Truely eating us out of house and home

Among the things that appear to be out of sync with my universe here is what they commonly call 'food' hereabouts. If you were to venture out of the compound and roam around the countryside, one of the things that you'd find is that the Africans in this part of the world primarily subsist on three main things; Ugali, (which we have discovered in past blogs to be some kind of unkind joke played on the residents here) Sukumawiki, (chopped up and cooked some kind of green stuff like chard or skunk cabbage...) and Githari (mostly semi-cooked beans and maize, somewhat like a moist Purina Dog Chow). Everyday, mostly the same thing. But here at Instep, the kids get much more variety....some even edible. At least every evening, the dinner is different day by day, repeating every 7 days. Like on Mondays, they get something like spagetti with meat in it with toasted bread or maybe something much like a taco..well sort of. Tues, millet and rice, Wed, deep fried potatos and sausage....well, it COULD be construde as sausage, I suppose. So you get the idea. Though often indecernable, the nutrition is balanced with the right amount of carbs, protein and vitamins, etc. Tonight was the Wed meal and thru a chain of circumstances such as new cooks, and lack of a Jeff, we forgot to get the sausage to give the cooks. Nancy, (new head cook...21 years old...) almost paniced, but we all got creative and dinner worked out just fine....the kids didn't even know they were being starved to death. It kinda works like that here....we worry.....God makes it work out fine. BTW, Nancy is a real keeper.

I heard in passing the other day, "JAMES, quit eating the bricks!!!" Seems he likes them....but then he's an ugali trained kid. I have been wondering why the kitchen is taking so many bricks.

We actually have a guy who can weld working on the shelving in the storeroom. He doesn't speak anything except swahili and I don't speak anything but jibberish....pretty interesting conversations...but we both speak construction. By the end of today, we should have the storeroom restocked....hoping to excavate Carla's kitchen....we might find some of the kids we have been missing. Plastering the new and old kitchen start today as well....making James lunch disappear behind a nice smooth wall.

Have I mentioned that BethAnn is doing a super job with the 4 yr olds....not an easy thing.