Morning walk to the health center

Mornings are my favorite part of the day here. I love my morning basin bath, which is always warm no matter how long I have to wait to heat the water. It is almost always sunny in the morning with the drenching rains coming mid-day. The kilometer walk to the Ruhiira health center is all downhill and the view looks out onto the hills and valleys beyond. Often the clouds look like they’re resting in the valley. There are not a lot of birds in Ruhiira as the hills have been deforested by need for firewood, but the birds that are here are beautiful. There’s an iridescent blue bird called a sunbird that resembles a hummingbird and a lovely bright yellow bird with black wings that I haven’t identified (My copy of “Birds of East Africa” is on its way from Amazon). One day a small funnel wind lifted a dried matoke leaf many feet in the air and it twirled around for minutes as I walked down the hill before being deposited back in the same garden. There are usually women of all ages hoeing in their fields and matoke plots, many with babies strapped to their backs. On Second Eid, a public holiday here, there were about 40 people kneeling in rows on cloths laid out in a field by the road, men in front and women in back, chanting prayers. One day bunches of children gathered around me as I walked, never passing me but keeping time with my walking. I tried brief runs, abrupt stops, and backward trots- I'm not sure if they knew the game but they didn’t miss a beat. The photos are of health workers walking towards the health center and some children who accompanied me one day.