child at heart

7/7/08 – Day 13

 Today is our free day. Daniel and I opted to stay here at home and chill while others went to an agricultural something and then to Glady’s house to pick up our clean clothes. They should be back any minute now.

 Some time after lunch today we are supposed to go to the market with Murithi. That is exciting for me since I missed it last time!

 I woke up with a killer headache, I think its from dehydration so I’ve been chugging water all day.

 I sit here now with everyone in the room as we are waiting for lunch. We are planning for our youth meeting, and we haven’t really done much for it. I think we all just seem really overwhelmed about planning the whole thing by ourselves.

 After lunch Emily, Murithi, Clay and I went down to the market. That was so much fun. We rented a mutatu (a taxi) to get down there. It was a decent price of 100 shillings for all of us. While we were standing outside trying to get a taxi 2 street boys came up to us asking for money. They were both holding their little kerosene bottles either in their hands or their mouths. They couldn’t have been more than 8 years old and they were already so incredibly high. Their eyes were so red and glazed over and one boy even had a hard time standing up straight. When we got into the taxi Emily had to grab my arm because I almost started crying. The corner that all the boys stay at is right next to our hotel. It’s getting to the point that I hate walking outside because the boys are there and the sight of them breaks my heart.

 When we got to the market I was quickly amazed at how large it was! For as far as your eyes could see there were people camped out with their goods hoping to make a sale. Of course we were the center of attention, at 1 point a drunken lady threw a couple of carrots at me because I would not come buy anything from her. Yeah, throw something at me – that’s what I was waiting for, I really want to buy something from you now. We didn’t stay for too long, I would say we were there about 2 hours or so.

 Clay bought some tire sandals – those are actually quite big here, and 2 suka’s for his sister. He looked like a big tard buying suka’s. :) Emily got another hand woven basket and some suka’s for gifts. The baskets are beautiful and done VERY well. I would love to get one sometime. I ended up getting a couple suka’s and an African dress! I am so excited about the dress. I’m planning on wearing it to church the Sunday after we get back home.

 We got another taxi to take us back home. I felt like I needed to smoke a blunt to fit in on this ride. We had the windows down, Reggae music blarrin’ super loud, a rosary was hanging from the rearview mirror, the seats were kid you not, red, suede velvet with swirls in the fabric and tacky, plastic wood vinyl (the kind that you line the inside of cheap dresser drawers with) for the roof. Tell me that doesn’t take you back to the 60s and 70s and I will call you a straight up liar. 

 A song came on that was real chill and about love. Murithi said it was a good radio dedication song. Emily asked him if he had ever dedicated it to someone and he said “Yes, when I was in love”, “I used to be in love”. How sad! Apparently he had a really serious girlfriend last year that broke up with him in December. Marinda, Catherine and several others were happy about them breaking up because they had gotten bad vibes from her. Her reasoning for breaking up?!: she was being pressured by her family to marry someone who was wealthier than Murithi’s family. That is a low blow back in the states and is definitely one here. :( I think she is missing out on a great man.

 Well I just got off the phone with mom and dad. I haven’t had to good of conversations with them because apparently the international phone lines wants to be tards. I got my picture from buster with a sign around his neck saying “Bella come home.” I don’t really miss home but it is still good to hear everyone’s voice.

 It’s already after 10 and I have to be up at 7a. We are bonding tomorrow! Emily and I are going with Makena so it should be a really fun day – but I need my sleep to keep up with her.

 We figured out what my headache was from today. Every morning at breakfast we drink hot tea, this morning since I slept in I did not drink tea. Aka caffeine headaches/withdrawals. Ha its really funny that I’m getting addicted to hot tea. At least it’s a healthy habit.

 7/8/08 – Day 14

 Today went very well. Emily and I went to Makena’s for bonding day and it was SO much fun. When we first got there we spent some time visiting and getting to know them. Them being Makena, my mom, James, her husband, and their third born Gakii, my sister.

 After that Makena pulled us into the kitchen so we could help get things ready for lunch. First, we started off by pulling peas out of their shells, then we pealed potato’s (by knife not potato peeler) and cut them in half. We also made chai, mmmm. While lunch was being made we went with Gakii to one of the shamba’s. While we were there we took a tour. They grow maze (corn), coffee, banana’s, mango’s, paupau’s, peas, carrots, potatoes and sugargum. They have quite a lot of plant life also. While we were in the shamba we cute a huge bag full of old maze, grass and other plants for the animals to feed on. Emily even used the machete to cut some of the plants down. I kindly said no thank to Gakii since my luck with knifes is very short. After we took a tour of the shamba and filled the bag we went back to the house.

