WHEW! What a week. I can't believe it has been a month of me being here too. I am in awe.
This week, in two words, was extremely challenging and freeing at the same time. I do not have enough space to explain it all on this blog, so you will have to just ask me about it. But basically, if I was only here for this week, it would have all been worth it. I can't believe that God has more for me here. I am so blessed. His mercy is so amazing.
Sorry I can't post more pictures, but I had to use the slower computers today. It is a long story, but I will try again next time. We have more pictures to share anyway. :)
This week we got to go to the orphanage! It was SO much fun and reminded me so much of beautiful times at Clark Kerr Infant Center back in college. This orphanage is just for babies and toddlers under the age of 3 (actually we celebrated two birthdays of children who turned 3). There are 16 babies total, and they were an absolute blast to be with. I love baby time!!!!
The orphanage is in town, and there is another one for older kids that we did not get to go to, but perhaps will have a chance later.
The bites got a lot worse this week - worse than any other week. I have also continued to not sleep well. What I have learned though, is that God is so good and His faithfulness has been shown in amazing strength despite missing sleep and miraculous relief. My time with the people of my team has been so precious and cherished. What beautiful people. What amazing hearts.
Next week will be interesting, as we will have over 60 people at the base. There is a pastor's conference, and we are housing some of them. The buildings are being finished as I type this - so amazing. (And for your information, some of the donations that some of you gave went to these buildings. They are so very grateful. Thank you.)
Hope you are all well!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
a couple more things
I got a gift of being able to come to the Internet twice in a row, and so I thought I would write down a couple more things I left off.
Last week, a couple of the people on our team came to dinner with news that they saw a person being stoned at the beach by our base. After repeatedly asking if what I thought I heard was true, they repeated, "Yes, Kristy, he was stoned to death. Like Stephen."
"WHAT," I thought.
I got the full story last night. Supposedly, some girls were walking on the beach and were robbed. Three guys robbed them. Well, some people nearby saw them and started to chase the robbers. Two of them got away, but the third one was stoned to death. Lisa and I were shocked.
But, as I told the story to Lillian from the other school, she applauded the efforts of the people. Here was our conversation last night:
L: "Great! They were helping solve crime."
me: "WHAT? Is that normal?"
L: "No, but bringing them to the police won't help either. Usually people are just put in a tire, then petrol (gasoline) is poured on them, and they are lit on fire."
WHOA. Boy was I in for a shock. (yes, eeks yikes face, Carlos Pedro). You can all pray for the people and the police system, that it becomes more trustworthy for the people. But no worries for me, I am pretty safe, and am not committing any crimes. haha.
In other news, we had an awesome time with the kids at church today. It was wonderful and we were able to share with them a song, a game, and a lesson on the love of God. It was really good. We also had a good time personally interacting with the kids and getting to know them. There were less of them today (maybe 20), but it gave us some more time.
I think I shared about him before, but there is one kid who I got to talk with last time. I got to pray for him, and his request is quite different from most kids I know at home. He wanted to pray for his parents and family that they would have food. What a sweet eighth grader. I prayed for him there, and he has been on my heart for the week. You can imagine how excited I was when I got to church today and he was the first one there. He was excited that I remembered his name, and then walked with us to the bus (matatu) after service. It was then that I got more of his story. He is actually no longer in eighth grade. He had to stop going to school because his family did not have enough money. I found out that his family lives far away, but that he is here living with the pastor and taking care of the pastor's two small boys (they are super cute too). He won't get to go home to see his parents until August, but he asked for prayer for them again, that they would have enough food. I was amazed at the resilience of this kid - his faith, his gentle and peaceful being, and his trust. I look forward to continuing to see him and the other kids. About half of them come from a children's home nearby, I found out as well. But we had an awesome time of fun and worship and I'm so glad we serve a God who loves them so deeply.
Last week, a couple of the people on our team came to dinner with news that they saw a person being stoned at the beach by our base. After repeatedly asking if what I thought I heard was true, they repeated, "Yes, Kristy, he was stoned to death. Like Stephen."
"WHAT," I thought.
I got the full story last night. Supposedly, some girls were walking on the beach and were robbed. Three guys robbed them. Well, some people nearby saw them and started to chase the robbers. Two of them got away, but the third one was stoned to death. Lisa and I were shocked.
But, as I told the story to Lillian from the other school, she applauded the efforts of the people. Here was our conversation last night:
L: "Great! They were helping solve crime."
me: "WHAT? Is that normal?"
L: "No, but bringing them to the police won't help either. Usually people are just put in a tire, then petrol (gasoline) is poured on them, and they are lit on fire."
WHOA. Boy was I in for a shock. (yes, eeks yikes face, Carlos Pedro). You can all pray for the people and the police system, that it becomes more trustworthy for the people. But no worries for me, I am pretty safe, and am not committing any crimes. haha.
In other news, we had an awesome time with the kids at church today. It was wonderful and we were able to share with them a song, a game, and a lesson on the love of God. It was really good. We also had a good time personally interacting with the kids and getting to know them. There were less of them today (maybe 20), but it gave us some more time.
