Mombasa days

I am sitting in the guesthouse room, looking over our budget and trying to figure out if we can possibly hire an assistant, since there is just way too much to do. Outside, right below my window, there is a wedding taking place. Two houses down, there is another wedding taking place. Both have music happening and people talking and children running around and it all adds up to LOTS OF NOISE. Suddenly, from across the street, I hear the call to prayer from the mosque. And, I start laughing with Mary (who is also trying to do some work…involving numbers, as well) as we try to reconcile two wedding bashes and their music with the call to prayer of the mullah. Strange…

The cold water shower feels good after a day of traipsing around in the mugginess that engulfs Mombasa and the coast, so there are no complaints there. Our little Mombasa guesthouse is quite comfortable, really, but it does have the added bonus of having iguanas and lizards running around. I have found lizard and/or iguana poop on the beds and my things and it sort of makes me not sleep too well because all I can think of is that one of those creatures is going to run up my body sometime through the night. Even though they are cute and all, I don’t relish the thought of them waking me up by crawling on me. So, I am not sleeping too well here.

Today we were told that we should take beans, rice, milk or sugar to our friends in Zimbabwe, as they really don’t have much of anything. So, we trundled off to the supermarket and purchased some stuff to take with us and now my suitcases are heavy again. I was all excited that my suitcases weren’t so full or heavy anymore since I’ve unloaded 2/3 of the gifts we brought, including 17 pounds of candy and 20 pounds of stickers. I was wrong! They are heavy again. Just received an SMS telling me that we should still plan on coming to Zimbabwe, even though there still has not been an announcement of who won the presidency. Hope everything stays as calm as can be while we are there!