People sometimes wonder what kind of food we can buy here.  These are just the Kenyan brands pictured.  Top left to right and then bottom row:  Peanuts,  Manji makes lots of crackers and biscuits (what Kenyan's think of as cookies but they are not as sweet as U.S.  Manji often packages them in small amounts in the box making it good for traveling.  Cinnamon doesn't exist but we found a cinnamon/sugar mixture.
Zesta is a big food company making cornstarch and jellies.  Weetabix is a cereal- even found at Grinnell's Fareway!  Digestives make a very good graham cracker crust since graham crackers don't exist here.  Royco is the green container used for a soup base or gravy.  Ranee is spaghetti brand.  Kensalt comes in a plastic sack.



More food choices:  Milo is hot chocolate, Oatmeal is available more local and we found Quaker Oats this week.  Fanta is the pop of choice with multiple flavors like black currant, orange, and a ginger one called Stoney.  The square box on the far right are matches with different animals rotated on them over time.  Right now a rhino and a horse are in.  Blue Band is margarine that doesn't need to be refrigerated.  Peanut butter is usually creamy and Jogoo is corn meal -- most Kenyans make a stiff mold of cooked cornmeal called ugali which is a staple.  I make corn fritters and pancakes.Jello is called Jelly.  Ribena is a wonderful black currant fruit juice concentrate that doesn't need to be refrigerated or frozen. We miss this one a lot in the U.S. so are enjoying it while we can! UHT is ultra heat treated milk that lasts for 6 months without refrigeration and once opened you have a few days to drink it (kept in frig then).

Besides this is lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, milk from the dairy next door, and eggs from a neighbor.  Plus the occasional treat of American style foods like Kitkat.

Right now the FTC students are all gone.  At times like this, Donna really misses her Grinnell College library student workers!  All of these books need to be processed.  The cataloging edits have already been done.



From time to time, Jim also helps in the library.  He is cutting apart books that Donna needs to reback.  Some are in terrible shape, even some with covers upside down.



These are some of the Bibles that have been rebacked.  On the top right is a Bible which had a spine from another old book that was discovered when preparing for a reback.

Cheptulu is the nearest place we can buy things.  It is about a 20 minute walk and is a small center with limited supplies.  It does, however, have a place you can get a massage.  Salon, pronounces saloon, is a hair dresser for ladies.  Kinyozi is a barber for men.  We have not tried either.  Donna cut Jim's hair just this morning with a dull pair of kitchen shears.

We bought some Oreos to eat on the bus ride to Nairobi.  Note that these were made in Egypt and are referred to as Biscuits.



Donna has been so busy with other things in the library that she just today got to start doing book repair.  She got to use the book press that Jumba made for us.  It worked very well.



She is re-backing textbooks that will be needed when the students come on March 28.  These are Bibles that are checked out to the students as textbooks.

Tonight we invited John (left) and Dominic (right) for supper.  John is a teacher at FTC and Dominic is the registrar.  It was a hybrid USA/Kenya event.  We made chili soup but served it with chapatis, peas and carrots, and mixed fresh fruit - mango, pineapple, honeydew melon.  After the meal we played Scrabble and allowed both English and Swahili words.  We had a very enjoyable time and even learned something about how we each view the world.

When we left Kijabe in 1999, our son Caleb was given a chicken as a gift.  We thought the person who gave it to him was just being nice.  We were told that giving a chicken to a young boy is a way of helping him accumulate wealth – not money, but property.  The chicken can have chicks which will eventually add up to enough chickens to trade for a goat.  The goat will have more goats and eventually you will have enough goats to trade for a cow.  The cow will have calves and eventually you will have enough cows to buy a wife.  So the chicken is not to be eaten or sold.  It is to be kept as the beginning of wealth.

We did not know that, so we gave the chicken to Mary, the lady who helped in our house.  It is a good thing Caleb didn’t have to buy his wife!

We are getting close to making a decision about the solar electric system, so we made a 3 day trip to Nairobi to visit 2 of the companies we are considering.  We stayed at the Mennonite Guest House which has a beautiful yard and gardens.  Donna is standing by a bird of paradise bush.



In the foreground is a poinsettia tree.  This one is rather small.  They get much bigger.  In the background is a large flowering tree that we are not sure of the species.

Jean Smith invited us to go with her to Kiboko (hippo) Bay in Kisumu which is on the shore of Lake Victoria.  Jean is a Quaker who is retired and is working with HIV widows to help them earn a living by sewing craft items.  We had lunch and then swam in their pool.

There are a large number of pictures in the library that should be in an archive.  One problem is that they have been stamped on the back and then all the photos put on top of each other.  The purple stamp ink has come off on the picture below it - see the skirt of the Turkana girl.  Donna put paper in between the pictures and created a designated place to collect all of them.  Jim was able to help identify some of the pictures from his time in Turkana back in 1980-1982.



Occasionally we notice businesses with our family names in them like this hair salon in Kakamega.  In Kisumu is a small shop called Donna's transport which deals with motorcycle taxis (boda-boda).  Still looking for the rest of the family.

Washing dishes with a headlamp while the electricity is off.



We needed to get some extra padlock keys made for when we have visitors.  We found this locksmith who held the original key in front of the blank, rested both on a rock, and then filed the new key with a hand file.  We had him make 3 copies and he charged $1.80 total.  When we got home, the original still worked and all 3 copies worked as well.

