful mama Maggie I could have asked for. This is my life. TIA man, TIA.

Fact: I am Maasai. I've only spent two days in Saikeri but oh man, it's home. I've never felt this good before. The Maasai are incredible people...indescribable. My host mom, Maggie, is the nicest most accepting person I've met here. She doesn't speak ill of anyone and tries to find the beauty in everyone. And the landscape, and the stars at night, and the animals, and the people, and the way they dress and act and sing and dance...I'm in love. I could stay here forever. My room has no electricity, although the living room and Maggie's room do so that's no big deal. Our toilet is a hole in the ground with four walls around it (but at night if you have to pee it's way more beautiful and convenient to just step outside and pee under the stars). My school is literally right next door so my morning commute is about 2 minutes, and we can come home for tea breaks and for lunch. My class 2 kids are adorable. On Friday they started the day out by doing traditional dances to traditional songs- it was AWESOME. Seriously, I was supposed to be born Maasai. I just got put in the wrong body.

My face has hardened over my few short weeks here. When I walk down the streets my jaw is clenched tight, my eyes unforgiving. Even at home it takes a lot more effort to get a smile out of me than it did four weeks ago. Being a mzungu in Kibera you naturally draw everyone's attention. I constantly feel the stares on me- some gentle and welcoming, most are not. In four short weeks I've grown to anticipate the looks, the grabs, the handshakes, the calls, and I've learned to give back nothing. No facial or verbal acknowledgement of how I feel because it doesn't matter. Whether I want the attention or not it's going to come. Even the children aren't guaranteed a response anymore. That I don't like. I don't like that I've become this hard shell of a person. I don't like that I came here thinking I could so easily love everyone and give my heart to them all when in reality, I can't. I don't like that when I walk alone I don't feel like I can even give a smile without becoming even more of a target.
I leave for Maasai land tomorrow. I've heard tat the Maasai are the most kind-hearted, welcoming, gentle, beautiful souls out there. My biggest hope is that they'll break me. That they'll re-teach me how to openly trust my neighbors, how to let my guard down, how to smile freely.
My life is beautiful, and I am living my dream, I just didn't realize how much I would learn and change in the process.

best day ever

I met this woman today who is a friend of an uncle of a friend (I guess now I could just call her my friend) and she works for MSF (doctors without borders). Super awesome. So my friend and I met up with her and her adorable son for lunch at Java House to just talk to her about her job and pretty much just shoot the shit and that was great but then my friend got sick so she had to come home. So this woman, Sandra, still invited me to her house after to hang out and I went because duh, you don't pass up awesome opportunities like this. So I got to see the house that MSF put her and her family in for their mission, which was sick by the way. I played with her son and then Sandra and I drank tea and talked for hours. She's so cool. This is kind of a pointless story because I'm not going to type out our whole conversation but everyone should know that this woman is great and she cemented my future plans and I can't wait to live my life (meaning I can't wait for this minute and the next and the next hour and day and week and month and year and forever because my life is and will keep being so awesome). I'm so glad I met her and I'm so glad today happened and I'm so glad people like her exist and I'm so glad I somehow meet the most inspiring, wonderful people everywhere I go. My faith in humanity is once again restored.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, our internet ran out and then this past weekend i went to Uganda so I was too busy. Life is still incredible over here. Last Thursday four other volunteers and I took a 17 hour bus ride to Kampala, Uganda, which I thought was the most atrocious bus ride ever until we rode the bus back to Nairobi. That turned out to be wayyy worse. Uganda is so beautiful. Everything is the purest, most luscious green you can imagine. The roads are lined with sugar cane fields, tea fields, mud huts in little village clusters and huge forests. I immediately fell in love. The roads are a deep red that after about 2 minutes walking around, you're covered in. There are police and security guards everywhere who carry huge guns, and sometimes they hopped on our bus. At first they were a little intimidating because of the guns but then I got used to them and they made me feel safer because I knew they were only there to help. Kampala sucked. I don't advise anyone to go there ever because its probably the scariest city I've ever been in. As a mzungu, you can't walk 10 metres without being approached in some sort of negative way. People were not that comfortable there. So we left pretty quickly and went out to Jinja for an extra night. That city I highly suggest people visit. Instead of taking taxis and matatus everywhere there, you take boda-bodas which are motorcycles. They're so much fun and may look really unsafe (and maybe in reality they are) but when you ride them, you feel so secure. It's fabulous. Saturday we went to Ghandi's temple and rode a boat out to the source of the Nile, which is this one part of water where Lake Victoria and the Nile meet. Water bubbles up from the bottom of the river/lake area and then flows down the Nile for 3 months until it reaches Egypt. After the boat ride, Atazia and I went bungee jumping!! WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!! That was so much fun. I jumped first, and while I was standing on the edge of the platform my adrenaline was rushing so hard that my entire body was shaking as was the entire platform. Such a great feeling. We met this woman who's a painter down in one of the villages. She was so nice! We're basically best friends now. Sunday three of us walked around the painter's village (not with her though, she was busy painting) and met some kids who took us around to meet all their parents, see all their houses, and just show us everything. We got to see avocado trees, orange trees, passionfruit trees, jackfruit trees (which are super bizarre), coffee trees, and a bunch of other cool things. The kids were great. I didn't want to leave, and the bus ride home was completely awful but that's ok because the whole trip was incredible overall.

