Life is beautiful

Life here is busy but in a good, full and rich kind of way... Life here is beautiful!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to do some traveling with our Madam as she needed to take her soldier to his barracks in Mombasa. It was a great weekend. I really enjoyed getting to see the coast again, but mostly getting to know the Madam more on a person to person level and to share some family life with her. Life here is always family life. If you are under the misconception that that is something very much different than family life in America, you are wrong... it is mostly just love and grace and sharing life despite our humanity together, and it is beautiful, just like it is in America... sometimes hard, but beautiful...

Another thing which is beautiful is Kenyan countryside, which I have had the opportunity to see a lot of. While I had been to Mombasa before back in December, I had made the trip their on a night bus and had no idea what lay between Nairobi and Mombasa. While on Friday we drove through the night to get there, coming back was Monday during the day, and it was stunning from the coastal farmland through the hours of African grassland, to foothills and farmland back to the outskirts of industrial Nairobi at dusk. I would have taken pictures, but I tried once and if you take pictures out of a moving vehicle, they are blurred... so you will have to simply believe, that Kenya is insanely beautiful.

Coming back to Hope is always beautiful too, even after being gone a few days; the greetings of my fellow teachers, the smiles that light up the children's faces when they see I return, and the feeling of coming home. The day to day is beautiful... the teaching which still terrifies me slightly with the gravity of my job; it is the children's future!... the babies who are getting so big but are always ready for some quality cuddling and reward you with big eyes and bright smiles... the teasing of friends as we go about our day to day... the feeling of home...

With just over a month remaining in Kenya, I feel torn between two homes; the home I have made for myself here with the children and the home which calls me back to America. It is completely natural and logical for me in the same breath to be excited to see my family and to lament how I will ever say goodbye... to count the days both in anticipation and in terror... Often, I simply begin to reflect on this past year and on the richness of it and on how much I have grown as a person, on how much these children have taught me. Often, I am simply overwhelmed by the grace in it all, by God's grace in my life in somehow bringing me here... Sometimes I simply reflect on how life is beautiful...

Time is racing...

Every morning I start my classes by writing the date on the blackboard. Sometimes I get confused because here I would say 2/6/2011 and back home I would write 6/2/2011... Still, normally I get it correct, or my students, ever helpful, correct me. Each morning I am confronted with the passage of time, and this morning I was struck by the realization, how is it June already? Then, when one of my little friends was asking when I was leaving, saying July sounds suddenly near. I remember when  a friend from Canada was leaving in January, and July seemed ages away and was easy to dismiss to the children... 'I am here for a long time yet.' Only, now I am not... I have less than fifty days remaining in Kenya, and the time is racing! I don't know how I will ever say goodbye... I told my little friend though I would be so sad and cry to say goodbye, "nitalia kusema kwaheri" but then told her I would say 'tutaonana' instead, which means we will see each other... as I hope somehow to not have it be goodbye forever, but to find a way to come back and visit all my sisters and brothers here in Kenya...

Meanwhile, when I am not moping, panicked or even excited about my quickly coming departure, life here is good, full of celebration and holiday. On Sunday  we had a sweet celebration for our soldier brother, with songs, dances, recited poems and comedies and a feast of rice, beans, chicken, bananas, buns and even soda and cake. We recently had a chapter on celebrations in my Standard four  class, and according to these kids, it is the food that makes a celebration, so Sundays affair was as good as it gets, even if with delays and how long things really take we didn't eat lunch until 5pm...

Then yesterday was Kenya's 48th Madaraka Day, or Independence Day. Kenya became independent from Britain in 1963. Here at Hope we watched the parade on TV and the singing and then the Prime Ministers speech in Kiswahili but turned the TV off during the President's speech because lunch was ready... this made me laugh although I was probably the only one actually listening by that point. He talked about how far Kenya has come in the last 48 years to achieve social services like education, and reemphasized the goals for the country to keep moving forward... Also, it meant we didn't have school which was a nice to have a midweek chance to sleep in...

