Tabasamu

Mom arrived safely last night. i was so excited to go pick her from the airport. we got there in time for me to just barely spot her looking for her luggage and struggling to put everything on the cart. peter could tell i was so eager for her to come out. i kept standing on my tiptoes over the crowd looking for her. last night was quite a breaking in experience for her. there's no running water at the house right now. i think this is good in a way b/c it will give her a true taste of what it's like. it felt like a big campout as we were preparing for bed with me trying to explain to her and catherine (also a hoosier that arrived yesterday) how to dip out the water from these storage containers outside. and i tucked her into her mosquito net. i think i freaked her out a bit after i told her that her skin can't touch the net or they will still bite her.

today we left super early to go decorate for tabasamu. we hung lots of tinsel and balloons in 4 various tents right by the school we volunteer at in kibera. and then started painted faces. face painting here is awesome b/c it's just lines, squiggles, and designs. much easier. we painted several hundred faces (about 6 of us were working on this) in maybe an hour and a half. the kids were super excited about this. i had a near very bad experience when dumping out the dirty face paint water. i just dumped it out the window of the school. you have to understand that there's no grass or sinks or good places for it to go so this seemed fine to me. i looked out the window when i dumped the first containers and it was fine. but the last one i dumped from a different window. a few minutes later a man peaked his head in the window and told me to come here. i looked out and the nasty purple water had splashed onto this sweater that fell off the clothesline. i felt super bad b/c he probably doesn't have many clothes. i kept saying "pole sana" i'm very sorry. i volunteered to wash it out but he said no. so i took ruth back to his house a few minutes later. he was then pretty nice about it. he'd already washed it out and it came out. and ruth thinks the sweater was actually a rag. the man said, "it's fine. we're all christians. i can forgive you." i felt better after that and it didn't spoil the day.

there was lots of entertainment throughout the event. mostly popo and alex making jokes in swahili. they pulled me alone up on stage twice to dance in front of over 500 people. it was quite funny. then mom, catherine, and i led some christmas songs in the afternoon. this went less than stellar b/c the kids don't know any of the words. they were just staring at us mostly. but all the same i think they were just glad to see some mzungus being silly. everyone thinks mom should be my sister b/c she looks so young :) lunch was catered and again we fed hundreds of people. it was hard to control the number of people coming into the event. b/c even after closing the gate there is no way to completely block off other entrances. everyone wanted to come when they saw a tent up b/c it meant free stuff. we gave away shoes towards the end. kids were very happy. but again it was so hard b/c not everyone got them. we probably had around 400ish but there were more kids than that. i think all of this was very hard for mom to see. sometimes i tend to block out some of the things i see. i guess b/c i'm so used to it now. i know this is probably bad, but in a way sometimes i have to separate myself a bit b/c it is so emotionally draining. however, it was good for me to watch mom and catherine experience this for the first time b/c it opened my eyes again too. i think mom is not used to all the dirt yet. she desperately wants to take a shower but it'll have to be more of a sponge bath not in a bathtub. she got to experience having black snot at the end of the day. lovely. it's funny b/c most of this stuff doesn't get to me anymore. i just forget. ruth had someone pull off her necklace and steal it today during all this. and someone broke the window of the cater's van. lots of theft in the past few days.