Safari - last post...

Well I debated whether to throw these photos up on facebook or whether to do it on the blog, and since I kind of promised on my last post that I'd try to get some up, here you go! I'll wait until we get home to put them up on facebook since that is SO much faster there.

We had an incredible time at the Maasai Mara (the name for the game reserve that's about 1600 square km large, and apparently the best place in Africa to do these "safaris"). We stayed at a camp called "Sekenani", a small place that had luxury tents for accommodations, and Maasai guards who would escort us to and from the dining tent and our "living tent". The reason they did this at night was because of the resident leopard and the buffaloes and elephants that occasionally enter the camp! Luckily they didn't have to use their spears while we were there...

At any rate, the wildlife we viewed on our 3 game drives (afternoon on Monday, full day on Tuesday, then morning on Wednesday) included giraffes, elephants, zebras, wildabeast, buffalo, some lions, a couple of cheetahs, hippos, a leopard, and the list goes on and on. You just look at these animals and their habitat and how everything works together and you're just left in awe of this aspect of God's creation. Some of the animals are SO powerful (we saw a lioness dragging around a freshly killed zebra), beautiful (you should see these leopards!) just downright massive (elephants, hippos, buffalo, etc) and graceful (impalas, gazelles, falcons). It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

One thing that we really thought about was the fact that SO much money funnels through this area from tourists. I mean, it cost us $120 American each day to just be inside the park, let alone the cost of staying at the camp. Despite this fact, the Maasai people (the residents of the area who basically just herd cattle) live in some squalid conditions. Also, the last 50km of the drive was on a brutal dirt road that in some places reduced each vehicle to a crawl to avoid bottoming out. Much of the money that is made in this area goes straight into the pockets of corrupt people at various levels of influence, with only a small portion going to infrastructure or community development for the Maasai (although it should be noted that some camps, including Sekenani, have community development and environmental projects that they support directly with their profits). The Maasai people have been nomadic, basically driving cattle where the rains are (between Kenya and Tanzania). Since the formation of these "countries" happened when the colonial powers (i.e. Britain) left, they can no longer pass freely between these two countries without a visa! Furthermore, since the establishment of this vast nature reserve, they can't use the whole reserve for their cattle either! These are just more examples of the differences in culture and distribution of wealth between this country and our own. I mean, I was left wondering how it would be different in Canada if this magnificent of a reserve was in our country. How would indigenous peoples of the area have been treated? Maybe just the same (i.e. native reserves?)

Anyways, those were just the thoughts we were left with as we felt guilty for how luxurious and relaxed we were able to feel. I'll share with you just a taste of the pictures we were able to take. Honestly, we were mere feet away from some of these animals, and we have 350 more pictures where these came from...

Like I said in the title, this will be my last post. We leave for Mount Kenya tomorrow morning and will be there for 6 days climbing up the mountain. When we finish the hike on the 30th, we're basically showering up and then getting taken straight to the airport to fly home! So, we'll be home and back to the cold weather before we know it. Thanks to those of you who have stuck through this blog through the end. It's been great to have a forum for our random musings as we've experienced this, and it's touching to know that so many of you back home have been interested enough to keep reading it! We're looking forward to catching up with you all in the New Year.

Bye for now,

Kevin and Jackie

Lioness with its baby zebra kill - they would later abandon it because some wallies got out of their vehicle about 200m away. Amazingly the animals are totally fine with the vehicles driving around because they are used to it; however, if people get out of the vehicles it's out of the ordinary so they get spooked...

Surveying his landscape... We have some real close-ups of this one as it walked about 5 feet away from us.... He's just gorgeous!

One of Jackie's favourite pictures...

I don't know what possessed this elephant to do this, but he was about 10 feet away from the van at the time...

A cheetah early in the morning, surveying the landscape for gazelles to have for breakfast. If we hung around for long enough we might have witnessed the kills, but who knows.

Jackie goofing around and pretending to be an elephant. She got so happy every time we got near them...

Jackie took this one as the ostrich ran across the road in front of our van. At the dining tent in our resort, all of the lamps on the walls were actually ostrich eggs, and we couldn't believe that these football-sized eggs could come out of a bird! That is, until we saw the ostriches... This picture doesn't do it justice, but these things were actually taller than the van...

The landscape was beautiful...

Chillin around...

The end! At least for now...

Final thoughts...