Now our soldier brother leaves tomorrow to report to his unit, and I have been invited for the trip to drop him off in Mombassa. I am excited. It should be fun. I was in Mombassa briefly in December when I was on vacation, and the best thing about it is, it is on the ocean, so I  should have a chance to hopefully wave at the Indian Ocean again... And travelling with the Madam is always fun!

Anyways, in other news, I still love getting emails... and one of the babies burped on me earlier, so I smell like sour milk!

As time keeps on passing...

Greetings from Kenya,

I fear this update is rather overdue as life here has been keeping me quite busy, but in a good way. My classes are going well and I teach most mornings from 8 until 1 with a serious amount of marking on breaktimes. Then, after lunch and a cup or two or three of tea, I head to the nursery for a few hours before the kids get done with school at four when I try and go hangout with them. Sometimes I need another cup of tea between the nursery and hanging out. Then, after evenings devotions, I eat my dinner quickly before going to the nursery to help again for an hour or two before heading back to my room around nine. We are a bit short handed in the nursery which has led me to volunteer and be assigned to extra time there, mostly with the little babies as the toddlers have started nursery school and have their own schedule now. It is a full, rich if at times exhausting life, and I am very thankful for tea and coffee. Back when I was getting ready to come to Kenya and people would ask what I was most worried about, my somewhat joking but truly honest answer was that there would be no tea or coffee... Thankfully, that fear was unfounded, and so even life is busy and full, I am happy so long as I can retreat for tea or start my morning with coffee...

This past weekend I was offered a break from the norm when the Madam invited me and the other volunteer here to come to one of the older boys military training graduation on Friday. It seems like only the other day we were throwing a going away party for this young man, but now his seven months of training are over and it was time for him to graduate. Here in Kenya, the recruits are not allowed to go home at all during the training period, so he had not seen any of his family since October. Our dear Madam was very anxious to see her baby boy...

It was rather a large group of us, seventeen in all, who headed for the graduation, leaving late Thursday evening to arrive Friday morning at the Moi Barracks in Eldoret, some six hour drive away. By the time we arrived, the place was already packed, and we had to park some 2km(1mi?) away from where we wanted to be and walk the rest of the way. Once we got closer, everybody was waiting and being told to move away from one area, and in Kiswahili the soldiers who were moving the crowds announced whoever was with the mzungus to please tell them where to go... it was amusing...

We had hoped to see our recruit before the parade, but then that wasn't possible, so our day of waiting commenced. We opted out of the parade if we even might have been allowed in as there were so many people, and as the President as Commander-in-Chief was attending, it really was no small affair. I can say I was in the general area of the Kenyan president even if I did not see him. Incidentally, he was late making the whole day run late, but I enjoyed waiting. I don't get out much, and this was prime people watching as there were so very many of us waiting for our recruits. Eventually they began to trickle out and it was fun to watch the young soldiers reunited with their families. Celebration here in Kenya is often accompanied with song, so you would see the young recruit surrounded by a throng of happy, singing people and it was a beautiful site.

Our poor recruit meanwhile had the hardest time finding his party as the cellphone lines were clogged, but after three hours with storm clouds threatening to let loose, he found us. It was a moving moment with the Madam, the recruit, and most of the others in our party in tears at the reunion. It was a big day not only for this young man, but for all of Hope because that is the vision here... That children who would have had no opportunity and been nobody in the eyes of Kenya can have both a hope and a future, and so when the children grow and achieve their dreams, it is a testimony to the possibility for each and every one...

We got poured on during these touching moments of reunion and had to race to our vehicles, and after dropping the recruit off to finish his last two days before we could pick him on Sunday, we encountered my worst traffic jam in Kenya, waiting five hours to get all of 10km back to Eldoret. That is what happens when everybody is leaving together... It was a little ridiculous though as we would move a few feet and then the drivers would all cut their engines, take naps and the passengers would get out of the car and walk around unless you were me and packed four tight in the backseat... Eventually we made it to Eldoret and had chicken and chips around midnight at a 24hr restaurant... yum!

