birthday boy

we just had a low key celebration for aaron's birthday last week, june 4th to be exact. i had worked all week so I took the day off to be with the boys all day. made a peanut butter pie, which I've never made before, but the recipe looked too easy and delicious - and it was pretty good! But then I remembered that you're actually not supposed to give babies peanuts...hmmph...so I made a banana bread cake as well. Aaron has the nickname "Kobe" which means "turtle," not too many people use it, but it's sort of fitting since he was born with wide eyes and looked like a turtle coming out of its shell. So thus the reason why the cake is decorated as such.

With all the focus on dessert, I neglected to think about supper - so Kurt went to town and picked up samosas, and just before it started getting dark the power went out, so we took some blankets outside and had a samosa picnic in our yard and came back in when the mosquitoes started coming out. Had some birthday cake with a neighbor to the ambience of a kerosene lantern, and aaron licked up all the frosting he could, but by then he was exhausted and couldn't even bother to stay up for more.

All in all, a special day.

happy birthday little buddy.

Aaron

The squeally, delightful smiles and noises

The unique shapes of all your toeses

you are ONE

and growing and learning and being

and with every breath and cry and laugh we pray

than in HIM you might live and move and have your being
we thank Him for you

our moonshine boy

why i don't blog much:

A typical HBC day:
- A volunteer that we hired to be part-time in the office while Elibariki was away, just had a baby on Monday. She called me at 7 in the morning on Monday, asking me to come and pick her up while she was in labor (and had been all night). I called the Imara driver and we met at the office where I grabbed gloves, then we swung by and picked up a nurse midwife who does VCT at Imara, then we drove the 14 km to her village. I called her to let her know we were coming, and she said she had already had the baby. About 15 minutes later we walked into her mud hut, and a traditional birth attendant had helped her deliver the baby safely and had tied and cut the cord. A healthy baby boy. We wrapped the baby up and I got to hold him as we took them to the hospital so that they could get some medical attention and the baby could get some ARVs. We brought them to the ward and talked with the PMTCT nurses. From there I ran home, and then got ready for the HBC volunteer meeting – which meant biking and getting the keys to the church, making sure we had enough forms for the volunteers etc. Went to the office and remembered that I also had to orient 3 nursing students who would be with HBC for the week. Talked with them and then we went to the HBC meeting. After the meeting I worked in the office with volunteers and clients, giving out money for milk, and dealing with all sorts of issues. Went home to feed Aaron. While I was home, was asked to return right away as the District HIV coordinator needed a list of 200 clients from us. So went back to the office and got that ready for him, then did a medicine inventory count (which we do every month). And before I knew it it was 6:00 pm.

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...

on safari

kurt and i, and the boys, live about an hour's drive to the west from

serengeti national park. we have driven through the park I don't know how many times already, since the park separates us from the mcc tz office in arusha. so on the way

to and from meetings, we pass through serengeti national park,

and then ngorongoro conservation area. Ngorongoro has a huge crater in which many animals live, it's known as an eighth wonder of the world. We have not yet been able to go into the crater to see the animals, but we enjoy the view from the top.

anyways, we live in serengeti....

so we get to see animals. driving just about 20 minutes from our home we often see giraffe or zebra or gazelle.

so I wanted to post some pictures that we've taken here and there, for the particular reading pleasure of some little boys I know back home in Winnipeg -

so Ayub and Sam, and Carter, Max and Nicholas, these are for you!

And Rosie and Jillian - we hope you get to come and see them too someday!

sunrise just outside of mugumu on our way to the park

a little safari baby

elegance

these are the cape buffalo - the fiercest animal in East Africa. you do not want to mess around with these things.

In Swahili they are called "Mbogo."

"Mbogo" is also my Dad's name, given to him by the Kikuyu more than 20 years ago.

And now, people in Mugumu call Ben "Mbogo," or "Mbogo Mdogo" (little Buffalo).

Quite fitting, really.

we had a snack at Olduvai Gorge, the "cradle of mankind" where they have found a large number of bones and ancient artifacts, including the oldest footprints ever found.


this tree was very exciting...look closely...



after 10 years of living in Africa, I finally got to see a leopard.



this was a huge pod of elephants, more than could be pictured - probably about 8 babies in this particular pod. They crossed right in front of us - very humbling.



there are more pictures of lions and giraffes and hippoes...any interest to see them?