Some things you just don’t want to think about too much!

The other day I had a couple of experiences that made me realize how I have acclimated to life in Kenya. Although I was aware of the situations (as I will explain), I realized that I was not bothered by them. It is just life here, and it is what it is!

I walked to Kenyatta Market (about an 8 -10 minute walk alone, 18-20 mins with Micah!) to buy some vegetables (5 carrots for 20/- {27 cents}, 4 Roma tomatoes for 20/- {27 cents}, 3 zucchini for 30/- {40 cents}, and 2 apples for 40/- {53 cents}.) Apples are expensive, but for the most part veggies are very inexpensive here. I guess they have to be less expensive to make up for the high prices for everything else!

Then I went into the Farmer’s Outlet butchery (thankfully, “outlet” in this case does not mean overstock or last years models!) to buy some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ground beef (or mince.) We do not buy our meat all nicely packaged like at the grocery stores at home. They do sell meat & chicken at the large grocery stores here but it’s pretty expensive (ex. chicken at butchery: 550/- per kilo [$3.33/lb], chicken at grocery store: 860/- per kilo [$5.21/lb]!).

I ordered 2 kilos of mince & 2 kilos of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and was waiting for them to skin & de-bone the chicken when I started really looking at my surroundings. The meat is kept in 2 glass cases with sliding glass doors on the workers side. The 2 cases are end-to-end but they are not the same so there is about a 2” triangle shaped open spot where the two cases do not line up. There were two flies inside the cases. Only some of the meat is wrapped in plastic.

One of the workers removed an empty tray from the case and used a cloth that was on the counter to wipe off the blood or whatever else was on it. He threw the cloth back on the counter, returned the tray to the case, then filled the tray with whole chickens (don’t worry, they’re each in a clear plastic bag and they look like the whole chickens at home!)

I decided to ask about ordering a ham for Christmas (I prefer turkey but they’re expensive here) so they sent out Elizabeth, one of the head workers. She was in the back working with a huge meat grinder. I could see the ground meat coming out and plopping down into a large plastic bin that’s sitting on the floor. Anyway, Elizabeth told me she will have to call me when she finds out how much pork she will be getting. She handed me a pad with a couple of other names and numbers on it and then a pen and asked me to write down my name and number. When she handed me the pen I noticed that she was not wearing gloves and she had mince all over her hands! Come on Deana, you can do it! Keep reading!! At least she wasn’t working with chicken! Incidentally, Margaret never called me about the ham! I checked in 2 more times since that day and both times she told me that “they” were supposed to call that afternoon and let her know. We had lasagna for Christmas!

When I arrived home Margaret (or Mama Samaki {fish} as she jokingly calls herself!) was waiting for me. She greeted me then informed me that as soon as she got there Micah ran into the house and came out with a glass of water for her, without her asking! Whenever she comes by she always asks for water and Micah remembered!

As I wrote previously, Margaret sells tilapia fish. She brings a bunch of whole fish in a large bag and sets up on the ground under the carport. She requests newspaper, a bin of water, and a good knife. On this particular day, Margaret tells me that the fish are small right now. She believes they will be big in January! (Margaret is Luo, a tribe known to be avid fishers, so they know fish!) She asks me if I will take 6 fish. I tell her that I will take my usual 4. She says, “They are small so you will take 6” and she begins taking fish out of her bag. This is typical of this culture! You have to admit she is a pretty good “saleswoman”! I say, “No Margaret, just 4 today, thanks!”

Margaret fillets the fish spread out on newspaper right there in our carport. Micah sits right beside her chatting away! As you can imagine, with the fish come flies! As Margaret fillets the fish, flies are buzzing all over. Micah enjoys shooing them away as Margaret does her best to cover the freshly filleted fish with newspaper. The fillets are rinsed in filtered water and I usually freeze them immediately!

Margaret will usually wrap the fish bones and heads to take home and make fish stew. Sometimes I will request to keep them for Wycliffe. He is also Luo so he also enjoys making fish stew. I asked Dorcas, who is Kikuyu, about fish stew and she said that she has never made it nor has she ever eaten it!

Several of you have asked what it is like where we live. Here is a visual. I stood at the end of our driveway and took a shot looking in each direction.

Looking straight ahead is about 5 houses on each side then the road ends at another house (white gate) so it is a dead-end.

Looking right (pic with large white truck) is the gate to our section of the complex we live in. The gate is kept shut and is manned 24/7 by a guard (see Micah with one of the guards below.)

Looking left are 4 houses, a corrugated steel wall, then the railroad tracks (so, another dead-end.) Yes, we hear the train! They do not hesitate to toot their horns (or whatever it is that trains do!) at all hours of the day and night!

