our second week comes to a close

Well, Magz and I are officially Nyeri pros now... we know our way around town, and how to avoid being followed by a pack of schoolchildren - speak French, it confuses them. We've also purchased some condiments so now I'm really at home :) whenever our host mom makes something strange, I just slap on some jam and I'm all set. They have rhubarb jam here, and it's amazing...the peanut butter, however, leaves much to be desired.

At this point in our stay at St Mary's school, it's become pretty apparent that the tutoring we're doing, while being effective and rewarding, is really not the most important thing we're here for. A lot of the kids just really like knowing that you're there for them and that you care. One of them approached me the other day because he had no one else to go to and told me all about how his dead father's spirit tries to kill him at night. When I tried to convince him that it was just a nightmare, he told me that his priest had told him that it was real and was a punishment from God... some priest. And when he wakes up afraid he can't talk to anyone because all the other boys in his dorm go to a school that is even more poorly funded, and so they are all jealous and consistently unkind to him. Anyways, we had a good chat, and today he wrote me a letter saying that all his nightmares were gone and that he was happy to finally have a friend. So that's pretty much the most intense thing that's happened thus far here.

One of the trickiest things we've encountered is that it is hard to help a kid out by giving him shoes or anything, because all the other kids will be jealous and either steal it, or ostracize him.. so you pretty much have to have enough for everyone. Speaking of which, the toothbrushes we gave out last week were a huge hit.. they've been carrying them around everywhere with them ever since!
Tomorrow I'm going to try my hand at bargaining in Swahili - should be fun!
Take care, everyone!
=:0)