Yesterday I went to my school to hang with the kids and teacher Violet basically told me her entire life story. I was about to cry in class while she was talking to me because it's so unfair. She works from 5:30am-7pm every day at the school and gets paid the equivalent of $100/month. She still has to live with her guardians because that's not enough money to sustain her, and she pays her guardians $50/month to help with all the bills. It's customary for grandchildren to help support their grandparents so she sends her grandparents money every other month, and she's the oldest of all her siblings so she has to help pay for their high school and uni as well. Since the extra $50 isn't enough to cover all that she took on some private tutoring jobs from 7-9pm every night to get her about $20 extra every month. So every night she collapses from exhaustion at about midnight after doing her lesson plans for the following day. She's the most approachable teacher in the school, so all the girls go to her to ask for pads when it's their time of the month, so every time she buys some for herself she buys extras for the girls. She was telling me that most people are excited for pay day but she's in tears every single time because it's so stressful to think of all the money she owes everyone. She never has enough money to pay for her hair to get done, or a new dress or new shoes but she perseveres every day because she loves those kids and some of them are worse off than she is. She doesn't want to show them her frustration or her exhaustion because she wants them to know that they too can persevere. She's an amazing woman.

this one's just for you Liana :)

Today quite a few of my friends left for safari, but I opted not to go (at least not yet). I was a little nervous to go to my school on my own because so far I've always had another mzungu with me, and i almost went just to say i felt sick so i could go back to the volunteer house, but I didn't. I figured, if I came to Kenya on my own, surely I can survive a day on my own with my class three kids. So I went on my 30 minute walk through Kibera, past all the shop owners, past all the children shouting "how are you?", past all the matatus and stray dogs and piles of burning garbage. I walked straight to my school on my own so I could do the work I came here to do. When I arrived I was greeted warmly by the entire school because they were still in morning assembly. My class all smiled their biggest smiles because even after just one week, our love for each other is huge. I sat in for the end few minutes of assembly and then teacher Violet told me all the teachers have to finish grading exams so I have the class to myself today and can do whatever I wish with them. Ahh! 36 kids on my own?! I decided to give them all paper, colored pencils and crayons since I figured they never have art time (or art supplies for that matter) and to make it a little more educational I had them write stories about their drawings on the back of theur papers. I have 36 little angels who I'm in love with. Quite a few decided to include how much they love me and how beautiful they think I am in their stories :)

I also love being able to walk anywhere and buy a mango on the side of the road for only 20ksh! Just sayin, I've never liked mangoes before but here, they're fantastic.

