As many of you may know, this Saturday was Cinco de Mayo (aka my birthday). I celebrated with a beautiful mix of home activities and Kenyan activities. To start the day, I awoke to freshly made chai from my housemate, Andrea. Really most of my birthday went amazingly because of her (shout-out well deserved). After that, we walked to town to the one of the nicest hotels in Nyeri (though very pretty, don't picture anything too extravagant) where I received my first ever full body massage followed by ordering a hamburger and fries (errr, chips) for lunch.
After lunch, we shopped around town for ingredients to make a beef stew for dinner for a little get together. We then returned to the Center where I found one of the guys to help me set-up a slip-n-slide for the kids. During this set-up, I was "washed" (a birthday tradition) by about 5 or 6 kids. Washing entails being doused with water for one's birthday. It was probably one of the cutest things in the world as some of the 5 year olds would run up to me with the most mischievous looks on their face you could imagine and throw a margarine tub's worth of water on me. Already being soaked, I demonstrated the slip-n-slide and a successful activity commenced.
Later, some of the staff cooked dinner while Andrea and I snuck off to bake the brownies my mom sent. They were A-MAZING! Thanks mom. Back to dinner, a group of us enjoyed dinner together in darkness as the power had gone out due to the rain (nothing new). After enjoying my beef stew, I stepped outside to be "washed" again. This times it was exponentially more cold, but hilarious nonetheless. All in all, it was a Kenyan birthday success.
The following is a video of some of the pictures of the slip-n-slide, dinner, and my late night washing. Enjoy...
That looked incredible! Those kids are lucky to have you! Love and miss you!
ReplyDeletehappy late birthday! miss you and praying for you. good to see your smile on those pictures. =)
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