Kenya Tuesday-Thursday 6/29-7/1/10

After Monday’s long day in Homa Bay we took Tuesday off in Asumbi to write blogs and try to catch up. There is still the problem of the issue of dial-up internet where a picture takes 10-15 minutes to upload but we made a day of it and read our books between each blog as the pictures uploaded. Before the blogs there was a necessary task that we were not too sure about. We needed to do our laundry in Asumbi, where it would dry, without the aid of a washer or dryer. The Sisters were happy to help us learn how to wash out of a bucket, scrub on a table and rinse in two other buckets and then up on the line. It really was not bad but the workmen were worried about Stanley, who was helping hang up the laundry. They were sure there was something wrong with him. One more time American and Kenyan culture clashed. Toward the end of the day we worked a little on the organizational charts and printed one of them up. The chart took 8 pages and Yvonne and Sister Pauline spent an hour gluing it together to make a wall chart. Then we went to bed. We were happy to have the opportunity to catch up a little on the blog. This was a quiet day with a moment of rest after several weeks of travel.


The next morning, Wednesday, we were up with the best of intentions of finishing up the blog but the internet was down and so life went on. Laundry was taken in and repacked. The chart was worked on a little more while Sister Margaret finished a myriad of meetings and office work and then we were back on the road to Nairobi. Down the “Dancing road” and through Kisii and on to Narok and then to Nairobi. We got back at 12:00 to find Assisi House completely black. The power in this section of Nairobi had gone out about 3:00 in the afternoon so no work on the plumbing had happened and there was no water. It was a concern and I needed to talk to the plumber.

Thursday morning we went over to the Assisi House and met with the plumber. There still was no water. He talked about different issues that he had found with the system while working on it. Each was realistic and each was necessary but nothing could be done until the electricity, which was still off, came back on.

Thursday was scheduled as another day of computer work. Sister Margaret’s computer had crashed and the technician found she had a virus. He reformatted the disk and reinstalled the programs. He did not know that I had installed a program for her so it was lost. We went to Consolata Seminary again where Father Steve (Sister Margaret’s brother) allowed us to use the high speed internet. We were able to do another blog while the program was down loading, catch up on e-mail and then close down the whole system and go over to Bomas to wait for Sister Margaret so we could go to dinner at her sister’s house, Cecilia. Margaret’s meeting went long so we had dinner at Bomas and will see Cecilia on the 8th for lunch.

During the afternoon we checked in on the water system at Assisi House and found that the power had come back on and that it had worked so well that the city tank had overflowed. They had never seen that much water. It demonstrated that the system worked but it also demonstrated that the shut off switches did not. Oh well I am glad to know that now.

We are going to be up tomorrow to take a two day trip around Mt. Kenya to see a different part of Kenya.

Sorry no pictures but we have pictures coming up on the next blog (look forward to camels).