Mountaineering

This week we headed off to Ngong hills. If you have ever seen Out of Africa, there is a famous line in there about them. I haven't seen it, but that is what I was told. I've been trying to go for awhile, but there has always been some reason that we couldn't. The most recent was that our driver went out of town. I found another driver and we set out on Wednesday morning. Ngong is knuckle in Swahili so the name refers to a series of hills.

It was a hot day--perhaps even the hottest we have had since being here (29 degrees).  I don't know how describe it, but the power of the sun just feels stronger here, so 29 degrees is hot.

The hills were beautiful and grueling.

From far off they look like gentle slopes, but some of them were steep! And for some reason, when I climb, I get so breathless. I missed Brent, who always makes us stop while he catches his breath. This time I was the weak link. We didn't walk all 7 hills, but we hiked almost half of the park. At the start there were wind turbines which were quite loud when we were close to them, but the wind in that part was delicious. Elizabeth did a kilometer long zipline there, but Malachi was too scared.

We saw lots of sheep and goats grazing there. After we passed the turbines, it was very quiet. There weren't even any birds singing. On our way back, we passed a man carrying a styrofoam box. Our guide told us he sold ice cream. It was only 50 shillings, so we welcomed a cool treat. The cones were small, like not much bigger than a toonie, but it wasn't bad for 50 bob (as they say here). 

We discovered when we got home, that we all missed some little spots when we had applied sunscreen so we all had random areas of sunburn. For Elizabeth, it was the back of her knees--ouch!.

We also stopped and bought a drink from a family that had some kind of juicer plugged into a power line up there. The juice had sugar cane, beet, turmeric, ginger, lime, and aloe vera. I wasn't sure how it was going to be. The reds wanted just lime and ginger, but she misunderstood, so we all got everything. It was delicious--so gingery and yummy.

Even though it was so hot, her little boy was all bundled up. 

It was the same at church today. It was so hot, the fans were barely on, and the toddler girl we saw was wearing a thick fleece vest and thick, warm, ear warmers. Because it has been so hot, and I have been roasting in my room, I bought a small hand held  electric fan. It is amazing! 

This week the Mathare library boy called and asked us to come do library work on Saturday, so we headed there not really knowing what to expect. When we arrived, he was outside peeling potatoes. He told me he was doing a little business today and he would show me later. Then he took us into the library which was full of kids and left us there to go back to his potato peeling. Ummm, what? So we decided to read some books to them. We held up different books and they chose the one they wanted us to read. Many kids voted for every book. I don't think they understood us. We read one book and then they handed us another. The second book was much longer and I had my doubts about how many were actually understanding it. To liven things up, we decided to play some games. We taught them beat master, which they all loved, and then Simon says. The library is a small room and there were a lot of kids in there with us, so it was hard to do much activity in there.

We took them outside the library and did a few more games. Elizabeth really took charge of leading the games. One that they  really liked was concentration, but Elizabeth does it with a complicated clapping rhythm, so I gave up quickly.

They have such good rhythm, it was fun to watch them play.

After playing with the kids for a while, we got to see what the library boy was making. He made Bhajia, which is a Mathare street food. He had a little fire right outside of the Mathare library which he cooked over. He deep fried the potatoes in a wok. They had some kind of Indian spices on them--I'm guessing turmeric, because they were very orange. We had a little taste--they were yummy. I wish I had taken some pictures.