T-Shirts Anyone?

Our bank, Yehu Microfinance has made some shirts for their annual meeting with all of their clients and employees (all 12,000 of them!) and they have some extra. We thought we would check if anyone would like to have a t-shirt from Kenya! They are selling them for 350 Ksh which is about $5.40. We can just pay them shillings here and you can pay dollars when you get it – don’t worry we don’t charge interest for the buy now, pay later option! They only made them in L and XL – the L fits Justin and is big for me, but could be a good workout or pajama shirt. This is not meant to be a sales pitch at all so don’t feel pressured in any way. It's only if you want one - we just thought we’d throw it out there! Just send us an e-mail or post a comment sometime in the next week or so and we will bring one home for you on April 20th.

Meet Gerald from the Accounting Dept.

Yehu Microfinance Trust

In an accounting class at BYU Justin was introduced to this new form of banking called microfinance. Mohammed Yunus, the father of microfinance started this system of giving small loans to groups of women to start businesses in India…and it worked. Women were becoming self-sufficient, successful business owners and bringing themselves and their families out of poverty for good. After a single lecture on the subject Justin was so excited about it that on the way home we didn’t even get inside the house before he had told me all about it. This was something he wanted to be a part of and it didn’t take long to convince me. We found Yehu through the BYU Center for Economic Self-Reliance which had several internship opportunities. This internship caught his eye because of how impressed he had been with the African people he met while on his mission in Spain. We spent a lot of time thinking and praying about coming here. We met with the internship contact in Utah and learned a little bit more about Yehu. Yehu Microfinance was started in 1999 as a small branch of a larger organization called Choice Humanitarian. The branch slowly grew as it found some success in the micro lending industry. Louis Pope, owner of U.S. Synthetic in Orem, Utah took on the project and helped Yehu become independent of Choice Humanitarian. The bank is now run by a native Kenyan CEO and all employees are Kenyans (with the exception of a few interns). Yehu has over 50 employees and over 12,000 clients. The bank desires to grow into a much larger entity and serve all of Kenya whereas now they have been able to reach clients in an area with a radius of about 40 miles. Yehu follows the Grameen Bank principles loaning mainly to groups of women and requiring weekly meetings and payments. We have enjoyed getting a closer look at this amazing industry that is taking off all over the world and is making a real difference. (More information about microfinance can be found on the world wide web – have fun) Yehu is having their annual general meeting next month and we are very excited to attend it. All of the clients and employees are invited. Reports about the company’s progress and plans for the future will be given. There will also be native music and dancing of various tribes that will be represented.

The gate to our office building.

Just inside the gate. The building is shared by Yehu and Choice Humanitarian.

Some paperwork. Many of the clients are illiterate and so they do the best they can with paperwork.

Mzuri Safari

Swahili for Good Journey. We had a great time on our journey. We started early Wednesday morning when John, our driver and tour guide, picked us up at our apartment. Our first destination was Tsavo East National Park. There we were greeted by a man selling safari hats at the entrance gate. He was a bit pushy but not too bad. We didn’t buy safari hats. We were, however, in for much more ferocious sales people at all of the other gates. We entered and exited National Parks a total of six times, and each time our van was swarmed with people selling carvings, and beaded necklaces, and all kinds of things. We did buy a small spear from one of them. It started at 1,000 Ksh and was finally sold for 200. Then the same man came back telling us we needed another one in our collection for just 150.

They may not be able to read, but they know numbers...even backwards. Our salesman was writing on the dirty window!

After Tsavo East we drove to Amboseli National Park and then Tsavo West. At each of the parks we stayed at very nice lodges. The temperature was nice and cool as we were quite a distance from the coast. It was so great to be not sweating all day long!! We were even able to take cool refreshing swims at lunch time. The food was great at the lodges; we always had a great buffet to choose from and very nice dining areas. The wildlife was always close to us even at the lodges. In fact our first morning a baboon opened the door to the dining room, jumped onto a table, stole some food from a woman’s plate (who was not absent form her setting) and ran back outside. Two of our lodges had watering holes near the dining area so we could see the animals as we were eating and at Amboseli National Park we had a great view of the snow-capped peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It is often covered by clouds but we were lucky enough to get a peek as we left in the morning.

The view from our room in Tsavo East - Voi Safari Lodge at sunrise.

A big, clean bed! Amboseli Serena Lodge in Amboseli National Park.