I think I shared about him before, but there is one kid who I got to talk with last time. I got to pray for him, and his request is quite different from most kids I know at home. He wanted to pray for his parents and family that they would have food. What a sweet eighth grader. I prayed for him there, and he has been on my heart for the week. You can imagine how excited I was when I got to church today and he was the first one there. He was excited that I remembered his name, and then walked with us to the bus (matatu) after service. It was then that I got more of his story. He is actually no longer in eighth grade. He had to stop going to school because his family did not have enough money. I found out that his family lives far away, but that he is here living with the pastor and taking care of the pastor's two small boys (they are super cute too). He won't get to go home to see his parents until August, but he asked for prayer for them again, that they would have enough food. I was amazed at the resilience of this kid - his faith, his gentle and peaceful being, and his trust. I look forward to continuing to see him and the other kids. About half of them come from a children's home nearby, I found out as well. But we had an awesome time of fun and worship and I'm so glad we serve a God who loves them so deeply.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Week 3 - Begin classes
Hello there!
I hope this finds you well! It is the end of my third week here, and I have definitely learned a lot, including to not assume anything - my expectations are changed all the time.
For example, I thought I would be working with kids right away. We have work with a group of middle schoolers and high schoolers on Sunday mornings, and there is a group of younger kids who come to the base on Satuday mornings, but aside from that, we don't get to see a lot of kids. I thought we would be able to go to the orphanage more often, but we haven't gone yet. I am not sure when that will happen, but we will see. (The one we went to last week was a one time deal.) The bulk of our outreach work will be the second half of my time here - the last three months. We do not yet know where exactly we will go, but we are praying for direction. But, there is a young family on base, and we all take turns holding Baby Devin and playing with 2-year old Daniela. They are quite fun. There are also some neighborhood kids who come by each day, and we hang out with them sometimes.
The Sunday morning ministry is fun. We just taught a song last week, but I had a chance to pray with one of the eighth graders. His concerns in life are so different, and it was humbling to just talk to him. I am looking forward to going tomorrow.
So what exactly am I doing then? The first three months is training and a LOT of learning (although, I'm sure that we will have our own share of learning on the second three months as well). My average day these days looks like this:
6:00 Go for a short run
6:30 Breakfast and clean up (clean up takes a lot more time than it does at home. Breakfast is tea and jam and bread, unless someone makes mandazi the day before. But with over 30 people at the base now, it is a lot to make.)
7:30 Prayer
8:30 Worship and prayer all together
9:30 Class. This week we learned about the character and nature of God. It was really good and a lot to learn.
12:30 Lunch. (Lunch and dinner are HOT meals. We are already sweating with the heat already, but after meals, everyone is really warm. haha. Everyone has these handkerchiefs that we carry around everywhere because it's so warm. We then have a lot to clean up.)
2:00 Work. The work is different each day. On Tuesday, I was in the shamba (garden) and was working with the planting of some crops (we were told "your job is to put the manure in when we dig the holes." My first thought was, "okay, well, we learned this morning about not complaining, so I will see the good in this." They gave us the bucket and no shovel, but luckily Martin asked us if we wanted some gloves. Praise the Lord. haha. Then we found out that the manure was just from chickens, and the whole work was fine.) The rest of the week, I was doing clean up in various areas of the base. Other people did things like sorting beans and rice (when you buy these here, they have to be sorted before cooked, because the bags have all kinds of dirt, bugs and rocks accumulated with the food).
6:00 Dinner and clean up.
7:30 Evening activity. This changes every day. On two of the days, we work and train for presentations that we will either do at churches on Sundays or in the outreach in the second three months. Wednesday nights are for prayer, and the other nights are for meeting with smaller groups of people to formally check in how things are going and build team work.
9:00 Get ready for bed. By this time, we're exhausted, so it's good to start getting ready to sleep. Even getting ready for bed is different because it involves taking a shower (an ordeal in itself), and tucking in the mosquito net, among other things. For some reason, it has been taking me a long time to actually fall asleep (perhaps because I have been really careful to sleep straight so that I don't touch the net (the mosquitos bite through the net if you are too close)), and I have been waking up around 4:30 each day as well. It is really the strength of the Lord getting me through the day each day.
It is important to note here too that Swahili time is 6 hours ahead than the regular time. It is because they start counting when the sun rises at 6:00 each day. So you have to add six hours to each hour. The good thing is that at the base, we use the standard time. But if we go anywhere else, we have to calculate. Good math problem, fourth graders!! You can also calculate that a dollar is about the same as 70 Kenyan shillings.
It has been a fun, yet humbling week. I have learned so much. There is so much that I still don't know. I am still learning a lot of Swahili:)
Some highlights:
- I had a huge painful bite on my left thigh and knee at the beginning of the week. The one on my thigh was really big, covering a space a little larger than my hand. With both so swollen, I was a little concerned. But then, you can imagine the scare when I found a centipede in my bed later in the morning. Yikes. It is important to note here that the first week, we had two centipedes in our room. Both times, we had someone else come in and kill them for us. Fridah killed the second one, and her words were "yes they bite and it is painful, but it will not kill you." So with that in mind, I thought I had been bitten by the centipede. But with my earlier comment about not complaining, I was tring to see the good in it and was assured that I would be okay. At the end of the day, Fridah said that centipede bites hurt so much that I probably would not be able to stand. So, then we figured that this was either not a centipede, or it was a miraculous healing from the Lord. Either way, I was thankful.
- Later in the week, I had a few bites that started on my toe and foot, and then my whole left foot swelled up so that I could not even put on my flip flop without a lot of effort and pain. But that too, has healed for the most part. Other physical thanksgivings: my right ankle was in a lot of pain last week and has healed, and the swelling of my ankles has also gone down for the most part. I still have a lot of bites, but it's okay.
