First, scattered update (we're alive!)

Hi all, we're.... alive in Kenya! Which I'm sure is a relief for you to hear. It's been an intense experience already, with much learning, some anxiety... and not much that we're used to (although the drug store here was strangely filled with Colgate Total and Listerine). We had an ill-planned adventure in Nairobi which happily ended in an animal orphanage, where we got to see a lot of Kenya's animals within hours of landing. Our waits in the airport were excruciatingly long, and the sleep deprivation was becoming quite bad. I'm not going to give many details now, but it's 5:50pm on thursday, we arrived in Kakamega last night and drove up a 'highway' (dirt road) to Ephy's family's place, which is surrounded by a corrugated metal fence (9 feet tall) and a security guard (everything has security guards here), had dinner and met a few people, then came back to our appartment. The appartment itself is fairly nice... living room, cooking facilities, two beds (one large), bathroom with toilet and shower. It's on the top floor of a building contained within a larger villa-like complex.... but screens were missing from the window, there were holes in our malaria mosquito nets, a car alarm was going off all night, we were woken up by the sounds of lots of animals in the morning. Also I took the first cold shower of my life this morning.... though we got the hot water working afterwards. I woke up around 10:30 this morning, and i had slept through soem heavy rains because i took some drowsy cough and cold medication last night... oh yeah, because i got sick on the plane going out of toronto, and i'm still blowing my nose. I think its beginning to clear up.

Everything is kind of indescribable, and we're right int he imddle of it, so i'm not sure how useful i'm going to be in giving you a picture of what we've been seeing. Courtney's kind of overwhelmed, deeply out of her comfort zone, but i hope that soon she will feel more comfortable, and we will just be careful about where we are going. There are lots and lots of people streaming through the streets and in the markets, when we were driving up the highway even at night in the pitch black, people were walking and biking up and down the street. The roads are fairly insane (and we got a taste of this in Nairobi on an ill-concieved and slightly accidental adventure which ended up in an animal orphanage)... there are no traffic lights, people drive on the left side of the road (which adds to the disconcertedness), everyone jaywalks, there are tons of bicycles, and the general rule of the road is 'don't hit anyone', other than that it's all fair game. Every oncoming vehicle on the highway seemed lik an impending head-on collission because the road is so bad that normally you just drive on the best part of it, then move to the side for any oncoming cars (the road was not very busy). After driving up the main road into Kakamega we turned off the road and started driving through what looked like a jungle tunnel, with trees on either side and above us... a corridor of the forest. Thenw e came out into 'residental areas' where ephy lives.

Today we went out with Ephy to the CABDA office, so we got to see kakamega in the daylight. In the morning i spred open a curtain and was somewhat stunned by what i could see... green hills dipping below us, some of it being cultivated, a group of people on the grass slaughtering a cow, 5 other cattle grazing (in our complex) and a bunch of young animals... a school sitting on one of the hills, then the market up the way on the road full of people. Ephy picked us up and warned us that we were be called 'Mzungu' (white person), but not to be offended. Indeed, we're almost the only white people here... Courtney is aware of people ("everyone") looking at us as we walk by (and there's lots of people), which I'm not as aware of... but we're definitely something to look at. We've seen 3 other white people today, but that's all since we left the Airport.
We met Ephy's family and her husband, Morris, who runs another, larger organization. I'm really pleased with them, them have put thought into what we can be doing, and today we sat down with Ephy and talked about a work plan. Her first idea was for us to finance and implement the building of of water tank/rain catchment for a school, but today we decided to fund a microcredit group and work with them in the various programs of training they get as a part of their loan. Ephy is going to rewrite our intern descriptions and further break down our tasks, as well as add ones which we've suggested... building a website, seeking funding, putting together packages to send out to potential and current donors, develop case studies... we're both really pleased with the range of things we have been invited to work in, and we may be able to contribute to. With our current fundraising $1600, we have enough to give a microcredit loan of 3500 shillings to 25 people. The normal program would be 5000 shillings for 25 people, so if we get the grant, or if we recieve more donations, we will be able to run a full program.
We have been able to withdraw money without difficulty, and i am about to check if these have included conversion fees or not (there's not, or if there are, they are very reasonable). It seems we will only be working with cash, withdrawing what we need when we need it. I just found out that our hosts are waiting outside for us so i'll cut this short now. We're alive, we're coping, we've a lot to learn and we've learned a lot already. We're learning some swahili, we're nzuri (fine), but will need a fair amount of time to adjust.
We've gotta go!
Much love
Neil