Second Week - elephants, weather, Isabella and Kiswahili

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been here just a little over a week!  People have been so anxious to show us the many programs, services, and sites, that we can barely absorb it all. 

I saw elephants!  On the return from a trip to Meru, we came to a place that Bill Savuto said had been in the migration path of elephants before the highway had been put in.  He slowed down, we looked, and there they were! – four elephants, including two babies! - just 100 yards away and behind the electric fence separating them from the highway.  I’m told that sometimes they come right up to the fence, but I was thrilled to see them just where they were.

The weather here is ideal.  True, it is the rainy season, and it rains daily, but the rain only comes at night.  Isn’t that convenient?  I love to lie in bed and hear the rain on the roof, grateful that I am indoors and not outside in the down pour.  It doesn’t just drizzle like in Seattle, it really pours.  Last month alone, there were 30 inches of rain recorded here.  The temperature ranges from lows in the 50s to highs in the 70s. 

Our small house (which they call a cottage) is very comfortable.  We don’t have the labor saving devices such as washing machine, dryer, or dish washer, but we have another even better labor saving device.  Her name is Isabella.  Isabella comes Monday through Friday for four hours to help with the cleaning, cooking, washing or whatever we request.  The most valuable help however is with the shopping.  She can converse in kiswahili with those in the market and we all know that she gets a better price than we would.  Isabella is a single mom who raised her orphaned niece and is now raising her 11 month old son.  The hospital hires help for most of the staff here because so many of the local people need a job.  Isabella has been employed doing house work for ten years.

Although English is the official language in Kenya and is the language used in the schools, many people speak only Kiswahili or Kemeru.  So,educated people here are bi-lingual or even tri-lingual. All of the hospital staff speak English, but talk with each other in kiswahili.  Even when they speak English, some of them are extremely hard to understand, especially when speaking with a microphone. They might as well be speaking Kiswahili.