- I have really been enjoyying time with the team. They are so much fun and it is neat to see how each person is coming together and growing. There are fun stories every day, even if it is just laughing at how someone says a normal word, like "what" or "oh." I realized how much I have grown to enjoy these friends, when I came back last week from the Internet and was so glad to see them at dinner.
- I am personally learning a whole lot and, like I said before, am being quite humbled in every way. It is good and I am thankful.
I think that is good for now. Here are some pictures so far:
This was the pillow on the airplane. How cute! I thought it was fun so I took a picture. :)Kristy in Kenya
This is a picture of the base. I am standing in the place where my dorm is, and looking at the main building. In the front is our dining room and kitchen are. The back building is our classroom and the family stays upstairs. The building to the right that is cut off is where the other clas
s and library is.
The lizards and geckoes are huge here and are everywhere. Our pet Geico in Room 15 is tiny compared.
(Sorry the formatting is weird, but this is taking forever as it is) This is a treasured picture. These are the girls (minus Judy) from our team: Left to right: me, Catherine, Lisa, Lillian.
I am trying unsucessfully to load more pictures. I will try again next week. Sorry!
Until then, have a great week!
I hope this finds you well! It is the end of my third week here, and I have definitely learned a lot, including to not assume anything - my expectations are changed all the time.
For example, I thought I would be working with kids right away. We have work with a group of middle schoolers and high schoolers on Sunday mornings, and there is a group of younger kids who come to the base on Satuday mornings, but aside from that, we don't get to see a lot of kids. I thought we would be able to go to the orphanage more often, but we haven't gone yet. I am not sure when that will happen, but we will see. (The one we went to last week was a one time deal.) The bulk of our outreach work will be the second half of my time here - the last three months. We do not yet know where exactly we will go, but we are praying for direction. But, there is a young family on base, and we all take turns holding Baby Devin and playing with 2-year old Daniela. They are quite fun. There are also some neighborhood kids who come by each day, and we hang out with them sometimes.
The Sunday morning ministry is fun. We just taught a song last week, but I had a chance to pray with one of the eighth graders. His concerns in life are so different, and it was humbling to just talk to him. I am looking forward to going tomorrow.
So what exactly am I doing then? The first three months is training and a LOT of learning (although, I'm sure that we will have our own share of learning on the second three months as well). My average day these days looks like this:
6:00 Go for a short run
6:30 Breakfast and clean up (clean up takes a lot more time than it does at home. Breakfast is tea and jam and bread, unless someone makes mandazi the day before. But with over 30 people at the base now, it is a lot to make.)
7:30 Prayer
8:30 Worship and prayer all together
9:30 Class. This week we learned about the character and nature of God. It was really good and a lot to learn.
12:30 Lunch. (Lunch and dinner are HOT meals. We are already sweating with the heat already, but after meals, everyone is really warm. haha. Everyone has these handkerchiefs that we carry around everywhere because it's so warm. We then have a lot to clean up.)
2:00 Work. The work is different each day. On Tuesday, I was in the shamba (garden) and was working with the planting of some crops (we were told "your job is to put the manure in when we dig the holes." My first thought was, "okay, well, we learned this morning about not complaining, so I will see the good in this." They gave us the bucket and no shovel, but luckily Martin asked us if we wanted some gloves. Praise the Lord. haha. Then we found out that the manure was just from chickens, and the whole work was fine.) The rest of the week, I was doing clean up in various areas of the base. Other people did things like sorting beans and rice (when you buy these here, they have to be sorted before cooked, because the bags have all kinds of dirt, bugs and rocks accumulated with the food).
6:00 Dinner and clean up.
7:30 Evening activity. This changes every day. On two of the days, we work and train for presentations that we will either do at churches on Sundays or in the outreach in the second three months. Wednesday nights are for prayer, and the other nights are for meeting with smaller groups of people to formally check in how things are going and build team work.
9:00 Get ready for bed. By this time, we're exhausted, so it's good to start getting ready to sleep. Even getting ready for bed is different because it involves taking a shower (an ordeal in itself), and tucking in the mosquito net, among other things. For some reason, it has been taking me a long time to actually fall asleep (perhaps because I have been really careful to sleep straight so that I don't touch the net (the mosquitos bite through the net if you are too close)), and I have been waking up around 4:30 each day as well. It is really the strength of the Lord getting me through the day each day.
It is important to note here too that Swahili time is 6 hours ahead than the regular time. It is because they start counting when the sun rises at 6:00 each day. So you have to add six hours to each hour. The good thing is that at the base, we use the standard time. But if we go anywhere else, we have to calculate. Good math problem, fourth graders!! You can also calculate that a dollar is about the same as 70 Kenyan shillings.
It has been a fun, yet humbling week. I have learned so much. There is so much that I still don't know. I am still learning a lot of Swahili:)
Some highlights:
- I had a huge painful bite on my left thigh and knee at the beginning of the week. The one on my thigh was really big, covering a space a little larger than my hand. With both so swollen, I was a little concerned. But then, you can imagine the scare when I found a centipede in my bed later in the morning. Yikes. It is important to note here that the first week, we had two centipedes in our room. Both times, we had someone else come in and kill them for us. Fridah killed the second one, and her words were "yes they bite and it is painful, but it will not kill you." So with that in mind, I thought I had been bitten by the centipede. But with my earlier comment about not complaining, I was tring to see the good in it and was assured that I would be okay. At the end of the day, Fridah said that centipede bites hurt so much that I probably would not be able to stand. So, then we figured that this was either not a centipede, or it was a miraculous healing from the Lord. Either way, I was thankful.
