The Beginning and the End
August 30, 2006
There have been lots of changes in our lives, but sometimes you sort of
get used to them until they all jump out at you. Last year, when we were in the
states, I would get really annoyed at advertisements on the radio. I found that
if I did not understand what they were saying, it didn’t annoy me as
much; that is why I started listening to Latino music.
I fell in love with a group called La
oreja de Van Gogh. I don’t speak a word of Spanish, and I have
no idea what the song means but they have a song called Puedes contra conmigo which is my favorite
of the moment. (if you download the song from iTunes and discover that it is
about being in love with a goat, please don’t tell me)
Un café con sal. Ganas de liorar…
And I looked at my
I put on some Neil Diamond.
It may be in bad taste to tell you that our coldest months are
July/August, because I have heard how hot it was in the states. It was so cold
one day that you could see your breath at noon. This is particularly important
when you don’t have heat in your house outside of a fireplace. The result
was Katie and Ben got bronchitis, and Katie’s moved into pneumonia. She
is almost all the way better, but it was a rough two weeks for her, and when
Katie isn’t happy, nobody is happy.
Speaking of bad taste, I’m not quite sure how to share my recent experience
with the Kenyan health care system. If you are over 50, doctors suggest you
have a procedure that is unnatural. I
went into the waiting room, and I was sitting there thinking `It just SUCKS to
get old.’ Then a staff member came in, and I asked why he was there. When
he told me that he was getting a vasectomy, suddenly life just seemed GRAND.
It’s all perspective.
We actually have two more computer centers completed. What took a year
with the mission has taken six weeks with a businessman. Walter, our friend in
the mission who is the designer of the labs, worked on about 18 projects at a
time. We weren’t a priority, and we probably shouldn’t have been. But
it got the ball rolling, and created a prototype for our new vendor to follow. He
has completed two so fast that we don’t even have computers in the
country yet.
I interviewed some teachers, and had to reject several because of their
low level of knowledge. (One guy knew so little it was safe to say that he had
NO level of knowledge.) I was talking to another guy, and I told him that he
had the chance to change children’s lives. He asked me what the pay was.
During another interview, I told Samuel that he might be the only
chance some of these kids would ever have. He looked at me and said `That is my
dream.’
I knew we had our guy.
(Center number four with Samuel at the Longanot school)
We have the distinction of having a senior in high school, a freshmen
in high school, and two kindergartners. School started yesterday for Ben and
Kate, and it was a sweet time for all of us to walk them to their first day of
school
I remember the first day of school for JT, and now it is just a few
short months and he will be going to the states for college. Katie told me that
she didn’t like college because college was going to take her JT from
her.
I know how she feels.
Your pal
Steve and Nancy Peifer
Stateside Address: AIM
Home Number: 011-254-20-3246-458
Office Number: 011-254-20-3246-170
Steve's Cell: 011-254-0734-124292
Website: http://peifer.kijabe.org/index.html?intro.html&1
Foundation: http://www.solutionbeaconfoundation.org/programs.htm
Webcam: http://www.kijabe.org/longocam/