www.NuruInternational.org
We have one on every wall of our living room. We’re pretty sure the house plans only included the one normal light bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the ceiling, but somehow we also ended up with the hongera lights. When turned on, they alternately flash lavender, turquoise, purple, yellow, red, and green. At night our living room looks like an empty discotheque.
Mind you, the cabinet doors don’t close, the bathroom light switch turns on the light in the room next to it, and the back door was installed with a 4-inch gap at the bottom – but the hongera lights work perfectly. Priorities, priorities.
Mid-July marked the 12th week of our Savings Clubs. Members can now apply for loans from their group’s savings. The groups whose members have met their savings goal every week during the 12 weeks qualify to have Nuru match their loan amount, doubling the principal they have to loan from. This is Mkombozi, one of our best groups, signing their loan contracts. 
I’m realizing how much infrastructure I took for granted when I was working with Pro Mujer. All of the paperwork, accounting, and information management systems were in place. Now I am building all those elements from scratch, trying to figure out what applies or is necessary. Thus far, Savings Club deposits are issued a receipt which is then recorded in a journal. The addition used in said journal is questionable, as is the accuracy of the group name under which the transaction was recorded (does the deposit recorded under “Vision Group” belong to Vision Farming or Nyaihungurumo Vision Group??). Apparently, receipts weren’t issued for withdrawals so we have no formal record of these, just notes scribbled in the margins of the Office Manager’s notebook. The loan contracts we’re using were written the night before we issued the loans.
The beauty of Savings Clubs is that many of the management tasks (such as how much each member contributes and when) are the responsibility of the group representatives. But we are going to need to establish more formal and detailed procedures for the program. It feels inappropriate to push for electronic record keeping when the Nuru office in Nyametaburo is operating off a solar panel and gets invaded periodically by chickens or goats, but we’re growing so quickly that the volume and complexity of transactions is going to require it soon. Besides, Nuru is responsible for this money and we take that seriously. A lot of our members have never saved before, and we owe it to them to have every detail in place to keep it safe. So I can be as OCD as I want! Perfect.
We live in a town about 7 km from the villages we work in, and take piki piki (motorcycle) taxis to work. It has to be the best morning commute in the world: good Kenyan coffee and zipping to work on a motorcycle down a dirt road surrounded by rolling green hills, golden maize fields, giant boulders, bright banana trees and thatched huts. Children near the roadside wave enthusiastically, screaming “muzungu!!” (it means white man, but works for all foreigners). The first few minutes after I get off a piki piki my face always tickles. I think it’s from my hair whipping around during the drive; I call it the motorcycle fuzzies.
In the summer, black bears begin hyperphagia, a period of excessive eating and drinking to fatten for hibernation later in the fall. Their bellies will literally drag the ground from over-eating. This is how I feel in the weeks before I leave for Kenya. I am gorging on cheese, burritos, pad kee mao, bagels, Chinese food, ice cream, pretending that if I eat enough of my favorite foods now, I won’t miss them in the next 6 months. As my food baby grows I feel guilty; I am going to Kuria, where there is a hunger season. Families habitually run out of money and go hungry in the months before the harvest, and I am shoveling 3,000 calories-worth of smoked gouda into my mouth. 
In Nairobi, the acrid smell of burning plastic reminds me of Bolivia, and it’s strangely comforting. The back of the bus in front of us has ‘Gangsta for Life’ painted in giant letters. The scenery between the capital and Nyanza province is a sweeping landscape dotted by acacia trees before it opens dramatically into the Great Rift Valley. Sadly I miss much of this, sleeping/blacked out in the back of the bus, my arms and legs pinned down by boxes and bags. But whenever the bus hits a rough patch of road and slams my head into the window (about every 15 minutes), I wake up long enough to admire the view. Our long trip, timed by David at 51 hours, finally ends and Foundation Team 3 stumbles off the dusty bus in Isibania. I am sticky and have dirt in my teeth from the dust that billowed in the bus windows. Feels like home. 
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