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Dear friends,

Tuesday morning, a new day and lot’s of new experiences!

Today, we tried to show our “Art” side and by “our” we definitely mean “Alex” as Agnes’ Elephants look like Zebras.

Well, this is what we did today:

Alex painting and surrounded by curious kids...

We (meaning Alex) also started to paint a school sign to put up at the new fence. It’s not finalized yet, picture will follow once finished.

We also reinforced our school fence by adding additional polls in-between the existing once. Now you can’t sneak through the wires anymore. We got half way round.

Stronger fence

One of the teacher’s (the only male one) is in love with Alex. Rebecca, do you mind a chocolate baby? :) “I really missed you over the weekend” is just one of the nice comments Alex got today. Quite funny (for Agnes at least…). But don’t worry Rebecca, applications need to go through Agnes and the criteria are tough! :)

Some other “successes” of today:

• Some of the materials to build the toilets got delivered to the school (e.g., bricks and sand)
• Water access has been paid for and application letter filled out (not sure what next steps are, probably some hand shaking and visitor books)
• Additional polls to finalize reinforcement of fence got delivered to school
• Temporary school gate (with wire and polls) built

Delivery of new polls

Below just a small list of what we miss:

• Flushed toilets (no, you simply don’t get used to the smell)
• Chicken Burger (Alex) and Spaghetti Bolognese (Agnes)
• Running around without being looked at (and EVERYONE just seems to want to shake our hands, calling us Mizungo (white person) and asking “how are you”? Latter we hear about every 10 seconds while walking around…)
• Bicycle (Agnes) and trams (Alex)
• Fixed prices (no bargaining and no extra prize just because we are white)
• Showered neighbors, roommates, friends and colleagues (it seems to be our destiny to have one of these not-so-well-smelling-people sitting next to us every time we use one of the overcrowded Matatus)
• Sparkling water (or at least clean drinking water when opening the tab)
• News (hey folks, what’s going on on planet earth? We are totally lost…)

And to be fair: A list of what we will miss once leaving Kimilili

• 250 pairs of big brown smiley eyes
• The big support from back home, cheering us up when dealing with African challenges. Nothing left to say to our 300 daily followers other than:

Please don't look at the feet...

• Sun, sun, sun (had one rainfall so far that lasted for about 20 minutes)
• Freshly prepared fruit juice and fruit salad:

Soooo gooooood!

• “Mizungo”, “how are you?” and hand shaking. Let’s be fair, it’s somehow makes us feel very welcomed by the Kenyans…
• The buying power of 1 Euro…
• Chicken, cows and donkeys running around on the street. Just makes the street so “lively”
• Constant electricity and internet access

A big hug to all of you!

Alex & Agnes