our life

our house: big water tank up front where we collect rain water:

the zebra roundabout, downtown Mugumu:
(since then, the head of the zebra has been shot off by a group of bandits who came into town with a stolen car, robbed a gas station and escaped by shooting bullets into the air so the police would know where NOT to go)

no this is not from our front porch.

but we will take anyone who visits us when we are in nairobi to this place:

aaron was the in oven here (just had to explain that bump)

the center of attention:
at a church fundraiser

everyday life

so my friend amy suggested I post some pics of our everyday life here,

so here are a few...

this is our last night in Nairobi, from here it's off to Arusha for meetings, and we will likely not arrive in Mugumu until mid-next week.

It's been a good trip - the beach was wonderful.

Kurt came back safely from Mt. Kenya, although he didn't summit Batian, he did climb to another peak, Lenana, which he said was beautiful.

The boys are well save for Ben burnt his foot yesterday with some boiling water, looks like it will be about the size of a cookie on the top of his foot, so please pray for his healing. It doesn't seem to bother him except for when I have to clean it, so that is a good thing.

Ben, Aaron and I have all been fighting runny noses and sore throats, probably a bi-product of the hot humid coast air and the air-conditioned room we stayed in.

But it has been a wonderful break.

So...to the pictures...

Our yard: or a fraction of it actually:

Ben's room:

(with a quilt that only took me 2 years to make!)

running on our favorite walk outside our place:


need I explain this one?

tired of beans and rice:

ok so these weren't exactly our everyday life, I'm uploading photos and these came up first so I wanted to post them quickly....

More coming!!

work

I thought I'd put up some pictures of the work that I do here...

I do home-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS.

We have almost 600 clients in Serengeti District, but we focus on clients from within 14 villages that are a bit closer to Mugumu.

I work with 28 volunteers and 2 full-time staff,

doing home visitation, transport to and from hospital for emergencies, providing medications, nutritional supplementation, soaps, and praying for clients who are sick.

The majority of our clients are women over the age of 40 who are married.

Last year we registered 18 new clients under the age of 10.

People living here do not have it easy - from food and water resources, to paying for children's education, to transportation, to lack of employment, to broken families, to health care, everything is a challenge. Many of our clients live in very isolated settings and it is a major barrier to them obtaining good health care.

Sometimes they come all the way to the hospital but there is no doctor available to see them.

Mugumu does have a clinic supported by the government to provide free services to people living with HIV. And they receive free ARV medicines. But there are still challenges to making sure that they get medicine for opportunistic infections without having to pay. We stock meds to give to those with prescriptions.

So that is my work - visiting people in their homes, at the office, in the hospital. Advocating for clients who are admitted to hospital. In general just trying to support them.

We also work with over 200 orphans from 5 different villages...helping with school fees, and nutrtional supplementation.

So this is a typical home-based care run:

driving over paths like this:

to get to homes like this:

for clients like this:

this is Mama Benja, or Mary Benjamin Tumbo, the orphan coordinator, and one of the most incredible people I have ever met.

I think that getting to work with Mama Benja will have been one of the biggest blessings in my lifetime:

Here are some pics of a supply distribution for orphans,

They need shoes to go to school:

And school supplies:

This little boy was too cute:


And here are a couple pics of a food distribution we did, 2 buckets of corn per family unit:

And here'sthe woman who makes it possible for me to work:

Mama Daudi, who watches Ben and Aaron.

She has a lot of experience looking after western kids, has a great sense of humor, is incredibly strong in mind and spirit, and one senses the Spirit of God in her.

We are so thankful for her!

So there you have my work in a nutshell...