Welcome Kate!

Kate has arrived! It's so good to see her, but the poor girl is absolutely exhausted, and drained after 3 flights, and 24 hours of traveling from London. I realized today when she arrived what a different reality I am living in, how different "normal" has become for me. I wrote her just the other day telling her not to worry about anything, that I'd be at the airport to pick her up, and that I had a great place for us to stay. Patrick and Jon's home where I have been staying is a one-room apartment, no bigger than 300 square feet. It's located on the 2nd floor of a mechanic shop in an industrial part of town. Junk cars clog the streets, men covered in grease and oil pour from every shop, and the roads are little more than puddles of mud and piles of dirt. In the US, no one would ever live in such a place, but here in Kenya, in Africa, it's normal. There is a single toilet and shower for the 4 families that live here. Food is cooked and clothes are washed in the central common area. Kate was shocked, anxious, and concerned, and it never even crossed my mind that for someone arriving in Africa for the first time, straight from the realities of life in the US, that this would be a little intimidating. A squat toilet that doesn't flush, sleeping in a small, hot, stuffy room with 2 strangers, and all in a part of town that to an unaccustomed eye looks shady and dangerous. I guess splurging for a hotel room for her first night would have eased the transition a bit. Sorry Kate! Welcome to Africa!