My mom asked if we are learning any Swahili. Not really. We’ve got the greetings, “Jambo” and the thank you very much “Asante Sana” down pat but everyone here speaks English. School is taught in English, a prettier lilting British English that is so endearing, especially coming from a childs mouth.

This beautiful beach town still has the third world grunge factor, just with fancy resorts and gated apartments and a expensive Italian restaurants thrown in. Italian army had a station in Malindi during WWII and fell in love with the beaches. It seems like a heck of a long trip for a vacation but the tourism here is booming and the beach chairs are filled with the fashions of Europe and the mansions along the beach are breathtaking.

Beth and I have taken our first few tuk-tuk trips. this is a three wheeled/motorcycle/cab that holds three people and will take you anywhere in the town for 100 shilling. 100 shilling, until I negotiate for 50 shilling, which we pay and is probably still too much. (but come on, it’s only 60 cents) Last night we joined Betty at her new apartment here. Beautiful apartment!! We were green with envy. Polished flagstone-like floor, and backsplash, and shower. Dark wood trim, dresser, granite countertop, patio with view of palm/coconut tree courtyard. The Oasis apartments are home to the biggest swimming pool in Kenya, which we are going to be dipping in, in about 2 hours. Betty will be here for another 6 or so months teaching classes to new mothers through Imani’s community outreach.

Betty asked us last night what our legacy to Imani was. Aside from the toilet that the people of Jackson funded, I told her that Imani left a legacy on me, not the other way around. This trip has been just as enriching as one would hope. My sweat moustache is telling me it’s time to go, so more on our enrichment at another time.

Love to all, we are well!

MARA SAFARI OCT 5TH 2009

Oct 5 07.00 Check in at Mombasa Moi Interntional Airport for your

flight to Masai Mara – Mara Shikar Airfield. The flight leaves

at 07.30am.

You arrive at Mara Shikar at approximately 10.30 am. Joseph

or Francis and William will be there to meet you and take you

to camp with a game drive en route. Lunch will be at the camp. At about 4.00 pm you will depart for an evening game drive returning to camp around 6.30 – 7.00 pm. It will be time for showers following by an evening by the camp fire ove drinks and then dinner.

Oct 6 This day you will get an early morning call, with breakfast at the camp after which you will leave for a whole day outing, visiting theMara River to see crocodiles and hippos in the water, and hopefully a wildebeest crossing. You will have a pic nic lunch

out in the Mara and come back in the evening having seen a lot. Mara means plains. These are huge plains with undulating hills – generally with grass but bare at this time of the drought. It is the home of the black maned lions and home to the larger cats such as leopards and cheetahs. It is also the area that houses over 1.5 million wildebeests and half a million zebras that migrate every year between Mara and the Serengeti in Tanzania in search of food. They follow the rains.

There are over 300,000 gazelles in the mara and many other

Antelopes. There are also over 3000 elephants in the Mara.

I am confident that you will have the opportunity to see all of

these. You return to camp exhausted, but hopefully happy, for

your showers and dinner. Drinks are always there by the camp

fire!!

Oct 7 You will wake for an early morning game drive, returning to

Camp for a hearty breakfast. You might decide to stay at the

Camp and enjoy the visiting zebras, or go out on a short game

drive. Lunch will be at the camp followed by an afternoon

game drive. Return to camp for showers and dinner.

Oct 8 Time for another early morning game drive. Come back to

Camp for breakfast. Depending on what there is, you might

wish to leave after breakfast and come back for lunch.

After lunch and short siesta, you will be driven to the airfield

at Ngerende for your flight to Nairobi, getting into Nairobi at

around 5pm. Your flight to Nairobi will be on Safari Link.

Let me back up to our drive from Imani A to Ngong. William was a great tour guide, and when we were driving through Nairobi and I asked him to point our a picture of Jomo Kenyatta his face lit up. Jomo was the first president of Kenya in 1963. Coincidentally, William was born in 1963, all Kenyans are proud of their country, and love Jomo. We parked in the city center and walked to his grave. He is preserved under a monument with a flag-lined sidewalk and two guards. On the anniversary of his death his family may come and look at his face. Wow. We walked to the couryard of the Judiciary and took a couple of pics of a bronze Jomo 25 feet up in a fountain.