Well the experience in Kapsowar has now come to an official close (at least for now :-) Our journey back to Nairobi yesterday was an adventure, to say the least! There’s more of a story behind this, but it included the following highlights:

- being late for the matatu at 6am (because let’s be serious, nothing in Kenya had really been on time, up to that point)
- sitting with 13 others basically on a bench in the back of a pickup (with a top) with our luggage strapped to the roof along with a pole that had about 20 live chickens tied to it by their legs. This was in addition to the 2 chickens they threw underneath the benches by our legs that were impressively well-behaved for the journey
- Allie dry-heaving for much of the first hour on the terrible dirt road
- Seeing giraffes, antelopes, baboons, and zebras along the road
- Jackie going crazy in the souvenir shop (as she tends to do) in Eldoret
- Quite an uneventful 5-hour shuttle to Nairobi, but then getting into a cab that was circa 1980 and BEAT UP, only to have it run OUT OF GAS on the way up a hill and then get towed to a gas station, have the cabbie try to get us to pay for gas, then get lost (a 5-10 minute journey turned into 45 minutes) and THEN try to get us to overpay (although it was a pretty sheepish effort on his part at that point to continue trying to rip off the wazungu).

However, we arrived on time for the debriefing last night despite all of that, had a nice, relaxing evening, and said goodbye to Allie this morning as she departed for Zambia. Jackie and I are now laying low for the day at the Mayfield (AIM) guest house just reading and organizing before our 11-day whirlwind tourist tour of Kenya that commences tomorrow morning at 7:30am. I’ll share with you some closing events and thoughts of our last week in Kapsowar.

Basically the week was similar to the rest in terms of what we were able to accomplish, but it was a great week of some culminating “bonding time”. Dr. Christina was, unfortunately, pretty ill for most of the week. It was a bummer that we couldn’t spend much time with her toward the end and that it was a couple of days of Jackie not being able to learn from her, but it did provide Jackie with the opportunity to essentially RUN the maternity ward for three days. In the end, the three girls received excellent feedback about how much they were able to help out (and not just learn) at the hospital for these 4 weeks. One interesting case that arose that reflected an aspect of the culture was another one to do with abortion. On Thursday a woman arrived who was 10 weeks pregnant but had an abortion performed the day before at a local dispensary (because it wasn't her husband's baby). She was showing signs of septic shock, which was not surprising given the method (the main instrument used was a steel rod). The abortion had effectively killed the baby, but they still had to remove the fetus from the mother – the mother will recover. The really interesting part of this is, if you remember, the fact that abortion is illegal so they really should have reported this dispensary to the police. The attitude of the Kenyan medical staff was apathetic to the situation. Having had similar experiences, they decided it was useless to report since the dispensary would just end up bribing the police and the investigation would then be thrown out before any change was effected. It begs the question: how do you change this attitude? Should you still report it even though nothing will happen just because then the dispensary has to AT LEAST pay the bribe?

As for me, I spent the majority of the week working on a Microsoft Excel file for the church we had been attending to use to track their finances and then, hopefully, design some sort of budget. The method (or lack, thereof) of the church to track the donations and tithes coming in vs. tracking their expenses going out was quite concerning, especially considering the sermon series on stewardship they are currently in the middle of. We came up with at least the beginnings of a system for them to track this (because they do have a computer available to them), and I hope that they will be able to use it. People have a genuine mistrust toward authorities when it comes to finances (for very good reason, usually), so the churches here should really be at the forefront of transparency and accountability when it comes to that. However, many of their strengths are weaknesses of a lot of churches in the west, so there has to be a balance in there somewhere... I tried very hard to be sensitive of the fact that this type of thing isn't a strength of churches here, but it seemed like motivation was there for this to happen - hopefully it's sustainable and it leads to more on their part.

I also gave a talk to junior high school and high-school aged kids about “balancing your spiritual life amid distractions of life”. It went really well, although the difference in teaching/learning style here was definitely evident. It’s all done by rote, so trying to get them to engage in discussion or answer questions out loud was like pulling teeth! They were very attentive and appreciative, however, and most took good notes!

What had the greatest effect on us this week were definitely the goodbyes. Despite the fact that the hospital quite often takes in “short-termers” like us, so much energy was spent making us feel welcome the whole time and in sending us off “in style”. We were repeatedly told how much we were appreciated, and repeatedly asked when we would return! Jackie and I had the privilege of hosting our friends Elisha and Franxedes for dinner one night, we returned to the orphanage on Friday afternoon to say goodbye and play some “football” with them (in their colourful new soccer jerseys we had brought them from Clinton), and then we had a very special goodbye dinner with almost everyone we had grown close to on the hospital compound on Friday night at Mikel’s house (one of the nurses). This final party had 20 people (in a really tight space!) and included about 8 speeches and then us being adorned with gifts of sarongs (wrap-around skirts) for the girls and, luckily, a t-shirt for me :-) This picture is, as follows: Dr. Drew, me, Jackie, Dr. Kimosop, Crystal, Salome the hospital administrator, Allie, Dr James, and Mikel. Of noteable absence is Dr. Christina (she was sick).

