The Nest Children's Home

02/12/013
Here at the Nest
I know I said I would be away from the internet for a while, but SURPRISE! I just couldn't stay away. How would I best describe these last 2 days? I've barely had enough time to  eat or sleep because I've been the best kind of busy. Let me repeat. The BEST kind of busy. (okay that's a lie, I can always find time to eat) My life is full of so many wonderful people. Life here at the Nest is quiet, but it is the kind of quite I need. The children will take any chance they get to sneak in a hug or hang from my arms. They all seek affection, especially the little ones. I spend my first day here in the nursery, covered in spit and mysterious goo. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry. At lunch time we made our way down to Limuru, the neighboring town, to buy food and supplies. Like many volunteers before me, I had arrived completely unprepared, so I had to stock up for the next 11 days. It was so fun to walk around the fruit market and see all the exotic items. I can buy HUGE mangos for only 30 KSH. That's like $0.34. The children outside their houses on the way home from Limuru see us "Mzungus" coming from a mile away. They love to practice their english phrases on us. They say "Mzungu, Mzungu! How are you!?" "Mzuri sana," we say back, or simply "how are you." Their vocabulary is a bit limited...
I feel like I've had ants in my pants all day. Literally. As another volunteer and I were doing laundry today, we noticed a few of the nursery's nappies had fallen off the line. Once we looked closer we realized they were swarming with ants. As we were pulling the other clothes out of the way and off the line, the children saw us working and came running over to help. You can only imagine how that turned out. I spent the next 5 minutes frantically pulling and shaking ants off poor Alex who had SAT DOWN in the ant swarm. These are not like your normal North American sugar ants. These ants bite hard and hang on tight. The poor kid got through his little escapade without any tears. What a trooper. As for me, I still feel like they're crawling all over me.
Things are winding down here in the volunteer house. We finished dinner and went for an afternoon walk. In the background of my own little world, I can hear grey's anatomy in German thanks to my three austrian housemates. They have promised to teach me German. So far I can say "I walk, he walks, she walks, we walk, you walk." "Ich gehe, er geht, sie geht, wir gehen, du gehst." Pretty impressive, huh.
Tonight, we met a local girl named Nancy. She was very nice to us. It seems to me that Kenyan customarily are used to having guests over often. She showed us to her house, which was about a 3 minute walk away from our house where her dog had just had puppies. They were the cutest things I have ever seen. (besides sammy, of course) These pups were little fuzzy balls of joy. Nancy invited us in, gave us chapati, a delicious tortilla-like bread and offered to trade novels with us.
It made for a pretty relaxing afternoon which turned into a lovely evening.
That's all for now.
Lala Salama!