Kenya Part 1 (March 8, 2010)

Hey Everyone!

I hope you have all been well since my last update!

Now I am in Kenya! I arrived last Friday and will be here for a total of six weeks. I am living with a family in Eregi, a really small village in Western Kenya. Eregi is close to the Kakamega rainforest. It rains every day so everything is lush and green. It is really beautiful.

My host parents, Kizito and Saumu are both teachers. They have a son at boarding school (who I have not met) along with two foster children, Diana (age 12) and Moachi (age 8). Everyone has been extremely friendly and welcoming. Kizito and Saumu are already calling me their daughter and treating me like a member of the family.

So far, I love living here. Our whole neighborhood has no electricity or running water. Food is cooked in pots balanced on three stones over a fire. There are no cars and we walk everywhere. There are two cows, some chickens, and some ducks living out back. My hosts find it very amusing that in the US, I do not go out looking for firewood on a regular basis and that I often drink milk from a cow that I have never seen.

A Stanford graduate, Lyndsay, who lives outside of Eregi, has helped get me started on a number of interesting volunteer projects. I teach math, computers, sports, and leadership to a group of 14 girls in a pilot program called I AM an Entrepreneur at a boarding school in Eregi. I am teaching the teachers how to use computers at the same boarding school. My goal is for all 31 teachers at the high school to be computer literate by the time I leave. I am also working on a start up solar business. I’ll send a little more information about these projects in the updates that follow.

Thanks for reading.
Love,
Emmiliese

Pictures:
1) The road leading up to my house
2) Our cow. I actually thought they had used a lawn mower to cut the grass when I first arrived.
3) Diana lighting a fire to cook dinner on
4) My bedroom! The mosquito net is a must. Though I think there are also bed bugs bugging me. I wake up covered in bites.
5) The kids are starting to get the hang of using my camera. Moachi is the one in the front.