Finally, yesterday here in Nairobi we had an excellent debrief with Murray, the man who had done our orientation with us before we left 4 weeks ago. He challenged us to think about the following (among other things) :
- How we would apply what we learned about ourselves and missions in general when we return to Canada
- Handling the “reverse culture shock” of returning to Canada and trying to balance our thoughts about our culture vs. that of Kenya
- Sifting through positives and negatives of our experience, as well as how we’ve grown spiritually in these last 4 weeks

We have definitely learned much about ourselves and about how “missions” might fit into our future plans – too much to write about in a relatively short blog. I want to thank all of you who stuck with us through the end of this blog (maybe it was only our moms, Victoria, and Tetcy, but that’s ok because it really helped me collect my thoughts as we progressed through the trip). We definitely look forward to returning home to family and friends and then discussing this experience with anyone who is interested as well as finding out what you all of have learned and been up to since we’ve been gone. Don’t worry, I’m going to think about a 1-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, and then limitless presentation of what we have learned through this experience, and I’ll get Jackie to do the same (if you know Jackie, this is of vital importance. :-) So, you don’t have to be afraid to ask us for the “1-minute version” or whatever you’re interested in hearing. I already had one person (Mrs. From) tell me that she wanted the limitless discussion complete with pictures and everything, so that’s an option too :-) Perhaps most of all, we’ve learned (through experience, now) that God’s love and providence extend even to the far reaches of rural Africa, and that people in any circumstance or position can teach us about Him and about ourselves if we open ourselves to it.

As for Jackie and I, we leave for Sekanani camp tomorrow morning at 7:30 to do our 3-day “Africa wilderness safari" in the Masai Mara. Then we’re back in Nairobi for the night of the 23rd, and we leave early on the 24th to do our trek up Mount Kenya. If we get some really cool photos, I'll post a short blog about the safari when we're here again on the 23rd, so you can check it out then if you'd like. We return to fly out of Nairobi on December 30, and will arrive back on Canadian soil on the evening of December 31st. Again, we really appreciate all your thoughts and prayers and look forward to catching up with each of you (even if it’s only moms and Victoria) when we return! We will miss spending Christmas with the families, but being on the side of Mount Kenya with just each other (and our shirpas, haha) will be a pretty cool experience as well... I'm also really looking forward to seeing my grade 8 class and the rest of SCCS again in January!

Much love and blessings,
Kevin and Jackie

Here's a picture of my "basketball gang"


Allison and I on the "Piki Piki" outside of the Childrens' home

A picture of the Operating Theatre on the hospital grounds

Jackie and her patient Eunice with her baby "Kipchumba"
(which means "white" - because the C-section was performed by Jackie and Christina)

Merry Christmas! (etc.)

We’ll start this blog with some thoughts from Kevin, then shift to Jackie for a description of the weekend and the ending. I (Kevin) started to make an effort at the end of last week to get to know the pastors of the church that we’ve been going to, just to see if they needed help with any administrative or technology tasks. This has opened up a lot of windows in terms of getting to know them and also really helping them out in this short period of time. I was able to show them a few tricks for their new projector and am now in the process of coming up with an excel template with which they can track revenues and expenditures (would you believe they track all this with notepaper and a pen still?) From these new relationships have come some other opportunities as well:

Last Thursday I attended a day of the junior youth camp that is going on in the area (about a half hour motorbike ride away). This was pretty incredible – 100 kids packed into a room with backless benches, really engaged with what the speakers had to say and also in awe of the talents of their peers during the presentations hour! They are so welcoming to visitors as well, I felt like a visiting president or something! They wanted me to speak to the kids (through an interpreter), so it’s a good thing I kind of prepared something the morning of… I should mention another first that Jackie missed in her last post – my first motorbike accident. Pastor Patrick and I had a bit of a spill on the way there, which resulted in a scraped up arm and some bruises for me, not really much of anything for him. I think my pride was hurt more than anything. Luckily, Allie was able to bandage me up in the operating room and I was back on the bike come Sunday (what a cool way to see the countryside!).

Maybe more than anything, I’m learning from these pastors the art of forming relationships. If they tell me to meet them at 10 about accomplishing a task, what they really mean is “show up at 10:30 or 11, we’ll hang out and talk for an hour, then maybe get around to what we intended to get around to”. This doesn’t do much for their ability to take administrative steps or accomplish extra tasks during the week, but it reflects the Kenyan culture of “let’s take care of “us” before taking care of “that”. They also spread themselves very thing during the week and on the weekends by visiting a great number of people, attending weddings, and supporting their pastoral peers in various settings. Again – very refreshing.