- Later in the week, I had a few bites that started on my toe and foot, and then my whole left foot swelled up so that I could not even put on my flip flop without a lot of effort and pain. But that too, has healed for the most part. Other physical thanksgivings: my right ankle was in a lot of pain last week and has healed, and the swelling of my ankles has also gone down for the most part. I still have a lot of bites, but it's okay.
- I have really been enjoyying time with the team. They are so much fun and it is neat to see how each person is coming together and growing. There are fun stories every day, even if it is just laughing at how someone says a normal word, like "what" or "oh." I realized how much I have grown to enjoy these friends, when I came back last week from the Internet and was so glad to see them at dinner.
- I am personally learning a whole lot and, like I said before, am being quite humbled in every way. It is good and I am thankful.
I think that is good for now. Here are some pictures so far:
This was the pillow on the airplane. How cute! I thought it was fun so I took a picture. :)Kristy in Kenya
This is a picture of the base. I am standing in the place where my dorm is, and looking at the main building. In the front is our dining room and kitchen are. The back building is our classroom and the family stays upstairs. The building to the right that is cut off is where the other clas
s and library is.
The lizards and geckoes are huge here and are everywhere. Our pet Geico in Room 15 is tiny compared.(Sorry the formatting is weird, but this is taking forever as it is) This is a treasured picture. These are the girls (minus Judy) from our team: Left to right: me, Catherine, Lisa, Lillian.
I am trying unsucessfully to load more pictures. I will try again next week. Sorry!
Until then, have a great week!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Week 2: Shimba Hills
Hello there! I am writing from the smaller Internet cafe today- the other one was closed when we went into town today. So, no pictures today - sorry. I will try to load pics when I go to the other one.
This week was quite different from the week before, and since we probably won't be going there again, I think it's different from how it will be in the future.
We left on Monday to go to a place called Shimba Hills, which is about an hour and a half drive from the base. (Most Kenyans measure distance by how much time it takes to get there, not by mileage or km.) Shimba Hills is beautiful and is not just away in distance, but it is far from everything in general. We went for a retreat type of week - to do some team-building, and to also work with an orphanage nearby. There is not much up there, so we had a lot of time to sit with each other and with God. It was a really good time of quiet, and we also had some good fun. And, for those of you interested, there was no water, electricity, etc. But we brought our own water, and the caretaker also had some water in this tank that was collected from the rain. And, one of the best things that Shimba Hills has is a BREEZE. It was so nice to have a cool night to sleep in.
We did a lot of trusting there. By Wednesday, we had run out of drinking water, and had to start using some of the extra water and treat it to make more drinking water. The whole area is full of drought, and on our village walk on the first day, each family we passed was struggling with the lack of water. We were told that the closest place to buy water was a 5 km walk to get water. So, we were allotted one to two pitchers of water each for a "shower," once a day. By Thursday, we were not allowed any water for that because there simply was not enough. It gave a pretty clear picture of the reality of how it was there. We went back to the base on Saturday and were able to have water, but this is not the case for the people in the surrounding villages. So, on Wednesday morning, with the first treatment for drinking water, we began to pray for rain. No sooner than we finished praying, we felt the first drops of rain! RAIN IN AFRICA!!!! It was so exciting. It was not much, but it rained some more that night. The roof leaked, but it didn't matter because we were so excited for the rain - mostly for the people nearby. It was not a lot of rain, but it was good to see it happen. I guess during the rainy season, it has flooded before, making roads inaccessible, but during the dry season, it's very dry. Something to be praying for, for the people there.
What did we do there? Well, on Monday when we got there, we took a village walk to a coconut farm. How interesting! Coconut trees have very deep roots, and can go very far down (imagine - we were on a hill, and so these roots must have to go quite deep to get to water - this is not close to the ocean like Likoni is). Not only are the roots deep, but the fruit is full of water! So the amount of water the roots can connect to is amazing. It was quite fascinating. For my fourth graders possibly reading this, the guy also showed us all of the ways you can use the coconut tree. It is like the Native Americans we learned about earlier this year, so it was so interesting to me. Every part of the tree is used - coconut fruit obviously, but also the branches for things like brooms, etc. Then part of the trunk comes off is a sieve like material. The bottom parts of the trunk are used for a lot of other things. It was cool, and then we got to drink coconut juice from the younger coconuts called madafu's, and then eat the softer fruit. The brown coconut that you are probably picturing has a much harder white fruit inside.
We also spent a lot of time cooking (we used a typical outside kitchen - this is used at the base too) , which was also quite an experience. I learned how to make mandazi, which is a plain doughnut type of thing, for breakfast, and mchele (rice with some veggies in it), beans, and chapati, which is similar to a tortilla. The outdoor kitchen is a fire with 3 stones around it. You put the pot on top of the fire, supported by the stones. It is incredibly smoky (we had a lot of tears) but we cooked everything there, so it was quite necessary.
