Tea, anyone?

...or perhaps a soccer ball?

Today is Wednesday the 23rd.  The day started out refreshingly uncommitted.  After breakfast we gathered laundry and sent it out to be washed.  We had the choice of doing it ourselves or paying 300 KSh per load to provide employment to someone.  That was a good call!  We now have clean clothes again.

While we were waiting for the laundry, I wandered around and bumped into Martha up at the hospital (I was headed to the IT department to find out about getting on the wifi, which you can be very thankful for.)  Martha, having been here before and many years ago too, gave me the nickel tour and explained how things have grown since she was first here.  We also kept an eye out for Amy, who as a nurse, was allowed to shadow today to get this experience.  This hospital is not what you would expect in the US, but it is a great hospital compared to some, as I understand.  Here's a shot we took while looking in the pediatric ward, which wasn't too crowded today.  That's according to Andrew, a doctor here for two months.

After we got the wifi sorted out, Martha and I made our way back to the housing area looking for friends of friends--Joe and Daneen P. asked that I look up two families while I was here, and Martha and I found one of them.  But before we got there, we checked in on the local primary school.  That was very sweet--the kids kept saying hi and wanted to hold our hands over the fence.  What fun!

When we met the first family, it turns out that she is involved in an orphanage ministry here, and she said they could use balls and had none--they'll take them with them when they play with kids, and keep them for future visits.  So Sam and I returned and delivered six balls and two pumps to that family and their orphanage ministry.  

We also introduced ourselves to the other family that D&J mentioned and that was nice, but short.  Lunch time and home for a quick bite I suspected, we kept the "hello" meeting short.  

After lunch, the man named Livingston asked if we had any more balls, and so he got the last one (before we head to Uganda).  He has two grand children, 4 and 6, and was happy to have one.  Thanks again to Jim and family!

We had a fun outing today.  As you might know, in Colorado we have Celestial Seasonings tea factory right down the road, and they specialize in tours of how tea is mixed and packaged. Well, here we got to go to the Tiragaga tea factory, and boy did we learn a lot about the beginning of the tea making process.  

Situated in the middle of the independent tea farms, this "co-op" owned tea factory produces 24 million kilos/year of tea.  It was built in 2007 as an expansion of it's parent plant, and they will expand again soon.  Tea made here is prepared and shipped to Mombasa, Kenya, for auction to global tea buyers.

Tea is unloaded from the picker bags.  Only the top two leaves and the bud are picked.  The tea tree could grow large enough to use it for construction, we were told.

Tea is dried for 12 hours.

Tea is fermented in 2 hours.  This line wasn't running, so we could approach the machinery.

Tea is cut.

Tea is dried in 20 minutes.

Then seperated.

Then packaged and shipped.

Then you drink it.  We talked with Nancy and Wesley and asked how they became managers here.  

Mike met with 11 students about to conclude the semester at the chaplain trainins school run by Dr. David Kilel, mentioned earlier.  

A great dinner prepared by Livingston, and we learned how Amy's day in the OB went (just a c-section with language barriers, among other amazing experiences), and how Hazel's day went working with women just released from the prison near Kisumu.  She said they want her to come back ASAP.  

Mike taught another installment of his series in the evening session. 

Jeff was able to get in a good rest after yesterday's experience at the prison.

I'm unclear on what we're doing tomorrow, but that doesn't matter.  We'll be ready for anything!  We just know to show up at 7 for breakfast, then go where we go.