I (Jackie) can hardly believe we are entering our last week of work here in Kapsowar! I do want to say “Merry Christmas” to you all now, while I can still remember the yummy smell of stuffing and feel the dead weight in my stomach of too many desserts after our Christmas celebration on Saturday. We had a full holiday meal for 14 at Christina’s and, since only photos can capture the “Charlie-Brown”-ness of our decorative efforts, I will let them speak for themselves. We also ended up sharing a bunch of Allie and Dave’s as well as our wedding pictures with the gang that was there, and then finished the night with Chevy’s Chase’s “National Lampoon Christmas Vacation.” By 11:30pm or so, as the movie was ending, I had to admit it really DID feel like Christmas. Although we will definitely miss our families over Christmas, we’ve grown very close with the national docs and nurses, Mama Brian and the other ex-pat missionaries that we spent the day and night with. The process of getting the décor and meal to happen also left us with that exhausted-yet-satisfied feeling that comes with a big family gathering. It was really nice.

And….amid the festivities…..I began to look just a TAD more Kenyan (other than the fact that I'm still really white - it's me on the right, by the way...). ☺ Again, the picture will speak for itself. All I can say is that Mama Brian has the speediest fingers I’ve ever seen! She did my whole head, including the extensions, in under three hours. (During that time I was happily making tree ornaments out of pipe-cleaners, pinecones popsicle sticks and buttons, and eating a lot of the popcorn that we were supposed to string up around the tree.)

Now, for Sunday: The morning’s church service was lots of fun. We went to the English service (which usually starts within about 15 minutes of it’s official 9:30am start time), and there Kevin played Blessed Be Your Name on the guitar while Crystal and I sang. One does feel a BIT hypocritical singing words about blessing God’s name not only “when the sun’s shining down on me” but also “on the road marked with suffering,” when daily living here seems like suffering compared to my life. Anyway, then I also sang alone (Honour, Honour) in both the English and Kiswahili service. (For comparison, the Kiswahili service officially starts at 11, but it doesn’t really get going until about noon and then continues until 1:40 or so.) I received an unusual compliment after the English service from Pastor Patrick: “She has a voice that could bring a snake out of it’s hole!” (Mama Brian explained that I should be very pleased with this high praise. Ahem….so now I’m the unofficial snake-charmer-lady.)

One thing that I’m still getting used to at all the services we’ve been to is the way each song starts. Someone leading at the front (usually a different person for each song) just begins, and then someone near the keyboard hits the rhythm button so a drum beat starts playing. Then this pianist person guesses wildly at which key we’re in and eventually lands on one that’s close, usually requiring that the congregation change to match the keyboard (sometimes after several pit-stops in other keys). It’s crazy-distracting for me, but everyone here is cool with it – so I’m learning not to get attached to the key we start a song in. There’s no such thing as being given a starting note or an introduction – each song always starts with a solo voice and then key-guessing. Anyways, it’s most definitely different from home! ☺

Later on Sunday, we did another beautiful Kapsowar-area hike. It took about 4 hours, but we hiked to a ridge across the valley that is beside Kapsowar. Hiking along that ridge, you could get a beautiful view of the Kerio Valley on the other side, which is a finger of the Great Rift Valley that extends from Kenya all the way up into Israel. You could see for miles, and it was really neat to see little pockets of rain falling on various parts of the valley (very beautiful).

I think that should be good for now – we’ll probably post one more later this week and then another with some closing thoughts from Nairobi on Saturday or Sunday. We might be able to make one last post on December 23rd from Nairobi after our safari as well…



Hugs and love to you all!
-Jackie and Kevin

More and more FIRSTS!

(What ELSE to call my first blog, eh? Hopefully this will appease Kevin… ☺)

Let me begin by saying “Happy Kenyan Independence Day” to all! (There doesn’t seem to be a lot going on around Kapsowar in celebration other than a few extra decorations on storefronts, but it is technically a national holiday.)

It’s taken me too long to get around to writing this, in part because there is so much to say that I’m not sure where to begin, and in part because I’m hesitant, knowing that my understanding of what is going on around me is still very limited. However, here goes!

This week, as every week here so far, has been a week of firsts.

Number 1: On Monday morning, for the first time I left the house at 7:10am when my attending physician had expressly told me rounds were starting at 7am. At home this would NOT have gone over well; however, as Kevin mentioned, I was working with Kimosop – on Kenyan time. Kimosop is a Kenyan-trained general practitioner who desires to complete a residency in Pediatrics in the future. He usually covers the pediatric ward and very tiny nursery, as well as the OutPatient Department (sort of like ER/clinic), and is the medical director of the hospital. However, for the entire time we’ve been here, Kimosop has also been covering for James, his adult medicine counterpart. Therefore, he’s been managing all of the female and male adult medical wards, any medical issues on the surgical wards, and the HIV clinic. He’s been on call EVERY NIGHT for all medical admissions and taking 1/3 C-section call. Oh, and he’s been doing teaching rounds for everyone once weekly this month. He’s clearly a busy guy, but I was glad I hadn’t arrived until 7:15am on Monday - as he rolled in about 8am! The rest of the week was a great time with him, looking after patients with HIV, Malaria, TB, and one particularly unfortunate child with probable TB meningitis whose prognosis is quite guarded at this point. (We don’t think that he will die, but he will probably have significant, permanent brain damage.)

