Sunday, June 27th -- Hippo Point!

Julia and I went to 7:30 am mass at Our Lady of Grace. Like always, the mass was very lively and upbeat even at such an early hour. The students do a terrific job of orchestrating the music. During the songs, everyone is waving their arms in the air and clapping to the beat of the bongos. A group of 6 girls are liturgical dancers on Sundays. The girls wore very pretty navy blue and gold sarongs. Mass is a bit longer here is Kenya, but everyone stays attentive even when they are dancing in their seats. During the masses and their days, there is a time for everything – whether its concentrating or rejoicing.

We came back to bake a two cakes for Julia’s birthday. One is for tonight and one is for tomorrow when we eat at the Sister’s convent. We did not realize how ambitious of a plan it would be. We made the cake without measuring cups so we resorted to our best estimates. Also, they do not sell icing in Kenya so we decided to use Nutella. The slight problem was that the super market did not have Nutella so we then chose chocolate peanut butter. To complicate things a little bit more, the peanut butter here is much more natural so it is not as delicious as Skippy! As you can guess, we probably looked like Lucy and Ethel trying to make this cake with the oven with the severely fading temperature gauge in Celsius.

Father Kevin, Sister Remea, Sister Alvera, Julia and I went to Hippo Point at Lake Victoria. On our drive there, we passed by the mud hut that Father Kevin and some of the older boys at the school built. It has an earth floor, sides made out of mud and stones with slim timber beams to support the hardened mud, and a modest tin roof. The two room house was built for a widow and her five children who suffer from the foot disease jiggers.

Lake Victoria is only 80 m deep but covers an area of 70,000 sq. km. It has shores on Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. At Hippo Point, we took a small boti (boat) out to see the hippos. They only come up for two seconds as their eyes and ears emerge from underneath the water. In the middle of the night, they come to rest on the shore. The average kiboko (hippo) weighs 3 tons! We luckily caught a few quick glimpses of them just as it started to drizzle. Lake Victoria is the second largest fresh water lake in the world! From the boat, we could see a few impalas at their sanctuary. There were also beautiful canary yellow birds flying among their nests along with otters in the water.

The Lake is harmed by the water hyacinth plants that are especially apparent starting in December. Water hyacinth stifles the fishing industry. The plants tie themselves together to form huge mats. It is a big financial burden also since it is so costly to control. We also saw a shipment of sacks of coal from Uganda coming in by boat. The quality of coal from Uganda is very good. The Lake is a popular tourist spot. On our way back, we stopped at a market. My bargaining skills have improved since I was somehow able to talk my way into getting the best prices. Good news: our vanilla cake with chocolate peanut butter "frosting" and colored sprinkles was a big hit at dessert! Phew.

Julia’s blog is www.juliagoestokenya.blogspot.com.