By APRIL BERESFORD

February 5th

We woke up at 06:00 and were eating breakfast at 06:30 in preparation for an early morning mountain climb up Mt. Mulli. Normally, I would protest with all of my wit and charm to NOT get up so early on my day off, but I was really quite eager to go. We filled up our water bottles and hit the trail through MCF and off the property. We passed through a half dozen settlements on our way, mud-brick and stick huts like we had seen yesterday. Some were fortunate enough to have doors and sheet metal roofs, and a few owned livestock (cattle, goats and/or chickens). Much like MCF, they graze the goats and cows during the day in the bush, and either pen them up (stick and rope construction) at night or tie them by their back legs to a sturdy tree or bush (which makes me visibly cringe when I see it). Every house had at least one scraggly little guard dog, and there were a few that I thought might come after us. They were all skinny, with protruding ribs and hips. Not like the well-nourished dogs at MCF, which we also had represented in the group (Blue came with us). I'm happy to report that nobody was bitten.

Our climb up Mt. Mulli took about an hour up and an hour down. Half of the trek was foot trails and the other half, the upper half, was blazing our own path. At a few points we had to climb up rock with our fingernails and tiptoes. I have never climbed like that before, and throroughly enjoyed the adventure. Angela, Rama, Lydia, Celestine, Timothy and David came with us as our guides. They hardly even broke a sweat, while the rest of us plodded along. :o)

The view from the top was phenominal. It was way past "amazing". We were high enough, and it was a clear enough day to see Mt. Kenya which is the higest point in all of Kenya. It was so beautiful and peaceful way up there, but in the quiet we could faintly hear crowing chickens, braying donkeys, and at one point we heard some sort of tribal drum, beating slow and steady. I sat in the sun at the top and just basked in the vastness of it all, both of the climb and the whole week I just had. Experiencing the beauty of Africa has been a lifelong dream for me and it was surreal just to be there. At the top of a mountain in the middle of Kenya with friends. I had to laugh when Angela got a call on her cell phone while we were taking photos at the top. Seriously... I lose calls when driving down 84th Street near my home in Alto, and she can get calls way up here??? LOL.

The trip down the mountain was just as long and exhausing as it was going up. My calves burned a little afterward, but it felt great to get some good exercise. Once back at MCF, we showered, packed, and had one last meal there: arrow root, chipati bread, ugali, and sukuma wiki. I'm looking forward to more of a food variety in Nairobi. I hate to sound like a pretty pretty princess, but if I eat green beans one more time this week I might start turning green myself. I hugged Julia goodbye (the young woman from Germany here to teach for half a year) and thanked Esther again for her wonderful hospitality and for inviting us into her home here at MCF. She thanked us for coming, and let us knwo how much she and the children and the community enjoyed and appreciated our services. I said goodbye to my friends who life at MCF with a sad heart. I'm never good at goodbyes. I hate them. As much as I am really looking forward to scooping my kids up at the airport, and hugging them like crazy, I have really come to love it here. I love the people here. As our bus pulled away kids ran up and waved goodbye to us, including the precious little girl that I fell in love with earlier that week. (If Kenya and USA had an adoption treaty, I would for sure be doing everything I could to bring that precious little sweetheart home with me.) She was tall and slender, much like Madeline in size and stature. She found me first when we visited the children's classroom mid-week for evening devotions. She climbed right into my lap and snuggled with me. I never did get to learn her name because few of the younger children know English yet. That surely didn't slow down their curiosity with us. She snuggled with me, and stroked my hair just like Charlotte does. She was so quiet and sweet and sharing that moment was special. She found me the next day and ran up to me with open arms. Having to say 'goodbye' to her (in Swahili: Kwaheri) was hard. I hugged her and then had to set her down and walk up to the bus. I got all teary-eyed. If only I could bring her home with me. On one hand, I am so thankful that she has a home here. She will grow up with a large family of other orphans and a bunch of adults who love her and will provide her with food, a home, and education and she will grow up to know God. But on the other hand, none of that replaces having a Mom and a Dad.

