Things that probably wouldn’t happen in the United States:

• A friend is buying a car and is having it delivered to his home. The car does not arrive when promised: he finds out it was damaged when it ran into a giraffe.
• Some Kenyans are talking to a medical doctor from the States. They ask him about his wife, and he informs them he is single. They are shocked by this; since he is a young man, he asks why. The response is `Your bottom is too big for a single man.’
• I am walking through a craft fair and a guard hands me a brochure for the event. Since this is the third time the same guard has tried to give me the same brochure, I hold up the brochure and tell him: `You already gave me one!’ He smiles at me and says `Sorry, it is because you are white. You all look alike to me.’ This is the third time a Kenyan has told me this
• We buy our eggs from a gentleman who goes door to door delivering them. They are good and fresh, but they are very brown. How do you dye a brown Easter egg?
• We didn’t hide the eggs the night before because we didn’t want the baboons to get them.

The kids arrive tomorrow. Last term, I completely reconfigured all the computers, cleaned them, added new programs, a new operating system and felt ready to go.

The principal, a kindly gentle man, told me that I had forgotten something. I asked him what. He said: `Change the bulletin board.’ So I put together a bulletin board.

This term he said ` Thanks for changing the bulletin board last term. However, a black and white advertisement from Arthur Anderson culled from the Wall Street Journal on e-commerce is probably not appropriate for first grade kids.’

Have you ever created a bulletin board? I had not until yesterday, and I confess I use to mock when I heard that teachers would take COURSES in bulletin board creation. Now I wish I could take one. I found some magazines from 1991 that I could tear up and tried to put something together, but I am afraid that it is having an unintentional effect: it makes the other teachers feel good about themselves. One teacher came in, looked at it, and started laughing and said `I thought I was weak. Thanks!’

We went to the waterfalls yesterday. The last time I went, I stopped at the first waterfall and stayed with kids who didn’t want to go higher because 1 someone needed to stay with them and 2 I was not able to continue.

I went to the top yesterday. I climbed as high as you could climb without equipment. And I didn’t get wiped out doing it. I was tired, but it was a good tired, not a the end is near tired.

And it struck me how many faces redemption has. I came to Africa depressed over weight and out of shape. As we celebrate Easter and the miracle of the second chance, I think of myself on top of that large hill and think: I would not have chosen this path and I am so grateful to be on it.

YP