Judie is home...

My 22 year-old-daughter appeared at my front door Friday late morning, just as I was leaving for town to meet a fundi and Grace. She is in a boarding secondary school in Ong'ata Rongai, which is about 40 minutes from Ngong. For those of you who don't know about Judie, here is a quick history.

I met her when I was working for nuns and living in a convent in Meru, Kenya in 2005. She was 15 years old at the time. Her mother died when she was 7 years old. And her father left she and her three siblings with relatives and married another woman in a different village. Judie didn't attend school until she was 11 and free primary school was introduced in Kenya. She repeated class 3 because of illness and class 7 because of poor grades in math and science(she could be my biological daughter in that respect!)

I met the fundi and sent him back to the job site with about 75 pounds of glass for the windows and paint for the metal windows and door.

I also met Grace at the POSTA. We had received a notice that we had a package awaiting pickup, only to discover the POSTA had messed up and we had already picked up the package!

Then I caught up on email, because I did not have credit on my BlackBerry to receive email for a few days. Most cell phones here are pre-paid.

That done I met Judie at the bus stage by our home. We were going to go to Karen to buy groceries at Nakumatt, which is like our version of Walmart. I only buy things I can't get in Ngong (which is a lot of things)!

On the way I called a woman named Jill, who I met in the checkout line a week before in Nakumatt. She is retired and doing mission work on a self-supporting basis and lives in Karen.

We decided to meet for tea at Dormand's outside of Nakumatt in an hour. Judie and I were both hungry so we headed to a restaurant at the local Shell gas station. I know that sounds a bit weird but the food is really good.

We had a nice lunch and a chat and then went to Nakumatt to meet Jill. We had a nice time with Jill. She is moving soon and said she had books she needed to get rid of. "REALLY," I said. "My Kindle died and I'm dying for reading materials." Come over and take what you want was her response. The best part is that she also is a fan of mystery novels and Sudoku! So I left her home with about 15 books and 2 books of Sudoku! I was doing a happy dance every chance I had all evening!

Judie and I stood outside her compound waiting for a matatu, but none came. A taxi came and dropped someone off at her compound and gave us a lift back to Karen. It was dark so I negotiated with the taxi driver to take us back to Ngong after we got groceries.

I'm so excited to have Judie home!!! I can't wait for all the fun we will have during this vacation!