Update from Kenya

Today was a good day. I’m feeling much better today.

For those of you who don’t know, I haven’t been well since about 1:00 Sunday morning.

On Sunday, five of us had dinner from a normally good restaurant in Kitale area (although Daniel would definitely deny that it was a good restaurant – I’m not feeling the pain he felt months ago!). And yes, at 1:00 in the morning, I thought I was going to die. I’m thinking it was food poisoning.

I had an important meeting on Monday morning; a meeting that I couldn’t miss. But I just couldn’t get back to sleep so at 10:00 am, I showed up to the meeting, running on 2.5 hours sleep….and not getting a wink of sleep from 1:00am to 7:00 when I decided to get out of bed.

Anne and I got to the meeting place at 9:55 am. The meeting was to be from 10:00 to 12:30pm. Long story short, the meeting didn’t start until 11:35 and went until 2:00pm. By 12:00, I thought I was going to pass out. No sleep, no food (too sick to eat) and really cranky. It seriously took all it had in me NOT to fall asleep in the meeting. Yes, there were some moments of nodding off. Thankfully, no one noticed (hopefully) and I was even nominated to a be a part of the sub-committee they are setting up. It’s to see what can be done for the street kids. And you know me with the street kids. Hook me up!!!

I was in bed by 9:00, asleep within minutes and didn’t get up until 8:00 this morning. Still haven’t been able to eat much; all I could muster was a banana today and lots of water.

Kim, Holly and I went to the Baby House today; my first time in a few months. Wow, all the babies are getting BIG. As soon as we got out of the car, little Moses came RUNNING to me and he didn’t have any trousers on. I scooped him up in to my arms and covered him in kisses. Later we found out that he did have underwear on BUT he somehow managed to pull them up around his belly. One leg in one hole maybe, who knows. The boy hates wearing underwear or trousers.

Then there’s little Isaiah, oh sweet beautiful little Isaiah. When I last saw him, he could only lie down and he was a bit top heavy so he always fell face forward when we tried to sit him up. But now, he’s a crawling machine. And he came crawling over to me; I think he remembered me. That’s what I’m going to believe anyway.

Oh, Rhonda and Catherine, you guys should see how big Destiny has gotten. She’s sitting up, crawling around. She’s SOOOO beautiful. Next time I go, I’ll bring my camera and take pics of her for you.

On to Kenya news. I don’t know if you guys are hearing things over there about Kitale and the violence that is going on right now so I want to clarify things for everyone.

The violence that is happening is not IN Kitale. It is in the depths of Mount Elgon. Kitale is kind of at the base of Mount Elgon, which is a HUGE mountain that separates Kenya and Uganda.

We have heard that there are a group of these “revenge” soldiers who do have access to firearms. Some 250 men were busted about two or three weeks ago. What they are doing and why they have firearms, well that’s still in rumor stages. Some people say that it’s a group of a tribe or two training to take out another tribe. Some people say that this “training” has been going on for years now.

Daniel said he heard that the Kenyan army went up to Mount Elgon today. I didn’t hear anything about that when I was in town today (I’ll need to buy a newspaper tomorrow). But I was told today that Kitale has put in place a 7:00pm curfew. All shops and restaurants are to be closed by then and the town should become a ghost town as of that time. Any one seen on the streets after 7:00 can be arrested or fined.

The government is saying they’re doing this to try to keep the tribal wars of Mount Elgon from trickling down in to Kitale. Don’t know what that’ll really do but we’ll see.

I’m not alarmed or worried. I know that tribal wars have been going on in Mount Elgon for years and year. If this is something more; if this is something about “revenge” soldiers being trained then we’ll see what it does. But for now, I haven’t seen any effects in our town or in the people. Only the 7:00 pm curfew. That’s all.

As always, if I hear any more, I’ll let you know. I’ll keep everyone posted. But know that all is good here.

I have a big day tomorrow. I’m going to the deaf children’s school to help do assessments for our Canadian friends who support some of these children. I’m really excited about going. I loved going to this school back in January. The kids were amazing and I still remember some of their name signs…and mine too!

I love you all!

Meredith

xoxoxo