Two weekends ago Pat took Thursday and Friday off of his first week back from Africa to spend some quality time with the Fam. We borrowed the pop-up camper from the Costers (Thanks again!) and headed to Raccoon Lake in Parke County, Indiana. Parke County is the home of the Covered Bridge Festival every year in October. The entire county is selling something! The roads are lined with garage sales and the towns are all turned into county fairs. We stop in some of the towns, mostly for the great fair food. But most of the time we’re enjoying the beautiful Fall colors at our campsite or driving through the countryside looking for more covered bridges. We’ve probably seen 15-20 bridges over the 3 years that we’ve gone. Hannah, at 2, is not entertained by spending the evening sitting by the fire. So both nights were movie nights in the camper, all three in one bed huddled around my laptop. Good times.

Friday – Sept. 28th
OK I must admit that it is actually Sunday night. I haven’t had the energy the last couple of nights to stay up and write. So here’s my best attempt to recall what happened. I also have a 6-year-old girl, telling stories in my room and a cat on my lap as I write.
We went to the Methare school to meet Doug and his group of ministers and their wives. Anyway when Doug came, Jo and I came out with guns blazing. Shooting every possible angle and combination of guests with Doug. Soon Doug was able to get away from the group so we took a tour of the classrooms. The head teacher gave the tour and had us all introduce ourselves to each classroom and hear them sing a song and recite a memory verse. After a few, Doug said “OK just one more.” So we still went to every class, it’s just they didn’t get to sing a song.

Next was a walk through the slums with Doug, David (the Kenyan photographer), and a couple of social workers.
We toured the same section of Methare Valley and got some great stuff. David found a kid that should have been in school. David asked him why and the kid said because he has to watch his little brother. He wanted to go to the boarding school out of Nairobi so he wouldn’t have to take care of his brother. We also went into the home of Naomi. She has AIDS and is a member of the local church. Doug and Dennis, sat in her home and talked to her for awhile. Thankfully she had some light in her home because the church group from Florida that had been there the week before had put in a section of clear corrugated plastic in her roof so she could have light in the day. The power to the whole slums was illegally tapped into, so the power company cut all power to her slum. There is now no way legally or illegally to get power in their homes. Then we got in the van that Doug had hired and went to the Kosovo church that we attended on Sunday.

Joe and I grabbed our D80’s and walked around the school taking pictures. I love this camera! It’s like I’m a photographer again! We went back in the room with Doug to eat lunch around like 2pm – rice with carrots, cabbage, mashed potatoes, mystery meat stew, and a bottle of pop. The school is building another three-story building and it’s amazing to watch these builders. They are so fast! That’s mostly because they aren’t following any rules of an American job site. Concrete barely sits 20 minutes before they take away the guides and start building on top of it. These kids are so cute. They only thing hard about getting good shots is not getting 5 kids to jump in front of where you’re pointing.

Saturday – Sept. 29th
This was supposed to be a slow morning while packed and got ready to take the bus to Tanzania in the afternoon. However, Keith picked us up early and we drove to another slum, Kibera, on the other side of town. This was a little more threatening of a place. There was news that there would be a political rally held there that afternoon. We met Doug and his group at another one of our schools/church. A US church donated $15,000 to build this two-story building. It had a rickety home made ladder to get to the top floor that was really dangerous. The kids put on a show for the visitors – songs, drama, and reciting scripture. The kids all had their brightly colored mugs of Chi tea that held like it was precious and sipped on it continuously for a half hour. This all went on for awhile until we all got the message that we needed to leave quickly because tensions in Kibera were rising as the political rally was getting closer. We all just walked rather quickly back to the car for like 20 minutes. There we met a mob of people all getting ready for the rally that didn’t start for four hours. The police were getting ready too. They all had their AK-47s and were locking down the place. It was good to get away from all that.

Then we drove I think back to Methare to see progress on a public toilet and shower building that we are building at the base of the Valley – where the poorest of the poor live. It will be a great addition to the community; it’s what they said they wanted. They had even planted several very small trees. They found some benches and invited the American guests to sit and kind of had a dedication service. Doug, of course, was the guest of honor and was thanked at least a dozen times.

Heading to the bus. This was an adventure! There were several busses from different companies. Nobody looked official and nobody took charge as we just stood there with our bags. We had no idea what was going on. Nobody wanted to look at our tickets or direct us where to go. We started to just get on the only bus from our company, but somebody said it was a private bus and not to get on. Then another bus from that company showed up and there was a rush for everyone to get on it. We got on and sat together with our backpacks wedged in our lapse. I was nervously trying to keep track of our luggage to make sure it found it’s way on top of our bus

As the bus eventually filled up, a man came around asking for everyone’s tickets. This was the first evidence we had that we were even on the right bus. They gave us our customs forms to fill out before we crossed the border. I started filling them out and realized I didn’t know the address or phone number of where I was going to be staying in TZ. So I texted Jeff and he replied with the info. I’m glad I have this phone now! The bus ride was pretty uneventful. I listened to Car Talk podcasts so I had a blast. Joe rested. We stopped at a little store/restaurant place for a rest stop. I watched our bags and Joe took the first shift to the bathroom. 15 minutes later we headed for the border.