On Thursday and Friday we got to go to the orphanage, which was a great joy. The kids are so cute. There is also a preschool on site, which has about 80 kids right now. The orphanage has about 25 kids living there. The other preschool kids come from the village nearby. The closest primary school is about an hour walk away, and so the vision for the orphanage is to build a primary school on site. It is also important to note that children in this area do not start school all at the same time, depending on the family. So, for example, one of the children at the orphanage, Isaac (so cute!), is 6 years old, but he is in the baby class at the preschool because his family did not send him to school when he was younger. By the time he gets to primary school, he could possibly be a 10 year old first grader. It is pretty common to see though, so I have learned to not ask questions associating age with year in school - because there is not one general age. Anyway, the kids were really sweet. We did some work for the orphanage on Thursday (we moved these big rocks for them because they are trying to dig a well, and then we sorted rice). We also got to play with them and they sang a couple of songs. On Friday night, we went and played a bunch of games with them. It was a lot of fun. The youngest at the orphanage is Eva, at age 2. The oldest is Jotham, at age 18. Such great kids, and yes, lots of laughter. :)
I had an interesting talk with some of the Kenyans about the school system here. It is very interesting, and I so wanted to tell my fourth graders how so very lucky that they are. Aside from the challenges to even get to school, once one gets there, it has its own challenges. Public schools became free about 3 years ago, which is good so that kids can go to school, but it has meant that up to 100 kids are in a classroom, with one teacher!! Kids go to school around 7:30 and then go home around 5. What a day. This is for a public day school though. Private schools have a smaller class size, and boarding schools have kids living there. Fridah told me about the boarding school that she went to for high school. The term was 3 months, and the children are not allowed to bring phones or contact home at all during the time. Families get to visit once during the term. (I thought this was a long time, but there are boarding schools for children as young as age 5, with the same restrictions!) Children are not allowed to bring their own food or clothes from home - if they do, it is taken away when they get there. They do a lot of studying, and are very disciplined, being taught to always have a neat appearance and a neat room, as well as staying on top of their studies. They are punished if they don't polish their shoes, make their bed, or go to class each day. We had a discussion about the discipline as well. I told about my class consequences, and then Fridah told me some examples of what could happen at her school. Examples include mixing cow manure with water, picking up the manure to fertilize the plants, or picking weeds until their hands bled. Of course, not too many kids broke a rule. :) Oh, and it brought quite a laugh when I told her about how I let the kids inside to play during our recess, especially since we play with our pet gecko. ha. Here, there are geckoes everywhere, so the idea of a gecko being in a cage was quite comical. :)
I think that's about it. We had some fun games, enlightening sharing, and good times of quiet, in any of the extra time not spent on what I talked about above. I learned a lot more swahili, and felt humbled in every moment.
We came back yesterday (Saturday afternoon), and did some laundry (no laundry machines for anyone interested).
Church has been super fun, and those of you interested can email me about it, since I am running out of time now.
I think of you often. Someone asked me what was the hardest thing here. I think it is the missing home and the frustration of not being able to communicate so often that is hardest. Some other things like the heat or water issues or cultural interactions with the Kenyans have been uncomfortable, but not the hardest. The best things have been what I have been learning, and getting to know and laughing with my new Kenyan friends. Oh, we have a new person on our team, Wycliffe. He is also hard to understand, but hopefully through time, it will become easier. Already, we are better understanding both Richard and Catherine.
Back at the base, we also have another class starting beside our own. So we have some new girls in our dorm, including another girl named Lillian, and some other guys as well. There is a family living on site as well, with 2 year old Daniela, and her baby brother Devin. They are a delight to be with too.
Take care! We start the classes part of the program tomorrow, as well as more of the practical work. The first two weeks of the program were team building, some practical work (we did a presentation at a church last week and worked with some middle schoolers today, in addition to the orphanage from last week).
This week was quite different from the week before, and since we probably won't be going there again, I think it's different from how it will be in the future.
We left on Monday to go to a place called Shimba Hills, which is about an hour and a half drive from the base. (Most Kenyans measure distance by how much time it takes to get there, not by mileage or km.) Shimba Hills is beautiful and is not just away in distance, but it is far from everything in general. We went for a retreat type of week - to do some team-building, and to also work with an orphanage nearby. There is not much up there, so we had a lot of time to sit with each other and with God. It was a really good time of quiet, and we also had some good fun. And, for those of you interested, there was no water, electricity, etc. But we brought our own water, and the caretaker also had some water in this tank that was collected from the rain. And, one of the best things that Shimba Hills has is a BREEZE. It was so nice to have a cool night to sleep in.
We did a lot of trusting there. By Wednesday, we had run out of drinking water, and had to start using some of the extra water and treat it to make more drinking water. The whole area is full of drought, and on our village walk on the first day, each family we passed was struggling with the lack of water. We were told that the closest place to buy water was a 5 km walk to get water. So, we were allotted one to two pitchers of water each for a "shower," once a day. By Thursday, we were not allowed any water for that because there simply was not enough. It gave a pretty clear picture of the reality of how it was there. We went back to the base on Saturday and were able to have water, but this is not the case for the people in the surrounding villages. So, on Wednesday morning, with the first treatment for drinking water, we began to pray for rain. No sooner than we finished praying, we felt the first drops of rain! RAIN IN AFRICA!!!! It was so exciting. It was not much, but it rained some more that night. The roof leaked, but it didn't matter because we were so excited for the rain - mostly for the people nearby. It was not a lot of rain, but it was good to see it happen. I guess during the rainy season, it has flooded before, making roads inaccessible, but during the dry season, it's very dry. Something to be praying for, for the people there.