They beat each other. The kids, they're all bullies. And who can blame them? They're being beaten every day of their life by their parents and then when they get to school, they're caned by the teachers. It's the only kind of discipline they have. So they quickly learn that beating their friends and classmates is totally acceptable. Teacher Violet has 36 kids in her class. 36 kids that she alone is in charge of. When the kids go outside to play, they have no supervision. They don't have a playground, just an empty field. There's 1 soccer ball for the whole school to share, so most of the time the older kids have it and my kids have nothing. So they run. A lot. Relay races, tag, the game I like to call "run around the field 3 times and I'll time you." I taught them Miss Mary Mack and Father Abraham. They've taught me a few games where you have to sing in Kiswahili. We make do. Teachers disappear for hours at a time every day so I'm left in charge of my kids a lot. But things are really different here. It's not expected that you'll always be watching everyone. The kids are self-sufficient here. The classrooms are about 12' x 12'. The walls are plywood and the roofs are tin. There are no lights so the doors and windows are always open so there can be natural light. There is no budget for posters or papers so mostly the walls are bare. There are no books in my classroom and I'm pretty sure it's the same in every classroom. Teacher Violet makes the best of the situation and genuinely loves her kids, so she's possibly the best teacher our school has. But really, how are kids supposed to learn when there are almost no pencils, erasers, paper, books, very little food during the day and absolutely no structure?

On another note, I went to dinner the other night at this place called Carnivore. So expensive but oh so worth it. It's buffet style for all of the meats they have, so I got to try ostrich, crocodile, and bull testicles :) lucky me haha

I'm constantly covered in dirt and my lungs feel like I've just run a marathon every second of the day because they're filled with dirt and dust, and my throat kills because of the dirt, but otherwise, physically, I feel great. And I get so much kid love every day that my spirit feels great too.

7 hours and 2500ksh later, I am braided!! My hair looks awesome and I feel so great. And the hairdresser told me my scalp is now protected from the sun so really I just did myself a huge favor. Tomorrow I'm doing an outreach project where we go for a 14km bike ride to pride rock (lion king anyone?) and then we visit a garbage slum to feed the children. I'm such a lucky lady :)

After two painfully long flights and 9 hours trying desperately not to fall asleep in the middle of the Istanbul airport I finally made it to Nairobi! As soon as I arrived I had my first "African time" experience- I waited in line for a visa for about 45 minutes without moving, my baggage took so long to come out, and people just in general move extremely slow. But it's wonderful in every single way.

Nairobi is filled with the most beautiful people I've ever seen. They're filled with love and passion and so much kindness. Last night Atazia and I wanted to go out to see where some loud music was coming from but the woman who runs our house, Winnie, said it wasn't safe because it was after dark. Then since it's our first time here she offered to take us to church today and then show us around a bit. Church was incredible. The service was about 4 hours long but it was so worth it and I want to go back to her church every weekend because I'm completely in love with everyone there. There are churches all over Nairobi because everyone goes, but the one we went to was in the middle of the slum that Winnie lives in. The roads we walked were made of a mix of dirt and garbage, and there were starving stray dogs every few feet. Goats wandered around the streets, but those aren't stray, people keep them for...well, I don't actually know why. All of the walls surrounding homes are topped with either barbed wire or broken glass to deter theft, and the air was thick with the smell of feces in many places. The church was small, the roof made of tin, and the chairs were the plastic kind you might use on a patio. But it was beautiful because the people are beautiful. They welcomed us with everything they had and genuinely want to see us again (every weekend). The children loved us (because we're white) and the whole congregation came up to us afterwards to meet us and at least shake hands, if not tell us how welcome we are in all of Kenya.

I have to go because I want to hang out with these guys we just met and my roommate but life is good and I am so happy here. I'll update again as soon as I can.

Ladies and gentlemen, in just a few short hours I will board the plane that will take me not only thousands of miles away physically, but will take me to new extremes spiritually, mentally and emotionally. Am I scared? Hell yeah. But I'm more excited than anything else and I know this trip will be worth it.

I got an email with my placement the other day so now I know more specifically what I'll be doing and where I'll be- I'll be living with 2 wonderful Kenyan ladies, Milka and Wambui, in a volunteer house in Nairobi, and I'll be teaching science, math and writing at a co-ed high school that's in walking distance from my home. It sounds perfect for me :)

I have no idea how much internet I'll have but as soon as I can I'll get online just to let everyone know I'm safe. Love you all and thanks for the immense support.

Tutaonana Mungu akipenda