 We fed the chickens old maze and scraps and the goats and cow got the bag full of stuff we cut for them. I’ve always thought goats were cute but after looking at them today I do realize that they do have some freaky looking eyes. One of her goats was a Billy goat with all the hair hanging down from his chin. Now he was cute!

 After we fed them Daniel and I sat in the front yard pulling old hard maze off the husk to put in bags while the others went to fetch water for the animals to drink from the near creek.

 During lunch we all kind of visited and enjoyed time together. After lunch we toured the shamba and met the men who sit in the quarry and break stones to get money for their family.

 While we were killing time Makena taught us how to make chipatti’s, it was actually really simple. You take some hot water; add a little salt and then flour to make dough. You keep adding flour slowly and mixing it together until the dough no longer sticks to your hand. Makena had a little griddle over her fire and let it warm up. You then take a chunk of dough, shape into a ball and then roll it our with a rolling pin until it is in the desired thickness. Then you just put it on the griddle with a little oil until its browned and then its done!

 Clay, Emily and myself all made a couple to prove we could, it was really fun. We even at some later with chai.

 We went outside to play with the animals and I was immediately drawn to the cow. She was beautiful. I started off just petting her face and she started smelling me, which turned to licking my arms all the way past my elbows. Emily said she was trying to get the salt off my skin. I walked to her side to scratch it so she would stop licking me and it was fin, she backed off for a minute. When I walked back around the cow tried to eat my suka. Seriously, a big chunk of it was in her mouth!! It was really funny actually. I loved playing with the cow.

 We started walking home around 4.30 or so. James walked about 10 minutes and then had to run errands, Makena walked half way and then Gakii finished walking us back home. The walk wasn’t really bad, maybe a couple of miles? The weather was amazing! It was clear outside with a nice beautiful sky and a decent breeze most of the way home. We passed a lot of incredibly friendly people and even stopped a couple times for Gakii to talk to people. Once we got into town Gakii stopped at her job place (a photo studio) for us to meet all of her friends and she even had a photo taken of the 4 of us and her. It was kind of hard walking that way home because we passed by the street boys again. I’ve learned not to make eye contact and then its not that bad. Once we got home we had some free time until supper. After supper we sang 3 songs and Dr. Trull gave a little devo for us. After devo we all hung out until time to go to bed. Clay hung out in our room and had some interesting convo’s with us (relationships, views on dating, school etc.) After he left Emily and I had a nice little conversation and we headed to bed around 11. I cannot even believe that our trip is already half way over!

7/9/08 – Day 15 

Today most of the day is designated to planning for the youth meeting. As of right now Clay and Emily are working on the part about relationships with others, and using the story of Joseph to help illustrate their point and help in emphasizing Christian maturity and the pursuit of it in the believers life. Gakii, Dr. Trull and I have finished our lesson on the relationship with God and the focus on reconciliation. Corinne, Daniel and Lacee are in the dining room working on their lesson. I think they are having a really hard time coming up with the right material for it. Murithi should be coming within the next hour or so to help us finalize a lot of what we have done. I am super stressed about this planning; I just want God to speak through us for these teens.

 Our biggest struggle in this planning is the cultural differences. For example, we were just talking to Gakii about dating and that word caused a big problem. Here it is called courtship, because the term dating means you are having sex with that person. How could we have known that?

 Dr. Trull was talking today about trying to get us as tour of one of the local mosque’s. I think he is going to try to talk to Rizwan and see if that is even possible. I think that would be such an awesome experience. We are currently in a rolling blackout at the hotel. I think this is the third one for the day already. Kenya has a problem with getting enough electricity for all the area and have blackouts often. No biggies, it’s the middle of the day and there is more than enough light to function. I think we are going to practice our Joseph drama pretty soon. I hope the teens will like it. Mrs. Marinda thinks they will.

 We have most of the youth meeting planned out now. The lessons are more or less done; they just need some fine-tuning. The boys are downstairs getting the breakout sessions done and Gakii just left after a couple hours helping us plan the girl’s breakout session. I don’t think I’ve had to think this much since school god out. I think Emily and I are about to take a nap until supper. Overall, it’s been a really productive day, I am very proud of our team. Now tomorrow we have to practice the dramas and pray everything goes well!

