I have arrived! It was quite the welcome - all the kids were in front of the school singing "we are glad to see you!". So sweet - and they had drawn a bunch of pictures saying "Karibou, Paula", which means welcome in Swahili.
The flight to Nairobi was uneventful, just nice and long. A driver was waiting at the airport as promised and drove me and another girl, Marisa (she will be at the orphanage for the same amount of time) to the "West Breeze Hotel". It was very nice and had a bed and a shower - definitely all we needed! We were picked up the next morning and then flew to Kisumu, where Becca, my friend and one of the people helping to build the clinic in Mbita, picked us up with her fiance, Simon. Simon is one of the director's of YGC (Young Generation Center), which is the orphanage where we are staying in Kisumu.
A quick interjection about YGC - it was started 16 years ago by Saline, who is a nurse and is the sort-of matriarch here. Originally it was a compound with four or five huts which Saline would rent out. One of these huts was rented to Simon's mom., who one day was traveling back from town and was killed in a car accident, so Simon became the first orphan here at YGC. From there it grew and the huts were replaced by a building with living quarters for the staff and children. 5 years ago, a school was built by Solace, International, a non-profit based out of Pheonix. The school serves the orphans or "borders", as well as about 50 children from the area. It has ECD, or Early Childhood Development and then levels 1-8. After level 8, the kids go to secondary school. If any of the children who board here have extended family, they go to live with them during secondary school. They go to school from 7 until 4 - so long!
The local language spoken is Luo. The children are taught Swahili and English starting at level 1 and usually by level 3-4 are relatively fluent. I am a little jealous of all of their language skills. :o) Luo is not taught in the schools, because that is generally spoken at home.
After settling in, I went out to show some of the kids the little digital camera I had bought for them to take pictures of each other with. That was a blast - initially a lot of pictures of just me - it took a little while to get them to take pictures of each other, but they got the hang of it. Some of the photos are posted.
I've started to learn some Swahili -the kids are great teachers. Every time they see me, they say "Count to ten in Swahili" - I usually fail, I can never remember the word for five! They are really sweet - I look forward to getting to know them better.
It sounds like I will be spending most of my time in Mbita, doing health assessments and helping more with setting up the clinic. I really look forward to doing that, although I will miss seeing all the children here! It also means updates to this blog may be getting sparse! We are leaving today and come back Friday, so I will have more to say then.