Written on August 25, 2011
So if anyone didn’t know, I’m writing this from Kenya. I am sitting in Kenya, across from four Kenyan boys who are doing their schoolwork and listening to the girls and small kids playing outside. Micah is here too, doing his schoolwork, quietly and trying to get his work done quickly so he can go back outside and play. Dad is teaching the staff institute and mom is helping him. I’ve made a few friends here at R.O.C.K Ministries (Rescuing Our Children in Kisumu). There’s Agnes, Eunice, Janet, Winnie (girls), Duncan, Bosco, Patrick, Remjus (boys, don’t know them too well, but still friends, you know?), and a lot more. I’m learning sign language too, one of the girls here is deaf. A, B, C, D, E, F...
Anyway, I’m really enjoying myself, just yesterday… (You WON’T believe this.) Just yesterday the Peterson family got to pet... A CHEETAH!!!! Told you you wouldn’t believe me. No, I’m serious. It wasn’t stuffed, it wasn’t just a fur carpet or anything, it wasn’t some trickster machinery, it was the REAL THING. A purring, live, breathing, spotted, skinny cheetah. I say skinny because cheetahs tend not to gain a lot of weight if they’re running all the time. It was awesome! You’re probably wondering how it came about. Was the cheetah wild? No. The guy who took us to the enclosure said she had been raised as a cub. The male was so much bigger and more aggressive, but he had just had his meal and in fact was still finishing it so we had nothing to worry about. Thankfully, we only had to pay about $3. I don’t care. I won’t be petting another cheetah anytime soon so it was definitely worth it.
We were in the Kisumu Impala Sanctuary, they have African Buffalo, African Lions, monkeys, Dik-diks (little deer-type things), a Hyena, two ostriches, a leopard and free roaming Zebras and Impalas. By free roaming I mean they can roam where ever they want all around the sanctuary. Torture for the lions, cheetahs and leopards :P. So we enjoyed our relaxing day yesterday. After the Kisumu Impala Sanctuary (haha, KIS, kiss) dad took a nap and Micah and I went swimming in the hotel’s murky swimming pool. We’ve swum every day for the past four days, it’s been fun. Micah’s learning how to dive, and for his first time doing it he did REALLY well.
The view from our hotel is amazing. The first thing you see when you walk into the room is the lake. There’s a huge window allowing the view just soak into your room (how exactly does that work I don’t know). We’re on the fifth floor which is actually about the sixth or seventh level. The room isn’t the securest. Ok maybe I shouldn’t say the room, the window isn’t the securest. We had a lake fly adventure the night before last. (I’m writing this on the 25 of August just in case this doesn’t get published for a while, the internet at the hotel wasn’t working when we left.) I’ll let Micah tell the story if he wants to. All I’m going to say is we had hundreds of lake flies in our room. Yeah.
We’ve been to three restaurants so far, two out of the three were really good. Green Gardens was one, they had really good food and really good Ice-Cream… ***** (five star, to me at least) The next was an Arabic/Indian restaurant, I don’t remember what it was called cause it wasn’t so good… ** The last was kind of like a hotel. It was right on the lake, it even had a dock-type-thing that was floating ON the lake. The food was good and so was the ice-cream. I had a banana boat (banana split). **** We were going down to a beach and frying fish with U. Dan just for the experience, but the day got too late and U. Dan canceled the snack (phew). Micah and dad are playing football (soccer) with all the boys here after lunch. We leave tomorrow to Mbale, stay over night, then maybe head back to New Hope on Saturday. Kenya is beautiful. I’ll tell you about our two boarder adventures next time.
~Kara L. Peterson
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