Home Sweet Home!!

After two very, very long days of traveling, we are finally home!  My best friend, Amanda, who has been watching our apartment left nice surprises for us everywhere...ahem, Amanda!!  She so nicely plastered tampons, pads, and 'Caution' tape everywhere, as well as placing her and her boyfriend's pictures taped over top of AJ and my pictures! Lol!  (paybacks will be a'coming!)  Other than that, my MIL was so sweet!  She stocked our fridge and counter with all kinds of foods and drinks so we wouldn't come home to nothing to eat.  She even went as far as cooking us food so that we wouldn't have to cook and could eat that when we got home; it was so awesome - what a GREAT way to come home!!  

So now I have to back up and give a run-down of the last few days.  On Sunday morning, we left bright and early to begin our long bus ride back to Nairobi.  We checked into our hotel, grabbed a shower in HOT water (which was glorious!), and then headed off to dinner.  We had a really nice dinner at this restaurant, which if I remember correctly, was called Trattoria.  AJ got some sort of Italian Salmon pasta dinner, and I got an individual pizza with prosciutto on top.  It was so yummy and so welcome from the rice, potatoes and cabbage we were used to.  When we were on our way to the restaurant though, it was one of the first times that I've seen young kids come up to us begging for shillings.  Even on the way, I saw this mother sleeping on the sidewalk with her very young baby sleeping next to her.  It was so sad, and so different than what I'm used to seeing here at home.  Because we don't live in the city, it's not too often you see someone who is homeless, let alone women and children, or babies for that matter.  

Here is a quick 1 minute clip of some of the things we would see on the drive from Kitale to Nairobi:

 After dinner we went back to the hotel to get a good night of sleep.  Early the next morning, we met before 7 to get ready to go on our Safari at the Nairobi National Park.  According to their website, "the 117 km2 Nairobi National Park is unique by being the only protected area in the world with a variety of animals and birds close to a major city."  The safari was pretty awesome.  Apparently it's pretty hit or miss as far as whether or not you will see many animals, so I made sure to write down what we did see.  While we didn't see any lions like you might expect, we did see Zebra, wilderbeasts, water buffalo, antelope, giraffes, gazelle, eagles, peacocks, ostriches, Impala, goats, baboons, a secretary bird, a corvasta bird (sp?), and one Rhino.  However, as we were looking at the Rhino on the one side of our vehicle, we heard a lot of commotion on the other side, maybe a few hundred feet away, along the side where the park bordered the city.  When we looked over we were surprised to find two groups of Kenyan men going after each other with sticks and machetes.  It was believed by our driver that they were likely fighting over a piece of land,...but still....machetes? Really?  While you might think that would be a bit on the scary side, especially being so close to us, I think I was more or less in shock that we were even seeing anything like this at all.  Thankfully it didn't appear as if anyone really got hurt, and you could see a few policeman heading the men's way to possibly break it up.  The groups then separated and we finished up our safari before heading to the airport.

Here are some pictures from the Safari:

This reminds me of an old Pink Floyd Poster from the 90's!!

Family Zebra Butt; Mama & Baby.

Random Castle in the middle of the Safari. Weird. But Cool.

Not the best pic - but these are some of the men involved in the fight.  They either had sticks or machetes.  In this picture, you can only see one machete (the 3rd guy from the left side).

Love Love Love!

Steph managed to catch me taking pictures on the Safari =)

Our flights were fairly long and uneventful.  I managed to get a few hours of sleep on the 13 hour flight, while poor AJ really couldn't sleep at all.  Sitting anywhere for as long as our team had been, nothing at that point is comfortable.  You just ache to stretch out your body and walk around.  When we arrived at JFK, we grabbed our luggage, headed to our shuttle bus, and then went back to Providence, eventually dispersing to our homes. 

It's so nice to be back home.  It's actually easier for me, being home, to really sit and process some of the things from the past two weeks.  I was glad to learn more about the organizations there, and the authenticity of the ones that we met and worked with.  I was disappointed to find out how the corrupt the government and churches/pastors are there, but glad that I now know.  It makes me question where my money goes all the more when I give to things like this.  Now, I'm happy to say that when I will give in the future, I know of a few honest places that will use the funds appropriately to best help the people there.  I also realize how much of a need there is for medication (that won't be kept by the doctors and pharmacies - or overpriced that no one can afford them), and for education.  The basic need for many of the Kenyans in Kitale is survival.  Without a means to provide for their family, that makes all of these things unavailable to them.  One of the things that I loved about TI is that they were helping the Shimo and Neema girls to learn trades that would give them the ability to provide for their families, as well as educating them.  With these skills, the girls can now go off, start their own businesses (which most of them talked about their dream of becoming a 'businesswoman!'), thus providing for their families - but also giving them a sense of self-worth.  It will take some time, but these girls are fast learners!  If you go to provinkenya.blogspot.com - I believe Faith will be posting some information on each one of the girls at some point - so you can get a better idea of who they are.

In the meantime, I am sifting through the 1500 or so pictures that I took on this trip.  As I go through them, I will be adding them to this blog in the previous blog posts - so you may need to scroll back through from the beginning to see some of them.  Or, if you have Facebook, you can also search for 'Providence KenyaTeam', and look through everyone's pictures on there.  I'm pretty sure we are all going to be posting like madmen to this page over the next week, so be patient as the pictures will likely come in waves.

Again, thank you all for your prayers and support through all of this!  Now,...back to the pictures! Am going back to the first blog post now when we arrived to add the pictures from the bus ride from Nairobi to Kitale when we first arrived.  xoxo