Church visits

Alex and Shiphra live right next door to one of the churches that they attend. Shiphra is mostly responsible for leading the congregation at this church. It is fairly small and most people walk to the church on Sunday. We attended the church twice while in Kenya. On our first visit we were welcomed warmly and our second visit was at the end of our trip so we said Kwahare (goodbye). Even though the services were conducted in Kiswahili it was so easy to feel the love that the people had for one another.



Alex is preparing his sermon that he will give.


Nikki and I outside the church.


Alex, our host father, is an elder in another nearby church, which we visisted on our second weekend in Kenya. Church services in Kenya are overall much moe lively than services here. It is not uncommon for people to go to the front of the church and dance while they sing. We received a warm welcome from the congregation and were introduced during the service.







Here we are all waiting for a matatu to take us closer to our home. We ended up waiting for about an hour.




You can see some of the missing pieces of the road and a matatu in the distance.

Traditional Maasai Village

During our time in Maasai Mara we visited a traditional Maasai village. The village was composed of approximately 12 huts all belonging to members of the same family. The huts are made of cow dung and contain a room for the baby cows to sleep in and another one for the people to sleep in. The Maasai people live a very simple life and have little desire for many expensive possessions. They are herders and survive by raising cattle and sheep. The men take the cattle and sheep out to graze during the day while the women build the homes, find water, prepare food, raise the children, make clothing, and do essentially all of the hard labor. When a young man from the village wants to marry he takes a dowry of cattle to a neighboring village to purchase his wife (You can guess how I feel about this). In the past he would kill a lion to demonstrate his manliness and readiness to marry, however, due to conservation efforts that practice has since been abandoned.

The Maasai have been quite successful at maintain their cultural traditions. They still practice many traditional dances, customs, and celebrations. One such custom, female genital mutilation (fgm), still perseveres, despite the fact that it is outlawed in Kenya. Our Maasai guide in the village told us that even though he personally feels the practice should be abandoned it is still important for him to marry a woman who has gone through the Maasai initiation ceremony, in which fgm is the central tenet. This inherent contradiction is a good example of one of the barriers that prevent change.

The villagers we met were very friendly and eager to share information about their culture. They performed traditional dances for us, including the infamous jumping dance. The men were adorned in their Maasai color (red) and ornate jewelry. Some Maasai cut their ears and reshape them over a painful one month process such that there is a flap of outer skin which hangs down and is separated from the rest of the ear. Our guide told us that the process sounded too painful for him.

Nikki didn't throw up in the village so we gave her a gold star.









The Maasai men showed us how they made fire with sticks and elephant dung.

Maasai Mara Safari

One weekend we did a three day trip to Maasai Mara, a game reserve in Southern Kenya. We went with a group of other volunteers in two 10 seater vans. We stayed at a campsite just outside of the game reserve where we had tents equipped with running water and toilets! There were also monkeys hanging out around the campsite munching on left over food.

We left Nairobi on a Friday morning and it took us about 5 hours to drive to our campsite. The road was unbelievably bumpy. At one point Nikki got so sick that we had to pull the car over. Fortunately we pulled over right next to a group of Maasai children who watched her intently as she emptied her stomach. One of the other volunteers from New Zealand congratulated her on giving something back to the continent. After that episode the group moved Nikki up to the front seat, thus preventing any further incidents.

In the park we saw most of the major Kenyan animals including: zebras, gazelles, giraffes, elephants, cape buffalo, hyenas, lions, cheetahs, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, impalas, topis, and warthogs. The only big 5 animal that we missed was the rhino. The animals are so used to the vehicles that they barely pay any attention to them. At one point we were so close to a lioness that you could nearly reach out the window and touch her. One day we stopped in the park to have a picnic and got out of the vehicles less than a mile away from where we saw cheetahs. Luckily we managed to avoid getting mauled by any wild beasts.




Ostrich


Africa at sunrise

Lioness with young males


lioness

Giraffe
Hippos
Cheetahs


Here is where we stopped to picnic for lunch.

Our roommate M and us at a stop.

Hyena
Here you can see the type of vehicle we used in the park. It was a 10 seater van with an extendable top for game viewing.

Gazelle
Zebra
This is a tree in the game reserve right before sundown.

Here is the Great Rift Valley that we passed through on our way to Maasai Mara.

Pictures from Around the House

Here is a collection of some pictures of our host family and our home area.


Here is our host mother, Shiphra, and host father, Alex. Though Alex may look like a Mzungu (white person) he is actually an African with albinoism. His story about growing up in a traditional Maasai community with white skin and a disability is amazing. He actually told his story in the British Journal of Special Education and there was a big article in a Kenyan newspaper about him. Alex is incredibly inspiring. Because of his own problems with his disability he has a passion for helping the disabled. He works in the Ministry of Education training teachers how to deal with special needs issues and also leads support groups for Albinos in Kenya and Kenyans with disabilities.

Here I am trying to get some laundry done before the sun goes down. Everything was done by hand, even chasing away the chickens from our water.

Johny and I are cashed out on the couch after a long day.

This is Beth, Alex's neice, who is cleaning up some dishes as they are preparing dinner.


Nikki is in the yard with Johny, Cialo, and Kariss (Alex's nephew who stays with the family).

This is our host sister, Michelle (aka Cialo), doing her homework inside the house. She would do hours of homework every night, which is typical for a private school.

Here I am with our family's punda on our compound. You can see the baby cows in the background.

The gateway into our home.

The bathroom at our home, which consisted of a hole. We would see many of our large eight legged friends here every night after sundown.

Nikki out in front of Alex's home on one of the warmer days that we had.


This is the home that we stayed in. My host brother Johny is on the left and his cousin, William is on the right.



Here Nikki and I are walking back with our host brother, William, from the place where we boarded a matatu. You can see the Ngong hills in the background.