Number 2: On Wednesday, Christina (the OB/GYN) called me in to Labour and Delivery to see my first female circumcision reversal. (She knows I’m very interested in Obstetrics and has been amazing about calling me for unique things, even if I’m on another rotation.)
It’s impossible to work in a hospital in Kenya without encountering both male and female circumcision, so let me digress for a minute here about each.

Circumcision for males here takes place between the ages of 8 and 16, whenever the boy and/or his family think he is “ready” to become a man. Usually, a traditional “circumciser” from the village is responsible for removing the foreskin as these boys lie flat in an open field in a big group. Of course no anesthetic is used and it’s considered a sign of weakness to cry or make any sound while this is happening. Then, these boys are bandaged up and heal after a few days, occasionally developing an infection or having significant bleeding that brings them to the hospital. The boy Kevin mentioned earlier with the “botched” circumcision was the most serious genital injury I’ve ever seen. I was VERY emotional about this because it’s such a medically unnecessary procedure at home, because his family seemed nonchalant about the whole thing, because there’s no one in Kenya who could fix this (particularly in a timely fashion) and, anyway, this very poor family would have had no hope of affording much in the way of surgery. We sent him to the nearest referral hospital (Eldoret) where at least he could be followed by Urology over the longer term.

Yesterday, a 14 year old female came to the hospital in early septic shock one week after a female circumcision (which is extremely common here, although it is illegal in Kenya). She’s stabilized in hospital, thankfully.

I think I’ve been EXTRA infuriated by the practice of female circumcision (which most of the medical world and human rights activists call Female Genital Multilation because this is actually a more fitting description) while reading Hirsi Ali’s book. (She’s an originally-Somali woman who is a women’s rights activist, particularly in Europe’s Muslim communities and, of course, she vehemently opposes the practice.) This is certainly mature subject matter for grade eight students (much less Jonathan’s grade sixes), but these students are actually the same age as many of the girls having this done in East Africa – so perhaps it’s a fitting discussion to have here. In any case, this procedure, of which there are endless variations, has the primary goal of making intercourse unpleasurable for women, as well as sentencing them to a life of more difficult urination and menses. Imagine, then, what a VICTORY it is for Christina (and myself) when a woman agrees to have this reversed. Our patient on Wednesday, of course, had to obtain her husband’s consent before having the procedure. Then, right before she delivered her first child (while on the “table” in labour and delivery) we incised her scar so that she will likely be able to have her next babies without episiotomy and will no longer have to pass urine and blood from a space the size of a small grape (this was the most severe circumcision I’ve seen since I got here).

Number 3: At Wednesday morning’s hospital chapel, I finally got around to singing for our friends here - impromptu-Kenyan style. During services, there is always an opportunity at the beginning for anyone to bring “presentations” forward. These can be songs, skits, praise reports, etc. I’ve been thinking about singing for a while now, but there were always some other eager volunteers, so I’ve been waiting. In a concrete building (that was nicely live, actually), I sang “Because of Who You Are,” which is an old song about admiring the character of God. That has gotten me a gig in church tomorrow, both leading a song (with KEVIN on guitar!) for the English service and then singing a solo (I think it’ll be a spiritual called “Honour, Honour”) at the Kiswahili service. Kevin and I have never played music publicly TOGETHER before….so this is a major first. ☺

Our next blog will have the details of today’s special first: our first North-American Christmas party in Kenya! We’ve been stringing popcorn and baking cookies, making decorations and putting lights on a little fir tree (actually a BRANCH of a tree) at Christina’s all day. Meanwhile, I also managed to get Mama Brian to braid my hair (an additional first!)…. so more on these things to come!

Love, and so much thankfulness for your prayers.
-Jackie

PS: The picture that I've included is of about 80 junior high kids waving to Kevin's grade 8 class back home from their bible camp...

Going Deeper...

I’m beginning to feel like the first few sentences are the hardest ones to come up with when making a blog. So, I’m going to start this one with that disclaimer! There’s just so much to talk about, so many new experiences when you’re dropped into a culture this different from your own.

