weekend in Kapsowar...

Welcome back! Sorry that it’s been a while since my last post, I know my mom has been wondering what is going on ☺ In reality, the posts will now be probably 2 or 3 days apart now since we’re experiencing much of the same (although exciting new things do happen daily!).

First of all, congratulations need to go out to the SCCS girls and boys volleyball teams! I heard through the grapevine that BOTH teams won the 1st place banner at the Woodstock Christian Schools tournament! Nice work! I must admit, I wasn’t surprised to hear this, although I’m sad that I can’t be around to hear more about it. It sounds like the Thames Valley regional finals happen this week. Please keep me posted on how you do!

As far as what’s been happening here, we’ve had a pretty exciting couple of days. I worked on the construction site all day Friday, mostly with Elisha again (here's a picture of him on top of the exterior wall). Our task was to work on the electric wire conduit tubes. When they put up buildings here in Kapsowar, they always put up the walls, fill them, and THEN go back and chisel out a channel for the electrical wires to go through! What we’ve been doing is putting these conduits in during the building phase. They haven’t done it this way before, but it will end up being MUCH easier for them. I’ve been going through a bit of a moral dilemma when working on this job site, however. It’s pretty tough for some of the men in the area to get work, so when I’m at the job site volunteering to slug dirt and wheel-barrow things around, I’m actually taking up work that some locals could get paid to do. So I talked about this with Elisha and also with the supervisors, and I think I’m going to do about 2 or 3 days a week in more of a supervisory role for the more delicate tasks (which means I won’t be as jacked as I thought I would be when I get back). Looks like I’m going to have to get my exercise in different ways! It’s too bad Greg or Rich (two of my cousins who work in construction) didn’t come with, as they’d be able to add so much of their expertise! (Imagine, the men here look at ME like I know what I’m doing!!)

On Friday night we had a dinner get-together with the 4 of us along with Drs. Christina and Drew, a nurse from the hospital (Mikel), and “Mama Brian”. Since Friday was the day after American Thanksgiving, we could officially start celebrating the Christmas season! We played Christmas carols and then watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, although we only got through half of it before the power went out!

As for Mama Brian's name, what’s hilarious here is that when a woman has a baby, she gets a new name. The name is “Mama” + whatever her first-born’s name is – hence, “Mama Brian." As you can tell, having babies is a VERY important part of the culture here, especially if it’s a boy.

Yesterday (Saturday) was definitely a day to remember! We attended an official Kenyan wedding ceremony in the morning and, although I do not have the time or the finger strength to fully explain this to you in a blog, I will share some highlights:

- It was supposed to start at 10am, so we arrived at 11:00 thinking that would be plenty early enough. Not even close – I have a picture of an EMPTY hall except for us Wazungu at 11:15. Everybody arrived en masse at about 11:30!! This is an example of “Kenyan time” at its finest…
- The wedding party had about 40 people in it, including children with matching outfits (I will include a picture of this parade). They didn’t reserve seats for them so they had to move a number of people back or to the standing room only section before the ceremony could start (this all had to happen when the bride and groom were already at the front). We were such guests of honour that they didn’t let us move back, instead they moved the PARENTS of the bride and groom BEHIND us!
- At the end, they took pictures and family pictures at the front of the church before leaving, and they got the 5 of us Wazungu to actually go up and be a PART of the family pictures. It was unreal – I was able to capture a video of this with our little camera before the battery died.
- Overall it was such a vibrant, joyous event that we were almost overwhelmed!

Instead of going to the wedding reception in the afternoon, Allie, Jackie and I went for a 3-hour hike down the valley to the river at the bottom and back. We got some beautiful pictures of the countryside as well as of a bunch of little kids who knew three English phrases: “How are you? Gimme sweets! Take a picture” Then they would chant: “Wazungu, wazungu, wooh, wooh, wooh!” and follow us down the road. It was a ton of fun!

So, that’s a pretty thorough update on what we’ve been up to. Today (Sunday) we’re going to have lunch at Mama Brian’s and then take about an hour hike to an orphanage in the area. There are about 35 kids there of all ages and most of them are going to leave in the next few days to stay with other relatives they have in the area for the holiday season. I’ll write about that experience in the next blog. Thanks again for following along, we’ve heard from a number of you (including my parents on the phone last night) and it’s a comfort to know of all the prayer support we have back home. We’re praying for family and friends back home as well, as we know this is the start of a pretty busy season! Special prayers and thoughts go out to the teachers at SCCS (especially Heidi) who are going through report card time on top all of everything…

Blessings,
Kevin

After a few days...

As the locals would say: Habari!! (Their way of saying “What’s up?”) I’m sitting on my back porch right now as the day winds down for us, viewing this majestic landscape that I just cannot get enough of. I’m attaching a picture of the view that I have, but it just doesn’t do justice to the contrasting colours and elevation changes. (Depending when you view the blog, the pictures may not be up yet since I have to send them to my mom who posts them up when she gets the chance). It is certainly one of the most beautiful places I have visited.

We are now a full three days into our time here and are starting to understand what our roles are and what we will be responsible for. Jackie has had the privilege of delivering multiple babies and has been a major part of a couple of C-sections as well (she is working with the OB/gyn doctor, if you don’t know what that means, basically she’s in charge of women and babies). Actually, today the main OB doctor is away – she’s American so a few of them went into Eldoret to have a Thanksgiving meal together. That left Jackie in charge of any complications that might arise, a pretty huge responsibility for her! All three of them (Jackie, Allie, and Crystal) seem to be doing very well, although it is an adjustment when you’re seeing cases you aren’t familiar with and you require a nurse to translate everything for you.

I’ve been keeping busy as well (relatively speaking). I’ve hooked into the construction crew who are building a new operating theatre for the hospital, and it seems that will be a great opportunity to build some relationships. They work really hard for about $2.60 a day, which seems pretty meager to us but is actually a decent living here. I worked closely with a 20-year old guy named Elisha, yesterday. Since our task was not too complicated we had a lot of time to share our stories with each other. His was extraordinary to me, but seems typical of the people around here. Bottom line, he wants to further his education to become an electrical engineer, but since his dad has passed away, his siblings have moved out, and his mother is ill, he has to work this job to support the two of them so he can’t afford the school fees. I’m looking forward to getting to know him better over the next few weeks.

What I really enjoy is playing soccer and basketball with the local teenagers and young adults, who come onto the station (where we are staying) from about 4pm until dark every day. At first I think we were pretty funny to them, but they’re definitely getting used to us and when it got dark yesterday I sat down and chatted with five of the high school aged boys for about half an hour. We had gotten our hands on two basketballs that deflated every 3 or 4 minutes so we had been rotating one person out to pump up the ball we were playing with every time it got flat. Then the ball that had been pumped up came into play (very resourceful!).

I’ll leave you with a funny story. I had been pretty self-conscious because the people here are ALWAYS smiling, laughing, and having a good time. Since we stick out like sore thumbs, we naturally think they’re making fun of us! So yesterday I stole the soccer ball from a boy during the game, and then all of the sudden he ran away from me! Everyone on the field then burst out laughing, and no one would tell me why. I thought it was because I was wearing shoes and he didn’t want to get stepped on, so I took them off but that made them laugh even harder! I was actually kind of bothered by this because I never did figure it out until sitting down with some of the boys later that night. It turned out that that boy had “broke wind” (or farted, haha) and didn’t want me to know it was him!! We had a good laugh about that, and it was a great reminder to me to not be so skeptical…

I also took a bit of a hike today because it was a pretty relaxing day for me, and took a few pictures of the landscape. I’ll include one of them, although it really doesn’t do the area justice!

I’m really enjoying the comments you grade 8’s are leaving on the blog, it feels great every time I hear from people back home. I’m also excited to speak with you over skype this evening (morning for you) – hopefully it works!!

Many blessings…

PS I forgot to post this earlier, so I'm writing this AFTER I got the chance to chat with the grade 8's. It worked relatively well, at least for a time there. You had some great questions, and hopefully I'll be able to answer them more effectively as the trip goes on. It was amazing to hear from you, and congrats to the volleyball teams for moving on! Hopefully we can get the chat working for a little bit more later this evening....

arrival in Kapsowar

Asante Sana (thank you) for logging in again to my blog! It’s been a couple days since I have posted an entry – on Monday we left Nairobi at 6am. We caught a shuttle-bus to Eldoret (arrived there at noon) where we met up with Christina Francis, one of the doctors in Kapsowar. She is from Indianapolis and into the 3rd month of her two-year commitment. She took us out for lunch and then shopping for groceries. It was pretty different in town than it was in Nairobi in that we were pretty much the only wazungu (white people) so we caught a lot of stares… That may have also had to do with the 8 pieces of luggage that we had that each weighed 50 pounds – pretty embarrassing… We’re hoping to leave 4 of those pieces behind so it won’t be nearly as bad going back to Nairobi. We also ended up with a ton of groceries, it’s pretty hard to buy groceries for 4 people for 4 weeks!

From Eldoret we drove 2 hours in the hospital’s ambulance (with all of our luggage strapped to the top!) down a pretty horrible dirt road, and arrived in Kapsowar at about 6pm. The most interesting part of that journey was driving through the town of Itan (ee-ten). That is the training headquarters for all of the Kenyan runners. It makes sense, you should see how hilly it is here, and we’re at over 7000 feet elevation! We saw a few of them running, and Christina told a story that especially Alyson and Danielle will appreciate. Dr. Rhodes (the permanent doc who isn’t actually here at present, he’s at home in the States) and his daughter were out for a run, and they met somebody else running on the road. They chatted with him for a bit, then invited him back to their place for dinner. In the course of the conversation, Dr. Rhodes mentioned that he was hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon the following year (probably the most well-known marathon in the U.S.) He proceeded to ask the Kenyan if he had heard of it, and the Kenyan replied “yes, I actually won that race last year”! It turns out about 75% of Kenyan marathon runners come out of this district (the Marakwet district). My goal now is to get out running every morning and then try to meet one of them!

At any rate, I cannot describe to you how absolutely gorgeous it is here. We are way up on a hill here in town, and we look out over multiple valleys that are hundreds of feet down. In fact, I’m looking out the window of the house that Jackie and I are staying in and all I see are green rolling hills. They do get a lot of rain in this region (especially recently) so the trees and vegetation are quite impressive (again, not what you’d expect). It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. I will take plenty of pictures, but I’m sure that they won’t do the area justice. The only thing missing is the wildlife – plenty of birds, but the rest are just cows and sheep! Oh, and don’t forget the massive spiders, cockroaches (I’ve only seen one) and crazy Junebugs the size of golfballs. When those are flying outside of your window it sounds like someone is cutting their lawn with a lawnmower… I think the lack of wildlife is because of the colder climate (by colder, I mean 70’s and low 80’s during the day, 60’s at night) and the elevation.

Since today is our first actual day here, we haven’t been up to much. We received a tour of the hospital grounds this morning, and then I came home to get our place more organized and do a bit of relaxing while Jackie, Allie, and Crystal got right to work in the hospital. I did go into town to explore for a bit and to try to pick up a card that I need to get the internet going, but man I felt so out of place that I didn’t last long ☺ I think it will be easier once our faces become a little more familiar in town. Many people are very friendly, however, and will try to chat your ear off in Swahili, or in English if they know it. Mary, the lady in charge of keeping our house in order, came by to do our laundry as well, so I got to chat with her for a while. She lives across the valley, and it takes her 1.5 to 2 hours to walk here every morning! She is so cheerful and I think it’ll be fun practicing my Swahili with her!

Tomorrow I am going to start working with the construction crew that is putting up a new operations theatre for the hospital. It’ll be a really good chance to build relationships with some locals. I might be spending a bunch of the time while I’m here doing that, along with visiting a couple of the orphanages in the area and playing with the schoolchildren who just started on a 6-week break.

Anyways, you may have stopped reading a while ago – this is all SO exciting to us, but it’s hard to grasp it all by just reading along. God has been amazing to us so far in providing us safety (especially on the roads), people that are excited to have us here, and beautiful accommodations. Please pray for Jackie and the girls – they are pretty nervous that the medicine side of things is going to be overwhelming (although I’m sure they’ll do great). Also pray for me as things are a bit more open-ended in terms of my responsibilities here. I’m really excited about the prospect of getting to know and witness to the locals whom I will be working and spending time with.

We’re definitely missing all of you at home, but it is comforting to know that there are many of you praying for us (as we are doing for you) and thinking of us during this time. I will try to send some pictures to my mom so that she can post them on this blog and the last one. The internet connection here is too slow to really be able to download or upload anything - which makes sense since we are way out in the boonies...

Until next time…














Our house in Kapsowar

Nairobi

Hujambo! ("Greetings"),

As some of you already know, our luggage did arrive over the last couple of days, so I don't think we're lacking anything as we leave for Kapsowar tomorrow morning (6am - booo...). We had a great day today, though, after a full day of orientation discussion yesterday. I'll give you a couple of highlights:

We went to a church a few kilometres away this morning with the four of us. We were trying to go to Nairobi Chapel since Northpark Church in London has a bit of a connection with them, but a couple that we met this morning over breakfast told us they could give us a ride there, and "there" ended up being a completely different church... Oh well! It was actually a great service, although not what you'd expect. Nairobi is fairly "westernized" so the service was in English (with some Swahili songs) and wasn't as eccentric as you might be picturing. Also, the people in the church were pretty indifferent to the fact that we were there. I've been told it's a much different experience if you go to church in the country (as in, I should be ready to preach a sermon at a moment's notice... yikes!)

Later in the afternoon we took a long walk to check out a market that we were told about. I took my camera, thinking I'd be able to "capture" a bit of Nairobi. However, I only took 2 pictures and I will explain why. There was a full herd of cattle grazing right beside this main street we were walking along, so naturally I pulled out our little (older) camera and tried to nonchalantly catch the image of the cows with the city right beside them. Two gentlemen then stopped Allie and Crystal to ask what their friend (me) was doing taking pictures of their cows! I went over there, offered to delete the pictures, but they just wanted me to pay them some money. So, one of the pictures you see below cost be 100 shillings (and they probably weren't even that guy's cows). Needless to say, I kept the camera in my pocket for the rest of the adventure for fear of looking like a serious tourist again! The market was quite something, and it's too bad I couldn't take more pictures, but I'll have to tell you more about it sometime. You could buy just about anything there if you were willing to bargain, but it turns out that white (now red) skin isn't so good of a bargaining chip, so I didn't end up buying anything. As some of you know, I start to get physically ill and the room starts spinning if I'm shopping at a mall in Canada with NOBODY hassling me, so I was doomed from the beginning!

So that was the day - it will be interesting to contrast that experience with rural Kenya, which I'm told is as different as night and day. Actually, that was the most interesting part of our orientation, learning about the differences between this culture and ours. Bottom line, it is one of relationship rather than task (like ours is). For example, if somebody asks you about yourself, they don't care what you do for a living, they want to know where you come from, what your family is like, and whether or not your goats are doing well :-) Maybe instead of getting you grade 8's to work on spelling right away in the morning (task) we should spend time just hanging out after the bell rings in the morning (relationship) :-) I'll be able to comment on this culture more when we're actually in it.

The other great part of orientation was getting a grounding for what our role as short-term "missionaries" is. It is not to come here and save the world. It is to show the people that we care, to encourage those that are already here doing God's work, and to build relationships with people. Talking about this made me really excited to get over to Kapsowar and to get started - of course the girls are going to be on the front lines a bit more doing medical work with limited resources, I get to hang out with people and keep my schedule wide open!

Anyways, this post is quite long already, so I'll wrap it up. I've included a picture that I paid the big bucks (and got knocked down a few notches in my ego) for, as well as a picture of Jackie and me in front of the Mayfield Guest House where we have been staying the last couple of nights. Again, we're leaving for our 7 hour trek upcountry to Kapsowar tomorrow at 6am, so please pray for travelling mercies for us as well as for the fact that we'll be into the community tomorrow.

Many blessings

Expensive picture of cows beside the highway!



Mayfield guest house in Nairobi

We're here!

Well after about 25 hours straight of travelling (15 spent flying, 10 spent driving to the airport, waiting, then driving here), three on-flight movies that we could barely see (I'll have to watch that Harry Potter one again at home), about 16 on-flight meals (weird...) we've arrived safely at Mayfield Guest House in Nairobi. Don't worry mom, there are two or three guarded gates that the bad guys would have to get through to make it to us.

That's the good news. The bad news is that our luggage is still travelling abroad. That's right, we're here without so much as a bottle of shampoo - good thing I packed that extra shirt and pair of socks in my carry-on!.. We also shafted the driver that was at the airport to pick us up and took our own cab. So, I guess we're 0-2. The blessing in disguise is that we had SO much luggage that it was nice to not have to transport it here after the flight!! Hopefully KLM will deliver it to us.

I guess the message right off the get-go is to let go of the control we think we have while over here and have faith that things will work out. I, for one, am really excited now that we're here and we were able to take care of (mostly) what we needed to finish. I found myself quite nervous, however, on the plane - that uncomfortable feeling of not really knowing what's coming. Please pray for our luggage, first of all, and that our 2 days of orientation calm our nerves for the unknown.

Time to go and get some sleep. With that time change it made me think how hard it would be to be a flight attendant or a pilot, doing that day in and day out (or even those business guys that insist on wearing a full three-piece suit for an 8-hour flight, but that's a bit of an aside).

Anyways, sorry if this post is a bit scattered, I'm working on only a few hours of sleep and I tried to send it away quickly just in case the class tries to check it before the end of the day. I'll write more sometime in the next couple of days, but I don't know if anything exciting is going to happen in that time since we'll be just hanging out here.

All the best,

Kevin

Test

This is just to make sure this blog works. I'm going to be posting updates on what we're up to (by "we" I mean myself, my wife Jackie, and our friends Allie and Crystal) on our trip to Kapsowar, Kenya. The main intent of this blog is to keep my wonderful grade 8 class at Strathroy Community Christian School in the loop for the 4 weeks of school that I will be missing in action from them - but I welcome others who I've given this link out to as well.

We will be leaving on Thursday, November 19th at 6pm out of Toronto. We have a brief stopover in Amsterdam after 7 hours of flying, and then we fly for 8 hours to Nairobi, Kenya. We will arrive at 8:25pm Nairobi time on November 20, which is 12:25pm in Strathroy with the 8 hour time difference. We will then stay for two nights in Nairobi to receive some orientation, then it's a 6 hour drive west to Kapsowar!

I'll hopefully write my next post from Nairobi, if not then it will be from Kapsowar...

Mr. W