Oh, "Its" a girl!

One of the major cultural differences that I'm currently realizing is that Kenyans don't generally feel that certain colors (let's say pink) generally apply to female clothing and that others tend to be associated more with male clothing.  When Ellana was first born, for some reason I didn't want to have anything to do with pale, baby pink, but I often got frustrated when she was wearing yellow or green and people would comment on my cute baby boy.  Consequently, I started buying more and more pink which seemed to solve the problem.  Ironically, now most of her clothing is pink, but I cannot count the number of Kenyans who have first assumed she is a boy and then when I say, she, they exclaim, "oh, its a girl!"  I have been laughing about this with my other mom friends who have boys clad mostly in blue, and Kenyans seem to think they are girls. 

The same problem appeared when my friend Nick, the MBA working with Imani Workshops, was assisting with the inventory count.  He was trying to divide the baby sweaters into male/female categories, and when he put the bright pink sweaters in the female pile, the artisans looked at him as though he had lost his marbles.  It turned out the feature that determined the "sex" of the sweater was not color, but whether or not the sweater had a certain type of button.  Go figure.

Our new babysitter, Sylvia has been sick the past few days and went to the hospital yesterday.  I tried to contact her again this morning, but haven't heard how she is doing.  Please say prayers that she gets better soon!  Consequently, I haven't really been able to work at Imani much, and I'm so ready to get back into the groove.  I have a meeting this afternoon, so I think Ellana is just going to tag along!

Steve has a full day of cases lined up today (his regularly scheduled operating days are Wednesdays and Fridays), and the other days he either spends in the clinic or doing research.  He also did a big lecture for about 30 medical students at 7 am Monday morning, and I think we were all impressed with the turn out!  We have been trying to finalize all of the details for the Duke Neurosurgery trip in September as well as for our other family members and friends who will be visiting the next few months.  We cannot wait to see everyone and show them more about our lives here!