I know it’s been a few days since the last post. I kept trying to get Jackie to put a few of her thoughts down, but she’s so into the book that she’s reading right now that it takes up all of her spare time. She was actually reading it with a flashlight while we watched a movie last night. The book is called “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali – it’s really intense… Anyways, I do promise that her thoughts will come soon enough, although if she waits too long she’s just going to have too much to say! I can say, however, that she has started a new rotation this week, this time with a Kenyan “medical officer” (kind of like an advanced resident in Canada) named “Kimosop”. He does Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, and he truly runs on “Kenyan time”. If he tells Jackie to meet him at 7am, she leaves the house at 7:25 or else she would be waiting half an hour for him! He does, however, know a TON about medicine so Jackie stands to learn a lot from him.

The two of them had a very interesting case yesterday. Basically the gist of it is that a 16-year old girl came in with her mother because she is pregnant. She wants an abortion, which is actually illegal in this country. Her reasoning, though, would cause even the most conservative person to stop and think about the decision. Her father doesn’t know, and she and her mother believe that when he finds out about the child he will kill her. So if they don’t do this procedure for her in the sterile and safe environment of the hospital, she will either get someone in her village to do it (extremely dangerous with a good chance she’d die then anyways) or she will kill herself. What would you suggest in this situation? I’m honestly at a bit of a loss… They really couldn’t do anything about it other than recommend her to pastoral counseling intervention and recommend against having the abortion done in the village.

On Saturday we went on our longest hike yet, to a peak called Kipkinor. We had to leave at 6:30am so that we could make it up before noon, the hottest time of the day (I know you’re all bitter at me now because of your Canadian December temperature). It was a beautiful 10km there (and then 10 back) through the forest. We saw about a dozen monkeys, although I couldn’t get a good picture of them because they were way up in the trees and really try to stay out of sight of us humans. I did carry my camera around my neck for part of it, until I slipped in the mud and turned my body while I fell to protect the camera. A bloody and bruised elbow was enough to convince me to put the camera away again, and thus I did not get a picture of the monkeys :-( At the top of this peak, though, was a large rock outcropping about the size of a living room where we had a beautiful panoramic view of the area and the town (and where we could lay down for an hour-long nap before heading back). Mama Brian and her neighbour boy Jonah were excellent guides for the journey. What was interesting was passing cows (and dodging cow patties) almost the entire way up. There were even a half-dozen of them on the peak! I’ll include a picture of Jackie and I hanging out at the top…

We are feeling more and more comfortable as time goes by here. I can now walk to the market in centre (what they call their town centre, if you say “town” you actually mean Eldoret) and meet up with at least 5 or 6 people I already know. Because you walk everywhere, if you see somebody you know you automatically stop and have a conversation. Greeting each other and talking is more important to the people here than what they originally set out to accomplish! This aspect of culture here really gets you thinking about the “bubble” that we create for ourselves back home by driving everywhere, hanging out in the back yard of our homes instead of the front yard, and minimizing spontaneous get-togethers with people…

As for me, I continue to diversify my role here… I spent the morning with a couple pastors from the local church helping them figure out their new projector, where to set it up, and how to play videos on it for the church. What’s funny is it would have been a 15-minute job back home, but it turns into an hour and a half here because you just end up enjoying each other’s company for that long! I’ve also spent time helping organize the Nursing School Library (yay Dewey Decimal System!) and I’m going to the children’s home tomorrow to help on their “jamba” (garden) Thursday I’m traveling to help out at a Junior High Youth Retreat with one of the Pastors from the church here. Oh, and of course I’ve been putting on a clinic at the basketball court with the high school boys – they are really improving!

I think that should be about it for now, I don’t want you guys to lose interest in these because they are so long :-) I have enjoyed hearing from family and friends back home, and thanks to my students for the regular updates on their volleyball season! Both teams competed in the Thames Valley Finals on Saturday, with the girls winning one match and playing really well, and the boys actually taking home the gold medal in what I was told were some really tight matches toward the end! I’m thinking that the teachers don’t stand a chance against the grade 8’s in the annual grudge match this year, unless Mr. Devries has really been working on his hops and Miss Reitsma on her topspin jump serve… I do know that the kids are sad to see the season finish up.

At any rate, we send our love to you all back home. Please continue to pray for the doctors and nurses here who really have their work cut out for them (such a small hospital for a catch basin of a quarter-million people) and for us to keep finding ways to fill needs in the community while we are here.

Blessings,
Kevin and Jackie

Kenyan Hospitality

My plan was to make this post a “Jackie post”, that is, I was going to get her to put this one up herself and talk about what she has been up to. However, since she’s quite a perfectionist when it comes to writing (and most things – evidence of that being her husband :-) she will probably do that over the weekend when she has more time. My mom wants another update with more pictures so I will fill you in a bit on what we’ve been up to the last few days.