What did we do there? Well, on Monday when we got there, we took a village walk to a coconut farm. How interesting! Coconut trees have very deep roots, and can go very far down (imagine - we were on a hill, and so these roots must have to go quite deep to get to water - this is not close to the ocean like Likoni is). Not only are the roots deep, but the fruit is full of water! So the amount of water the roots can connect to is amazing. It was quite fascinating. For my fourth graders possibly reading this, the guy also showed us all of the ways you can use the coconut tree. It is like the Native Americans we learned about earlier this year, so it was so interesting to me. Every part of the tree is used - coconut fruit obviously, but also the branches for things like brooms, etc. Then part of the trunk comes off is a sieve like material. The bottom parts of the trunk are used for a lot of other things. It was cool, and then we got to drink coconut juice from the younger coconuts called madafu's, and then eat the softer fruit. The brown coconut that you are probably picturing has a much harder white fruit inside.
We also spent a lot of time cooking (we used a typical outside kitchen - this is used at the base too) , which was also quite an experience. I learned how to make mandazi, which is a plain doughnut type of thing, for breakfast, and mchele (rice with some veggies in it), beans, and chapati, which is similar to a tortilla. The outdoor kitchen is a fire with 3 stones around it. You put the pot on top of the fire, supported by the stones. It is incredibly smoky (we had a lot of tears) but we cooked everything there, so it was quite necessary.
On Thursday and Friday we got to go to the orphanage, which was a great joy. The kids are so cute. There is also a preschool on site, which has about 80 kids right now. The orphanage has about 25 kids living there. The other preschool kids come from the village nearby. The closest primary school is about an hour walk away, and so the vision for the orphanage is to build a primary school on site. It is also important to note that children in this area do not start school all at the same time, depending on the family. So, for example, one of the children at the orphanage, Isaac (so cute!), is 6 years old, but he is in the baby class at the preschool because his family did not send him to school when he was younger. By the time he gets to primary school, he could possibly be a 10 year old first grader. It is pretty common to see though, so I have learned to not ask questions associating age with year in school - because there is not one general age. Anyway, the kids were really sweet. We did some work for the orphanage on Thursday (we moved these big rocks for them because they are trying to dig a well, and then we sorted rice). We also got to play with them and they sang a couple of songs. On Friday night, we went and played a bunch of games with them. It was a lot of fun. The youngest at the orphanage is Eva, at age 2. The oldest is Jotham, at age 18. Such great kids, and yes, lots of laughter. :)
I had an interesting talk with some of the Kenyans about the school system here. It is very interesting, and I so wanted to tell my fourth graders how so very lucky that they are. Aside from the challenges to even get to school, once one gets there, it has its own challenges. Public schools became free about 3 years ago, which is good so that kids can go to school, but it has meant that up to 100 kids are in a classroom, with one teacher!! Kids go to school around 7:30 and then go home around 5. What a day. This is for a public day school though. Private schools have a smaller class size, and boarding schools have kids living there. Fridah told me about the boarding school that she went to for high school. The term was 3 months, and the children are not allowed to bring phones or contact home at all during the time. Families get to visit once during the term. (I thought this was a long time, but there are boarding schools for children as young as age 5, with the same restrictions!) Children are not allowed to bring their own food or clothes from home - if they do, it is taken away when they get there. They do a lot of studying, and are very disciplined, being taught to always have a neat appearance and a neat room, as well as staying on top of their studies. They are punished if they don't polish their shoes, make their bed, or go to class each day. We had a discussion about the discipline as well. I told about my class consequences, and then Fridah told me some examples of what could happen at her school. Examples include mixing cow manure with water, picking up the manure to fertilize the plants, or picking weeds until their hands bled. Of course, not too many kids broke a rule. :) Oh, and it brought quite a laugh when I told her about how I let the kids inside to play during our recess, especially since we play with our pet gecko. ha. Here, there are geckoes everywhere, so the idea of a gecko being in a cage was quite comical. :)
I think that's about it. We had some fun games, enlightening sharing, and good times of quiet, in any of the extra time not spent on what I talked about above. I learned a lot more swahili, and felt humbled in every moment.
We came back yesterday (Saturday afternoon), and did some laundry (no laundry machines for anyone interested).
Church has been super fun, and those of you interested can email me about it, since I am running out of time now.
I think of you often. Someone asked me what was the hardest thing here. I think it is the missing home and the frustration of not being able to communicate so often that is hardest. Some other things like the heat or water issues or cultural interactions with the Kenyans have been uncomfortable, but not the hardest. The best things have been what I have been learning, and getting to know and laughing with my new Kenyan friends. Oh, we have a new person on our team, Wycliffe. He is also hard to understand, but hopefully through time, it will become easier. Already, we are better understanding both Richard and Catherine.
Back at the base, we also have another class starting beside our own. So we have some new girls in our dorm, including another girl named Lillian, and some other guys as well. There is a family living on site as well, with 2 year old Daniela, and her baby brother Devin. They are a delight to be with too.
Take care! We start the classes part of the program tomorrow, as well as more of the practical work. The first two weeks of the program were team building, some practical work (we did a presentation at a church last week and worked with some middle schoolers today, in addition to the orphanage from last week).
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Week One
I am trying out this blog. I hope it works. :)
I am emailing from the "faster" Internet in Mombasa, Kenya. It takes at least 40 minutes to get to town from where I am living, including walking to the ferry, riding the ferry across into town, and then walking here to the Internet cafe. There is also another Internet cafe that is only a 20 minute walk from where I am living, but it is a lot slower. I think I will try and blog from this computer in town.
