Spaghetti for 120...

 Chef Mary helping Elizabeth stir the spaghetti sauce.

 Elizabeth serving spaghetti

 Lauren cooking spaghetti

 Caleb delivering a "prize" egg to Caroline

The Easter egg hunt!

The Piki Piki Gang

The last couple of days have been wonderful. Sunday we spent the morning cooking spaghetti for all of the kids at the LCC, the staff, and a number of guests. Cooking over firewood was a new experience and quite a challenge, but it all came together perfectly and the food was ready right on time. We had two of the little girls (Mary and Belinda) in the kitchen helping us break 30 pounds of spaghetti into small pieces. We used 20 pounds of ground beef, 30 tomatoes, 20 green peppers, 20 onions, and 20 zucchini in addition to 8 gallons of tomato sauce.  I learned that when you're cooking for 120, you just dump the entire jar of spices into the pot instead of bothering to measure! The kids loved spaghetti. We had also brought bread to go with the spaghetti and they wanted peanut butter on the bread (ugh - spaghetti and peanut butter??) since they get it so rarely. We also bought chocolate bars as an extra treat. We shared a great meal together. Mama Joan and her family joined us and Geoffrey came from Nakuru (about 2 hours away) on a matatu (public transport) to spend the day with us. He was our guard in 2009 and we have continued to stay in touch with him and his family.

We wanted to give them a unique American experience so we brought  lots of plastic eggs and spent one evening wrapping small gifts (candy and toys) and ended up with almost 600 gifts. That meant that every child was able to find 10 gifts. We included four "prizes" that included a note that led the child to one of us, and we each had giant bags filled with stuffed animals, toys, and snacks. They had never seen anything like it - afterward a boy said to me "Kate, I have all of the sweets, what do I do with them?" and I told him to put them in his pocket or on his bed. He said "you mean they're mine?" It was a really sweet experience.

All of the kids were wearing their new shoes yesterday and it reminded me of a story my friend Rachel told me. She said that someone had recently asked her why shoes were so important to a child in Africa, and she said that shoes instantly give a person "class." She's a teacher and principal and she said that when a child receives a pair of shoes his/her test scores will go up immediately because they have a new sense of confidence (over being barefooted). It was such a moving story. The other part of our Mississippi team asked the kids if they could buy anything in the world, what would it be, and 70% answered, "shoes." They're that important here. Tomorrow, we're taking the six Kenyan high schools that live here in the house with us to Bata to buy them shoes. We're also giving the moms and other staff at the orphanage Bata gift certificates so they can pick out their own shoes. I've never realized how important something like shoes could be.

Today has been a wonderful day of rest spent mostly at our house. This morning, we had tea at Pat Dixson's house (from the feeding program for the elderly). We enjoyed a nice visit with her and then had a tour of her beautiful gardens. We stopped at Tigoni Store on our way home and had the excellent adventure of taking a piki piki (motorbike) home from there. It was hilarious to see the four of us behind Kenyan drivers on little motorbikes and was actually a very fun form of transportation. They can be dangerous in traffic or with inexperienced drivers, but our guide made sure we had good drivers and we really only went up our very long driveway which was deserted, so it was safe. After the piki piki drive, we spent the afternoon cooking with Mama Joan. She taught us how to make chapati (Kenyan flatbread), and we baked up a storm. Tonight we're having potato soup, chapati, and cheese biscuits for dinner with brownies and banana bread for dessert! We made enough to feed a small army so we've invited several Kenyan friends to join us.

Tomorrow we have a full day of projects/activities and then we leave for safari on Wednesday. The trip is winding down, and I'm already getting sad to leave. It's hard to have such strong friendships and relationships with people who live on the other side of the world.