I entitled this post “Kenyan hospitality” because that’s exactly what we’ve been given over these past few days. I mentioned that on Sunday we had lunch at Mama Brian’s, but we also had dinner at Mikel’s (a nurse at the hospital) on Monday night and then dinner at Edna’s (Christina and Drew’s house help) and dessert at Shaloma’s (hospital adminstrator) last night! So we went from having almost no Kenyan food the first week of being here to having three in 4 nights. The food, although it’s really good, doesn’t compare to the hospitality that comes along with it. People here are so gracious and willing to serve, it really is quite wonderful. The staples are “ugali” (kind of a more-firm version of cream of wheat), beans and potatoes in some form, rice, sometimes meat and sometimes chapati (my favourite).



I’d say the most interesting meal was at Edna’s, who lives about a 15-minute walk into the countryside. There we wazungu are quite a novelty to the kids. Drew and I had a blast telling them we were monsters and then chasing them through the hillside and in between the huts! Drew even made on little boy cry, but they loved it and kept coming back for more (in fact I ran into two of them on my hike today, who walked with me for about 10 minutes along the trail).







Edna had two little huts – one as a dining room and one as a kitchen and bedroom. THAT felt like a true Kenyan rural experience! Interestingly enough it is quite common for the host to not even eat with his or her guests; in fact, Edna butchered a chicken and made us this meal for 6pm and didn’t eat with us. Instead she ended up eating the same food with her family three hours later. It was quite bizarre, but she checked in on us regularly and was very happy to have us over. The picture I've included with this blog is of us and Edna's family.

Another thing that is interesting and quite sad about the culture here is the role of men in the family and the household. Typically it’s the wife that does all the cooking and household chores and raising the children. Traditionally, that left men to do the hunting and be the warriors. However, with technology, the global village, availability of food, etc. that role is no longer really needed. In general the men have not stepped up their role within the family and they seem to float along on any whim they might have (I am definitely generalizing here). It is commonplace for men to sleep around, take a second wife, turn to alcohol, and generally not really be there for their families. Some evidence of this is the fact that Edna's husband was not present for dinner - the man in the photo is actually her brother-in-law. I was fascinated with my conversation with Mama Brian today who said she thinks that women should improve on the support they give to their husbands so that they won’t “want” to leave their families. I, however, think it would be an excellent ministry to be geared at developing Godly men with a sense of purpose. You would really have to commit to a community for a long time to get this off the ground, however, since the culture of the men is so ingrained…

At any rate, Jackie has been on surgery with Dr. Drew this week and has had some interesting cases. One was a man who fell out of a tree, or off of a rock (he couldn’t really remember…) four days prior. He came in complaining of blood in his urine, which turned out to be a bladder rupture. When they opened him up, his bladder actually kind of exploded all over Jackie and Drew (some mixture of blood and urine). Another case involved a circumcision gone VERY badly in one of the surrounding villages. The men who took this boy in had waited all day to do so and just didn’t grasp the seriousness of the matter. This was an indication of the larger problem of some very sketchy, almost barbaric rituals going on in these extremely rural areas - it does make for some interesting medical cases, though!

I have spent the majority of my week working on the job site (Tuesday and Wednesday) and really trying to build relationships with many of the locals. Today (Thursday) was just that – I took a long walk in the morning to find a remote place to read my bible and ended up striking up random conversations with many people from the area. After this hike I had chai SIX times at various houses with different people, learned to make CHAPATI (definitely going to make use of that skill) and learned a lot about Kenya, the area, traditions, etc. It was actually an amazing day, although it doesn’t sound like much. I was also able to meet with the patron of the children’s home to figure out how we can be of assistance to them going forward. I really wish we were going to be around on December 22 when they’re having a big Christmas program with all of those kids!

That about sums up the last couple of days! We are continuing to have an incredible time here, I can’t tell you how great it is to be able to do this together. On a side note – can you believe Christmas is only three weeks away? I can’t decide what I’m more upset about, the fact that it might not even feel like Christmas is going to happen or the fact that I miss the entire egg nog season… Mom, can you pick some up and stick them in the freezer for me? Hope all is well back home, and as always – your thoughts and prayers are very much appreciated.

Final thought - for some reason I haven't been able to get a reliable internet connection to be able to do another full skype call with the grade 8 class. Thanks goes out to Mr. Aalbers and Mr. Devries for having the patience to keep trying, and for those of you that logged into MSN last night to chat a bit!

Blessings,

Kevin and Jackie

beautiful, but quite heart-wrenching...

I'm beginning this post at about 5:30pm Kapsowar time, with rain steaming down that so rudely interrupted our basketball game. Actually it was pretty neat seeing these rain clouds roll in over the valley, engulfing the surrounding hills as they approached us. I was on the work site at the time, continuing to work on the electrical outlets. The wind has calmed down now, and it's pretty serene sitting here looking out the window - to me it's beautiful and to others in the area it's great for the crops, but it does make things really messy around here for those that live in the little "rocket" huts on the hills or in town.

