Wednesday – a relaxing day and night of celebration. . . - love | cook

After a long Tuesday, we decided to make Wednesday a more relaxing day for the team. At breakfast we broke the team into 2 groups – Deb, Becky, Lilly and Lacey went to the school with me – and Adam, Lynn, Cathy and Peter stayed at the house. Our morning would be spent assisting with daily tasks. At the house that meant cooking, cleaning, laundry, or whatever Auntie Grace needed help with – and at the school it meant cooking, doing dishes or helping students in class.

At school I took the opportunity to spend the time in the Shamba (garden) and Greenhouse. This past year I embarked on a fundraiser to support the Shamba and Greenhouse. I want to thank all the generous donors and I especially want to thank the Schreiber Family – Scott, Jennifer and Brooks and my family – my sisters Vicki and Melissa, and my Mom, Paula – for their incredibly generous donations to Flying Kites! The shamba and greenhouse are producing the most delicious and nutritious vegetables for these beautiful children. Asante Sana!

After lunch everyone had time to organize their gear and to relax as tonight we will have a send off and tomorrow is a very early day.

I spent the afternoon organizing my things, trying to catch up on this blog and baking a cake. One of the volunteers, Morgan, turned 21, and Edwin asked if I could bake a cake for her. Now I’m a trained pastry chef, but I will be honest, I was a little nervous making this cake – I would need to improvise using the ingredients at the house and I had to use an oven without temperature control, at least as I know it. I had to use the same oven I cooked the pizza in – the charcoal fired oven.

I decided to make a simply white cake – I creamed eggs and sugar; added oil, milk and vanilla; and lastly mixed in self-rising flour and baking powder. Then into the butter and floured cake pans – one pan was a traditional pan, the other an old cookie tin. And as I didn’t have icing, I improvised and made a jam glaze – red plum for one cake, strawberry for the other.

We all had dinner with the children in the children’s dining room. And at the end of dinner we presented Morgan with her cake. And then after dinner we had a big bonfire with S’Mores, a beautiful song written by Josh, and Taylor sang along. The two of the are quite talented. After singing and dancing around the fire, everyone (the Kili climbers) headed to bed. Peter and I, headed into the volunteer lounge and hung out a bit. Then it was off to bed. Tomorrow we head to Arusha!