February Happenings

February seemed to fly by!  I must be having fun :)  Here are some of the things that took place throughout the month.

I had my first visitor! My friend from Colorado Springs, Brittany, came out to climb the mountain with a team. After a successful climb, she had one day to come stay with me before moving to her next work location. It was a short but sweet visit. What a treat to be able to give her a tour of the school, introduce her to my teachers and students and teammates, and share the stunning beauty that God has blessed us with here.  And then we also had time to go into town to visit a few of my usual places.

Taking her on an adventurous drive around town

The picture every visitor must get

Waiting at the station...

for a train... 

that will never come ;)

Finishing off the visit with a trip to our
"central market"

Our girls' soccer team was invited to play in a tournament at the local international school. They pretty much dominated every team they played.

On the 24th of February, I got to co-hare my first Hash. The person who sets the course for the Hash is called the Hare. The Hare is responsible for going out ahead of the Hash and putting out the flour to mark the path. A doctor who lives nearby has been a long time friend of our village and is considered one of the Hash experts around here. I was very excited when he asked if I'd like to set a Hash with him. He taught me all the tips and tricks.

One of the tricks you can do is make a false
trail, marked by the F, so that the lead runners
have to go back and find the real trail. We were
nice and only made one false trail :)

My co-Hare expert leading the way with his
bag of flour

The trail went down into the river valley and
back up twice, so it was a bit challenging but
beautifully lush

The mountain came out for a nice view

The flour going down into the river was a joke;
we kept to the bridges for crossing this time

I've got my bag of flour to mark the trail too

We made it back to the start in time to set up chairs and tables
in the yard and then...

welcome all of our Hash friends

 A couple of the friends that I've made at church came out to do the Hash, so I decided to go do the trail again with them. It was fun to have set the trail and then to go do it as a participant to get peoples' reactions.

 

Based on the comments, I think the two climbs out of the river valley were a good challenge and everyone really enjoyed the course. Then we all enjoyed bites together, which are always a highlight when my teammate, Sara, is in charge.

I ended the month with a wedding send-off. It was for one of our workers who has been living here as a mother of one of the children cottages. It's sad to see her go, but we were all quite happy for her. I decided it was about time that I have a proper outfit for a send-off, so I went to a local shop and had a kitenge skirt made.  Isn't the fabric here beautiful?

 Since the send-off was for a cottage mother, the 8 girls who had lived in her cottage were invited to the party. Having them with us made it even more fun!

Don't they look nice dressed up in their Sunday best?!

 There were 12 of us all together, so we hired a dala dala (15 passenger van).  It was the best decision! It meant that we didn't have to take multiple cars and we didn't have to worry about driving back in the dark.  Total win!

We got very close to the location of the party, but had to pull
over on the side of the road for some directions at the very end :)

I didn't mind because it gave me time to get a different view
of the mountain

 We still made it with time to spare because these things always start 2 hours after the time printed on the invitation. Everyone knows that, so it'll probably never change because if it did start on time no one would be there.  Our invitation said this one would start at 6 PM, so it was right "on time" when it started at 8 PM. Haha! It was a very nice send-off.  The hall was nicely decorated. The pace of events was very efficient. I would say it was probably my favorite one yet.

Beautiful lighting

The real treat for the kids is that they get SODA! You can see
that the orange and yellow Fantas are the favorites.

 And no send-off would be complete without the...

Keki ndafu (roasted goat decorated with cucumbers and carrots)
That was the biggest one I've seen; it even had horns!

Funny side note: even though we had all the girls go to the bathroom right before we left, we still had to have to dala dala pull off on the side of the road for a quick pit stop.  Like I said, having the kids with us made for a much more fun and entertaining evening.

And there you have it - the random happenings of February.