Hello My Lovelies,

Oh, how delinquent I have been about keeping in touch these last few weeks!  Let me give you some highlights:  We have been about the business of breaking in new blood at the Elewana Project.  While Peter and Chaplain are old hats at our craziness, two recent additions are still learning the ropes.  One, of course, is Grace Hornsby, our yearlong volunteer.  She has already befriended everyone in the village and been a huge help in training our other new face, Roselyn Osiyo, our office secretary.  Roselyn comes from one of the local villages, has her oldest daughter in Amagoro Junior Academy (where we do a lot of our work), and has become the anchor that holds down the Elewana Office.  We have essentially thrown Rose to wolves, as she is adjusting not only to computers, internet, and my incessant ability to make a mess, but to our loud, rapid-fire, Mzungu (white people) English.  Kenyans are, in general, are a very soft-spoken people who prefer to articulate their thoughts at a leisurely cadence.  As a result, I often feel like I’m going deaf.  There are some who, even when standing directly in front of me, can barely make themselves heard above the ringing in my ears.  While not that extreme, Rose is a soft-spoken woman, and I cringe to think how painfully loud we Wazungu must seem to her.

Given what I’ve heard about the weather in the US of late, I’m in no real position to complain, but it has been raining cats and dogs here.  This is an early start for the rainy season, and magnitude of the rains has caught everyone off guard.  Initially, the farmers all ran out and planted hedgerow to hedgerow, though some now are regretting such haste as their corn and beans are all but drowning in the waterlogged soils.  The rains do keep it blessedly cool, but wow, do they do a number on the roads.  This sandy soil washes away like sandcastles at high tide, exacerbating the already treacherous potholes for which Kenya is famous.  Our vehicles take the brunt of the abuse, largely because, once full of water, potholes are impossible to assess for profundity.  Driving becomes a game of Russian roulette, demanding the sacrifice of odd muffler and suspension parts to appease the vindictive road gods.  Some roads are best just left alone, too mean and temperamental to be trusted with anything other than a donkey, which can match anyone for mean and temperamental.

 Peter Omaset:

I have a tendency to throw names around in these blogs, and though I occasionally post photos of those mentioned, I’ve never given an account of the characters that keep the Elewana Project running.  To amend such injustice, I will include over the next couple months a few irreverent reflections on Elewana’s Usual Suspects.  I start with Peter Omaset, our Scholarship Coordinator and All-Purpose Project Manager.  A couple years ago I mentioned my obsession with The Godfather (Tom Hanks had it right in “You’ve Got Mail” – everything relates back to The Godfather).  And while I am hardly the Don, Peter is certainly my Luca Brasi, my all-business assassin.  Peter is a very quite fellow; hardly speaks and careful with his words when he does.  Forced to drop out of high-school so his brother could continue (his father could afford fees for only one of his sons), Peter negotiated his teens and early twenties by taking odd jobs and classes whenever possible.  As a result, he is blessed with a hodge-podge of very practical skills: he drives both cars and motorcycles, understands computers, possesses an uncommon wealth of common sense, and is a keen observer of his surroundings.  In short, he is nobody’s fool and incredibly competent at running Elewana’s various projects.  He takes care of business quietly, efficiently, at times even before I know it needs doing, and the job is almost always done right… kind of like Luca Brasi.

In gratitude for such an impressive skill set, I keep Peter busier than a one–legged man in an ass-kicking contest.  Last week, he was running up and down to all of our schools, checking on students, paying fees, buying books, all the while managing to ensure the laborers at the Mission House didn’t abscond with the paint and tile stored in the garage.   At the moment, unfortunately, Peter is on injured reserve, having sprained his ankle maneuvering our piki-piki (motorcycle) down a bad dirt road during a torrential rainstorm.  We are resting him at the moment and hope to have him back in action in a couple days.  Included is a recent photo of Peter as he checks in on some of our girls at the Kolanya Girls School, and you can expect more reflections on our Usual Suspects in the coming weeks and months.

Now its you’re turn ;-)

As always…Mad Love, Zach