Hum Burger: Soft burns with the best harm

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UPENDO NEWS:

There has been lots of excitement at Upendo in the last few weeks, but the kids are on school holidays at the moment - although they still come in for lunch and dinner and to play everyday - so things are a bit quieter now. We’ve had numerous welcomings for visitors from overseas who help fund the orphanage, which is what most of the pictures are from. Also, we bought the kids a stereo recently, so there has a lot of dancing to the Wiggles and other such great music lately. I’ve picked up some great dance moves from the kids, so watch out when I get back!


GENERAL NEWS:

We had to move house last weekend as the owner of our old one had family friends coming to stay. Very sad to leave the puppy and the pool, but our new house is super dooper. It’s much closer to town, has a great view of the creek, monkeys run round our backyard and verandah, and … (drumroll) … has hot water!!! It is a tad noisy and we get woken at about 4.30 each morning by the call to prayer from the local mosque, but we’ll get used to it.

One of the girls from Kemri had been living there, but went back to England this week, although we had one week of living with her. She had a fairly bad couple of days to end her trip though - and it also spoiled the kayaking holiday she had planned in Uganda: At about ten o’clock on Thursday night she decided it would be a good idea to do some washing, so went outside and climbed a wall without any lights on in order to get a bucket, before proceeding to fall off and fracture three bones in her foot… Katherine happened to be out for a work dinner, so I was the only one there to help her, and given my non-existent knowledge of medicine/first aid, I’m surprised that we handled it as well as we did. Fortunately she’s a doctor so she knew what to do and had a bag full of painkillers, so we managed alright!

Amusing cases of mistaken identity:
• Recently I have been mistaken for the following: Katherine’s ‘partner’(must be her hair - lucky I’ve lost the mohawk), the wife of my brother, the wife of my uncle, the mother of an 18-year-old African, the sister of that same black Kenyan (those last two can be attributed to the kids - they have very good imaginations).
• A Masai man was also convinced that my uncle was Jean-Claude van Damme (or Gene-Cloud as he said), while the captain of our dhow trip was adamant that he was a professional wrestler off TV.

Law changes in Kenya:
• It seems there have been a large number of rule changes in Kenya lately, not that anyone was told about them - they were just arrested if they committed a ‘crime’ which had become illegal overnight. Examples of this include:
• You can now no longer use plastic bags in Nairobi. If you are found carrying one, you will be arrested.
• Our taxi driver was arrested at 7.00 in the morning the other day while driving, because he had tinted windows (which of course was not illegal the day before). He was put in jail for five hours and then fined 500 shillings - just under $10.

Some of the food (with very funny - or inappropriate - descriptions) on the menu at Titanic, a local pub/restaurant:
• Hum burger: Soft burns with the best harm.
• Beef samosas: Mince meat raped in wheat flour and deep fat fried.


Ok, that’s probably about enough…hope that gets you all up-to-date. Not much going on at the moment. It’s basically just a month of flat-out working for Katherine to make up for some days she took off recently and to earn some for our big holiday in September (we’re attempting to climb Kilimanjaro, going on a safari in Tanzania and kayaking in Uganda). And for me, it’s hard work hanging out with the kids everyday.

Hope you’re all well.
Peace Out.

xoxo

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Photos

Murithi
Looks like he's doing an impression of me trying to wink...

Murithi II
And again...

Kadzo
Not the smiliest kid around