TRY something new

Thinking about this blog today I recognized how long it's been since I updated anything here. My problem is I keep waiting for moments of inspiration and not really coming up with anything.

I recognize that the main purpose of this blog should be to keep friends and family up to date on my life here in Africa. So I am proposing (to myself) a new philosophy. Rather than just writing about the rare random story I should start going for a post a week. We'll see if I can be faithful and pull this off, but I thought I should at least try for it. So each week I will look to the week ahead, where I'll be, what hope to accomplish, and any interesting events coming up. I also hope to look back and make note of the previous week, where I was and what I accomplished. Hopefully this new blogging perspective will bring about some interesting stories as well.

So to begin...

I feel like this time I really should jump back and mention the time i was recently able to spend with my cousins Tiffany and Samuel Thaler and our friend Mark Schieffla. Tiffany had been in Kenya since September 2008 as a volunteer working in Physical Therapy in Nairobi. Mark and Samuel came for about 2 weeks to visit. Actually no account of our time is complete with out my going back about 2 weeks now to Tiffany and Samuel meeting me in Kampala, Uganda. They took the 12-14 hour bus ride over to meet me and we all went white water rafting together on the Nile.

After rafting we returned to Nairobi by bus and met up with Mark. We all spent 2 days in Nairobi seeing places where Tiffany worked, visiting the baby elephants and the Giraffes near the national park and shopping. During this time we rented a vehicle and because I was the only one with a license it fell to me to be the driver! So I had my first experience driving in Nairobi, and with the exception of a few wrong turns it went pretty well.

Moving on from Nairobi we spent a few days in Maasai Land first at a mission station there and then in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve. At the Olderkesi Mission station we were privelaged to visit an actual Maasai village (not the touristy ones you find near the park) and were also treated to a night game drive using the spot light to try and find animals in the darkness.

After Maasai we returned to Nairobi for a night and last Friday (June 12) I said good-bye to the three of them and made my way to Tenwek Hospital. They were to fly out later that night.

I've been here at Tenwek for a week now mostly beginning to research my next video project. Tenwek Hospital is celebrating 50 years since the first full time doctor, Dr. Ernie Steury, came. My coworker, John Makibior, and I have been tasked to assemble a video that tells the story of Tenwek's early days and how far it's come since then. I am very excited about this project, but it is no small task. On Tuesday we had a meeting with the hospitals Executive Officer, Mr. Geoffery Langat, to discuss plans for the project. It was reassuring to see that he was looking for similar things to what we were thinking of.

On Wednesday morning Mr. Langat asked us to join the celebrations planning committee and present our thoughts to them. This meeting also went quite well.

I have spent the days since continuing to research and beginning an outline.

So what's in store for next week?

Today (Friday) I'm heading to Nairobi to hang out for the weekend and do some business at the beginning of next week. My work permit has been approved so I need to go and finalize that and apply for alien registration and a multiple entry permit so I don't have to pay every time I come into Kenya. I also plan to try and look for a slide scanner for AGC Media that we can use for this Tenwek project and for digitizing the large slide library at the office.

Until next week, God Bless.