Here is Micah and the twins, Barry and Larry (or Body and Lody as Micah calls them with his Kenyan English accent!). This guard is Evans, and he is so nice and just loves the kids!
Micah and Evans


The kids love to "race" up and down the street. Poor Micah tries so hard to win but he is very cautious of the rocky, very uneven road so he doesn't "win" often (he fell and scraped his knees every day when we first moved here!) It breaks my heart when he tells me that he always loses, but recently he has been beating Barry! He has such determination as you can see by his clenched fists and his face!

Traffic

Greetings! It's been a while, my apologies for you few faithful ones who check our blog! The internet is so slow at night (I sometimes cannot even get connected) and night is when I usually have the time to post.

Anyway, today I got to experience true Nairobi driving. I wanted to learn the way to Amani ya Juu so that I can drive there myself. I have been there a few times but it had been awhile and getting there is not a direct shot! Amani ya Juu is a place where marginalized women from all over Africa come take part in a sewing-marketing-training project. It has a shop to purchase their handmade products, a small cafe, a nice garden area with tables, and a small wooden play structure for the kids!

I followed Ginna, a missionary friend in my complex, as best I could. The traffic was probably the worst I've seen so far! You really need to drive assertively or you will not get anywhere. If you allow a car to go in front of you the cars behind it will all go following each other closely, preventing you from moving.

Unfortunately, when we finally arrived at Amani we found out that they are closed until the 12th. I have learned to be flexible! We decided to go to Westgate, a large mall with an indoor play area. After another white-knuckled drive of cars coming from every which way, people crossing wherever they please, and losing sight of Ginna (thankfully, I made a correct turn and recognized where I was!), we arrived at the mall, one hour after leaving home! As relieved as I was to have made it, I couldn't help but think that I still had to drive back home!

It certainly was not as relaxing and peaceful for me and Ginna as sitting in the garden at Amani, but Micah and Liam, Ginna's son, had a great time bouncing in the Spider Man jumper, riding a couple of "rides", and playing in the small structure. Maybe I'll attempt Amani on my own next week??!!

Catching up

Now that our internet is so much better (faster, more reliable) I'm catching up with some posts I was not able to post due to poor internet connection. This one is from last year, probably November, at Splash, a fun swim park.
Our Micah coming out of the big water slide with our friend's son, Micah (He's 12. It's Big Micah and Little Micah when we're all together.) Little Micah LOVES the big water slides. His only complaint is that it's dark in the slide! I actually went down both slides with him (one is closed [in the pic] and the other is open) and they are sooo fun!

Micah floating around in the little kid pool.


One of lifeguards took to Micah and actually gave him a 20 min swim lesson! Of course, he wanted us to pay for official lessons and come twice a week. I would like Micah to have more lessons but I'm waiting for it to warm up. The water is really cold!



Micah going down the smaller water slides. He loves the water! I think we're heading into cool, cloudy weather though so it may be a while before he gets back into the water!

It's the little things...

Last Sunday I got a new stove! Let me rephrase that - a new-to-me transitional stove. It is a loaner from IS Housing. I wish I had taken a before and after picture so you could really understand why I'm excited about a new loaner stove.

The one that was in our house when we moved in - also a loaner - is pretty small, only one gas burner worked (I also had 2 electric burners), the oven knob was upside down and had single digit numbers (I never knew to what temp I was setting the oven), I could only use the bottom rack or tops of whatever I was baking would burn, and it only fit very small cooking sheets which meant I could only cook 6 cookies at a time! Imagine that!

This stove is much larger, the oven actually has a temp dial and a heat location indicator (bottom, top, or both) and it has an ignition button! No more matches!

The reason I call it a transitional stove is that we will be purchasing our own new stove soon. We have already gone stove shopping and picked one out. We had have to stagger our large appliance purchases because they're pretty expensive!

Another reason I may be so excited about this stove is that my stove & oven at home is from the 50's!!

Catching up with pics

I've got soooo many pictures of our time here. I need to catch up so this post will be mostly all pictures and some explanations. Enjoy!!






Micah, Isaiah & Caleb playing with squirt guns.







While shopping at Nakumatt (large grocery store) Micah always asks to go see the bikes. This trip I decided to let him try them out as well!

Watermelon delivery down the side of the road.

After the dedication of the 2 new planes, I was searching for Micah in the hangar. I heard him call out, "Mommy, I'm up here!" "Here I am!"

Jerry Hurd, an AIMAir pilot & mechanic brought his family & Micah into the DC-10. A boy's dream come true!!

Our weekend at Rift Valley Academy (RVA)

As many of you remember, I served at RVA way back in 1997-1998. I still have quite a few friends there, including special friends Jan & Matt. We were at the same Candidate Week January 1997, had become quite close while I was there and kept in touch all these years! We stayed with them and their 4 children. Micah and their youngest child, Torrie, had great fun playing together!
This particular weekend at RVA was pretty busy. They had Pinewood Derby - tons of kids design and construct little cars and they're raced in scheduled heats all day Saturday. It was also Senior Store. The seniors make and sell donuts and omelets Saturday morning, then all kinds of great food for lunch. If I remember correctly, they're raising money for their banquet and/or their senior trips.
It was so nice to get away from the city to enjoy beautiful views of the Rift Valley, fresh, clean air, lots of trees and open spaces! It was also nice to be back and reconnect with old friends! It sure made me feel old though when people would tell me that all of their children are grown, in college and/or married, some with kids of their own!

