Janet and I sat down this afternoon with receipts, Western Union wire transfer paperwork and the list of “Kenya Mission” transactions given us by our faithful and overworked parish treasurer to sort through and make sure that we had documentation for all of the line items and everything is on the up and up.

Beyond the pleasure of Janet’s company not much fun…or so I thought. Then we started to go through things.

A year ago we were preparing to go to Kenya in March with no thoughts beyond finishing a second classroom for Kwa Muema Secondary and maybe providing some desks. Going through the list of expenditures, it seems almost impossible that in just over a year we have done so much: funded the construction of two classrooms for the secondary school, renovated an unused classroom into a library at the primary school and set it up with a librarian, provided scholarships for 15 people, purchased many text books and library books, started an after school program…

Each receipt represents something real. When we were thinking about the harambee I could almost feel the sun beating down, the throb of the drums and the shrill of the whistles they bow as they danced. The tops of my feet got so sunburned that day that you can still see the lines where my shoe straps were. The receipts for school fees aren’t just pieces of paper they represent real people, like Mr. Elijah, Alex and Christine.

In the end the audit didn’t seem so dry and boring.