Day One: Wowzers

Greetings all!  It's now 9pm, the end of our first day.  I must admit, my head is spinning a little.  This morning we had breakfast here at the lovely guest house, and then went for a little walk to find a bank to exchange money.  We completely blended in... no one noticed 12 white north americans following a small Maasai man.  After that, Kim, Anne, Meghan, Jesse, Clare and I went with Ron and Martha (MCC Kenya's Country Reps) to visit the town of Lari, which is about an hour's drive away.  

We had just driven past a huge market when we noticed the vehicles ahead of us were stopped; then they were backing up, people were jumping out of their vehicles, people were driving across the ditch to the highway on the other side... because this huge mob of people were running down the highway towards us.  So we drove through the ditch to the other side too, and then drove away a little bit to wait it out.  The crowd turned down a different street, so we then turned around and continued on our way.  We're not sure what was going on... perhaps they were chasing a thief.  It was kinda scary... I had all the worst case scenarios running through my head.  But everything was fine, and so we arrived in Lari without further drama.

The Lari Peace Museum team are incredible.  They are addressing the trauma and hurt that has plagued their community and Kenya through workshops, education, and dialogue.  They are starting a project where they are linking youth from across Kenya through a website... this is to help break down all the stereotypes about other tribes/regions that are transferred from generation to generation... so donate a computer to MCC for this project! :)

We leave for Najile tomorrow morning.  We are so excited to go meet the community!  And Joseph can't stop smiling, so I think he's pretty excited to.  And he's guaranteed us a zebra and gazelle viewing tomorrow.  Awesome!

lots of love to everyone!