margaret nicole blevins

Monday, a week ago, we met our half way point for our time in Kenya! We are now speeding towards the halfway mark for our entire trip. We have continued to be productive even on "Africa time".

[Africans say,  "Americans have the watches, and Africans have the time.]

 We visited two more schools this past week. When we pulled into the schoolyard the children came racing from every corner to see the Mzungu. (white man).

[All day. everyday. children. and adults. yell MZUNGUS! MZUNGUS!! as we go by.]

Phoebe and I huddled against the car, as several hundred children raced towards us, like waves of ants coming over a hill. It is actually pretty terrifying, no matter how adorable they are. We gave our talk on clean water, 10 steps to washing your hands, and the importance of wearing shoes, to the students at both schools.

[Charles, who cheers us on, said both times we did a wonderful job, and that we are natural teachers. We no longer doubt that our little cheerleader is terribly biased.]

All of the students were very attentive, even though they still giggle when we speak, and they asked very thoughtful questions. However, we knew it was time to end our talk when they started asking about acid rain and if you can boil poison out of your water.

[Children are the same everywhere.]

In addition to the students, Daddy had a successful meeting with a group of parents and community leaders. He also demonstrated to the teachers how to use liquid bleach to make a chlorine mother solution to clean the schools drinking water.

[Phoebe and I gave the chlorine demonstration at the last meeting, where I very gracefully let the water overflow out of the bottle. Luckily one of the members of the YEC (youth empowerment group) came to our rescue finishing the demonstration in Swahili, which was probably for the best, since I am fairly certain the teacher wasn’t understanding our English anyway.]

We enjoyed all of our visits to the local schools and feel very encouraged and hopeful for our test schools to be able to clean their water, using the chlorine solution.