Although I was exhausted from the early wake-up and the mountain climb, I didn't sleep during the three hour bus ride to Nairobi. I find everything too exotic and interesting to close my eyes. This was my last chance to absorb it all: the livestock being paraded down the road, the children walking home from school or tending to the livestock, the huts speckled in the near and the distant landscape, walking trails snaking through the dry, dead bush carved out like veins of the bare earth through the tough terrain connecting valleys and huts and rivers and roads. I saw women carrying packages on their heads (how do they DO that???) or babies on their backs using colorful scarves, saw clusters of homes made out of mud and/or sheet metal and make-shift shops lined up in long rows, fruit stands, men pushing two-wheeled carts loaded with itms to sell. I watch these things go by mile after mile. The land is flat with a randomly-placed mountain here and there. Much of the road is not paved, or paved well. It is narrow and chipped with billions of potholes that cause our driver to constantly speed up and slow down, sometimes to a crawling pace, to avoid wheel damage to the bus. The road has no lines and no cross streets for miles. We passed through Thika one last time. It's dirty. We finally came to Nairobi around 3:30pm. Nairobi is littered and dirty. It, too, is a city built on what I can only describe as randomness. The highway that brought us into Nairobi has a sign up explaining that the construction, for which we have been weaving into and out of, will be complete in 2030. Until then, traffic is routed onto new sections here and there, onto old sections for quite a bit, and even off the edge of both in some spots. Nairobi has almost no stop signs, and I only saw one street light and it was not even working. It's crowded and chaotic, but at this point I am getting used to it. I am even learning my way around a bit.

We finally make it to the hotel (same one we stayed at last week). We were planning a quick pit stop and then back on the bus to go see the Kiberi slum, then dinner and a little shopping. Due to time constraints and an extended driving time because of the construction, we decided that going into the slum at sunset was not a safe thing to do. We took quick showers, climbed back onto the bus and drove to a lookout point over the slum. The road leading to that point was the worse I have seen here yet. I can't tell you why we didn't blow a tire, or worse. Bumpy, bumpy, bumpy! It took us like 10 minutes to go 1/4 mile. People were walking by us at the same speed we were driving. Angela told us that people in the slum who have jobs get up and start walking as early as 4 or 5am, as there is no public transportation offered out there, nor could most of them afford it. We parked the bus at the overlook and my jaw just dropped. Spread out below us was the slum, a chaotic, crowded assembly of mud huts and sheet metal, clothing lines, small animals (dogs, chickens, goats) and small children. And it spread out all around me, from side to side like a big letter "C". Angela estimated that about 2 million people live here. By my vantage point, I'd gander to say that most of these were children. It looked like a scene from "Slumdog Millionare". Was I really standing here? Was this really happening? I was too far away to see faces, but could tell that many the children I was seeing down there were running around in tattered clothing and many had no shoes on. Angela and Tom explained that living in the slum is not free; slumlords charge an average of $12 a month for a 10 X 8 foot room, and often an entire family will live in one room. For that whole slum, there was no waste management. Garbage was everywhere and people used 'flying toilets' - you pee and poop in a bucket and fling it on the neighbor's roof when they aren't looking. There is no running water, and the huts that have electricity only have it for a few hours a day. Two of the MCF kids that were rescued from this slum came with us to Nairobi. "C" told us that it was just one year since he was plucked from this slum and brought to MCF and it was quite emotional for him to tell us about how bad his life down there was. His family was still down there, and he had not been back since he had joined MCF. It is a valley of disease and abuse and destruction. Probably the saddest part was learning that most of the slum owners are members of the Kenyan parliment. The slum exists because it makes money. How deepy sad. Police don't even go down there. The slum rules itself, and not many people graduate away from it. I was a bit relieved that we ran out of time to go walk down in and around it, though Angela said that during the day we would be fine. But I'm not sure my heart would.

Back down the ripped-up road, onto the main road again, and over to the NakuMatt shopping center again. I was able to get some new batteries for my camera (it ran out at the top of Mt. Mulli - I was horrified!) and we all sat down for dinner at Kava Mediterranean Restaurant. After eating small, light meals all week I pigged out, but my stomach had shrunk so I wasn't able to finish my normal "April-sized" portion. I felt a little guilty not finishing my meal after seeing what I had just seen.

My head is swimming as I lay here in bed, trying to process it all. I can hardly believe that tonight is my last night in Kenya. I am going to miss my roommate, Jennifer. She's so funny and I enjoy her company so much. :o)