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I have been very busy organising 2 weeks of tuition classes for the older students during the holidays - something that was very tiring teaching about 3 hours non-stop every day! But it went well and was very rewarding to hear some of the students saying it was one of the best tuitions ever. On the last day, Friday, we got someone to bake mandazi (fried pastries) for all of the students who were there, which was great fun and they all went home very happy. We have 1 week left of holiday now before school starts again.

On Saturday we held a big joint birthday party for me/leaving party for one of my closest friends here. We woke up at 7, and started cooking straight away. We had 3 charcoal cooking stoves burning and when that was insufficient, we had to collect firewood and light a fire (much amusement) and continue cooking with an open fire. I was cooking the chapati (I cooked 82!) and other people were cooking rice, a green lentil soup, stewed cabbages, mukimo (mashed potato) and we even cooked a cake on an open fire stove!

At about lunchtime one boy arrived and gave me one of his goats - this is considered a big honour. So him and another boy killed it, extracted all the meat and we cooked it. Normally girls are not really allowed to be around the goat killing, but because no party guests had arrived yet I stayed and helped disect the stomachs, intestines, and cut up the ribs... It was great fun but as soon as the older Maasai men arrived I had to disappear and join the other women cooking tea. Cooking tea is not as interesting.

We ate a huge feast, hardly slept at all, and then the next morning the borehole had broken! (Again) So we went to the next village, Olmararoi, and much to the amusement of everyone in Olmararoi we took basins and showered in a classroom in the primary school. We were so angry at Saikeri's borehole we didn't care what people were saying about us. Then we went to visit another family that we are close to, who had also given me a goat but they wanted to cook it themselves. Very late last night we took a motorbike into Nairobi to say goodbye to the departing volunteer who was going back to America.

Now, I am in an internet cafe in Nairobi, and I am SO tired! But it has been a good weekend. My plan was to travel this week to Northern Kenya, near to the Lake Turkana, but at the moment a curfew has been placed against foreigners travelling there so I am not sure what will happen. There was some conflict between the two tribes in the North and unfortunately these days they are getting so many cheap weapons from the border with Sudan so the fight became nasty. So, for all who are wondering, I'm probably not going this week - maybe I'll just have a quiet water-free week in Saikeri because of the stupid borehole!

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