Adventures in April

What to say about the fast few weeks since Ethiopia. I guess it’s been well over a month now. Days really fly and run together lately!

I’ve run quickly back into work and the usual day-to-day pressures of the ministry. Schools are closed for holidays. That means the primary school kids are on vacation and so Friday afternoons are open. We’ve been using those times to instead have meetings to plan for the summer. We should have more people this year. Instead of our average of two MSTs at a time last summer, we should have anywhere between 6-10 MSTs throughout June through August. That means we have to come up with plans of what we will do for our mission trip and for VBS this August. It also means we have to figure out what we need at the house to manage those kinds of numbers, i.e. new beds, new plates, cups, etc, and all the other logistics that are necessary.

Nancy and I have still been working on registration without any luck at all. We went to the next government office we were sent to on this wild goose chase and once again were bounced and told we don’t belong there either. Thinking about it later, it made me feel as if Empower A Child Kenya is a bat. We go to the birds and they say “go away, you aren’t a bird, you have fur.” Then we go to the rodents. They say “go away, you aren’t a rodent, you have wings,” so we stay stuck in between different government titles and government offices where no one quite knows where to send us or where it is we should go. Now we are trying to get help from a lawyer, but getting an audience from a lawyer is also proving as difficult. They are too busy and Easter holidays and other occasions don’t help.

In the meantime, I’ve been hard at work trying to lay the ground work to start up our Kenyan child sponsorship program. Emma has been running all over Kibera recruiting kids. She has around seven so far that she has identified as really needy (we need to start small until we know how to run the program well and can then add more students). While she does the fieldwork, I’ve been trying to remake the computerized database that the Uganda office is using in order to make it more effective and easier to use here in Kenya. That’s just more playing around with programs on my computer, trying new things, and learning new skills. It also means long days locked inside on my computer while the rest of the team is making chapati for kids or playing football with streetboys.





At the juvenile home, we finally finished reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in our morning program. When I asked the boys if they wanted to continue the program, I received a resounding “Yes!” and so we have started reading Prince Caspian. The boys insisted though, that we had to watch the movie from the first book so I made an agreement with them. “Whenever we finish a book, we can then watch the movie for it,” I promised them. So, the week after we finished the first book, we came with Victor’s DVD player and the movie. All the boys (even those not in the reading program) filled up the metal chairs in the dining hall in order to watch the movie on the tiny TV screen. The volume was so scant for that big hall that we had to turn the subtitles on just to know what was going on, but the boys absolutely loved it. Since then, every week they ask us if we have brought another movie for them.




Our teaching program has continued in the mornings. Though technically schools are on holidays this month, we decided to keep on teaching our kids because they really need the extra help. My class is still struggling to learn their numbers and the alphabet, but they are improving. I gave out lollipops to the kids that did the best on their exam. It worked like magic. All the sudden, the kids started begging for more exams so they could get lollipops too. Now we are working on recognizing the sounds of various consonants through a phonics book I found. The students are so excited when they get correct answers and when they learn. I love teaching those kids more than almost anything else I am doing right now.

In other news, Easter turns out to be a four day holiday in Kenya. I found this out the week before in a team meeting. I thought it was a regular work week for us and my staff told me very differently, “we go to church on Good Friday and we get Easter Monday off too!”

“Wow. A four day weekend,” I thought to myself, “what will the MSTs and I do with ourselves besides sit around home and watch movies.”

Then suddenly, it all made sense. Mombasa. The flowing palm trees, the turquoise ocean and white sandy beaches. How could there be any other option? I conspiracized with Athena and Cathy straight away. They were all in for an adventure.

Our Australian left right before Easter and the two MSTs from Uganda were also preparing to return to Uganda. Once they heard about our Mombasa plans, they immediately changed their departure date so they could join in.

Right before leaving for the coast, Ivan, my fiancé, also gave me a call. “We have spent every major holiday together. We can’t miss this one! I’m coming too!” I was pleasantly surprised, but immediately added him into our plans.





Late Thursday night, we left for the coast, and what an adventure we had! Since it was Easter weekend, a lot of other people had the same idea as us. The original place we hoped to stay was full so we stayed at a very inexpensive campsite. Camping near the beach sounded like a brilliant idea to us…until we got there and found out it wasn’t really a “campsite”, but tents shoved in between people’s hotel rooms. And the tents, which would be fine in a normal place, turned into ovens in the humid tropical heat of the coast. Not only so, but in the torrential downpours of the rainy season, the boys’ tents turned into little mini aquariums our first night, meaning we awoke to find the boys’ in our tent as well as us.