William, Beth and I shared coffee and pastry at a breakfast cafe. There have only been two subsequent presidents. The second president (and I am paraphrasing) received aid from America contingent upon removing corporal punishment from school. So they did. Years later, the students were so out of hand that schools were being lit on fire and students were rioting. Interesting tidbit, no? When did we rid our schools of corporal punishment and when did school violence become an issue in America? (this is from Wikipedia: Paddling is used in schools in a number of Southern states, though it is on the decline. However, 30 states ban corporal punishment in public schools, and two states, New Jersey and Iowa, additionally prohibit it in private schools.)

William invited us to church, a gospel church, in which the kids sing and dance, and he is an assistant pastor. We asked William when he relaxes with his family – works 12 hours a day for Imani 6 days a week and volunteers for the church most of the day Sunday. He said he finds time. Most Kenyans that we have met (hotel personnel, policemen and orphanage staff) work 10 hours 6 days a week.

After Ngong we went to a large indoor supermarket in a strip mall, it was most reminiscent of the western world thus far. We returned to Imani A, did rounds with the nurse, showered and joined up with Betty for her last dinner. She has been working tirelessly to paint and pretty up two rooms, as well as purchase and outfit a tent for a sewing room. We had pasta, carrots and beans from the garden at Imani B, and ice cream. Luxury! Faith entertained us with stories of the orphanage during dinner, this time with stories of diplomats/governmental people/donors that come expecting to be able to roll out a red carpet. She said ‘even if the children were making number eleven, I don’t clean it, they can see what we are anytime, there is nothing different here for them’ . The number eleven is when the kid is dripping snot out of each nostril right on to their upper lip. Hilarious!

Ok, gotta go…
In case you are looking every day for pics, you can relax. I don’t think we will have the capability to upload pics until we get home. This is my last posting for awhile, here is our itinerary for the remainder.
Sunday: Church, work at orphanage
Monday: orphanage
Tuesday: orphanage, return to Ngong for another photo.
Wednesday-Saturday: flight to Malindi to visit Imani there. This is the holiday vacation spot for the kids at Imani A during their month-long December break. I’ll write more about that location once I’m there.
Sunday-Thursday: fly to Masai Mara for safari
Thursday: return to Nairobi
Friday: flight home to NYC

We have all of the meds for the infants recorded and we are giving the nurse the day off Monday.

There is a full time social worker at the orphanage. She has a note in every medical chart about the circumstances of entering Imani. Typical story is abandonment. The nurse has told us the best scenario is a woman who delivers in the hospital and absconds so the baby is left to the “care and protection of Imani Children’s Home”. The worst case scenario is when a baby is abandoned at home and the neighbors call the police after 2 days of crying. The baby is malnourished, dehydrated, etc. The developmentally delayed babies are abandoned at a few months of age, when the parents have determined the baby is “not right”. My assumption was that HIV was a large factor in abandonment, but one of the managers at Imani B informed us that a more common situation is an unwed mother. If a woman gets pregnant and is not married here, her family disassociates and she is alone. Another interesting tidbit about the babies is that the HIV+ mothers that don’t breastfeed rarely have infected babies, but mothers that do breastfeed are more likely to have infected babies. Beth and I are amazed at how few kids here have HIV.

I just finished a great book, An Imperfect Offering, written by the past president of Doctors Without Borders, James Orbinski. He writes that the costs of HIV treatment per person has decreased from 15,000 dollars per person to 200 dollars per person per year in the last 9 years. Maybe you have heard of his work with Access to Essential Medicines. Not an easy task to take on against the pharmaceutical giants. Paul Farmer (another awesome global health book, Mountains Beyond Mountains) has done similar work with TB medications. We have only one child that I know of that has TB at the orphanage.

Faith Imani is the director of the orphanage and more needs to be said about her. Beth will write this part:
She is more giving than any woman could possibly be. She used to be a model and decided in her 20′s to start her own orphanage and now she has 5. She cooks all of the evening meals for the children and is there before school to greet them all. They all call her “mommy” and she calls them her sons and daughters. Every night we are impressed by another story of how she has given all she has for a psychologically damaged child (allowing them to stay with her) or medically damaged child (taking a child to Italy for corrective surgery). Her commitment is remarkable. The motto on the brochure for the orphanage is “If you want to change the world, change the children”

Interesting fact, the high wall that encloses Imani orphanage is as much for security as it is for dust. Many of the kids have a cough or a wheeze through the stethoscope, respiratory problems and diarrhea are the two things that keep the nurse busy all day.