Setting the stage...

Some of the emotions have died down since my last post, so I wanted to try and describe a little bit of the lifestyle that I have found myself enjoying. First, and probably most importantly, are the people. Two people that I will probably mention a lot are Duncan and Cornel. Duncan Kimani is 29 years old and grew up in Nakuru, Kenya, just a few hours to the north. His story is absolutely unbelievable, but in just a few words, God has taken him from a rural family, through school and seminary, and through a series of ministry positions to become one of the Directors for CARE for AIDS. Duncan lives in the CARE for AIDS house where I am now living, and he has a girlfriend who is currently in Ethiopia. Cornel Onyango is from Kisumu, Kenya, is 32 years old, and has been great friends with Duncan since they met in 2001. Cornel is our other Director here in Kenya, he is married to a beautiful woman named Irene, and they have two young sons. Cornel's story is remarkably similar to Duncan's, and it is really cool to see how God brought together two people who shared the same passion for ministry and the same idea for reaching out to people living with HIV.

Two other men make up the CFA team in Kenya. First is Steve, who handles our finances and much of the resource distribution. The other is Kevin, who heads up the empowerment side of our work. The five of us oversee everything happening in all of the CFA centers, each of which is staffed by an additional two employees. Almost every day we all end up in the office to start the day and then go out to whatever we are working on.

The next important thing to understand is where I am. Currently, I am living in a house that CFA rents in the town of Limuru. The house is large by Kenyan standards, with two bunk rooms that can sleep about 6 people each when short-term teams are here. We have running water and a wall with a security guard, as well as an ever-changing assortment of animals (turkeys, chickens, rabbits, dogs) in the yard. There is hot water in the showers, except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when we have no electricy due to government rationing. Most of our cooking is done on a propane-fueled stove in the kitchen, and we have a large water filter for drinking water. There is a wonderful woman named Jane who comes to the house every day to clean, do laundry, and keep everything in order. Upstairs in the house is the CARE for AIDS office. It is here that I can use the internet on my computer (albeit at EDGE network speeds). Technically, this is a corner office, and its got two windows, so I'm really living the dream right now as I type on my computer, looking out on tea fields, down the paved road with its matatus and motorbikes, down the dirt road with a small herd of sheep and children playing, and across a green valley spotted with acacia trees.

Our house is located on Limuru road about 30 kilometers from Nairobi. It is a really interesting climate -- we are at 1 degree latitude (so almost exactly on the equator), but Limuru sits at at altitude of almost 7500 feet, so it gets pretty cold at certain times in the year. August is about the coldest, and it has been in the 40's at night. The house doesn't have heat or a/c, so we really have to bundle up at night. The highs and lows really only vary by about 10 degrees throughout the year, so the hottest it will get will be about 80 degrees (and in the 50's or 60's at night). We are about 1 km from the main strip in Limuru, a crowded mile or so of donkey carts, matatus, and about every other form of transportation you can think of. Most of the people there walk, so the streets are crowded with pedestrians and vendors selling their crops for the day. It is rare to see another white person ("mzungo") once you get outside of Nairobi in this area. I could go on and on about the way of life in small-town Kenya, but that will wait for another post.

Exciting things like the food I'm eating and the way I've been getting around will also have to wait, because today is a Tuesday and my laptop battery is amost dead...tomorrow morning starting at 9am I'll be able to charge it and take a hot shower!

I hope all of this helps you to understand the life I am living. It is unbelievably different than the way we all live in America, but I am so thankful for each and every part of it!