 After supper we came back to Clay and Daniel’s room since our overhead light decided not to work. It took about 30 minutes or so to finally get it to turn on. While over there we finished writing out the scripture references from the drama on poster boards and going through the drama to help figure out who was going to play what roles. We also cut out the scripture to put on the 3×5 cards to give to the youth as an encouragement. If the kids are not interested in our drama they will for real be covered in a crazy amount of scripture. I am honestly kind of scared of how all this is going to go, but I read this scripture earlier today and it really has helped me out a lot: “for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” Luke 12:12 and even this one: “for it is not you who speaks, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” Matthew 10:20. That makes me feel a bit better.

 After working on VBS we all kind of hung out in Clay and Daniel’s room for a while just acting stupid and getting to know one another a little bit more. I really like these kids – I will have to hang out with them when we get home. And as for Emily, we will have to talk to each other on Facebook. I’m going to have Emily withdrawals when I go to bed at night and it’s so very quiet.

7/10/08 – Day 16

Today has started out well. After breakfast we all went into the lounge and practiced our drama. Ha – it looks so bad, but I guess the Lord will work through it right? Right now we are making final adjustments before we practice through it one more time. I’m hoping we will have a decent amount of kids there.

 We spent the next 5 hours working on the youth stuff and Emily and I even managed to get a 2.5hour nap in after lunch. To finish up we finished decorating our youth verse cards and got all of our props together.

 We left here and got to KTC around 5p or so. When we got there, there was only about 5 youth or so. We started playing soccer with them (after we greeted everyone of course), which was good. Murithi managed to kick a rock and the ball ricocheted and hit him in the face, and not 10 minutes later he kicked the ball to high and knocked a couple roof tiles off. He said he would fix it when yesterday came – smart alleck. After we played for a bit we decided to run through the drama so we could get all our entrances and exits all figured out. All the while the youth were starting to pour in and get settled. At that point I was starting to get frustrated because I wanted to be out of the room and spending time with the youth.

 We decided to cut practice short so we could mingle with the youth some – plus it was getting dark and they were all stuck outside. We ended up starting late – at about 7:10p or so. Supper got started really late because they wanted to make sure they had enough for everyone.

 We started off by all piling into the main building for singing. Our friend Lenick led in 3 or 4 songs. I was sitting next to Jackline so when we started to sing she got me to clap and sing and dance. It was so much fun. Then we did introductions. Our group started off first, we all introduced ourselves and then sang a group song. After that each church came up (1 by 1) and introduced the church and then did something. Some sang, some danced, some did both. It ended up being a real good time. I think our final number was 66 youth. That’s more than we thought we would have.

 After introductions we sang 1 more song and then blessed the food and had supper. Somehow we got done with supper in only 30 minutes! That is unheard of here. Even when we ear here in the hotel it takes at least an hour. After supper Daniel gave his lesion about relationships with friends and family. That actually went over very well. The youth seemed to enjoy the things he was saying.

 We had a prayer after the message, which was kind of weird. It started off as just singing a song of praise which was fine, then everyone started saying their own personal prayer all at one until it was one big jumbled speech party. Eventually 1 man (who was called to have the last prayer) got really loud and said a prayer as if to say that’s enough of all that. Lacee and I just kind of looked over at each other. It was really awkward and really Pentecostal. Mrs. Marinda said she was not too fond of that and it doesn’t really happen much (thankfully).

 After all the prayer we had a chai break, which I didn’t take because I knew I would be wide-awake all night. Instead I just mingled with everyone until it was time to leave. Gakii was sad that I was not staying at KTC overnight.

 Once we left we took Festus home, which in turn got us lost in the backwoods of Africa for about 30 minutes or so. To keep ourselves occupied and not freaked out in the dark we told jokes, including Lacee’s famous one:

1 day a teacher told her students they had to go home and write a sentence for homework that included the words green, pink and yellow. The next day the teacher asked the kids if they did their homework and they all said yes. The teacher asked Suzie what her sentence was; she said, “My mother has a green tablecloth with pink and yellow polka dots.” The teacher said good job, John what’s your sentence? He said, “The sky is blue, the grass is green and there are pink flowers, that’s my sentence.” Then the teacher asks and Asian kid, she says “Hey Asian kid what’s your sentence?” {Notice the Asian kid has no name} [Lacee normally says here’s the punch line] “Green Green the phone rings. I pink up the phone and say yellow.”

 Lacee will somehow laugh at that joke for about 10 minutes and it never gets old for her! Murithi busted out laughing at the joke too. For some reason an African laughing at an Asian joke just cracks me up! Either way we finally got home only to realize that Emily had left the key at KTC. Emily and Dr. Trull took Catherine and Murithi home, then headed back to KTC to pick up the key. I stayed here to journal and even talked to mom while I was waiting. It’s not 12:38a so it’s technically Friday morning and I have to be up in less than 7 hours. I’m headed to bed.