Wednesday morning

Wednesday I had an interesting drive to school. Things were pretty normal until we got near school. There was a lot of traffic and a lot of people, but there always are so I didn’t think much about it. In hindsight I realize that it was much busier than usual. We crawled round the corner onto the road where the school is when I started to see lots of men running down the hill waving huge branches. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but there was nothing I could do because I was stuck in a traffic jam. Within a few seconds, chaos descended. The men with branches arrived in front of the car, we were in the front of the queue at the intersection by this time. They were carrying huge branches, tires, large rocks and big pieces of cement. Very quickly, tires, rocks and cement were all being thrown down on the road in front of my car, some to block the road and the others to set fire to. At some point I decided that this was getting dangerous and I should get the car out of there. However, as slight panic over took me, I realized that I could not go forward and there was a car behind me. As I was planning to get the kids out of the car and just run for it, a group of very kind Kenyan men started gesturing to me that they would help me get my car out. They careful showed me how far I could drive forward and back so that I could turn the car around and drive away. I had a friend with me in the car who really helped me keep calm. She said one of the more violent looking men started coming towards the car and one of the guys who was helping us, hit him with a branch to move him away. Not my favorite experience ever, but I really feel like God provided a group of angels to get my car out of there. As I drove past a policemen on the way out I asked him what was going on. He said, “trouble, if you want to save your life get out of here”. We went straight back home, although afterwards I had no memory of the journey. The kids who thought it was all “cool”, suggested it was a protest about trees!! Later we found out what was going on. In the early hours of that morning, the police had shot and killed a man and his 14 year old son, saying that they were robbers. This happened in Kawangare, the slum that is next to the school. The riot was against the police in protest against what the residents claimed to be the killing of an innocent man and his son. The policeman in question has now been arrested and so things are calm again. I drove to school yesterday and this morning and the road is clear and life continues as normal. Oh the joys of living in Nairobi! Anyway thank you to all who pray for our safety, we do need it!

Some photos

Well, things plod on here as normal. We have had Victorian day at school, Roman day, crazy hair day, visits to fire stations and cheese factories. Every week there is something different. It is sometimes hard to keep up with the costumes.

Caleb has managed to hurt his back. Not sure how, but probably doing Caleb type things. Yesterday I took him to the hospital for an x-ray. They will get back to me today with the results. Health care can be fast here. The doctor told me to go and get an x-ray done and it took me just over an hour to drive across town, get the x-ray done and drive home again. It did cost me around £30, no NHS here, but it was fast.

At the weekend we also saw a big monkey in the tree in the garden. The photo shows the monkey watchers, but the monkey was so scared of the dogs it went to the top of a tree where it was hard to get a photo of. Instead there is a photo of a Caleb-spy monkey in a tree!!

News from Kenya

Well it was a busy week last week. Things are pretty tense in Nairobi, since the Kenyan army started fighting in Somalia against a terrorist group who have now threatened to blow up places in Nairobi. Last week there were two grenade attacks in the city centre and embassy's are advising against visiting certain areas in the city. Everywhere security has been tightened, more checks, more security personnel and more security measures. Even from school we have had a few e-mails about the different measures they have put in place. Please pray for this situation, that peace would come to Nairobi and there would be a resolution to the conflict.

On a lighter note, here are a few pictures from daily life. One of the relief pilots was able to deliver a net for our trampoline. Great fun for boys and Transformers! We had a water fight on one of the sunny Sunday afternoons. All the kids against the neighbour's dad.

Last week was sports day for Caleb on Tuesday and the others on Thursday. Caleb was thrilled that his team won. The older kids event is more serious and less fun and I didn't take my camera, so sorry no photos.

Today is Bethany's 9th birthday. We had the party on Saturday with a mixture of girls from school and MAF. Birthday partys are not my favourite thing, but it went well and Bethany was happy, which is the main thing.