Houseguests

We have spent the last part of March and the beginning of April alternating between having houseguests and being houseguests! A few weeks ago, Tito’s mother passed away (see newsletter) and his family members came from all over the country (and even his brother came from the US). Some of them stayed a few days, some a week, and Tito’s youngest brother, Shakespeare (goes by “Speare”) and his family stayed at the house here for about 3 weeks. It was actually really fun to have them here – they are about our age, and they normally live in Nairobi so we were able to communicate easily and probably had more in common with them than we do with folks in Ribe. Speare and his wife Kate have a daughter Betty, who just turned 3, and she provided constant entertainment with her singing, dancing, and favorite game “atanishika!” (“you can’t catch me!”).





One weekend while everyone was at our house we escaped for a bit to visit our missionary friends Josh and Maggie and their young boys. It was Maggie’s birthday, so the four adults went out to SUSHI (wow! first time having sushi since we’ve been here!) and then hung out the rest of the weekend at their house. We played a lot of Settlers of Catan and along with their oldest son Matthew (who’s almost 4, I think?) made a birthday cake for Maggie. You can see Matthew and Caleb loved the chocolate cake! :-)







The next weekend was Easter, and in order to make the trip to church more relaxing we stayed overnight with another missionary couple, the head pastor of the church. If we haven’t mentioned it here, it takes about 2 hours to get to church, so we like to stay overnight either before or after so we can maximize the time we have in the area to do grocery shopping, errands, etc. Easter itself was very relaxing – Chris and I went out to lunch, then spent the afternoon swimming and reading by the pool. The next day we headed to town for a variety of errands and had a fairly successful but hectic day.

Kate, Speare, and Betty just left to go back to Nairobi, but we are getting ready to have another houseguest in Ribe … my best friend Katie!! Her trip was planned rather last-minute when she found a cheap flight and realized she would have a couple weeks free between her med school classes and graduation. I think it’s been a little crazy for her to get travel arrangements, shots, and pack within the last few days, but I hope it’s all worth it! She’ll be volunteering at a local hospital for a week and then spending the rest of the time hanging out with us and seeing a bit of the country.