Week 10

March 2-March 8
This week was just an insane amount of work and a bit of annoyance due to the fact that our internet is not working for some unknown reason so I am posting this from the internet cafe and I don't have m blog document with me so this is all off the top of my head.

We arrived home from Masai Mara on Monday afternoon, vegged out and studied Swahili for an eternity because we had a midterm on Thursday.

Tuesday was Shangilia, but we didn't go to the compound. We went to Marilynn's house. She is one of the founding members of Shangilia and is currently on the board of directors. We spent 6 hours there Tuesday morning, but I can't go into much detail because so much of what we talked about is confidential. We just discussed the grant proposals, Jackie and I gave feedback regarding the staff and teaching methods, and the general well-being of the children.

Wednesday was school and intense amounts of studying for Swahili, Thursday morning was back to Shangilia and the afternoon was more studying then the test... =(

Friday we were finally allowed to go to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa where most of the post-election violence took place as far as Nairobi goes. So much was burned to the ground and as white people we were clearly not wanted there. We had gone to visit Saint Vincent's, a pre-primary school for children living the in the slum. Miriam is a friend of KJ's and she is the headmistress of the school. She was stopped more than once due to the fact that she was escorting 15 mzungu. This kids were all great though, even though the majority of them have all be traumatized due to what they have seen. Lucy is one of the directors and she is horribly torn up right now. Her house was set up in flames and she fled to Uganda for two months. She just returned less than a week ago and she is really distraught over the current situation in Kenya.

Yesterday, Mike (he's visiting me!!!), Carrie, Jackie, and I went to Shangilia for the afternoon, and as usual it was great. They were fascinated by Mike's tattoo and kept trying to rub it off his forearm. I also plowed through some barbed wire...which was NOT fun, and then some of the older girls taught me a new form of jump rope, which I am terrible at.

Now this week we just have school and interning planned.