Now, because Eldoret is near the border with Uganda and rather far from Kinangop and because we had to be back in Eldoret on Sunday and the Madam wanted to check on the girl in Uganda, she decided to go to Uganda between Friday night and Sunday morning, taking some of the party with her, including me and the other volunteer... So from our 24hr restaurant we headed to the border, passing immigration around 6:30am. I am getting good at crossing the border in to Uganda as this is my third time; once over Christmas, in March by myself and now this past weekend...

We were in Uganda for all of 22 hours, most of which we drove. First we drove to Iganga where the girl used to go to school to get the address for the school she was transferred to(around 100km...) and then we turned around and drove north to Soroti where she now goes to school(another four or five hours...). The new school seems like a good place though and is run by Catholic nuns who seem very committed. The girl seemed happy although I don't know if she remembered me from Christmas. It was good we went because Madam was able to straighten out her affairs, and show the school that she had somebody to stand by her as the girls family was playing rather absentee.

From Soroti it was back to the border where we arrived around 2am... I wish I knew how many kilometres we travelled... but it was definitely a lot. After crossing, we stopped over at a guesthouse in the border town and it was lovely to be able to bathe and sleep in a bed instead of the backseat after two days... Also, it came with a really good breakfast the next morning.

Then, the two hours back to Eldoret to pick up our recruit, but there were some delays so we spent most of Sunday afternoon waiting at a local restaurant where thankfully there was a playground for our three small traveling companions, Madam's three four year olds who do remarkably well traveling in cars, but loved the chance to run and play and swing and slide... Madam wants to get a playground here for the nursery school, and it would be lovely if she is able.

Around five we were able to pick up our recruit and start our journey home, arriving around midnight. On Friday, all the soldiers had been in uniform, but on Sunday they were in their street clothes and looked much younger. Most were catching buses home, so our recruit got to bask in the glory of being picked up by our beautiful Madam in her friends posh car as he leaned out the window calling fond farewells. Now he gets to spend two weeks with the greater family here at Hope before heading to his assignment. I think we are going to have a celebration one of these days...

It really was a fun weekend for me. I enjoyed getting to spend some quality time with Madam, the elements of roadtripping, getting to see the girl in Uganda again. The best part though was the celebration and reunion with our soldier that I was very honored to get to be a part of. Truly, the work of Hope is amazing. It is not to meet the basic needs of these children, but to give they a home, a family, a hope and a future and to help them by God's grace and faithfulness achieve their dreams.

Back to school in the rainy season

School opened on Tuesday and I am enjoying being back, and I think even the students, after their nice long break, are ready to be back to studying. I had forgotten how busy a school day can be though, with the break times morning bell of 8 o'clock a mere memory replaced by the rather cold early hour of 6:30. Busy and full as I continue to teach a solid load of classes and try to also be present in the nursery when I am able.

Meanwhile, while last term was teaching in the dry season, this term is teaching in the rainy season which poses some challenges. Namely, it rains pretty consistently in the afternoon which means our afternoon periods are somewhat lost. For me, most days I only have morning classes and am unaffected, but Thursday and Friday I do have some English periods in the afternoon and yesterday got to experience my first attempt at teaching during a torrential downpour. Remember, our schoolhouse is tin, and torrential downpours on tin makes for a deafening roar. Also, one wonders over the logistics of lightning and said metal walls... During my downpour I gave the students an assignment on the blackboard, but it is much better if we can go over it together as a class before they complete. However, yesterday at least, the assignment was thankfully self explanatory. The headteacher referred to afternoon lessons during the rainy season as lost periods though, and while of all the schools in the district we ranked quite high, the goal is to have our school rank number one. I think they can do it, but the rain does bring challenges.

