Long and overdue, but this month has been busy...

So looking at my blog I realize it has been almost a month since I last wrote... which means I am left with a lot to write about and not knowing what all to include... so bear with me... First, a quick disclaimer, the large gap has mostly been due to a lack of internet, not blogging negligence; my internet went down and then I was travelling on vacation... so here goes...

School ended the last week of November, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the holidays, both here at Hope and the two weeks I had between a personal vacation with friends and the MCC East Africa retreat. Especially the first week of holidays here at Hope was fun. With no classes, there was a lot of opportunity to just be around with the kids, and I felt like I crossed over some line of belonging, if only in my own head. When they worked, I worked with them... and provided a certain amount of entertainment in doing so... When they watched tv, I watched tv... and it was good.

I was almost sorry to have to go when the time came for my vacation... Almost might be an overstretch. I was quite looking forward to my vacation to the Kenyan coast with some friends who work with MCC Uganda, including my SALT orientation roommate and a fellow Peace Studies friend from Whitworth. I did not mind that my ride out from Hope was two hours late though as it allowed me plenty of time to tell the kids goodbye, and more importantly, that I was coming back in two weeks. There is enough ambiguity in life here at Hope that I did not feel the need to add to it by mysteriously disappearing.

That was Friday, December 3, and I got to Nairobi before my friends, bought us bus tickets to Mombassa which was the first leg of our journey, and then met them when their bus arrived from Kampala. We stayed Friday night in Nairobi, and then Saturday spent the day in Nairobi, including getting lunch at a coffee shop where I suffered my first Kenyan misadventure(and hopefully last). The one moment I was not hyper vigilant about my purse, having put it between my feet instead of on my lap, it was stolen... live, learn, and life is too short for regrets... still, not the funnest incident as my purse had some money, my bank card, my camera and what I was most sad to lose, my journal I had started halfway through November... at least the likelihood of a pickpocket reading fifty pages of rather boring reflections and existential angst written in cursive is slim to none, but still... I rather enjoy reading those things and am sorry to have lost those weeks of my time here. Thankfully, I was able to cancel my bank card immediately, and sorted out how to still get money(thanks to one of my travelling companions and my dad...) and so the vacation was not thwarted. I personally decided I was not going to let it ruin my time... and it didn't... I have had my close calls back in the states even, so robbery is not just a Kenya or Nairobi thing, but wherever or whenever it happens, it is unfortunate.

And so Saturday night, we took our bus to Mombassa. Our tickets had been in my purse too, but the company we used had computer records of my buying the tickets, and our names, so we were able to retrieve them. Also, I was able to get my same cellphone number back as the phone company makes you register for SIM cards, so once I could prove my identity, they were willing to restore my number. I was overall very impressed by the infrastructure and service I met with after my misadventure, as well as the sympathy that I received whenever people learned what had happened.

So the downside to taking the overnight bus to Mombassa is you arrive in Mombassa at 5:30 in the morning... which is really early to be in a new place. Thankfully, we found a place to have breakfast(and even store our luggage) before exploring the old town and visiting a 14th century Portugese fort. Fort Jesus had been built by the Portugese, conquered by the Arabs and then taken over by the British. We had a great guide, and I enjoyed our tour. I had expected the fort to be very much like the castle forts I had visited in Ghana, and while serving some of the same purposes, there was a different feel. Old Town meanwhile was a great walk. The coast of Kenya has a very different feel than inland and a very different culture. It is predominantly Swahili(not to be completely confused with the language of Kiswahili, the Swahili are also one of the people groups in Kenya). The details are escaping me, but they are pretty heavily influenced by Arab culture as well as they were the main traders centuries ago. For instance, the next day we visited the Gedi ruins a few hours north up the coast which were the ruins of a deserted 13th century Swahili city. What is left of the city is beautiful and included artifacts from as far away as China. Little is known about it except that it appears to have been deserted, for whatever reason, voluntarily and not violently.

I thoroughly enjoyed our time in Mombassa even if it was short as we headed that afternoon north to Malindi(where the ruins were) and stayed at this very funky eco camp... It was lovely, a little random, but we were the only guests so very relaxing... Monday we went to the ruins... and Tuesday we headed to our main destination for the trip which was Lamu Archipeligo on the northern coast of Kenya. It is a Unesco Heritage site, and so a very well preserved Swahili town. Also, no cars are allowed on the islands so the primary means of transportation are donkeys and dhows, the local sailing boats.  On Lamu we rented this random house which was quite reasonable and again away from the major hub or tourists although Lamu is definitely a tourist destination. It was really very nice, included breakfast and house help who we rather enjoyed as individuals... I am sure they thought we were quite mad and I do not think we were there average guests passing through.

Some highlights from Lamu:
-how insanely beautiful the island was
-getting to explore the town which was old, with narrow streets, lots of donkeys and despite being a tourist destination is also very much a place where people live
-the fact that Lamu might be the one place in Kenya where it is safe to walk around after dark
- eating lots of good seafood, especially seafood curries and drinking lots of really good fresh juice
- going to the beach and getting to swim in the Indian Ocean which is warm
- renting a Dhow boat one day and sailing on the Indian Ocean and then going snorkeling over a coral reef(which is rather like being inside the aquarium at the zoo) and eating a delicious meal that was cooked on our boat... also, if you ever go snorkeling, remember to put sunscreen on the back of your legs or it hurts the sit down the next day...
- exploring all the little shops in town
- simply being on vacation with the good company of friends...

And so the days passed, bringing us to Sunday where we had decided to skip the sixteen or so hours on very bumpy and hot buses it had taken us to get to Lamu and fly back back to Nairobi for our retreat which started the next day. The retreat was lovely too, more good company and good food. All the MCC workers from Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan were there, and it was cool to learn more about what MCC is doing in the region, and I still very much like their philosophy of partnership and how while certainly not perfect, how it works on the ground. One of my favorite things about the retreat was an outing one afternoon to Mt. Longonot in the Rift Valley. It is about a 45 minute hike up the mountain and then you can hike around the rim of a crater. It was pretty cool and had great views of the Rift Valley.

As this is much too long already(what happens when you try and cover a month in a blog...) I am going to try and wrap up. The retreat was good though, very refreshing and a good reminder of the greater community I am part of outside of Hope CC. Then Friday I was welcomed home here at Hope, and reminded of how blessed I am to be a part of this community here. I really am excited for the coming months, to see what they hold, and believe the relationships I have already begun are only going to get sweeter with time. And I promise to blog again before a month is up, and so to keep these shorter in the future.

And in light of the season, a very Happy Christmas! I would encourage everyone to truly have it be a season of giving, and to consider giving beyond yourself... to consider giving to your greater community and around the world... truly, from this side of the world, a little can truly go a long way, and programs like child sponsorship or providing a micro-finance enterpise through Heifer International or Kiva, really does make a difference... Give a gift that has the potential to change a life...