The latest update

Well thank you to everyone who donated this semester! I sent Mboya $215 on January 5th, and when I had my book club meeting the next week I collected even more donations! I believe we'll only need $10-20 next semester to cover tuition - maybe I'll give everyone a break and cover that myself. Thanks again everyone. As always, your thoughtfulness is appreciated by Mboya:

Joseph Mboya Musau

to me

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Jan 11

Hi ALLISON

Thanks so much that every thing went quit well, otherwise i got all the details as you had sent them,at the same time i fill very sorry for want happened to you with your UNTIE (Auntie - she passed away at the ripe old age of 95 last week) , I have no much to say but my condoles to the whole family and friends.

Anyway in case you want to sent the school stuff just sent them as you had sent the PHONE i received it with no problem use the same address then indicate my name.The only thing is the PHONE status is kind of not working very well but the SAFARI.COM is trying to work on it. in that case if you have any details about it please you can assist maybe from the person who was working

on it, cause the problem remains the network as they told me.
Well i have no much to point out but we still remain in touch,and please tell Rachel i can't wait to hear from her. wish you the best, take care talk soon.Bye

Hopefully I'll be adding more to this site soon. I am trying to find a way to send Mboya a disposable camera he can use to take pictures of his family and home. There are film developing services in Nairobi, so that's not a problem, the trick is getting either the camera or the prints back to the states because postage = MONEY, as always. Actually, you have to pay to pick up any packages that cannot fit in your tiny post office box, so the school supplies I'm sending Mumbua will have to be divided in several large manila envelopes that might be able to sneak their way into the School for Field Studies PO Box (SFS allows Mboya to receive his mail via their box, which is nice of them, as Mboya probably doesn't have a box of his own and anything sent general delivery to Nairobi would certainly get lost in the shuffle. Or stolen, I hate to say).

Also, the phone to which he is referring in the above email is an old LG phone I had. I got to upgrade when I went to Africa because the local Cingular guy was very curious to see if their phones would work from Kenya - no one had ever tried! They gave me a "razr" to use, as they couldn't put international calling on my old LG. In the end I got to keep the razr, which worked like a champ throughout rural Kenya (I don't think they wanted it back because it was a bit dusty, but I'm not complaining!) but I never had to turn in the old LG. I thought that it might help Mboya to have a phone for his job hunt. It's much easier than just showing up at a company and asking if they have job openings, plus you can respond to classifieds much easier. I had the LG "unlocked" by a California-based travel company. I guess (and forgive me for my non-technical explanation) most American cell phones are "locked." This means that you can't necessarily take your cell phone to another country and put a SIM card from a local cell agency in your phone and expect it to work. It might, but it might not, because some cell phone companies have "locked" their phones - they've programmed them to work with only SIM cards issued by their own company. STINGY! (this website explains it better)

I sent Mboya my phone right after I heard he lost his job - of course it was LOCKED! He used his head though and gave it to an SFS student to take home and mail from her house. That's what I love about SFS Kenya kids - they'll do stuff like that for you!!! Same with the professors - when my wildlife management professor visited Boston in 2003 I gave him about a dozen gifts for various staff members and he brought them back to Kenya for me! Argh, I'm rambling. Ok, so I got the phone back, did a little internet research, and found a company that would unlock my phone. Then I had to research the company :) Long and short of it, the old LG was unlocked and sent back to Kenya, Mboya got together the money he needed to fetch it, and now it's still giving him trouble. I think the trouble has to do with Safari.com, the Kenyan cell service, and the fact that they are accustomed to Nokias and probably haven't seen too many LG flip phones yet, but I'm sure they'll work it out in the end.

Well that's it from me. Thank you everyone for your donations. You're wonderful!
Allison