They did get the district scores yesterday, ranking our primary against almost thirty others in the district, and like I said, we really did quite well, even with English ranking quite well. Our lagging grades are class seven and eight, which with the grade eight secondary entry exam, the KCPE, looming in the future is worrisome. Yesterday afternoon the teachers met, and me too as I was stranded by the rain and do teach class seven English, to discuss strategies. I really admire the teachers here. They are very committed to both the school but more importantly to the students as individuals. The headteacher emphasized the responsibility we have, I was honored to be included in his conference, as teachers and counselors but also reminded the rest of us that we also often stand in the role of parents for these children, as the teachers are the adults the children know best. He also reminded us that for the class sevens and eights, while we might think we are teaching them, their thoughts might be anywhere else; essentially, he reminded us that they are going through adolescence. The teachers here are quality!

Meanwhile, with the new term, our toddlers have started nursery school which is really good. They had outgrown their playroom and were in danger of growing quite unruly, but I think they are at the perfect age to learn. They even got uniforms and look super smart. Currently, they don't have a classroom because this weekend even the secondary students are supposed to move into the almost completed secondary building to clear out their rooms for the nursery school. They have been having class in the dining hall though, and truly are enjoying their new atmosphere of learning.

In other news, in the world of westerners, my friend from England left this week and will be greatly missed. She was a lot of fun always teasing the children and really standing in the gap of the nursery over the holidays. I will miss having tea with her back in our rooms and talking about the crazy adventures of a day. However, fortunately for my sake as I rather like having tea and talking about the crazy happenings of life here, the week before she left, another young woman from Canada came and will be here for two months, so I have my evening company still. She will be here up until two weeks before I leave, and while she has only been here a week, I am convinced will do quite well and we have had fun together with the kids.

Meanwhile, this week back at school has rather raced by, and I know my last two and a half months will do the same because the weeks do fly during the busyness of school... I am constantly reminded of how blessed I am to be here, and as I don't think they will have more such long-term visitors here at least in the immediate future, I feel very blessed to be the person who had the opportunity to stay here with these children, in this family, the longest.

April holidays continue...

Greetings from Kenya and a late happy Easter! Here we continue on with our April holidays as we are breaking the school for the month of April like everyone else... while still thankful for my holiday to Uganda when I was told we were on break, I remain and will remain confused as to why I was told to go when I was... At the same time, I have enjoyed life on holiday here...

For me this has meant spending a lot of time with the toddlers, especially as we have had some nanny turnover and are currently down a few... The toddlers are at a great age for playing, games, singing silly Western nursery songs to the nannies great amusement, and my latest favorite thing... dance parties! Those babies know how to dance and I have been learning a lot of new moves although recently the older boys have been borrowing our radio to my dismay...

 Last Wednesday I even got to go into Nairobi as a proxy nanny with Madam. Two of the little babies needed to go in for injections, so I got to visit the rather impressive Jomo Kenyatta Hospital, and be utterly embarrassed when her three three year olds decided to make a great escape and I proceeded to chase them, or follow them as I was holding one of the babies, all around the hospital compound to try and get them back to our waiting room... While I love the babies and toddlers, I don't know if I could really be a nanny... It is hard work!

These past weeks have also held some lovely opportunities for cross-cultural exchange and for sharing life together outside of the routine. I got to help with my mzungu friend in the kitchen on two different occasions; the first sorting rocks out of the next days beans(no small feat when those beans feed two hundred people... we did a good job, but often you do find rocks in your food...), and then another day washing up the lunch dishes and amusing everyone by my attempts to mop the kitchen floor like a Kenyan(at that particular moment in addition to the kitchen boys, several of the nannies were in getting hot water, so the amusement was widespread...). Helping in the kitchen was fun too just for the sake of laughter, as the kitchen boys liked to teach, and test, our knowledge of Kiswahili and tease us for not understanding... and teach us Kenyan sheng(slang). Even if so often the joke really is on me, I love laughter and laughing at myself with those around me and how laughter can unite.

On another occasion, I 'helped' fix the driveway, or more accurately watched the kids fix the driveway while hanging out with some of the teachers and talking about how things are the same, and different... In Kenya, time is told based on the sun, and as the sun rises and sets pretty much the same time the whole year round, this works. So seven in the morning is saa moja, one o'clock, and you count from there with seven in the evening being saa moja again. It works... but I was explaining to two of the teachers how we don't tell time like that in America because the days change... getting long in the summer months and short in the winter months. I even gave the example of Alaska where in the summer it is daylight and the winter it is night. They were baffled and said if a Kenyan went to Alaska without knowing that, they would think the world was ending!

