Our date was great. It’s remarkable how being away for a day can refresh your perspective. It was also the first time I had driven to Nairobi since we had returned to Kenya, and it’s not like driving in Dallas. I dodged mule carts, sheep, matatus driven by escapees from the Asylum for the Criminal Insane, and pot holes that are so deep and so wide you can’t do anything but bid farewell to certain parts of your car as you go through them.

We went to an open-air market to just walk around and see what they were selling, and I had a verifiable I am not making this up exchange:

Me: How much for that?
Vendor: One hundred thousand shillings. (For an item you could buy for fifty shillings)
Me: You must think I’m dumb and rich.
Vendor: I did not think you were rich.

We returned to campus refreshed and eager to see the children. Ben and Katie, after they eat, like to lay on a rug and play with toys for about 45 minutes. We lay them on their backs or sit them up, and put a group of toys between them. Neither is crawling yet, but Katie is a good roller. After she has reached every toy she can from sitting up, she begins to roll to the center of the pile of toys. She grabs one, and rolls back to her side to deposit the toy. Once she has retrieved every toy, she makes a move for whatever Ben has, and then suddenly all the toys are on her side. She doesn’t PLAY with them, mind you; she just likes to have them all. Ben is surprisingly calm about all this, at least at this stage. JT and Matthew are wonderfully amused by it all.

What is the point of having power if you can’t abuse it? I run the computer department for the first through sixth grade, and we just got done installing email capabilities for them in the computer lab. All I can say is: you’ve never been Spammed until a third grader get a hold of your email address. Consider:

• One kid who wrote `Hi! I don’t know you’ to everyone in the A’s of the address book.
• Since we are using old Mac’s, it is pretty easy to do VOCAL emails. One fourth grader got mad at a sixth grade girl and sang `London Bridge’ TWENTY SEVEN TIMES.

Where this became valuable was when I realized it was March, and I still hadn’t seen the Super Bowl. Someone had a copy, but he was being coy about letting me see it. Suddenly, after 100 kids emailed him regarding my unhappiness, I moved to the top of the list.

Remember, I have YOUR address also.

It is the end of term, and we always have a big dorm party. I made perhaps the stupidest announcement in the history of my life to my dorm:

`Friday night the dorm party will commence with a water balloon fight. At that point, you may not address me as `Uncle Steve.’ I will be known as `Mister Toast’ because I will be that dry at the end of the fight.’

The gory details are best left to the imagination. A grand time was had by all but one.

Several of our guys have already left for Madagascar, which is a scary situation right now. There have been lots of strikes and riots, and the airports were shut down for several days. Sending seventh grade boys back to that situation is sobering, but they were so excited to go back home.

We are in the third world. Some reminders are fun: we have had two-foot hornbill birds on our porch this week. And some are your worst nightmare. One of our staff members had been complaining of a kidney stone; the local doctors sent him to the hospital in Nairobi.

The Nairobi hospital gave him a clean bill of health. Since he was still in pain, he was sent back to the States. He is in critical condition and they have removed one of his kidneys. He is a wonderful man with a sweet wife and two beautiful daughters; his name is Jeff Brodie. Please remember him in your prayers.

He was given a clean bill of health a week ago in Africa.

Your pal,

Steve Peifer

P.S. A Kenyan friend asked me to help him purchase a cow. I agreed on the condition that I got to name him. He informed me that Kenyans do not name cows. I asked if it was part of his tradition to borrow money to buy a cow. He asked me `What do you want to name the cow?’ And I thought, why should I get all the fun?

And so, we begin our contest. The best name for the cow will receive an original batik from a local artist, and the thrill of knowing that you have named the FIRST cow in Kijabe. Enter NOW!