Today we went with Ruth, one of the FTC students, to Jivuye Friends where she is the pastor.  We left home at 7:30 and walked one hour to get to the church, which is in the background.  Ruth is standing outside the fence that defines the Kaimosi Mission boundary.  The church is on mission ground.



One of the church members died this week, so about half of the normal attenders were gone to be at the home of the widow.  The service went from about 8:30-11:00.



We then were invited to the home of one of the church members named Frida.  Her husband has a job in Nairobi,so they have a very nice home.  The man on the far right is Meshack Musindi who is a teacher and Dean of Students at FTC.  He showed up unannounced, as is his habit, to check on his students to make sure they are being faithful in their student pastor assignments.  Frida did not know any of us were coming, but in a matter of minutes she served us chai, bananas, bread and butter sandwiches, and fresh avocado.  While we were eating that, she and her 2 daughters in law prepared a meal of chicken stew (they butchered one of their chickens) with rice, ugali (thick cooked maize meal you eat with your fingers), cow peas greens, cooked cabbage, and watermelon.



Frida also had 2 turkeys, which is quite unusual.

We then visited the home of 2 other church members on our way home.  We then walked through a beautiful tropical forest and arrived home at 4:15.

The water tower outside our house has a board bottom which is supposed to give the tank a flat surface to sit on.  Unfortunately, two of the board were too short and they used pieces to fill in, which in turn did not give a flat surface.  Jim had Jumba, a local carpenter cut two new boards, one on the ground and one being slid under the tank.  Jim used one of the short boards to pry the tank up so the new boards could be slid in.



While in Kisumu we saw this phone, radio, and TV repair shop.  Apparently he can't fix everything - see the graveyard on his roof.

Jim is staking out the site for the solar electric system.  The old administration.classroom building is in the center and the chapel on the left.  You can just see the corner of the new administration building on the right.

We are having a local carpenter build a raised panel wall for us in the library to separate out the new computer lab.  This is the carpenter's helper delivering the wood.  He made two loads this size with his home made wheel barrow.  It was a 1 mile trip each time, mostly uphill.



There has only been water in the pipes one day this week.  We have a dairy that must have water, so they use these cows to pull a wagon to carry water to the other cows.



Anton pulls water from a hand dug well with a 5 gallon bucket on a rope.  He then fills the big blue containers in the wagon as well as the yellow containers on the ground.

This is Jeptulu Friends Church where we have attended the last 3 weeks.  It is about a 30 minute walk from our house.



This Sunday was the celebration of their 90th Anniversary as a church.  Much work went into finishing the ceiling (brown), adding cloth backdrop to the stage, and even ribbons and balloons.  The church was packed with even the short nursery school chairs brought in for extra seating.  Donna and I stayed for 6 hours and then left while the ceremony continued.



As part of the celebration, they planted 6 Elgon Teak trees.  They asked Jim to plant one on behalf of Iowa Yearly Meeting.  They are a very slow growing hardwood and are beautiful when made into lumber for furniture.  They grow naturally here in the forest.



This is the young boy who dug the holes for the trees.  He used a pipe with a broken leaf spring welded to the end to do the digging.



This is Emily and Kayla, 2 of the Bible School students, who came to our house to teach Donna how to make chapatis.  It is like a tortilla, but with more substance - about a cup of flour each.

Thanks for Dana Oswald from William Penn University we were hand delivered our order of new labels for the FTC library.  These are a different size than had recently been used but are a big improvement to fit all of the call number on distinct lines.  This was the first set of labels to be printed.



Some supplies must be locally available for sustainability for the library to maintain like using local tape to cover call number labels.  Fred and I have made some adjustments to some standards of how things should look, size of labels, etc., and I keep a running list for Fred.



Physical inventory of the serials or periodicals.  All titles and the range we own will be put on an Excel sheet.



Current periodicals display area is being filled with the most recent.

Jim has been buying and testing LED lights.  There is tremendous variance in quality and efficiency.  We plan to replace all of the lights at FTC with LED's before installing the photo-voltaic system.



We enjoyed having Dana Oswald and her aunt Kay spend 2 nights with us.  Dana and Jim teach together at William Penn University.  Dana has been part of a team developing a Peace Curriculum to be used in Kenya schools.  She is in Kenya to help lead a 3 day workshop for 26 schools that will hopefully get the program off the ground.

A tea field on the path to the Jeptulu Friends Church where we have been attending.



Donna and the Presiding Clerk at Jeptulu Friends.  Cloth is used in the front of  many Kenyan churches to decorate.  It is rare to find a cross in a Kenyan Quaker church holding with the lack of need for symbolism in a Quaker Church.  The small bench is where the offering basket it put and people go up to put in the offering.



Musa Phares is a student at FTC from Tanzania.  He is also a taylor.  Donna had him sew an apron for her.

We were in Kisumu buying supplies and Donna ordered Fish Pilau.  It was a whole fish, eyes, fins, tail, bones, everything but the innards.  She did an admirable job of picking the meat off and eating it.



We were in the industrial area getting prices on steel to build the frame for the solar electric system.  Donna got to take her first ride in a Tuk Tuk, a 3 wheel motorcycle taxi with a 2 person back seat.



Back in the late 60's when Jim lived in Kaimosi, his family used to come to Kisumu to buy groceries and then would stop at the Mona Lisa restaurant for sodas, samosas and ice cream before going home.  We went to the restaurant for a soda, but did not eat there.  It has gone down hill dramatically.