04/05/12

Karibu – welcome in Kenya

Welcome – that's how we have been feeling since Sr Emily and Sr Rosa picked us up at the airport at Nairobi this morning. Today is a holiday in Kenya, too, and so the traffic is not that heavy and we arrive at the convent after a short drive.

During the common breakfast where we are offered delicious things like mangoes we get to know the other sisters and their jobs. With great joy we meet Sr Maria again whom we had met during her stay in Germany last August. After a short rest we attend a service together with the sisters. Though it's held in Kisuaheli we are never bored, since – wow, there is a lot of singing and clapping. Those who have ever attended a service in Africa know what I'm talking about. Really wonderful!

Afterwards Sister Maria makes a point of showing us the garden where they grow a vast variety of fruit and vegetables, papayas, bananas, leek, peppermint, pepper, eggplants, lettuce and mangoes.

It is really amazing. Unfortunately the sisters have to fight naughty monkeys that also know what tastes good and so Sr Maria now has a dog. It is a nice crossbreed whose only task is to keep the monkeys away. We also admire the approximately 500 hens she is keeping and then she and HP cut a sugarcane which we can taste later as dessert after lunch - peeled and cut in small pieces.

Before lunch, however, we are given the opportunity to visit the maternity unit which the sisters have established on the site. You can well imagine that seeing all these sweet babies makes our hearts swell – the youngest being a mere one and a half hours old.

Basically it is rather calm here as the kids are still on holiday for another week. Next weekend the pupils will come back to school and the kindergarden will open again as well. So we can now calmly visit all the premises. Of course we are especially interested in the two computer labs. We are sitting in one of them just now. While I'm writing this article HP is working on the terminal server installing it anew so that it can be used here. Unfortunately there is a leak in the roof and it rains into one of the computer labs so that the computers have to be covered with a plastic wrap until the roof is repaired. Otherwise everything seems to be fine.

Unfortunately we got the news that the arrival of the pallets will be delayed as the ship with the containers cannot dock at the harbour in Mombasa. Well, we'll see ….

Early tomorrow morning we are going on our trip to Chesongoch. It will be a long journey, first by bus to Eldoret (four hour's drive) and from there another three hour's drive to Chesongoch. So I'll say “good night“ now.