Then, for the Good Friday/Easter weekend, we celebrated Good Friday here and it was lovely fun and good feasting. I also got to witness a massive butchering operation of the twelve chickens which served as the highlight of our feast, and yes, twelve chickens can serve 200 people... as an addition to rice and beans. With the chickens, at least twenty of the primary boys were helping; plucking the chickens by placing them in boiling water, removing their organs and even the food the chickens had eaten that morning, and then cutting them into smaller pieces using a machete... Apparently we eat everything... the heads, the feet, and a good part of the organs... I told them that I had never seen a chicken be butchered before because generally if you are buying a chicken to eat in America, you buy it dead, but here, even if you are going to eat a chicken that you bought, you buy it live in the marketplace, butcher it yourself and eat it fresh...

Anyways, that is the news from my life in Kenya... I have been here in Kenya eight months this past week with three remaining... the days seems to be racing now, and I feel very blessed for how with time, the relationships get better and better and there are more and more opportunities to share life together in more and more ways. With both the good and the challenging, so much of life here feels like family life with its ups and downs. Like so much of the world these days, our budget is not all what might be hoped and the secondary school which should have been completed months ago creeps on towards completion... If you pray, pray for that, as when it is finally done, I think everyone will sigh a sigh of relief and most especially our Madam.

School opens again on May 3 and hopefully that all starts up smoothly and I am allowed to continue on with my classes. The children really have been having a lovely break and after a few days of just sitting in their classrooms they were rescued by the pastor into the sunshine for Bible study and even the other day had a singing lesson from a visiting teacher and for just general times of playing and relaxation. On several occasions when we had brought the toddlers outside, the children were free and played with them and that is always so fun to watch and oversee. It truly is family life here.

And everyone takes a breath and rests...

Breaks here are relaxing... a combination between work and rest... but the children spend more time playing and resting than working. Last week felt like a break although we did not close the school until Friday, but the primary children were only in class Monday and not even for real lessons(I kept busy taking the children out for impromptu PE to play), then Tuesday they were given their marks, but most of the week spent mornings working on the farm and cleaning their dorms and afternoons playing. This coming week is the proper break though with both secondary and primary free and most of the teachers gone home to see their families. I'm not sure if after this week it is back to classes or what, and am still not sure how I took a break when nobody else did(although they were supposed to... maybe) but am honestly happy to be here for the break, and to have had my break, so will not ask too many questions.

This past week I even helped on the farm a little bit. There are never enough tools, so the children take it in shifts, which keeps anyone from getting too tired so is a good plan anyways. They use jembes to break the ground, tools rather like a short handled hoe although the head is bigger. I tried to describe a pitchfork and they found that amusing, as they did my attempts at using the jembe. They told me I did a good job though, and I told them I was a farmer in America, which while a true fact, I am not sure they believed... They are convinced all farms in America are completely run by machines...

The other top activity of this past week was mancala. The children here go through game fashions. The first month I was here it was a stone game that I have not seen since, but all the little girls played it everyday. Then over December it was a dodging game played with a sock ball and then for a week the games all had to do with rolling four old tires. In the beginning of march they created a village out of building stones left over from the school, and now it is mancala on the sewer grates by the kitchen. They use the grates because in mancala, a game I think that comes from Africa but I play with my sisters, you have two rows of pockets(in our case four pockets for each player) and two banks for each persons stones. Then you move the stones in each pocket around, and if you land where there are already rocks, you pick up that pile and keep moving, depositing in your bank as you circle the board. Whoever has the most rocks in their bank at the end when all the rocks are taken wins. It is a simple game, but very fun and easy to join. I have had to explain it to some of the workers though and to two of the secondary teachers who always seem a little amused that the white women(myself and the young woman from England) are happy to play for ages on the grates with the little children... The children meanwhile were amused to hear I play the same game in America...