Home Sweet Home! Kilaguni Serena Lodge had the best flushing toilet in Kenya!

We started our game drives off on the right foot. About 2 minutes into the first park we saw a big herd of elephants, several giraffes, and then just down the road was a family of three lions laying under a bush right next to the road. They had just feasted on some animal a bit lower on the food chain and they were just lying around being the kings of the jungle. It was very cool to be so close to them and so many other animals in their natural environment. We learned a lot from our tour guide and had a great time getting away from work. We really enjoyed our little vacation.

The Militelly Style! A full King of the Jungle. This "little one" is 3-4 months old.

The lions are already full, so we are safe! John, the greatest guide in Kenya!

So here is the list of animals we saw in (rough) order of appearance (just skip to the next paragraph when you get bored):
Reticulated giraffe (red), kongoni (hartebeest – a deer like animal), red elephant, Somali ostrich, lion, warthog, African wood owl, white bellied buzzard, corrie buzzard, hippo, common zebra, African buffalo, secretary bird, great spotted eagle, long crested eagle, lilac breasted roller bird, difesa (water buck), cheetah, dikdik (a tiny little deer – like as big as a house cat), mongoose, baboons, silver backed jackal, spotted hyena, crowned plover (bird), guinea fowl, wildebeest, vervet mokey, gazelle, impala, Egyptian geese, superb starling bird, Malibu stork, maasai giraffe (black), eurasain roller bird, yellow neck spar fowl, blacksmith plover (bird), crocodile, and some fish.

Hippos & Gazelle in Tsavo East. Our favorite tree - the umbrella acacia.

Mt. Kilimanjaro. A cheetah enjoying the rain. In Kenya there are Zebras at the end of the rainbow!

Our safari was four days and three nights. On the fourth day we made our journey home and it was good to be back in a familiar place. Of course you know already know about my getting sick and our visit to the hospital and all that. Here I am still sick and Emily is making me write all kinds of blogs before I can go to bed!! She’s harsh, but fair.

The Malaria Test Is...

Negative! He has a viremia (aka a virus). We were sitting at lunch in a beautiful lodge after a kind of long morning of the bumpiest road I’ve ever been on traveling from Amboseli National Park to Tsavo West National Park and Justin said, “I don’t want to scare you, but I think I have the flu.” Good way to start the statement, huh? We knew malaria started with flu-like symptoms and then can lead to complications, sometimes life long. So I was scared. We asked the reception if they had any cold and flu medicine and they sent the resident clinician to our room. She told us we should not take the doxycycline (our anti-malarial) anymore (not true) and gave Justin some Panadol (a paracetamol – Emily Beth what is that??) to help with the symptoms and advised us to go to the hospital as soon as possible for a malaria test. Luckily, it was day 3 of our 4 day safari so we took it easy the rest of the time and drove home the next morning. Our awesome guide took us to Mombasa Hospital and waited with us to see a doctor. Our doctor was a very small, kind of young Indian named Dr. Odongo and he was awesome! Except when he learned we were here for 2 months from the US he assumed we were doctors and started talking to us like that - flattering, but not helpful! So once we cleared that up, he very completely explained the complications that could come from malaria, said he didn’t think Justin had it and advised a blood test to make sure. I sheepishly had to ask if Justin would get AIDS from the blood test and the good doctor assured me that because this is a private hospital they open all new things for each test. He did mention that could be a risk in government hospitals where they are recycling things because of lack of funding. So when the test came back negative we all felt much better. Justin’s lymphocytes (??) were high and something else was low which meant his body was fighting something but it wasn’t malaria! Dr. Odongo told us to keep taking the doxycycline (we thought so) and because it is a broad spectrum antibiotic anyway he didn’t need to prescribe anything else. While this was an experience we were hoping NOT to have, since the outcome was okay it was kind of fun for me having worked and studied in the health field to see the system in a developing country.

An interesting note: from my experience in the US, I would guess that seeing the Doc would be a little over $100, the test itself would be about the same, and we would also pay the lab, again, about the same. Our bill without insurance would come to somewhere around $300, but that could be more because it was in a walk-in, private hospital setting. At Mombasa Hospital, as non-residents we were charged double what a resident would pay to see the doctor. The test was an extra charge that was about the same as seeing the doctor. Our total bill was 2390 KSH, about $35.

No Malaria!!!

yes, I shamelessly took pictures, even in the hospital and yes, Justin was very embarassed