The ferry, while I am talking about it, is an experience in and of itself. Cars, bikes, people, etc. all ride on this ferry taking people back and forth from the island of Mombasa. I am located in Likoni, a suburb on the mainland. The city of Mombasa is actually a small island. The ferry packs people in, and there is no concept of personal space or safety. People just get on and off, and it is a part of life. You really have to watch out and be aware - there are no signs or traffic lights or anything. You see people carrying things on their heads (HUGE things, I might add. I am so impressed, and I even tried carrying something small, with the help of one of my friends here. ha) Anyway, I'm sure I will get used to it, but for now, I am still marvelling and the "cattle drive," as I like to refer to it in my head.
Back at the base, we have been adjusting to life here. Let me introduce you to the team and the people here. By the way, some of you have asked if this is like an army base. It is just like a small campus, with 3 dorms, and some other buildings. It is where we sleep, eat, work, etc. We have an overlook to the ocean, creating a nice breeze, but it is not a beach like what the pictures look like.
Okay, back to the team:
Our leaders are: Hillard, who has this deep laugh and a great sense of humor,
Jeremy, who has a lot of wisdom to share with us,
Fridah, who is the main leader and has a beautiful heart when she shares,
and Janelle, who is the only Canadian on the team (the rest of the leaders are Kenyans). Janelle has been a great help for us too.
On the team:
Lillian - who has an amazing life story, and an awesome joyful spirit. I am so inspired by her and how God has moved in her life to where she is now. Ask me about her if you get a chance. She is amazingly strong.
Catherine- the other Kenyan girl on our team. She is a lot more quiet than Lillian, but she's coming out of her shell a little each day.
Lisa - my fellow American. She is from Ohio and we celebrated her 21st birthday the day we got here. She has been a joy to have on our team - her love of people and of God have been great, and it has been good to get to know her.
Martin and Judy: They are a couple from England and have such a neat story of how God brought them to Kenya. They will be staying for 2 years, beyond our program. They are really a delight to have on the team.
Paul, John, Philip, and Duncan- the young Kenyan guys. They are such a crack up and make us laugh so much. Paul has been helpful with my Swahili and all of their playfulness has really been a lot of fun.
Tiberius and Richard - they are a few years older than the younger 4 guys, and a lot more serious. But they have a lot of wisdom that I think will be good for our ministries. The hard part for me is that it is pretty difficult for me to understand them when they speak. Richard, especially. I don't think I've been able to understand very much from him, and I don't think he's getting very much from me either.
Also on the base are some other people:
Christine and Grace lead the orphanage ministry called New Hope. They are great.
Elizabeth, Bob, and Erick lead the Kings Kids ministry. Erick and Christine have this contagious smile that you just can't help being happy around. We had the Kings Kids come this morning, and the first one I met today was a kid named Joe. :) He is not too much older than my fourth graders at home too.
It has been an adjustment being here. The people are beautiful, and I have enjoyed hanging out and listening to their stories. It has been a challenge, though, adjusting to a more laid back lifestyle, and finding out information at the seemingly last minute. Yesterday was probably the hardest day - finding out a lot of what we would be doing this weekend and next week without knowing beforehand. There is not a lot of planning ahead, so I am getting used to it. Martin and Lisa were helpful in talking some things out with me yesterday, so that was good. We are learning a lot about culture and things that I had taken for granted within myself. The biggest learnings have been about being flexible and humble. My theme for my time here is actually one of humility.
Let's see, what else can I tell you. It's pretty hot here. My ankles swelled up and so I have been trying to keep my feet cool (obviously with not a lot of success, since they are still kind of swollen). There are a lot of things that are broken - shower, toilet, etc. But we are making due with what we have. The cold showers are actually refreshing after the heat and humidity of the day - it's just weird having to bend down with the faucet because the shower head does not work. I am getting used to sleeping in the mosquito net, and to all the bites. ;) We have seen some pretty big lizards and bats at night, and every morning we hear the call from the mosque nearby and the birds walking on the roof. The first couple of nights we were here, we got these huge, red poisonous centipedes in our dorm, but had a couple of people to kill them for us. Fridah's words to us were "if it bites you, it will sting for a couple of days, but it won't kill you." Thank you. :)
I am learning a lot of swahili and loving the food. Praise God that my stomach has been pretty good. Kenyans eat a LOT of starches - so a lot of rice and potatoes. But it is good. They have a corn maize thing called ugali, which is pretty good too. Lillian says that she is used to eating ugali every day, but we have so far only had it once. I get a lot of laughs as I try out the swahili, but I'm learning a lot of words every day. Yes, Hakuna matata does mean "no worries," and "Rafiki" means friend. But the words I use almost every day are "jambo" (hi) and "mzuri sana" which means "very good." The funniest story I have about my Swahili is that one day we were outside and one of the ladies was carving out a coconut. I got to try it (it's really an interesting tool, you have to sit on it and then this one part grinds out the center). I asked what it was called, and they said the literal translation was "goat." So later I was trying to explain to someone that I got to use the "goat," and they CRACKED up. Apparently, this Swahili word is used to mean both a goat and a coconut grinder. It depends on context. It was pretty funny.
I think that is all for now. I am learning a lot and next week we are heading to another village. I am sure I will have lots to tell about that when I get there.
Until then, I miss you all so much. I think that's an understatement. But God has a purpose for me here, and so I'm making the most of it - I just think of you very often.
Keep in touch. I love to hear what is happening at home.
I am emailing from the "faster" Internet in Mombasa, Kenya. It takes at least 40 minutes to get to town from where I am living, including walking to the ferry, riding the ferry across into town, and then walking here to the Internet cafe. There is also another Internet cafe that is only a 20 minute walk from where I am living, but it is a lot slower. I think I will try and blog from this computer in town.
