So far so good on the job front. This past week was a lot of planning for the upcoming year. From what I have heard from some friends, people around town are pretty excited about me working at the organization, which makes me feel good. I still feel really confident about the work we are doing and I think I’ll be able to help a lot of it get done.It has just been a difficult transition to adjust to the work atmosphere here. Things that are so important at the work place in the US like efficiency, effectiveness, timeliness, productivity.... none of these exist here. There is a lot of sitting around, a lot of talking/gossiping and not a lot of actual DOING. This will take some time to get used to and things will still get done, just not as quickly as I would like or am used to.

My sister left last week so for the past few days I have had no family members here with me… first time in a month. It is still hot here every day. Three days ago it rained for the first time in literally two months. It was starting to get horrible. It was just so dusty and dry everywhere, but it’s rained a little in the past few days so it’s a little better.

The inauguration was pretty exciting here. Even though it wasn’t declared an official holiday like election day, people pretty much stopped working around 1 pm and celebrated the rest of the day and night. It was quite the event. There was a big get-together in town here in Kisumu with music blasting all day. There is a popular reggae song here with a chorus that just repeats “Ba-rack O-bama, Ba-rack O-bama.” We heard that song all day long…