What a week!

This week has been an emotional rollercoaster... I feel incredibly exhausted and exhilerated at the same time!
The week consisted of:
-Attempting to make more soap, and struggling to embrace the successes along with the failures... trying to learn something new, especially when your resources are so limited, is difficult!! I've found myself measuring with water bottles, using plastic bags ripped up to line molds, stirring with sugar cane... all and all it's been crazy.
-Having numerous house visits with random lovely people of Lwala. Their generosity and kindness is astounding. I've officially eaten the most questionable food I've ever had. I dont even want to think about it long enough to recount the details on here. Also, eggs and spinach and sweet potatoes and avacado and everything for that matter tastes better here! I dont know if its the lack of more exciting options or just that everything is so fresh and happy and authentic... from the garden or picked up out of the yard... its amazing.
-SOAP meetings with the director of LCA, some of the staff members, and the potential group members/employees! we're looking for ways to make the process of soap-making less expensive... getting oil wholesale, growing plants that produce a lot of oil, looking for lye in construction warehouses or buying wood ash from locals... we're going to make it work : ) the kenyans are WAY more resourceful than me and understand the need for economic efficiency in a way that I will never fathom... so I'm sure they'll figure it out! We're treating this idea like a project rather than a business for now... presenting the group memebers/employees with the skills to make soap, to run a business, and to advertise, and they will decide whether its worth thier time and energy to make it a business!!
-Sunday I went and sang with a bunch of the women in the choir at teh nearby church... Susan took me and Leah was there and we sang and I told them I loved "Come Thou Fount" and sang it for them and then they brought out the words to the Swahili version of the song and we sang it all together and it was a perfect moment.
-Monday we had a meeting with the past participants of the WASH training and they were so sweet and then some of the women took me to this other meeting which was, as far as I could tell, a secret society of the women of Lwala. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. There were about 25 or 30 of them, and me, and we had chai and mandazi and they asked me so many questions, most of which I didnt know the answers to, about microfinance and HIV/AIDs orphanages and community development and tons of other things... it was amazing... I'm going back for my last 2 mondays in Lwala.
-This weekend Susan, Kelly, Tina and I went to Nairobi, then Tina and I flew to Mombasa, we met Mary, a friend, and Dickson, in town, had lunch, explored Mombasa, shopped, got our train tickets, and then went back to Mary's house to eat and sleep. This morning we woke up, went to teh BEAUTIFUL beach, were waifs for a while stumbling in and out of beach resorts filled with a hilarious mix of Europeans on holiday (speedos) and American missionaries relaxing after spreading the Good News (t-shirts and visors). We're heading to Ray of Hope to visit the kids and the orphanage and then riding the train back to Nairobi and then Tina is headed home and I'm headed to Lwala for my last 2 weeks...
- I cant belive that just 2 weeks from now I'll be heading out of Lwala, for home. It seems crazy... I have so many mixed feelings about it but all and all I feel like it will be a good time for me to leave...

Pray/Hope for the soap business, for Tina's travel back to the US, for the people of Kenya... for a productive and intimate last couple of weeks in Lwala... : )