Trip to Mombasa and More

Hello Friends! I have become friends with the nurse here at the health clinic and she and her boyfriend and daughter took me into Mombasa for the day this past Saturday. Mombasa is the second largest city in Kenya and has gotten a lot of press in the past year. Mombasa has a big port and it is where a couple of the pirated ships have finally come to shore. Mombasa is a big, noisey, dirty, congested city but is in a beautiful location. For our day in the city, we visited an historic site; a fort built by the Portuguese in 1537. Very well preserved - see photos below and yes, the black people are my Kenyan friends! Also, here is a photo of a mud house in it's early construction stage. I will follow this house along and post a series of photos when it is completed. This will help you really visualize what a mud house is. You know we are predicted to begin an El Nino cycle starting at the end of this month. I have heard that during the rainy season some of these mud houses colapse!

I am currently organizing a community meeting; I have the task of writing a community needs accessment report so will have this meeting to solicite comments from the public. And, wow, what a public I may have in attendance. It will no doubt range from the illiterate to the college educated. Also, the meeting will be held outside in their usual meeting place ("under the big mango tree") and flip charts are unknown here and it likely will be windy. I will give you an update on this event after it takes place. I ofcourse will have an interpreter ---my kiswalhili has sort of stalled in its progress. I can speak, really I can, but I have a very hard time understanding people and have just become aware of the local dialet which is different from what I studied in Loittokitok. Oh ---would someone send me Karen Ingram's e-mail ----Steve actually lived in Loittokitok when he was a teenager.

Here are photos: Fort Jesus & Friends; random shots around where I live featuring shots of the sisal plantation that surrounds this area; and the first in the series on mud house construction.

Until next time -----