Easter Sunday

Happy belated Easter everyone! We have enjoyed our first holiday in a different country. I began my day with rounding in the hospital as usual. And as always, pediatrics is my favorite ward :) The children are getting used to this strange mzungu (white person) who sometimes comes to listen to their lungs and sometimes comes to paint on the walls (and always squeezes their chubby cheeks).
After Hubert and I finished rounding we all went to church, where the sermon was in English, much to our relief. The hymns are still in Swahili though, which I kind of like. I've gotten a Swahili songbook so I can at least move my lips generally in the right direction :)
After church we went to visit our friend Alex, who lives on the mountain behind us. When he said he lives at the top.....he wasn't kidding. It was a rather grueling hike in a skirt ( I didn't want to take off my new Easter kanga yet), but the view was definitely worth it. We got to meet his wife and daughter who were home visiting that weekend. Since jobs can be very difficult to find here, especially ones that routinely get paid, so it is pretty common for a husband and wife to live in different cities simply because that's where they can find a job. That said, Alex's wife Rhoda, who is also a nurse, works at a government hospital and hasn't gotten paid in 8 months.
As for the Phoebe House, things are still going pretty smoothly. My dad (Stephen Jeter) raised $450 dollars at his school for the house, and they are thrilled. They are currently spending 500 shillings each day to buy water and have it carried in(they are too weak to do it themselves). That adds up to 15,000 shillings a month, which is almost double the cost of rent. So for 8,000 shillings, we are getting a water tank and a gutter system put in so they can use rain water. That will save them so much money! $450 is about 30,000 shillings, so we will be going into Kisumu tomorrow to investigate some small business ideas that the Phoebe house may be able to manage.
Not much else to report. I have a acquired a boyfriend (according to his mother) who is 8 months old and is absolutely adorable. In her patchy English his mom told me that he usually won't interact with any strangers, but he seems to have fallen in love with me. I guess that gives Steven a little competition. Good to keep him on his toes, I suppose :)