Who knew Germany was so close to Kenya?

We departed on Monday morning for our 5 day trip to Thika. Monday is always a prayer and fast day so we were engaging in prayer and fasting as usual. As my parents and close friends know, my stomach has never been the strongest, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I wasn’t feeling well in the van on the way out. We got to Thika around noon and joined the pastor’s fellowship of eight local pastors. Their discussion that morning was about revelation and discerning what would happen in the end times. While some of our views differed from the pastors, but it was an awesome discussion because they were seeking different opinions. It was a very interesting conversation. After the discussion wrapped up around one, we met and played with the kids in the church nursery school. We all had fun chasing and picking up and tickling the kids. I managed to find the quietest two girls at the school though and spent time with them. I picked up one of them, Winifred, and just held her on my hip. She was so precious. She leaned her head forward and touched her forehead and nose to mine and just smiled. It wasn’t until after I put her down that I realized my shirt was damp with urine. It was totally worth it though. Around three we returned to the Catholic guest house we’re staying in. We found it rather funny that the building we are staying in is called Germany. The building directly next to us is Austria and Kenya is two buildings over. (Real porcelain toilets, although seatless, and actual showers were amenities that we have greatly enjoyed!) We broke our fast around 4pm with hot cocoa and muffins. After hanging out for a while we walked with Keziah, our host, to her house a fair distance away to get her clothes for the week. On our walk we gathered quite the entourage of children walking home from school. Zach gathered a nice gaggle of girls and Evie had some of the other older girls teaching her Swahili. I decided it would be fun to play soccer with the younger boys while we were walking. The dirt road had ditches on the sides that went into tall grass so when one of the boys passed me the ball that was a little ahead of me I ran to keep it from going off the road and ended up full blown wiping out. I’m pretty sure the kids thought that I was seriously injured. It hurt pretty bad but with the help of my team, we laughed it off pretty well. After gathering her clothes we took a matatu back to our guest house, ate dinner, which was delicious, and retired to our rooms. I know we all enjoyed our warm showers to wash off the dust we were caked in.
Yesterday, Tuesday, we woke up and ate breakfast which was also awesome. Yum pancakes. Then we took a matatu to a church a little ways off and played with a nursery school of children ages 3-6. We taught them several songs as well as how to play duck duck goose and red light green light (which turned into a game of go stop go stop go stop go). After playing with those kids for around two hours we walked to another local church and started playing with the kids there. We were doing the exact same round of songs and games when the kids from the other church showed up….they followed us. So we still followed through with the same songs and games but just had double the kids. We left the church around 1:15 and got back to the guest house just in time for all of us to take a midafternoon nap. My nap lasted three hours while everyone else’s lasted around one and then they played Frisbee ( we have yet to find anyone here who knows what a Frisbee is or how to throw it…Bailey included). I woke up just in time to get dinner and play a few rounds of nerts. We all went back to our rooms at a relatively early time but I stayed up reading until after midnight. The plot thickens. Once I put down my book (aka Evie’s Kindle) I was still unable to fall asleep until around 2:30am.
After a night of very restless sleep I woke up at 7am and immediately bolted to the bathroom. Round two of travelers bug. After puking and emptying my entire system of anything that it may contain I went back to bed in hopes of sleeping off the illness. Evie, Jacob and Keziah then came into my room and informed me that Gus and Dr. Emily wanted me to go get checked out at a hospital. So I dragged myself out of bed and off we went. Mt. Sinai hospital is not like the hospitals in the US. After a short wait we went in to have a consultation with the doctor who ordered lab work. I should mention that Evie is actively filling the role of my mother and was so helpful at the hospital. We went into the lab room and the nurse tied a latex glove around my arm to serve as a tourniquet. Sketchy. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve never been able to give blood because my veins are smaller than most needles. So when they said they needed to draw blood I knew we would have problems. The nurse stuck me in my left arm and I kept my eyes closed hoping she would finish quickly. Unfortunately after about 15 seconds I opened my eyes and looked down to see her wiggling the needle around IN my arm. Just to make sure she hadn’t hit a vein she unsuccessfully tried to suck blood out of my arm. OUCH. I may have been a bit rude in telling her to take out the needle and in making Evie go get Jacob. Fortunately, Jacob is very good at his paramedic job, and stuck me in my wrist and drew blood on his first try. I’m very grateful he drew it from my wrist and not my neck…as he joked…semiseriously. We then waited for my lab work to come back. No worries I don’t have typhoid, probably just a bug. They gave me some medicine (also sketchy…dispensed in a brown bag with directions hand written on the bag). We returned to the guest house in time to eat a little bit of lunch and for me to go back to bed for another four or five hours. I unfortunately ruined all the plans for today with my hospital trip. We were supposed to go see a local waterfall, Fourteen Falls, but we’re going tomorrow instead. While my day was mostly sleep, puke, hospital, sleep, eat, sleep a few other team members had a relatively successful day. Zach managed to clean all 52 of his playing cards…individually. Bailey practiced her Frisbee throwing. Jacob got to stick me and Evie was just an all star mom. I’m proud to report that our team is closer than ever. We all enjoy lots of laughs with the help of cheesy soap operas and Zach’s jokes. He loves to quote the soap opera “Love Spell.” His all time favorite quote is: “Did you come here to get badly beaten up?” Response “No I didn’t come here for a fight.” While we enjoy making fun of these soaps we do not request to watch them…they are on every where including the dining room and the hospital. Hopefully I’ll feel a little better tomorrow and we’ll get to do a little bit more than we did today.

Lots of love.
The Mi2 team
Robin