Sunday ended up being a pretty impactful day for us. As I mentioned in the last post, we visited Mama Brian's house in town to have lunch after the church service. She makes fantastic "chapati", which are like tortilla shells but with much more character - I'll definitely be taking advantage of that recipe later on this week! The meal we had with her was really good, and it was interesting to be huddled into 2/3 of her house with the 5 of us (Christina, Crystal, Jackie, myself, and Mama Brian). What a contrast to the 3-bedroom house with the large, flower-filled backyard that Jackie and I share... That lunch added more credence to us feeling awkward about being isolated from the town. I mentioned this to my class and to our parents, but the fact that all of the missionaries, white doctors, and a number of the hospital employees are in this fenced-in compound kind of separated from the rest of the town by the hospital serves to underline the inequalities that are present here. It does make sense from a permanent-missionary perspective in terms of getting that separation, that release I guess, but from a short-termer's perspective it feels a little bit like we're being set apart. It seems that puts us behind the 8-ball in terms of building relationships with people in the community.

After lunch we travelled to a place called "Kapchisawes" (I think) Children's Home, which is the orphanage run by African Inland Church (the church in Kapsowar started by the organization we came to Kenya with). This was a pretty incredible place - the setting of it was just UNREAL. It was on a large ridge with a valley that dropped off on three sides, and then climbed back up to form huge hills. The expanse of it was jaw-dropping. The orphanage supports around 35 children - most of them elementary school-age, some of them in high school. The conditions for these kids was quite depressing. David and Rebeccah (the patron and matron of the place) are vibrant, loving people who do a lot for these kids with what they have, the problem is that they just do not have a lot. The kids are sleeping 2, 3, sometimes 4 to a single "bed" (I use that term loosely, it's basically a worn foam pad on a frame), the kitchen is a closed-in building with a fire-pit, and I could go on. The place does care for these kids, though, and has them working in the jamba (garden), tending to the cows that they own, and doing their schoolwork regularly. We were able to give them modest gifts of the soccer jersesy that were donated by Clinton Minor Soccer Association, a bunch of skipping ropes from SCCS, some soccer balls and a pump and some other trinkets, but I think we're also going to try to purchase a number of textbooks that they need for the kids' schooling. I do know that Sunday won't have been my last visit there, although it is a bit of a hike (almost an hour) to get there.

What we found really refreshing about this place was that the two adults in charge (who volunteer themselves full-time, by the way) were not pushy in trying to guilt us into giving things to them. They were very gracious hosts, gave us an excellent tour, had tea with us and shared their vision for the place, their plan to make it self-sustaining through their animals and their "jamba". David and Rebeccah offered to let us share our gifts with the kids and create a "photo op" of it, but were clearly more comfortable when we turned this offer down and instead gave the gifts to them to distribute in their own way to the kids. It was an experience we won't soon forget, and one that left us feeling really good about how God really has provided these kids with a family even though they are lacking a lot of what we consider essential for living. Oh ya, then we played soccer with them for about an hour and a half on their uphill pitch while dodging the "cow pies". It was the wazungu and the girls vs. all the boys. Man, the elevation sure kills your endurance over here!

The first couple of days of this week have been a bit less interesting - I went into Eldoret town with Mama Brian and Dave (the contractor in charge of the hospital building that's being put up) to pick up a few things including basketballs for the high school boys that hang around here in the evening. We also bought ice cream, which was a real treat these days, and we saw two different kinds of monkeys and a camel (not native to the area, but used to give tourists like us a ride) on the drive there. Oh, and because we went through Iten so early in the morning, almost ALL of the elite Kenyan runners were out in full force, training! We probably saw more than 100 of them all decked out in spandex gear and Kenya track jackets. I wanted so badly to stop the car and try to run with them, but resisted the urge...

Jackie started with Dr. Drew (a surgical resident from Portland, Oregon/Sacramento, Calif) today and will be with him for the next week or so. He mostly does emergency surgeries like the one Jackie was called in to assist with over the weekend - the description for this one was "poison arrow to thigh" - no joke... I don't think there ended up being any poison, but there definitely was the removal of an arrow... She's still learning a ton about medicine, but also about patience in terms of the varying levels of training she is encountering in the rest of the medical staff at the hospital.

I'm including a picture of us with all the kids that were present at the children's home on Sunday, as well as another picture of the area with part of a FULL, gorgeous rainbow we saw while walking back to town. We wish you all the best back home and can't thank you enough for your prayers and support.

Much love,

Kevin and Jackie