January Trip with Kelsie

I made the trip back to Kenya for the month of January but this time I had my little sidekick with me, my 4.5 month old daughter Kelsie. Mama Mwangi has been running the house and taking care of the kids for the past several months. Since they were still on school break I wanted to get back there to visit and see how everyone is doing.

Of course everyone is doing well but growing up so quickly. My little Karanja is now a teenager!! How did that happen??

Karanja

Kelsie and Me

The kids were so excited to meet Kelsie! Though at first they were a bit scared of her because she is so little and doesn't walk yet. The first night we found the small kids staring at her as she was falling asleep. They said they wanted to see what a white/foreign baby looks like when she sleeps:) The same as every baby! We get quite a few visitors but we have never had a small baby visit us. The youngest visitor we have had was my cousin, Kevin Birk, when he was in 6th grade . When he walked past the elementary school in town all of the kids came running and were trying to touch him. You would have thought he was an international celebrity and of course Kevin just took it all in stride. So you can image the attention Kelsie got and she loved it!!! She basically enjoyed everything about the trip and fit right in with the Kenyan culture. She loved being held by everyone and was always full of smiles (until the camera would come out). She is very observant and enjoys watching everything going on around her. Usually when I take visitors to town (Nyeri and Nairobi) they are overwhelmed by how busy everything is. Well Kelsie thought it was great and it provided endless amounts of people watching. As a result of all of the attention, excitement and entertainment she basically didn't sleep much for the whole month. It was difficult to get her to sleep before 9pm and she was always awake by 6am. And for naps, she rarely ever took one more than about 20 minutes. She just couldn't miss out!

In town with Bochi

Kelsie's in her bed- her travel bed in the suitcase with mosquito net covering it.

Checking everything out on the plane

The boys playing with Kelsie

St. Gerald Children's Centre taking tea with the Catholic Brothers

 

Visiting her Auntie

St. Gerald students

Mama Mwangi

When she was at the house, the kids would take turns pushing her in her stroller/buggy (which they had never seen before but thought it was pretty cool). They would even push her two at a time when they were too excited to wait.

The kids were on the tail end of their school break when we arrived. So we spent a few days doing back to school shopping. This means you go to about 15 different shops, no Super Walmart or Target.... Different shops for shoes, uniforms, toiletries, books, belts etc. And of course we shop around to find the best prices, so it takes a few days to get all of the shopping finished.  Kelsie went with us for all of the shopping. We would take turns taking her in some of the shops or staying with her in the car. But at least this time we had a car to transport all of items rather than taking the matatu and then carrying everything all the way to the house!

We have four new students joining high school this year and are really proud of their performance on their standardized exams! The results on this exam determine which boarding high school the students attend and they were each selected to good schools, although they are at four different schools. We typically like having them all at one school as it makes it easier to visit them on visiting days and to keep up with them. But when they get called to a good school it's a must for them to go.



Endarasha was really dry which is good as it's easy to get the vehicle back and forth to the house but bad for the crops. When there are few rains the piped water gets rationed and there isn't enough water for watering crops in the garden. Therefore, the garden is really dry and not producing as much food as we would like. But we are still getting enough cabbage, spinach, kale, carrots, green peppers and beets for cooking in the kitchen, just not really enough to try selling.

We have quite a few animals at the house now, chickens, four sheep and a cow. The kids are pretty excited about our cow! We finally got the cow in June and it produces enough milk for consumption at the house and to sell a few liters each day. This means they milk the cow in the morning and keep that milk. Then in the afternoon they milk again and either the gardener or the kids carry it to the road to sell it to the dairy co-op milk truck. The kids enjoy when they get to take the milk to meet the truck. According to Mama Mwangi a house isn't a home without a cow, so we now have a home:)