Habari! Welcome to my newsletter! To make it truly Kenyan I should shake your hand but for some reason Microsoft haven't managed this yet!

First things first: I am not dead - the plane did not crash. Secondly my address is:

Siobhan Scully
c/o MCK Meru Children's Home
PO Box 113
Meru 60200
Kenya

Thirdly, I have stopped feeling excited and now fell tired and stressed out. Please pray for me. NB Being an atheist is NOT an excuse.

Righto now I can get on with it. I arrived last Tuesday evening in Nairobi so bored I was ready to go home again. Long distance flights are not that exciting. However, whilst pondering the colour of the seat in front of me and doing toe exercises I was hit by a puzzling thought: Why are there no air stewards over 35? Surely their life expectancy isn't that low.

I then stayed with the Moffoots until Saturday. (Some of you will know Andy and Sheila from their time in Sheffield but for those of you who don't they're mission partners based in Nairobi.) May I just take this opportunity to gloat: I have seen baby Joe before any of you!!! However I'm not sure I'll ever see him again as quite a few times people thought Joe was mine and Sheila was the grandma! I went to feed some girraffes but, sorry, I've seen no lions yet. On Saturday Andy took me to the MCK (Methodist Church Kenya) Youth Council meeting. It was good to get a flavour of what the Church in Kenya is up to even though I was quite bored. In my first bit of intoducing-ness I thought I did rather well - until they pointed out that I hadn't said my name. After a Kenyan lunch (more about food later...) Andy drove me up to Meru so that brings us to Sunday... (WARNING never get in a car if a Kenyan is driving, they have less road sense than a pigeon. In fact they have less road, most of it looks like an obstacle course from the bowels of Hell)

Can you believe that Kaaga Church has 'Songs of Fellowship'?! It was almost like walking into a church in the UK but here they would never have a picture of Jesus with blond ringlets and blue eyes. EEPs - do you remember the woodland picture from 'The Christ we Share' pictures? Well it was worse than that!

So far I don't have a plan of what I'll be doing during the week but hopefully we should sort this out in the next couple of days. So, I have been amusing myself by reading a doorstop of a book on the building of the railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria and going to see the cows. They have a relatively new dairy here and the woman in charge, Angela, is new to the area as well. She's 22 and doesn't understand Kimeru which is nice because I don't either. That's what they speak up (should that be down?) here and it is quite frustrating because in order understand people you have to know Swahili, Kimeru and English - they use all 3 in the space of 1 sentence. Anyway, I had had my first try at milking today, I can't say it was entirely successful but practice makes perfect - poor cows...

I'll also be helping out at the feeding project that's run in Meru for the street children that the Home can't take in.

Which brings me nicely onto food. Praises be to our glorious Father! - there is nothing that makes me feel sick. However, the reason for this is that is doesn't taste of anything apart from salt! I never want to eat another cabbage as long as I live. And if anyone tries to tell me of the wonderful meat you get in Kenya I will punch you in the teeth. Then you will know how I feel after I've chewed my way through the last set of teeth God gave me.

On a brighter note I'm making friends with the kids here and generally they don't laugh at me too much! Now I can understand more than three words when people talk to me - I'm gradually getting used to the accent. The weather is FAB and once I get used to the fact that getting up at 5.30am isn't morally wrong life will be great.

More next week.

God bless

Siobhan