Over the hump

This week marked our "over the hump" week as we have passed our 1/2 way mark. Our routine is fairly steady now and each of us has found what we like to and how to spend our time. Dale and I go to Tumaini every morning and most of our classes are done by 2. The rest go to the market about every other day. The Stiles have school in their apartment most days and Sharon has taken up sewing table runners and pot holders. By 5:30 or so we start dinner and by 8:30 the dishes are done and we get in a game of Yatzee or such

Dale and I visited the new office suite in the new science building on Friday. Some of the faculty have moved in and there are printers and desks and copy machines. We found 4 faculty and a secretary in the secretary's office huddled around the printer. The offices have numbers taped to the door so I found #10. The key is nowhere to be found but apparently my office mate may have it. I will keep trying next week to see if at least I can find the key. I don't plan to use the office as the building is a block away from all the classrooms and I have settled into a computer lab where the students can easily find me.

Dale has his own very nice office in the Theology wing. He has many office hours and many visitors. Daily, someone comes by looking for money. Each has a story about needing to get money for tuition or food. It is a challenge to figure out what to do with these. Friday, a young man and his father came by with a list looking like a Girl Scout Cookie list. Everyone who donated marked down their name and an amount. Since the Dean had contributed, Dale made a donation and put his name down. This is very strange. No one comes to the Computer Science offices looking for money -- I am not sure why.

We also have occasional visitors at our apartment doors looking for something -- sometimes money but other times we cannot tell. I just shrug my shoulders and say hapana (no) and they wander off. I am not sure why the gate guards let these folks in, but that is just another one of the mysteries of Africa.

We cooked dinner for some of the other Americans here in the apartment on Friday night. We had Marilyn (an English teacher at Tumaini), Natilee (coordinator of St.Paul partners at the Lutheran Diocese), Fred and Phil (agriculture advisors here training farmers), and Tom (our Bega Kwa Bega coordinator). Tom leaves for the U.S. on Tuesday so we wanted to at least give him a send-off.. We dispensed with the portable DJ but had a great evening and found out about all of our neighbors. Tonight we have an International Dinner at the International School and will find our more about our other neighbors. Many of the children here in the apartment attend the International School and the headmaster lives in Block A. The Stiles considered sending their students there, but the cost was quite high and they have been fairly successful continuing home-schooling as they were back in the U.S.

I spend the afternoon at the FM radio station on Friday. We have the station streaming at http://furaha.listen2myradio.com or http://tinyurl.com/radiofuraha. Either one loads a little radio player and connects to the music and information radio station here at the Lutheran Diocese. The whole thing is still in the "experimental" mode so it may not work all the time.

A couple more notes. Dale made us oatmeal cookies yesterday. The first batch came out just fine, but the second batch burned before its normal cooking time was up. The third batch cooked quickly and we started to feel the heat radiating from our little stove. Carrie asked what temperature the stove was set to and Dale said the highest setting on the oven was 250 and that was as close to 375 as he could set it. You guessed it! The control on the stove is Centigrade and 250 is close to 500 F. The rest of the batch was outstanding and we are going to encourage Dale to keep baking cookies in spite of his initial difficulties.

Additionally, remember 6 degrees of separation? Well at our dinner party last night we had Phil (a retired ag teacher) who taught at The Ohio State Univeristy and Natilee (who graduated from The Ohio State University in ag engeineering). And Fred (the other ag engineer) was a classmate of the brother of Mark Engebretson (a faculty member at Augsburg). Come 1/2 way around the world to reconnect with people.

Thanks to all of you for your notes keeping us up to date on what is going on at home. We miss all of you. We will be participating in the Fish Lake Lutheran's sunday service on the 11th. We plan to send a greeting via Skype at the end of the service. It will be 8 PM here and hopefully we can at least say hello to all of you.