Another special part of the weekend was visiting my old friend, Harriet, a sweet married Kenyan woman with 3 boys! This picture is (L to R) Samuel, Harriet's husband, James, the youngest, Abraham, the middle child, and Harriet. John, the oldest son, lives a few hours away so he was not able to be there but he did call on James' cell to talk with me! I was introduced to Harriet by another missionary friend. I used to walk up to her house every Wednesday and have chai and chat for several hours (it is not culturally appropriate to just pop in for a quick visit!)

We did not have a way of getting a hold of Harriet so we stopped by her house to let her know that we would be at RVA for the weekend! Needless to say, she was shocked! She stood and stared at me for a while then gave me a huge hug! Harriet gave Robb a hug then picked Micah right up and gave him a big hug! She knew I had desired to be married and have a child back in '97-98 and she prayed for me all these years! She used to always say, "Char, God is never late!"

The most exciting part of seeing Harriet again is that I had never seen her walk on her own. She had a congenital hip disorder and when I met her she was no longer able to walk, but was only able to move around a bit with a walker. Several other missionaries who had known Harriet before me had sent money over the years for her to have hip joint replacement surgeries. While I was there, I kind of took over and arranged with the medical center there for one of these operations. There just happened to be an orthopedic surgeon there for a month who not coincidentally specialized in hip joint replacements! Harriet had the other hip joint replaced after I was gone so I was seeing her walk for the first time! God is so good!!

Our weekend away was wonderful! Robb caught up on some sleep, I got to see many old friends, and Micah, well, as usual, he had fun!!

5 Years!

Saturday was our 5 year anniversary! It seems like so much longer – in a good way, of course! We arranged for Micah to go to Angie’s house, again (Kurt’s out of town)! Kurt and Angie have a 12 year old son (their 2 oldest are away at university) whose name is also Micah (We refer to them as Big Micah and Little Micah.)

All three of them are great with kids, and our Micah loves going over their house. When we got to their house, Angie had already made sugar cookies and they were going to decorate them! Big Micah graciously allows Little Micah to play with his Lego plane, trucks, helicopter… made with the tiny Legos!

Anyway, this post is about us and our anniversary! We dropped Micah off around 4:30pm or so and headed out to an area in Nairobi called Westlands. We parked at a fairly new, very modern, upscale mall and then walked across the street to some furniture “shops”. These are outdoor mind you, and they just set up their furniture on the side of the road and will usually have a book of photos showing different styles and pieces they make.

We did not order anything (pricey and we still do not know exactly what we want.) I did tho buy some fun toys for Micah for Christmas. They are made out of thick metal wire and what resembles black inner-tube material. I bargained them down to 300/- each (or around $4.00.) There were several men selling these things and after buying a couple of them, a man approached me with his and said, “I will make the same price.” The look on his face was priceless when I said, “Okay, 300/- ?” He could not believe that I bought them for that price, though he did sell me one for 300/-. They are used to getting more from wealthy residents and/or tourists. Now Robb says he wants some too!

For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant called Onami’s. Several people recommended this restaurant to us. It had very nice ambiance and only a few other tables were occupied since it was only 6pm.

Of course we had sushi!! We did not think we’d have sushi again for a couple of years! It was good, however we had to ask them to make the Spicy Salmon extra extra spicy since we did not even sniffle!

In conversation with our waiter, we told him we were celebrating our 5 year anniversary. After dinner, our waiter brought us a free dessert (a small chocolate lava cake and vanilla ice cream) and one of the managers hit this huge gong five times! Thankfully there were not many people in there!

We then headed downstairs to ArtCaffe – a coffeehouse restaurant – and had decaf mochas and dessert! We were gone for about 4-1/2 hours! It was so nice to go out, relax, enjoy yummy food, and spend some time together!

Rainy Days

The rains are making for interesting days! We decided to go looking at furniture last Saturday - what an adventure!
It hasn't really rained that much yet but we are already seeing the effects!
Green grass for the skin and bone cattle, green tree lined road out to Karen, and mud, mud mud!!

We headed out to a section of Ngong Road that is literally Furniture Row! It is shop after shop after shop of furniture makers pretty much selling the same things give or take a few unique pieces.
Each shop displays various pieces of furniture, rain or shine, and you just walk along discreetly scanning everything for what might catch your eye. You WILL be approached by "salesmen" at each shop who will make every attempt to get you to buy from them.
We didn't decide on any furniture that day but saw other fun things, like interesting shoppers,
and one-stop shopping: furniture, lawn mowers and tomb stones!