forgotten highlights

Those of you who blog and/or journal frequently will understand the dilemma between living in the present and making the most of every moment as it happens on the one hand and the urge to sit down to re-live one’s fondest experiences and share them with friends and family on the other.  Over the course of the last month, we have erred on the side of the former, somewhat to the detriment of this blog. As we prepare for new adventures in the coming weeks, we would like to share some of the highlights of the last month with you.

bottle-feeding baby elephants

A couple of months ago, the CLO organized a newcomer’s cocktail on the chancery lawn. Local restaurants catered the event, whose purpose was to familiarize newly arrived families with all that Kenya has to offer. Travel agents and tour companies set up information booths and contributed prizes to a raffle giveaway. S grabbed us a pair of raffle tickets and wound up pulling out an all-expenses paid two night stay at lodge in the Taita Hills Wildlife Game Sanctuary, located not too far from Tsavo National Park.

contest – we need your help

So…here’s the deal: we created a video and entered it into a “creative way to say I Love You” contest. As most such contests typically go, this is a popularity contest. So please help us out by going to https://www.facebook.com/emilieinc and voting for our video. In order to cast your vote, you simply have to “like” the video. If you really want to help, please repost this on your facebook page and ask your friends to chip in and vote as well. The contest ends in 48 hours so please click on the link and vote now and get as many of your friends as you can to do the same!

Thanks in advance,

D&S

third-world autocare

Kenyan roads are not kind to automobiles; off-roading on self-drive safaris is even less so. After a few trips on roads whose questionable surface almost made us regret leaving the city [see African massage], our car started making all sorts of odd noises. At one point, S considered calling into NPR’s Car Talk to ask for advice on why our car was whistling and tweeting like a bird. Sometimes the squeaking would go away for a day or two, but then we would drive over a bad patch of road, the underbelly of the car would rattle, and the noises would return.

gainful employment

Those of you who follow our blog regularly may have noticed that our previously prolific pace of posting has slackened considerably of late. This partly owes to other endeavors (studying Swahili, for example), partly to an expanding social life (it’s harder to find time to re-live one’s experiences when one is always out and about), but mostly to the fact that work has kept both of us extremely busy.

The week S got back from working with One by One in Eldoret, she received a mysterious phone call. All she could make out over the scratchy connection was that it was someone calling from Washington. At first, she thought it might be a website help desk that she had emailed, but after saying “what” over a dozen times she recognized the man’s name. Weeks prior, S had met with USAID (US Agency for International Development) and was told they were interested in having her work as a contractor on a new health initiative headed by Ambo.  In the meeting, they had mentioned this man’s name and his contracting company as a mechanism they could use to hire S on a “purchase order.” The phone call came on a Thursday, the contract was signed the next day, and S started work the following Monday.

staying safe in an unsafe land

We have received various emails and skype calls over the last month or so expressing concern for our safety as Kenya continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. For those who have not been following the news, below is a brief summary of recent events: