5 Miles

I gave up trying to do more detailed posts on Kenya…there’s just no time. But what I did do is upload ALL the pictues I like to Picasa and leave more detailed comments to help describe what happened. You can click on either picture below. The first is our time at NEGST and with Kim and Joe. The second is the safari (which I really didn’t tell much about here). Thanks for all your interest and support on it!

Nairobi/NEGST

Safari at Masai Mara, Kenya

Here’s my attempt to tell those of you who are interested more details of our trip. I’m going to try to go in order of our time there, so we’re starting at the beginning here and I’ll try to add a bit each day. If you’ve checked out my Facebook pictures or the team blog, there may be some repeat, but I’ll try to mix things up to give everyone a bit new. (The nice thing about this, verses making you sit down to a slide show of our vacation pictures, is you can walk away any time! I’m doing this partly for us, so I can remember our trip…as I do this I’m amazed at how fuzzy details already are getting. I won’t be upset if you skip over these!)

First, two days before we drove to Philly, we had a packing party where we gathered together, packed & WEIGHED bags (important, no one wants to pay overage fees) and then prayed for the trip.

James was a huge help with the weigh-in.

Saturday we drove out to James’ sister’s house in PA. It was an uneventful trip and we were thankful there was no bad weather on the drive. The boys did a really good job–and considering they had just done that 2 weeks earlier, it was even MORE impressive. But I’m not going to start driving out that way ever month or so to keep them used to it!

We flew out Sunday, the day of the AFC/NFC Championship games. We flew out of Philly, so we saw lots of Eagle and Steeler Pride on display. We got to Detroit in time to see the beginning of the Cardinals/Eagles game…we got to watch the first half in a bar while waiting for the rest of our team to show up. We were a bit nervous to see one of the flights from Indy was delayed (and projected to get in just as our fly to Amsterdam was to take off), so we were quite relieved to see our team members appear at the gate (they were on the other flight). We got on the flight with the Cardinals quite in the lead, and were shocked to find out in Amsterdam that the Eagles had come back to make it a close game (and we had to use one team member’s Blackberry to find out the final score. By then we found out who the two teams in the Super Bowl would be, and that was the last we heard. Kind of nice to miss out on the two weeks of Press Coverage!)

We landed in Nairobi around 7 pm local time. By the time we got through immigration & bought our visas, got all our luggage and gotten out the door, it was dark out and we were all a bit weary. But this was a nice sight to see:

Thankfully, ALL our luggage arrived!

We were met by David, a friend of Ed’s and the man who helped plan much of our travel arrangements. We were able to get all the luggage on the top of the bus (as you can see below) but a tiny bit uncertain if they tied the bags down…all the luggage did make it with us, but we hit a few bumps that made me really wonder if they would.

We were told it’d take about 30-45 minutes to get to the Guest House from the airport. But there was a tiny problem—no one was sure the name of the guest house. It seems the site on NEGST’s campus we were going to stay at was full for the week, and they had recommended another Guest House in the area. But that house was new, and no one knew where it was. We finally found it at 1 am. Tired, we fell into bed and were thankful we could sleep in until 9 am.

We were staying in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi. Karen not very populated–it’s an area of more expensive houses on large lots of land. Karen does have a small shopping center, and the next morning we went there to exchange our money.

They drive on the other side of the road there—one of many British influences we saw there. (Michelle, one of the women on our team, is from Ireland, and she comment how at home she felt, because of the Irish influences. This became a huge source of teasing. Another time I was working with the kids in VBS and trying to get them to form a line. They wouldn’t, until a teacher said “Get in queue”. Flashlights are torches, you drive on the tarmac…you get the idea.)

After that & lunch, we headed over to NEGST. James, Michelle and Colleen got to go to a planning meeting with officals at the school to help them work on their IT stratgey. The rest of us got a tour of the campus (we did more, but I’m going going to show you the tour now, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow).

Here’s a picture of the gate:

 NEGST stands for Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. Locals pronounce it NE-Gest. Other (like those who helped start it) say it rhymns with Next.

This is the classroom building, where we did the teaching.

Where we ate lunch each day.

The Admin Building

Our team on the steps of the Admin. Building

(Top Row: Ruth, Tina, James, Kim…3rd Road: Michelle, Carol, Colleen…2nd row: Brantly, Ali, Ruth…1st row: Leona, Judy, Phil…front & center, our leader: Ed)

The library

Between the library and Admin building is the chapel, and I can’t find a picture of it right now. I’m sure I’ll find one tomorrow, we’ll see if it gets updated.

These buildings are built around a grassy square that we often gathered in.

(From L to R: Polly, Colleen, Ruth, Kim and Michelle)

Another view of the commens area, with the chapel on the left and the library behind the trees. This is Colleen & Polly relaxing in between classes.

But–this takes time and I’ve been up long enough. So that’s it until tomorrow!

We’re back from our safari. I went through the hundreds of photos (really) and tried to pick some of the best ones and put them here.

There are more I may go back and add later, this was per a special request from the boys to see pictures of elephants. So I threw an extra few in. I didn’t include pictures of our exciting time this morning, stuck in the deep mud. We’ve been praying for rain for Kenya–and God has answered so we won’t complain about the rain at all. But wow does it make some mud and we understand the need for 4-wheel drive! James and the other guys got to get out and push. Sadly my camera batteries were starting to get low so I didn’t take any pictures (there were plenty of others taking them, I’ll will share as soon as I get copies)!

We had a great time. We flew back to Nairobi this afternoon and had time to kill while waiting for our host families. Now we’re waiting until we fly out tomorrow. We’re enjoying time with our friends and will go to church and to a market with them tomorrow. But I’m ready to come home. Very ready. Wishing we could be flying out right now, not tomorrow! (Though i’m sure I’ll be thankful for the night of sleep before I go without the next–we’ve had some really early mornings the last few days.)  Please pray with us we will have no delays or connection problems! We only have 1 1/2 hour lay over in Detroit and we have to go through customs there…I’m a bit nervous about that.  Thank you all for your interest and prayers! We’ll update again when we’re back in the US!

This is mainly for our families…updating may be sparse after this. We’re going to be leaving campus in an hour for a final tea and then will be without internet. We are unsure if we’ll have it at the lodge we’re staying at (The Serena Lodge in Kenya, I’ve been told it’s a very fancy place–you’ll have to google it to see but the website is nice!) Since it’s a nice place it might have it, and then I’ll work on sharing more of our trip…but if not, you’ll have to wait until Sunday for a quick update from our host’s house…and then we’ll be heading home. I have loved our time here, but am getting ready to head for home. I know the 24 hours of travel are going to seem MUCH longer as I want to get back to the boys then they were coming out (and they were long then). Please pray for us on Monday that we will not miss our connection in Detroit to Philly, we have a short window there. Thank you all for your prayers and for your interest!

I really don’t have much to add today. I did update the team blog (www.negst2009.blogspot.com) with some pictures but don’t plan on trying to add more today. I’m going to be busy helping in computer classes this morning.

We did finish VBS yesterday…that was nice. It was fun to play with the kids but we really felt unnecessary. As one person put it, we were “scratching an itch that didn’t needed scratched”. I was much happier helping out in the computer lab. We have told the leadership team that if they come out next year, a work team is needed more to help fix up the school.

This morning is our last morning of classes. A number of usual teachers have agreed to help some students one-on-one so I’m planning on going in and helping most of the morning. Then we will have coffee with one person and tea with the Woods (another set of missionaries from our church). Then we will pack and head out to our safari. We’ll be gone from Thursday-Saturday there, and then we’ll meet up with the Cluffs one more time for Sat. night to Sunday. So we really feel like we’re coming down the home stretch.

What an amazing weekend!

We met up with our friends who are missionaries in Nairobi on Friday night. We were able to do some laundry at their house and enjoy a light supper. Then we enjoyed watching them open all the gifts people from the States had given them–it really was like Christmas for them! They really enjoyed everything! The chocolate chips are already in the freezer and they were quite excited about the smoked sausage as well!   We stayed up late talking. We then slept very well and very much enjoyed the hot shower the next morning. (Showers have been a bit tricky at the guest house we’ve been staying at.)

Saturday morning we got up and started getting ready to head out to the bush.  We had to go to the store and buy supplies for the weekend. It was a Kenyan version of Wal-mart or Meijer, but with 2 floors with all the house hold supplies/toys/etc. upstairs.  The store has the elephant as part of it’s logo and has large elephants at the front of the store. We thought the boys would find it funny.

The drive out to the center Christian Missionary Fellowship has founded is about 2 hours. Along the road we saw all kinds of fun things that I thought the boys or Grandma Lo would find interesting–they could all be found here. It was amazing to watch the landscape change from lush and tropical to dry–it remineded me a bit of the high desert in AZ where my grandfather lives. Except we could look for gazelles, zebras and ostriches along the way! We saw all three.

We got to the training center our friends mission helped build in 1996. They built it simply as the Masi Tribe used to have no problem with all the men or women sleeping on giants bunks with mattresses all together in separate rooms. Now the expectations are to have seprate bunks so they are hoping to build those one day, as well as add running water to make it more of a conference center they can rent out. At this point though, it is very stark–espcially by American standards. We used squat pots and had a large jug of filtered water for  a splash “shower” if we so desired. I’m putting most of our pictures of the weekend here, but will include a few below.

Once we got there we unpacked. We rested and then walked over to visit Jennifer, a local woman who does language training and is friends with Kim and Joe.  You can see a man in tradational Masi dress to the right of the picture. They all love bright colors, but red & purple are what you see the men in. Women wear a red/yellow or red/multi-colored shaw over bright colored dresses–and LOTS of beaded jewlery.

We were given chai (tea) at Jennifer’s and “chewed the news” (talked). Then as it was getting dark we got ready to go back, but she told us she wanted to serve us food. We got to have goat stew! Goat meat with lots of potatos, cabbage and tomatoes over rice.  I only got one bite of goat meat in my serving but it was REALLY good!

(Joe dishing up–the headlight was needed, it was pitch black in that room at this point.)

(Jennifer, our host and two of her daughters)

We walked home in the dark, with two “torches” (head lamps Kim and Joe brought, Kenya has a number of British influences) to guide us. The stars were AMAZING. We were at a higher elevation then Nairobi and it was clear with NO light around so we saw much more then I ever expected. 

The next morning we got up to go to church. Kim and Joe wanted to take us to a typical bush church, so we were going to one an hour or so away. We found out 2 of the local pastors/elders (I’m not quite sure the difference) wanted to ride along so Joe agreed. It seems in the bush you find a way to make room. Then a woman (who was the half-sister of the grounds keeper) and her friend and a sheep also wanted a ride, so they got to ride in the back of the pick-up truck. Joe said he’s learned to keep the “mama’s” (actually, it’s a respectful term for woman) in the back…they are not used to riding in cars and often get sick. The back is easier to wash out. We had a car load as we went…2 in front, 4 in back and 2 women and a sheep in the bed. Then we dropped them off and managed to pick up many more people walking on their way to church along the way.

We arrived to church with the people already singing–it was amazing. I wish we could have recorded it so everyone could hear. We didn’t understand a word, but could tell they were all praising God as they sang along to a simple drum and jumped up and down.

Once the service started, they actually had several people who would translate for us–I was expecting to not understand anything! (So I understood about half of it instead…the translators could be a bit hard to understand at times.) It was an interesting time–instead of one preacher, many people stood up and told us of their testimony. This isn’t what I thought it would be, it was more sharing a verse that meant something to them or how they’d struggled in the last few weeks. They didn’t have time for many (because of the “Visitors who had to leave”–they kept saying they had to watch the time for us and we were quite embarrassed). Then Joe was asked to preach. Another man, James, spoke on part of Proverbs for about 10 minutes as well. Then we had more singing. We ended church by singing as everyone paraded out, then forming a circle and greeting each person (like a receiving line) and then joined the circle to greet the people behind you. If a woman or man is older then you, you bow your head and they touch the top of your head–unless you are male and over the age of circumcision (about 13), then you shake hands. At least I think that’s how it goes. If they held out their hand low, I shook it and if they went to touch my head I let them.

We stopped to see the school building they had build a few years ago. A team is coming this week to help them build water tanks for it. Then we started the long drive back to Nairobi. It was a 3 hour drive. We got back and enjoyed the warm showers a GREAT deal, packed up and went out to dinner. Then we met up with our team.

Well our Friday was interesting. Our morning classes were empty…we spent the first bit getting crafts ready for VBS:

Then we spent a great deal of time just sitting around, relaxing in the sun and having tea.

We went for a walk in the gardens and got a picture of the two of us together for the boys–by the banana trees they find so funny:

And this is my favorite drink here–it’s a ginger soda. It’s VERY tasty on a hot afternoon, after playing with the kids at VBS. Tangawizi is Swahali (sp?) for ginger.

VBS was rather different today…Fridays are the kids “Sports Time”. I don’ t have the pictures on my computer yet (nor the time to download them, it’s after midnight here) but I will be sure to share some pictures of me doing the warm up with the kids (a time they warm up for their games with a teacher who is a former soccer player) as well as the kids playing dodge ball and Red Rover. Then we just had time for a few songs and we gave them the small toys we’d brought for the end of each day. We’ll go back to a normal VBS on Monday.

This weekend we’re all going to different host families. Most of the team will be going to a family they’ve never met before from Nairobi Chapel. We are getting to stay with some friends from our church who are missionaries out here. We were very happy to see them and got to bring them a nice full bag of items from people in the States–it was a late Christmas for them! They enjoyed opening everything. Tomorrow we are going out to see an area they have established a center for a church, that is run by a local. We’ll get to sleep in the center that has no running water, and go to a local church on Sunday. We may even visit a typical Masi house and have chai tea! We’re looking forward to the adventure, but I MUST go to bed now. I was finally getting caught up on sleep, I can’t ruin that now!

We did get to call the boys tonight and the first thing Will said to me was he only had 9 more chains left on the chain until the Monday we come back (Actually it’s 10 but we won’t quibble).  Then we spent some time talking about how hot it is here and how they don’t get cold/snow, and how they have rainy seasons but we’ve had no rain. Will was worried they weren’t getting rain for the baby banana’s to grow.  I didn’t tell him that they are actually in a drought because the last rainy season was not very long. Alex didn’t say much, but it was nice to hear both their voices. We really appriciate the family keeping us updated on James’ sister’s blog and through Facebook, and are glad they are liking the pictures. Sorry we got cut off Tessa–I wouldn’t hang up without saying “hi” to you! I was just glad I’d gotten the “bye” in to Alex.

Thank you for all our prayers!

I’ve been working to keep our team blog updated (http://negst2009.blogspot.com/)  but, right now I have some time to put a few more things up here. It’s about 8 pm here (only 12 in Indy) and we’re at the computer lab, with an open lab to help stuents with more personal questions. Obviously, my help isn’t needed right now.  Today has been a long day. It was the first day to do our VBS (you’ll see the best pictures I took today on the team blog).  That was a rather crazy hour. We need to plan a few more organized games, but had fun with a general play time (with balls and big jump ropes and a simple craft).  Tomorrow we have the kids a bit longer, but we’re taking up their recess time so we need to plan some games that will make them all be active!

James has been very busy here, and not been able to spend much time outside. He’s been really helping the IT department (no surprise there)…he’s been doing that more then teaching, which is fitting, it’s what he enjoys.  We do have a free hour tomorrow–they have chapel from 10-11 on Tues/Wed/Thur and small groups that meet on Mon/Fri. Since we can’t meet during that time, many of our hard working teachers are looking forward to a break and time to relax outside.  It really is beautiful here, I don’t mean to keep rubbing it in, but we can’t get over it! I’ve had lots more time to enjoy it, being on the VBS team. I have been in on several classes to help, but they requested we do VBS from 3:30-4:30, and that means we can’t help out with the 2-4 or 4-6 classes–you would have thought we planned it!

We do have several people on the team struggling with health problems–not the typical ones you expect on a trip–one has a kidney stone (but she gets them chroniclly so she has the pain meds to help her until she passes it. Another had Shingles last year and fears it has come back. Please pray for their healing.  Pray we will be effective and helpful. 

Finally, here are a few more of my favorite pictures:

One picure of me so far!

Little girl carrying baby brother or sister

Cool red bug on a flower

(Two little girls from VBS. We gave the second one a lei just after this, but the picture wasn’t as cute)

Sorry, don’t have time for more—if you’re on Facebook you can see them there (Mom, you need to sign up!!!).

We’ve made it to Kenya! We are sorry it’s taken so long to update the blog or to let people know what we are doing. As I write my draft of this, the internet keeps coming and going. I’ve overheard that it’s being maxed out –so we’re not able to get online easily to update people nor to put up the pictures we want right now.

After a long series of flights, we were thrilled to be on the ground. It took some time to get the correct guest house but we were finally there around 1AM. Most of us slept very well that night.

Tuesday was a wonderful day to explore NEGST and do a few touristy things. We all loved the warm sunshine (does it rub in it to say we were even hot at times?)
James, Michelle, Colleen and Ed stayed at NEGST in the afternoon to help with their planning for their website update and 5 year plan. The rest of the team got to go to the Kazuri Bead Factory. You can look up their website and find examples of the beautiful necklaces they make. Most of us who went on the tour have lots of pictures showing how the beads are hand made. The most impressive part of it is the entire operation is for single mothers, to give them jobs. Each woman works at shaping the clay (from the soil of Mt. Kenya) into different bead shapes, then painting them once the beads have been fired. They then refire the beads for the glazes to set and then string them. Each one is beautiful and we were a bit overwhelmed with all the options.

We got back to NEGST and met up with the rest of the team members. Then it was back to our guest house for supper. After supper we were able to watch the Inauguration live—they were broadcasting BBC’s feed on the Kenya TV Station. While it was 8 at night for us, it was nice to share in something we knew many people in the US were doing at the same time.

Wednesday was our first teaching day. The computer teaching team has been busy getting everything ready and are starting to work with students. The VBS team did final planning and we’ll do our first VBS tomorrow.

Oh I had plans for this blog!

I took pictures of our snow day activites from our snowy/cold days the last few days. (Short version: We shoveled, we made rainbow colors from our broken crayons, we made massive train track set-ups in the living room, we went to the Children’s Museum.) I really don’t have time to put them up here, but we had a nice time. We’ve stayed warm despite the really cold temperatures (down to -12 last night–but not as bad as were James’ Aunt lives, they were at -28 the other day!).  All fingers and toes are still present and accounted for! I kept Will home from preschool Wednesday because I didn’t want to drive in the snow (I was hearing about all the accidents and chose to follow the advice of the news people and stay off the road). We had a nice relaxing day. Thursday we went out to the library and then Friday preschool was canceled and we joined some friends at the Children’t Museum. We haven’t been in about a year and it was fun to see what Will could now do and let Alex discover all the things he’d forgotten about. It was nice to get out–even if it was cold. The museum was pretty empty so we had a great time not having to share much! 

We went to our “Packing Party” tonight for our Kenya trip. (I took pictures of that too, but am not going to stay up to put them in the blog.)  This was a chance to bring in our suitcases and weigh them (and make sure we’re packed), make copies of passports and get last minute questions answered. Then the friends/family in the area and a few of the church elders/pastors prayed for us. It was a nice time.  Now James is packing up the car. We will head out around 5 am tomorrow to PA…it’s about a 12 hour drive. Then Sunday morning we’ll head to the airport.  We’re excited but I’m a bit nervous as well.  We will keep you updated here and will appreciate your prayers!