Starts with W, Rhymes with Late, Ends with “ing”

This week we’ve done a lot of waiting. Since Monday, we’ve been waiting for running water. Every day a new expert comes and tells us on high authority that the water will come that evening. It’s now Friday morning and we’re still waiting. I guess we’ve been a little spoiled this year as going one week without running water has been really difficult. We constantly have to remind ourselves that last year we were able to go six weeks without it.

Having to wait for the water has been nothing in comparison to the anxiousness we’ve felt waiting for our books to arrive. The books were scheduled to arrive in the Mombasa port on the 27^th of September, but after almost two weeks, they’re still on the freight waiting to dock. Apparently there’s been an error in the system involving a “manifest number” and some other things that we don’t really understand. Waiting for the books has taken on a whole new meaning of the word waiting; waiting for the freight coordinator to call, waiting for the government to issue a manifest number, waiting to find out how much everything will cost, waiting to schedule our time around when the books will arrive. Although it’s been a little frustrating, we’re not worried because we know that everything will work out in the end.

Another thing we’ve been waiting for since we got here is the news of a new manager arriving at the rescue center. The rescue center is transitioning into new management, which means that we can’t start our project there until the transition is over. Luckily, the staff knows about our project and are all very excited about it. In the meantime, we’re going to do another library project in a slum near Nairobi. After some consideration, we realized that the donated books are enough to not only create a library at the rescue center, but to create three; one at the rescue center, one at the Malia children’s home, and one in a Buru Buru slum. We’re really excited about the project in Buru Buru because the community was already interested in creating a resource center and had even designated a space for it, they just needed the books.We’ll be working on this project with the help of the friends who introduced us to the community. Next week we’ll start getting to know the kids there, setting up bookshelves, and, if the books have arrived, installing the library. But for now we’ll just go back to what we do best, waiting.