Meanwhile, the big event recently was this past Saturday's celebration for our Pastor's graduation. He graduated a few weeks ago from his seminary school(after finishing classes and being here since November) but this was the family celebration. It was lovely. He was Madam's first child, and has grown up in this ministry, achieved his dreams, and now returned, so all the children can look to him as a sign of the possibility for their own futures. We had a nice commisioning service with my MCC reps as special guests, and then a feast of chicken, bananas, rice and beans, maandazi buns... Apparently the boys had started cooking at 4am to finish all the food in time.

 So all in all, life continues on in its fullness and challenges. It all feels a little unreal sometimes, but at others I realize this is also as real as it gets. Still, as I read headlines from around the world of chaos and absurdity and how the US government almost shut down over the budget, the fact that my life is a smattering of playing with rocks on grates and holding little babies(who now smile and laugh) and doing my best to live my days here on purpose and for the children, it can all feel a little unreal... My country reps asked if I had a countdown yet, and I confess I do, but it is more to make the most of each day than because I am homesick. What if we lived like each day really mattered? What if we lived on purpose? What if we lived without taking the people around us for granted? Those are the reasons I have a countdown, so I remember how precious each day is and that even when a day is hard, life is beautiful and I will not be here forever and to get up, go out, and live!

The rains are incredible... I never appreciated them when I arrived back in September, but after several dry and dusty months, I see that they are glorious. With each rain, one can see the world turning green again, the shamba growing... One knows that soon there will be cabbage and kale with the beans and maize, that the cows will have enough to eat, and everything will be grow as it should...

I have also changed since the rains were a common day experience. As I stood on my balcony overlooking the rains yesterday, waiting for them to let up a little so I could walk to the nursery, I realized that I had learned to wait... to be... things I struggled with a lot when I arrived. I could just wait, enjoying the beauty of the rain, the smell of rain that always reminds me a little of home(although yesterday it was mixed with the smell of cow...). I have grown into the rhythm of life here, the waiting and the living...

Speaking of cows, a highlight of this past week was learning how to milk a cow. We have quite a herd, and two cows that currently are milking(the smallest baby cow truly reminds me of a puppy in how playful it is...) So one morning before class I got a lesson in milking from one of the men who keeps the animals. He is a newer worker and truly one of the nicest people... with kids of his own back home, so having a fatherly air about him with the children. Milking a cow was both easier and harder than I thought... I could get the milk to flow, but nowhere near quickly or as efficiently as my teacher...

In other news, we had our end term exams this week, and for the most part my children performed very well. My standard sevens, however, truly struggled, but according to the other teachers, the exams become much harder when they enter grade seven, and so if we all work hard, they should be passing by the end of next term. Apparently, I leave right before exams for term two which is unfortunate. While waiting two hours for exams to start on Thursday(we were waiting for them to be picked up from the district) I had a very nice time just hanging out in the staff office with the teachers, chatting for part, and when they switched to Kiswahili, following as best I could but feeling welcome to wait with them...

Now it is the weekend which is always lovely. Yesterday was Saturday and after the children cleaned their clothes and dorms they just lounged on the grass and played until lunch. Then after lunch we had a hilarious time of games. Here in addition to the teachers, nannies and workers there are three boys who returned to work after finishing secondary this past November, and they are my favorites because they are hilarious... They are a big help around the place, but also big personalities in the adolescent way... One is really into dancing and sometimes on a weekend afternoon will have all the children dancing to music in the dining hall... and even the babies know how to dance here... another is teaching primary(and always has his own personal soundtrack coming from his phone and is always on facebook on his cellphone which I find amusing)... and the third is mostly in the kitchen, but likes to walk around and show of his authority always a little louder than he needs be, but he is awfully nice. Anyways, yesterday they had all the primary come play and it was a lot of fun and a good laugh in the way big brothers are... I even played football with them until we all had to run and bring our laundry in when the rains came...

I have high hopes for a pleasant Sunday, as life continues on...

p.s. I still really love emails... so if you feel inspired...