Off the compound!

Yahoo! I got to go out today! I got let out of the compound during working hours!

I had to go and pick up a box of Bibles for someone from someone's office. And that someone just happens to have just come back from visiting my home and native land. So he had a whole envelop full of goodies in the form of mail and magazines from my parents! Amazing. I had to wait until the end of the day, though, to actually tear into the envelope, because I knew that once I opened it, I'd have to spend quite a few minutes perusing the beautiful glossy pages. So I kept it closed until the end of the work day!

I also made a quick stop at the market on the way, for some tomatoes, avocados, bananas, green beans (wow, what a treat!), zucchini (another wonderful find!), eggplants and limes. But man, it was sweaty in there. I think there's a proverb somewhere about Englishmen and dogs being the only ones foolish enough to go out in the mid-day sun. Yeah, well, I was absolutely drenched in sweat by the time I made it back to the truck. And since we don't have A/C and you can only drive, oh, about 15 km/h on the roads here, I was even drippier by the time I got to my friend's office!

I had a lovely lunch with my friend. She used to live here, but then moved to a different city several months ago (or is it a year ago now?!). She still comes this way quite often for work, though, so I get to see her relatively often. We had a nice lunch and a good chat. Pray for me that I will have wisdom to know what to say to her in a particular situation that she's in, which will help her to think things through, and yet still be a supportive friend.

After lunch, I went to the Catholic Bookshop. It's basically the only bookshop in town, and sells books printed by Pauline's Press in Kenya. They also happen to sell a book that we've published about learning the local language. So every once in a while, I go and bring them more books and collect payment for the ones they've sold. It's quite fun to . And we're trying to work out something where they can sell more of our books in the local language. What a wonderful thing that would be to have them selling books for us!

The bookshop itself is a wonderful oasis. It's quiet. It's clean. And it smells like new books! I love it! It's not very big, but they are getting more books in all the time, so there's always something new to browse through. I picked up two books today by Henri Nouwen (uh, is that how you spell his name?!). So I'm looking forward to reading those ones, too.

It was just nice to be off the compound, doing something a bit different for part of today, other than sitting in front of my computer or in meetings!