If a picture is worth a thousand words, this blog entry, which is much overdue (my apologies) should be a long one. After many requests to see what my house looks like I'm finally posting some pictures. I kept putting it off, waiting for my house to be 'clean' and then I realized that may never happen. I'm messy by nature, put me in a small space and that only exacerbates the problem! Anyway, the first few pictures here are of my house and my 'compound'.
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| View of the sunset out my living room window |
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| A view of my house from the front yard. The 2 windows in the picture are my room, the rest of the family house is behind and off to the right. The left window is my living room/kitchen/office and the right is my bedroom. |
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| My nuclear war bunker. Ha, so after you walk through the door in the picture before, you take a left down this dark hallway and that's my 'front door' on the left. Aaand that's my sweet ride on the right side. It has a bell. And a shopping basket tied to the back of it for carting fruits and veggies home from town. Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'riding in style' |
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| Welcome to my living/dining/sitting/ kitchen/office room. I do everything in here except sleep. Yes, Mom, it's messy... sorry, I'll clean before you come to visit, promise. On the left is my "kitchen" I have a little gas stove I cook on 2-3 times a day. My 'pantry' is the green shelf on the left. My coffee table has become a dumping ground, obviously, so I usually end up eating from my lap. |
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| The other "half" of my multipurpose room. That furniture in the corner covered in stuff is my desk... |
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| My bedroom.Yep, still half living out of suitcases... they're under all the clothes along the wall... |
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| The other "half" of my bedroom. my "closet/dresser" and that on the left is my count-down chart. I 'x' off 1 day every night and it counts down all the way to the end of my service. Ha, it's taller than I am. I've got a lot of x's to go, but its a nice way to make the time left seem like a tangible entity rather than this colossal amount of time. |
Alright, so that's basically my house. Someday I'll have to take some pictures of my bathroom and "shower" situation so you can truly appreciate my daily life here. Now, I'm just posting some pictures I've had for awhile. First, these are from the school where I teach science to class seven students:
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| We have kids in classes (grades) 1 - 8. All the schools, public and private, have mandatory uniforms. |
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| Some of my Class 7 kids in our classroom. I have about 75 kids total split into 2 classes. |
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| Some of the younger kids. They LOVE having their picture taken. |
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| Block of class rooms, each door leads to a classroom, a square concrete room with one blackboard and home-made desks that regularly fall apart. When it rains the water on the tin roof is so loud you can't teach. Their is no electricity at my school. |
So, I love my school and my kids most days. Some days they make me want to scream because, like all kids, they have the propensity to drive you nuts sometimes. One of the biggest problems we have in my community is kids dropping out of school after class 7 or 8 because they don't have the school fees for high school (public primary schools are 'free' but ALL secondary (grades 9-12) schools cost money to attend). Most of these kids only chance to ever get out of the field and the tiny village they were born in is to attend secondary school.
I have an idea to start a scholarship fund to send 1 kid per year to secondary school based on an essay or story writing contest. I've just started to think about it but I wanted to put some feelers out there and see if anyone would be willing to donate on a yearly or one time basis. An average school here costs between 200-300 US dollars per year. Eventually I'll be a grown up and have the money to sustain a fund on my own, but for now it would be through my friends and families donations that I would be able to carry out this plan. Even 10 or 20 dollars would be a huge help; its amazing how much so little can do here. As I said, its still in the very early stages, just an idea, but if you're interested, please shoot me an e-mail at "LindsayInKenya@gmail.com" and I will keep you updated. Thank you in advance for your support.
Okay, a few more pics...
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| I introduce you to 'baby Linds', 2 hours old in this picture. Yep, she's named after me :-) |
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| A screaming 2 week old baby Linds with her mom Celestine. Linds is wearing the shirt I bought for 35 cents in the market! |
Finally, I leave you with a few pretty pics of the flowers outside my clinic...
Alright folks, that's all for now. Love you and miss you all a lot. Been thinking about home a lot lately with the holidays coming up! Here's wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving if I don't post again before then!
