It’s been a mixed week here with some discouragements and a bit of loneliness but my brother is due to arrive tonight and I’m looking forward to focusing on him for the next 2 weeks, being his personal tour guide will be an excuse for plenty of fun trips out.
On Monday Rachel arrived and she’s really been what’s kept me going this week. She’s a zoologist and nearly as crazy about birds as Aaron and Albert are, except her real passion is bats. I never thought I would say this but last night I helped put up a bat net. Then I joined Rachel sitting on a little stool to wait and see if we caught a bat which we could look at, take photos of and release. Apparently it’s a regular hobby for some people. Apart from the bat thing though she’s quite normal :) and it’s actually been OK to share my room again and a relief to have someone to talk to. She’s extremely practical and also very good with people and languages; she’s genuinely trying to learn Swahili, rather than picking up the odd useful phrase like Aaron and I. It’s obvious that Colin realised she would be a real asset to Mwamba and encouraged her to come. She was only meant to stay for a couple of weeks but so far the data she was meant to enter still hasn’t been delivered. It looks like she will stay right over Christmas and she’s found plenty of other ways to make herself useful from mending bird ringing nets to escorting our new group of guests around the snake farm later.
Plans are always changing here, almost by the minute sometimes. Suzanne, Aaron’s fiancée has decided she wants to stay on as a volunteer when his parents go home next weekend. It makes sense as she’s only just out of college and has no job to go back to in Canada at the moment, and Aaron is here until February. Also we lost Jo so we were a volunteer down. From a purely selfish point of view however I’m feeling slightly dubious about January – my brother will have left and Rachel will probably set off on her travels again in the New Year, Bernard is also finishing on 28th December. So the volunteer team will consist of me and a young engaged couple counting down the weeks until their wedding, I may run out of ways to make myself scarce before the end of the month, if you have any ideas please send them ;)
This week seems to have been dominated by children. I was meant to do administrative tasks such as completing the end of year newsletter but on Wednesday I spent the whole afternoon teaching an 8 year old how to play Monopoly. I wondered about the ethics of it afterwards, she picked it up very quickly and then became rather obsessed with those pink ‘500’ notes. Her family left on Thursday but not before she’d taught another little girl, Lispa’s cousin how to play. Apparently the game is not known in Kenya – what an opportunity! Lispa’s cousin, Keziah and her little niece Nalius are staying throughout Christmas and are a lot of fun. Apart from learning Monopoly Keziah also wants to learn how to swim and became a keen amateur photographer last night when she got hold of my camera. Yesterday Bernard, (who is their new best friend) Rachel and I took them to the beach. It was a beautiful afternoon and so easy to get great photos. Keziah has just come and interrupted me now because she wants to know if there are waves on the beach today.
All day yesterday we were waiting for our new guests to arrive. Unfortunately for them they had taken the train from Nairobi which is notorious for breaking down. After a late night phone call we thought they would be staying the night in Mombasa and went to bed unconcerned. At 3am Aaron was woken up by banging and car hooting. They’d arrived in the middle of the night and of course did not know which rooms they were staying in or even where the rooms were. Aaron, bless him got up and showed them where to go, all 10 of them which was interesting as there were only meant to be 7. This morning we had a few issues regarding not enough cereal and where to sleep the extra guests but I think we’ve weathered the storm.
It’s time for me to entertain the children again so I’ll sign off for now…
Just in case anyone was pondering visiting but is still not sure this was the beach on Saturday afternoon...
For Those Who Pray
Pray that my brother arrives safely and we have a good time together.
Pray we can manage the guests coming to and fro and make some money for Mwamba and Arocha over the holiday season and maintain good relations all round.
Pray that I can get my head around January and it won’t be as difficult as I’m anticipating.
Thank you!
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