The ferry, while I am talking about it, is an experience in and of itself. Cars, bikes, people, etc. all ride on this ferry taking people back and forth from the island of Mombasa. I am located in Likoni, a suburb on the mainland. The city of Mombasa is actually a small island. The ferry packs people in, and there is no concept of personal space or safety. People just get on and off, and it is a part of life. You really have to watch out and be aware - there are no signs or traffic lights or anything. You see people carrying things on their heads (HUGE things, I might add. I am so impressed, and I even tried carrying something small, with the help of one of my friends here. ha) Anyway, I'm sure I will get used to it, but for now, I am still marvelling and the "cattle drive," as I like to refer to it in my head.
Back at the base, we have been adjusting to life here. Let me introduce you to the team and the people here. By the way, some of you have asked if this is like an army base. It is just like a small campus, with 3 dorms, and some other buildings. It is where we sleep, eat, work, etc. We have an overlook to the ocean, creating a nice breeze, but it is not a beach like what the pictures look like.
Okay, back to the team:
Our leaders are: Hillard, who has this deep laugh and a great sense of humor,
Jeremy, who has a lot of wisdom to share with us,
Fridah, who is the main leader and has a beautiful heart when she shares,
and Janelle, who is the only Canadian on the team (the rest of the leaders are Kenyans). Janelle has been a great help for us too.
On the team:
Lillian - who has an amazing life story, and an awesome joyful spirit. I am so inspired by her and how God has moved in her life to where she is now. Ask me about her if you get a chance. She is amazingly strong.
Catherine- the other Kenyan girl on our team. She is a lot more quiet than Lillian, but she's coming out of her shell a little each day.
Lisa - my fellow American. She is from Ohio and we celebrated her 21st birthday the day we got here. She has been a joy to have on our team - her love of people and of God have been great, and it has been good to get to know her.
Martin and Judy: They are a couple from England and have such a neat story of how God brought them to Kenya. They will be staying for 2 years, beyond our program. They are really a delight to have on the team.
Paul, John, Philip, and Duncan- the young Kenyan guys. They are such a crack up and make us laugh so much. Paul has been helpful with my Swahili and all of their playfulness has really been a lot of fun.
Tiberius and Richard - they are a few years older than the younger 4 guys, and a lot more serious. But they have a lot of wisdom that I think will be good for our ministries. The hard part for me is that it is pretty difficult for me to understand them when they speak. Richard, especially. I don't think I've been able to understand very much from him, and I don't think he's getting very much from me either.
Also on the base are some other people:
Christine and Grace lead the orphanage ministry called New Hope. They are great.
Elizabeth, Bob, and Erick lead the Kings Kids ministry. Erick and Christine have this contagious smile that you just can't help being happy around. We had the Kings Kids come this morning, and the first one I met today was a kid named Joe. :) He is not too much older than my fourth graders at home too.
It has been an adjustment being here. The people are beautiful, and I have enjoyed hanging out and listening to their stories. It has been a challenge, though, adjusting to a more laid back lifestyle, and finding out information at the seemingly last minute. Yesterday was probably the hardest day - finding out a lot of what we would be doing this weekend and next week without knowing beforehand. There is not a lot of planning ahead, so I am getting used to it. Martin and Lisa were helpful in talking some things out with me yesterday, so that was good. We are learning a lot about culture and things that I had taken for granted within myself. The biggest learnings have been about being flexible and humble. My theme for my time here is actually one of humility.
Let's see, what else can I tell you. It's pretty hot here. My ankles swelled up and so I have been trying to keep my feet cool (obviously with not a lot of success, since they are still kind of swollen). There are a lot of things that are broken - shower, toilet, etc. But we are making due with what we have. The cold showers are actually refreshing after the heat and humidity of the day - it's just weird having to bend down with the faucet because the shower head does not work. I am getting used to sleeping in the mosquito net, and to all the bites. ;) We have seen some pretty big lizards and bats at night, and every morning we hear the call from the mosque nearby and the birds walking on the roof. The first couple of nights we were here, we got these huge, red poisonous centipedes in our dorm, but had a couple of people to kill them for us. Fridah's words to us were "if it bites you, it will sting for a couple of days, but it won't kill you." Thank you. :)
I am learning a lot of swahili and loving the food. Praise God that my stomach has been pretty good. Kenyans eat a LOT of starches - so a lot of rice and potatoes. But it is good. They have a corn maize thing called ugali, which is pretty good too. Lillian says that she is used to eating ugali every day, but we have so far only had it once. I get a lot of laughs as I try out the swahili, but I'm learning a lot of words every day. Yes, Hakuna matata does mean "no worries," and "Rafiki" means friend. But the words I use almost every day are "jambo" (hi) and "mzuri sana" which means "very good." The funniest story I have about my Swahili is that one day we were outside and one of the ladies was carving out a coconut. I got to try it (it's really an interesting tool, you have to sit on it and then this one part grinds out the center). I asked what it was called, and they said the literal translation was "goat." So later I was trying to explain to someone that I got to use the "goat," and they CRACKED up. Apparently, this Swahili word is used to mean both a goat and a coconut grinder. It depends on context. It was pretty funny.
I think that is all for now. I am learning a lot and next week we are heading to another village. I am sure I will have lots to tell about that when I get there.
Until then, I miss you all so much. I think that's an understatement. But God has a purpose for me here, and so I'm making the most of it - I just think of you very often.
Keep in touch. I love to hear what is happening at home.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)