Tutaonana!

It's our last day in Nairobi and I'm really sad to leave, for so many reasons. Hence the title; tutaonana means goodbye/we'll see each other again in Kiswahili. One of the reasons I'm sad involves the fact that I'm two and a half weeks away from life in med school in Irvine. It has it's positives, but I'd much rather be here in Kenya talking to kids about how to complete their education and get ahead in life. But God has a plan and I can't be anything less than excited about it, because it always ends up better than I ever could have imagined. And that's the truth.

Anyway, there's so much to write, but the last week has been a whirlwind of paperwork and phone calls and haggling over school fees (yes, haggling, my mom is a genius by God's grace) and tying up loose ends. Running to the bank to make out banker's cheques to pay term fees for the upcoming school term. Converting between kenyan shillings and dollars, and withdrawing from the ATM, which is very stingy with letting us access our own money. We've also met with all the students, and had a real, delicious Sudanese meal at Kwai's house. That was probably one of my favorite things that happened here, actually. To eat traditional Sudanese food with some of the accepted students who we've been working with to sort out all their school and personal information was really nice. We'd been all business before, but this was purely a social event. It was a definite highlight. Even some of the very gracious applicants who weren't accepted came to share the meal, which I appreciated so much.

We are in the process of scanning all the life histories and photos of the students who applied but were not accepted this year, so that we can put them up on a yet-to-be-created website. God willing, the plan is to connect these students with donors other than the ones already involved in Universal Unity, Kiva-style. We'll keep everyone posted as this unfolds; there were a LOT of applicants so it will take a few weeks to sort everything out online.

There's so much to write about and think about, thankfully I have a whole 24 hour journey ahead of me to do all of that :).

More later.