what a great week! this is what it looked like:

on monday i worked at the farm with amanda! we weeded and hoed and did all this harvesting stuff, during which i got an extreme sunburn on my neck. cool. however, i learned to make ugali which is a traditional kenyan side dish made of maize flower and water (some of the american volunteers have compared to grits - which i have never had so i don't know). people at the farm said it was good. yay!

tuesday and wednesday consisted of sessions with the sex workers. i continue to have the privilege of working with them and learning about/from them. so thankful for days like these! i forget what happened on thursday, but i want to cut to the chase and talk about friday because it was SO neat.

so another aspect of FAIR is the care and support they provide for the community (apart from the prevention part with the sex workers). to carry out these duties in the community, they have hundreds of volunteer mentors who are trained to do household visits and counseling to check up on the children and families FAIR sponsors. on friday, i got to go with to do these home visits! oh my gosh it was so interesting. we visited ten homes and luckily most of the kids were in school (which is obviously the goal - that they can attend school every day) but a lot of the moms or caretakers were home. we got to meet so many of the families and hear their stories and ahhh i really enjoyed it. there was one point where i got pretty emotional though...like i thought i was going to cry. we went to this one house where there were twelve kids living with one caretaker. the caretaker is HIV positive and still tries to work as a farmer to make a little bit of money for her household. the people we were with classified the shelter as being in bad condition which became more obvious as we walked through the two room home. there was a teeeny mattress on the floor that was probably as thin as two pieces of cardboard and 12 kids slept on it. dear god it was hard to see. stuff like this makes me feel so spoiled (in america and nakuru). it sucks but this is what so many people in this gorgeous country deal with on the daily. wow. no matter how hard it is to see, it's important to see how hard it is for some of these families.

we didn't take any field trips this past weekend because this friday we are going to mombasa! yes, i realize this highlights my bratty-ness after what i saw on household visits, embarrassing ugh. but i'm really excited for the trip because if you ask anyone in kenya where you need to visit, EVERYONE says mombasa! it's one of the most southern parts and on the coast and everyone says it's crazy hot there. yay i'm excited to bake on the beach and see a totally different part of kenya! also, we're taking a train there! i've never ridden a train! woohoo! so i'm sure i will have lots to report about this adventure in the near future.

i hope everyone is doing really well! thanks for reading!