Today I learned where the baby wipes are in the supermarket…out of necessity. For the last eight days I have been babysitting three children, although only one of them is probably a baby by definition (under two years of age). The other two boys are six and nine years old. Denton, Fraser and Fiona. Days have been full. On top of juggling work, I have been getting kids dressed for school, making breakfasts, driving them to school, picking them up to take them to music lessons, picking them up from school, doing homework with them, making sure they eat all their dinner, settling for one shower every other day, brushing teeth, pajamas, the whole bit. I did enjoy it though. They are great kids! And of course there have been many highlights…telling stories by a campfire, figuring the best way for them to learn would be by experience as to why too many s’mores aren’t healthy, sleeping in a tent, being told that I had to put on Arabic music for the drive to school, chasing real monkeys in the backyard, laughing at our own inside jokes, playing legos.

Before the week began, I wondered how this would turn out. Well, the week flew by, the house isn’t torn apart and I’m not worn out. But I have a very large and renewed respect for parents! And I realize that I am very independent, because for the last week I have been living most of the day to make sure that these kids’ needs are met…until 8pm comes around and I can do something that I want to do. But then I’m too tired, so I end up in bed by 9:30 or 10 anyway. Hmm, it’s getting to be about that time now…

Tomorrow morning I drop them off at school one last time, and then I head to the airport and board an airplane…

…for Zanzibar!

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This is really random, but I looked up from my computer screen just now and had to take a picture of my jasmine plant that sits on my desk. The light was good.

And by the way, out of curiosity I had measured one of the stems before I left work on Friday, then measured it again when I came in today. It had grown 6.3 cm! That’s pretty fast, mind you…like an inch a day!

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On Saturday, Barak and I ascented Mount Longonot (click on this link and select “satellite” view). It is a dormant, stratovolcano (a conical volcano that is made of many layers of hardened lava) that overlooks Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley, northwest of Nairobi.

We woke up to rain, but decided to make the drive out anyway. I’m glad we did! It was cloudy the entire day, which made the weather perfect to hike in, although we were not offered great views of the crater or the surrounding Rift.

Here is our gps track (the yellow line), rendered in Google Earth:

From the base to the rim is an easy 60-minute ascent. There are a couple places that may be considered a class 2, and barely a class 3 scramble. The trail was full of secondary students from several schools in Nairobi. It’s good to see Kenyans out enjoying their environment, but when I’m on a mountain, I prefer not to have crowds of yelling children. Once we reached the rim, we decided to run the circumference, which took another two hours…and allowed us to escape the crowds. At one point we attempted to descend into the crater. However, it had been raining for the last three days, and the steep side of the crater lended itself well to landslides. So after 30 meters of descending and watching uncomfortable amounts of loose earth give way beneath our hands and feet, we thought better and continued on the rim instead. This picture is just inside the crater:

Photo courtesy of Barak.

On the north side of the main rim is another smaller crater that protrudes from its side. It is a beautiful view looking out over it:

Start of hike = 2,152 meters (just over 7,000 feet)
Highest point on rim of crater = 2,776 meters (9,108 feet), although I measured it at 2,772 meters (9,092 feet).
If you have Google Earth you can download the track of our hike here.

Photo courtesy of Barak.

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