My First Month

Hey Everyone-
I've never really done the blog thing before, so I figured I'd just break my life here into a few paragraphs to hit on the major points.

My New Home
I live in an area of Nairobi called Lavington with the Koech family. Diana (30) is the head of the household and a wonderful person. Since we are fairly close in age, we have become good friends, but she watches out for me in a semi-parental way which can be very comforting. She has 2 kids. Carl (10) has been at boarding school most of the time that I've been here, but was home for a week and we get along well. Kayla (6 months) is adorable and one of the most mellow babies I've met. She has no choice but to love me because I play with her all the time, and I do think that she actually likes me, but sometimes looks at me like I'm a crazy mzungu, which I guess I am. Diana's brother Amos or Kipto (depending on who is addressing him-a fun fact that took me ~1 1/2 weeks to figure out) is 28 and we also get along really well. Their younger sister Faith just turned 24 and we actually met last time I was here-very bizzare coincidence. We have become fast friends and sisters. I'm very grateful to have a Kenyan my age! All in all, they are wonderful people and I feel very luck to live with them.
Also, it happens to be a very nice house which was unexpected, but made my transition quite a bit easier. My own room and bathroom give me some necessary along time, and the pool doesn't exactly hurt...

My New Job
I am a volunteer teacher at a school called Hamomi (hamomi.org -check it out!). It's located in Kangemi, which is a slum a little ways from Lavington. It currently has 104 students, all living in Kangemi either with parents or guardians. They range from kindergarten (or "baby class" as it's referred to here) to standard 8. The people I work with, both Kenyan and American, are great. Right now, everyone is a volunteer and they really do a lot for these kids, who wouldn't really have a chance to go to school if it weren't for Hamomi. I've been teaching English to standard 5 and 6, and Science to standard 3. The students call me "Cha," which is short for teacher. It's pretty endearing. Last week I worked with the 6 standard 8 boys, helping prepare them for their national exams. These exams are really important, as the scores determine if and where they get to go to secondary school, so I think/hope the extra effort helped. They seemed very confident coming back today. I had a blast working with and getting to know them. They are very bright and incredibly motivated boys, and they made me promise to come visit them once they're at secondary.
Besides being my super cool and cheery self (even at 8 am after the hour-long walk to school-those of you who know me in the morning won't believe this, but I'm kind of a morning person in Kenya!), I brought one other thing to Hamomi with me-kazoos. Credit on this one goes all to Ann Brophy, well done Mother. I brought ~120 kazoos over and have mini-music lessons a few times a week. I've taught a few of the older classes scales, but we mostly just do songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Row Row Row Your Boat, and I'm learning the Kenyan National Anthem. They once requested for me to sing (yes, sing) the American one and I obliged...hasn't happened since. Wonder why that is? But they love the kazoos, and sometimes when I walk in for regular class they say "Cha kazoo?" and are quite disappointed when i make them learn about prefixes instead. Oh well, such is life.

KSLP
So far, we have made a lot of progress for KSLP. A few weeks ago, I traveled to Maua and Igembe South Constituency with an old friend and new colleague, Brian Redmond, to meet people and visit schools. Nick Nyagah, the principal at Nkubu Boys and a close friend of KSLP, showed us around and introduced us to the MP (member of parliament) in Igembe South, who is very supportive of us. He even lent us a driver and a Land Rover for 2 days. This made it possible for us to visit 11 schools, some right off the tarmac and others, well, not. Let's just say that without a Land Rover (and someone who knew where to drive it) it probably would have taken closer to 3 weeks, so thumbs up to making friends with connections.
It was all a pretty cool experience. If you're reading this, then you've also probably heard me talk (a lot) about KSLP over the past year or so, and probably didn't think it would be possible for me to believe in the cause any more than I already did. But now that I've actually been to the schools we'll be working with, seen waht they have, and heard from their mouths what they think a better library could do for them, I really do. Plus I got to do it all in a government vehicle and hand out business cards. I felt so grown-up!

Traveling
So, I'm aware that I'm already traveling, but since I live and work in Nairobi, I count leaving the city as traveling.
First, Maasai Mara for safari. Awesome blossom, extra awesome. It was amazing! We did one afternoon safari and one early enough to see the sunrise over the Rift Valley, totally incredible. We saw tons of animals (duh) including zebra, elephant, giraffe, impala, warthog, hyena, cheetah, buffalo, and wildebeast. But I was most excited about the king of the jungle, and we saw tons of lions. We saw a lion and lioness fighting each other over something, and we saw a lioness stalking a heard of zebra. It was straight out of Planet Earth and made for a awesome weekend.
I also got to go to Machakos and visit my host family from last time. I missed them a ton and it was really great to spend time there again. Life moves at about the same pace, not a ton has changed. I played several games of Uno with Brenda (now 8) and the neighbors. Unfortunately, the other kids were all away at school, but Mama made chapati and stew which is my favorite Kenyan meal. I really enjoyed relaxing and spending time in a place that was my home for 2 months. Also, since visiting, I have been getting lovely text messages from them every few days- my personal favorite is, "Morning daughter. We are fine & happy after a night of heavy rain. The weather is "super sweet" n the birds are singing & dancing in the sky. Happy times-love Dad." How do you have a bad day after that?
For the future, I have plans for a weekend on the beach in Mombasa, and in December the kids are off school, so I will be traveling to Tanzania with Brian. Let me know if you want some food. I'm not gonna cook it, but I'll order it from Zanzibar!

General
On Kenyatta Day (a national holiday to honor Jomo Kenyatta-first president of Kenya), my family had a BBQ, complete with a full goat-delievered to and slaughtered at our house. No drinking of the blood this time, but it was a unique experience none the less.
I've gotten pretty used to the day-to-day life here: walking a ton, work, Matatus, arguing with people over "mzungu prices," power-outages, the occasional Tusker or two, ugali and eating with my hands, and using Kiswahili (I'm getting better!) I love meeting new people, which I do everyday, and I'm very happy.
If you read all the way to here, thank you and I'm sorry it was so long! Please e-mail me at hbbrown87@gmail.com if we haven't been in touch yet, I'd really love to hear from you!

Love and Peace, Hannah