Then there was the advertised “cooking facilities” that we had been told about when we called to make reservations. In reality they turned out to be nothing more than a charcoal stove, which you would have to rent per use. Then you also would have to rent each individual pot, spoon, knife, and plate in addition to the charcoal stove. And where do you cook? There was no place for it, unless we took over some other guest’s front porch or else cooked outside in the rain. We decided to save ourselves money, the broke young people that we are, and try to eat cold, uncooked foods throughout.

By our second day there, we were a very miserable bunch. After waking up to pouring rain, the rain then continued all day long in a steady downpour. The girls still went swimming in the rain, it was surely warm enough for it, but the problem then was getting dry. While the tent was still an uncomfortable, steamy hot inside, there was no place to hang clothes unless we put them outside. But outside it was pouring rain. This meant that Ivan especially suffered, since all his clothes got a thorough rinsing in his flooded tent the previous night. Then we began to tire of meal after meal of peanut butter sandwiches and cookies. The thought of another couple nights of being wet and hot and hungry did not sound like very much fun and the boys, especially, were very dismal.

Finally, in a break in the rain, I went on a walk and checked out other places to stay. I found a beautiful apartment building and talked to the manager there. I told her our very sad story of flooded tents and miserable, wet boys and begged her to let us rent a one bedroom apartment for the six of us. It took a lot of bartering and begging but she eventually took pity on us and let us move in.

You should have seen how happy the boys were once they heard we were moving. We joyfully moved immediately (our campsite was ready to get rid of us too…they had overbooked their miserable tents and wanted to give our tent to someone else, poor souls) and that changed our entire weekend. All the sudden we had a full kitchen and could cook real food. We could hang out clothes to dry, take real showers, and sleep comfortably on couches, cushions, and beds. We were then truly in paradise.

Immediately we decided to go swimming. The sun came out, the water was as warm as a bathtub, and we swam and swam and swam.




The rest of the weekend, we truly enjoyed ourselves; swimming, gathering seashells, watching monkeys, and hangin out with good friends. It was lovely-the palm trees, flowering orange trees, flitting crabs, and sunrises. The heat just made the water that much more wonderful and our balcony at the apartment had a cool, fresh breeze. We learned a valuable lesson that weekend….no more beach camping!

Our return from Mombasa also saw the departure of all the Ugandan team. Craig, Kelsey and Ivan all returned to Uganda while our team continued our work here in Kenya.

I was able to pick up my wedding dress this week. It was finally finished with its alterations and cleaning and ready to come home. It’s so heavy it took two of us to bring it home. When I brought it home, I had to immediately take it out just to admire all the designs and beadwork and sparkles on it. I am very biased, however I think it’s the most beautiful dress in the whole wide world. Now we have three weeks till I leave for Uganda and our introduction ceremony. My mom will come to take part in the festivities and Ivan and I have been hard at work putting things together. He’s working on the overall planning, fundraising, and logistics of it. My job is much easier: getting dresses made for my maids, buying jewelry to match my dress (which is different from the wedding dress…yes, I got to pick out two pretty dresses…I am very blessed), figuring out how to do my hair, etc. I like those jobs better.

We went to a mixed cultural wedding this weekend. A British friend married a Kenyan friend and it was truly a beautiful wedding and they blended traditions nicely. While the energetic Kenyan dance party that followed took a few of the British visitors by surprise, the English barn dances that were taught afterwards also challenged the Kenyans. It was a blast. We are hoping that our party this month will be just as fun and as much of a blessing. Trying to combine cultural traditions and perspectives is a challenge but can really make for an interesting end result.

While in the eyes of Ivan’s family, we will be married at the end of this month, in the eyes of the church and government, we will not be officially married until our “real” wedding in October. This is just the families giving us permission to wed. I do find this custom very entertaining though…in Uganda you get two parties instead of just one! Please pray for the visa process to go on well though…government processes are a pain no matter what country it is!

Well, now it is time to go attack my mountain of dirty clothes that has been piling up for the past two weeks. Until next time….


For more pictures:
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