Last week, Steve’s friend, Paul, came to visit us for a few days. He is in the same Global Health program as Steve, and has been developing his research project in Eldoret, Kenya for the past few months. Because of the elections in Kenya and the concern that violence could break out again as it did in 2007/2008, Paul left the area for the weeks surrounding the elections.

[As an aside, the votes are slowly being counted as I type – results were supposed to be out some days ago, but there have been technical difficulties in counting the votes, hence the delay. Because of this delay, there is some concern about tampering, but at this point it hasn’t been confirmed, and people are not yet resorting to violence or protesting over it. The results should come out tomorrow or Saturday, if all continues as it is now.]

While Paul was here, we took a day trip up the mountain to a couple of waterfalls.

Before we went to the waterfalls, we walked through some neighborhoods near one of the gates to the Kilimanjaro National Park.

Ah, the international herb…

We passed by a school just in time for recess. (Yes, that’s a cow taking a nap in the school field.)

What better fun to have during recess than to follow some crazy Wazungu?

At the top of a ridge.

Our guide, Paul. He lives in this area, and even took us by his house during our walk.

For the first waterfall, we had to hike down a ravine.

Look familiar?

A really cool grasshopper.

The first waterfall.

Going back up.

The second waterfall. The water was FREEZING, but hanging out under the waterfall was definitely worth the cold!

Steve checking for hidden passageways behind the waterfall. There weren’t any.

A good time was had by all.

On our drive back down, I snapped a shot of the Usambara Mountains. If I’m able to, I would love to hike around in these for a couple of days before we leave Tanzania!