Merry Christmas and off to the Village

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

I was blessed with three different Christmases here. Christmas Eve I went to Atara'a parents house. They had a small gathering of people from church. Their house was decorated for Christmas so it was nice for it to "feel" like Christmas as I sat next the fire and admired the Christmas tree. Doug and Sue were so kind to have me stay over.

The next morning we attended a short out-door Christmas service put on my the Church. It was strange sitting outside in on a semi sunny day singing Christmas carols. I then went the house of Sandra and Jonathan, a South African couple from church. They had a few people over and we had an AMAZING lunch. Jonathan is an incredible cook.

Then I spent the afternoon enjoying a Kenyan Christmas with Nkita and her family and friends. Probably my favorite part of the day. We had so much food! I went to the market with her on the 23rd and we seriously brought so many vegetables and even a live chicken! (She was actually buying it as a gift for a friend, she already had like 10 frozen chickens in the freezer) I named it Alfred. Side note: So once you buy the chicken you have to transport it home so they tie it's legs and put the thing in a plastic bag, so your carry a live chicken just how you would carrying your other groceries. We put in the backseat of the car with some feed and it was content as could be...too bad it didn't know what was coming. Poor Alfred.
I had to hold a six week baby for like an hour on Christmas and I loved that. My Christmas was busy so that was good, I didn't have much time to think about home although i still did. I was really lucky and blessed with a wonderful Christmas.

I'm catching a ride to Kisumu tomorrow to go live in a village for five weeks. Pretty excited. I leaving earlier than first thought, because I was running into a lot of dead ends with everyone going to their villages it being on leave or it just being Christmas time so many of the people I needed to talk to for my research project are gone and will be gone until Jan. So I decided to copy them and go to the village as well. Instead of sitting around here waiting for people, I'm going to go get settled in the village and start my community life project. Then I'll come back to Nairobi the end of Jan. and have a month to finish everything before home.