Down on the farm again.

After our trip to the Mara we continued our journey to one of my favorite places Kembu Farm. We made our first trip to the farm for Rhett's birthday last year and we thought Rhett's parents would really enjoy it. It is a beautiful colonial farmhouse on a working farm (300 acres I think) that has dairy cows, thoroughbred horses and many other fun things. There are cottages spread out over the property that are all unique and very quaint. We stayed in a different cottage this time that had an amazing! front porch where we spent most of our time just reading and playing and dozing. Bliss.



Our cottage



Time to milk the cows!



(Like my new glasses? $7 from Zenni - nice.)



Feeding the calves.





The "Calf Cottages".


Now for the most magnificent creatures ever.











Claire and Ford went to collect the eggs in the morning.





Our awesome porch where it doesn't matter if your child runs around in a diaper like a redneck :)





Out on a farm walk!

Our next stop was a rose farm near Kembu. There are A LOT of flower farms in Kenya. The flowers make up a huge part of the economy here and are one of the main exports. The flowers grown here go straight to Holland then on the world market. We see lots of these farms int he area where we live but they were a bit of a mystery as to what went on inside them. We were thankful for the opportunity to get a little peek. Here are where your roses come from:





Inside on of the greenhouses.





This one farm exports 100,000 rose stems A DAY!





We sounded like a bunch of dorks as we went on and on about how nice the roses smelled and we were gently told that they were in fact unscented roses. Ahem, of course.



One more chapter of our trip to come!

Part II

More pictures from our great safari!





Gus is looking at the hippos in the river from our camp. All the tents face the river and you can hear the hippos in the early morning (or if you are lucky you can hear them all night like Rudy and Jo Anne).



I love this picture of Rudy. It kind of sums up the safari for him. He was watching elephants when I took this. Our driver kept wanting to move on and he would say no, no just a little while longer. He loved it and it was so much fun to see how much he enjoyed it.



A very pregnant lioness.



A lilac breasted roller.



Rhett and Ford watching a cheetah with a fresh kill.







Our walking safari out in the bush.





More lactation.

Way overdue

I tried to do a big post with all of the pictures from Rhett's parent's trip to Kenya. The pictures wouldn't post, I got some "bad request" response from blogger so I gave up thankful that I had copied everything I had already typed. I had to walk away for a while but now I'm back and going to get this series of posts done! Here we go!

In January Rhett's parents made the trek to Kenya to visit us! We were so excited to have visitors and to share with them what we do here!



We gave them one day to get settled before we headed out for our safari in the Masai Mara. You might be growing wearing of safari pictures on our blog by now! We drove this time which was quite an adventure itself. Rhett's mom and I bonded while being bounced around in the back of our van for several hours.



We finally made it and got into safari mode pretty quickly! Here are Jo Jo and Doc trying to keep up with Gus in his one speed: run.



Here are some of our favorite safari pictures:























A nursing giraffe . . . to go along with pictures of nursing elephants and hippos. Great lesson on mammals for the kids who think it is so cute!

Rhett at work

I've often wanted to tail Rhett around the hospital and snap some pictures of him at work but, even without asking, I knew he wouldn't go for that. Luckily when Rhett's parents came for their recent visit (post on that soon) his Dad rounded with him and spent the day in the hospital seeing what he does here and he snapped some great pictures.

Rhett on rounds with his team of mid-level practitioners and interns. He is in a teaching role here at Kijabe so a lot of his time is spent in medical educations with Kenyan trainees.



This is the hallway in the Women's Ward ("Salome") where Rhett is the Attending Physician about half of the time. Off of the hallway are rooms which are shared by 6-8 people. There is also a larger open area in the ward that has many beds all together.



This is "Casualty" or the ER. There are 6 or 8 beds here all together. It can get quite crowded during a big trauma as you can imagine.



Rhett and his Dad outside the hospital.



This is Rhett's little office where he works on the HIV/AIDS programing and prepares a lot of the lectures that he gives.



Here is Jo Anne outside of casualty.



Here is a picture of our house! I don't think I've ever shared one before. This gives you a better idea of where we live!



And our shopping center





This is us having dinner at our one and only local restaurant Mama Chikus.





More to come soon!