Sorry. If the blog posts have been a little scarce lately, it is because we have been running around, trying to fit in a billion different things before we leave town (tomorrow morning!). That, and the crickets have resorted to stealing documents as part of our ongoing war.

Okay. Maybe the part about the crickets isn't true, but Ashley seriously did count eighty just in our prayer room this morning. If this were a war, I think we might be losing, although, so far, hundreds of them have died, and none of us -- that I know of.

Trying to say goodbye to all our friends has taken up a lot of time, and involved quite a few dinners, lunches, and cups of chai or uji. Not that I am complaining about free food! Lol. (Well, maybe the uji...still not a huge fan of drinking scalding hot porridge.)

At this point, we are finally done with G-town goodbyes -- I think -- and fully into unpacking from our quick trip to Dadaab, repacking for Nairobi, and gutting our house so that we can leave it empty by tonight. So far, so good.

The trip to Dadaab town and Ifo camp (one of the three refugee camps that make up the "Dadaab regugee camp") was an interesting addition to our final week, a welcome break from packing and cleaning, and a learning experience for all of us.

The camps were nothing like what you might think of as a refugee camp, and nothing like what you hear about the refugee and IDP camps in the Darfur region of Sudan. Instead, they looked very much like the town across the river from us here, just a little more crowded together. There was a nice hospital and, what looked from the outside, like very nice primary and secondary schools.

Basically, they were three towns, towns with LOTS of NGOs and some facilities that other communities around here would love to have. (The three camps combined have about the same number of people as the Tri-cities.)

While we were there, we planted some trees in a community center in Dadaab town, took a driving tour of Ifo camp, ate way too much Ethiopian food -- which was a more than welcome change in flavors -- and found a huge wind scorpion that Ashley had battled with in the middle of the night.

We got back yesterday afternoon, visited with our neighbors yesterday evening, and, this morning, I have officially reduced sixteen months of my life to the following:

Yep. That bag even weighs less than fifty pounds, and has room for souvenirs. Epic skills.

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