Our Future Home

Sorry we left you all abruptly last week- Our pause though was a success since Nikki recovered her bag from the airport. I guess this is normal with British airways, so when you travel to Kenya, don't use them!

At School the kids are warming up to us more and more. They are getting bold and asking us many questions about the US and our family. Some want to come back with us. We have been encouraging them to work hard in school and go on to secondary and the university so that they can come visit us one day. The teachers have noticed that their motivation to learn (especially English) has improved. They are eager to sing us songs and dance. Last Friday Annalisa had class 3 jumping up and down singing traditional maasai songs. Singing and dancing with a group of 60 African children has to be one of the most amazing experiences you could imagine.

The students are so happy to have us around. One girl gave us gifts, shirts and a bracelet. Others have brought milk and sweet potatoes. We brought in pictures to show them from home and everyone crowded around to see. They were unable to believe everything they saw in the pictures. The students were begging to keep the pictures so that they could go home and show their parents. We plan on leaving the pictures with the school when we go and sending more once we return to the US. Everyone also loves when we take pictures of them. We'll post some of our pictures when we get back to the states.

Everyone is so incredibly grateful for what we are doing here. Most of the people from the community know we are here and stop us on the road to say hello. Some of the parents came to school one day and told us how happy they are that we are here. Sentero, Alex's brother who works at the school where we teach, keeps telling us how great it is that we've come. We are the first volunteers in the area and it is making such a big impact. Normally when white people come they only stay in Nairobi or go on expensive safari's. They never really go to the rural areas and interact with the people. So they are so honored that we have come to live with them and help out at the school. Some of the people in the area have been calling us "White Maasai" because they say we are living just like Maasai, only we are white. We can't even really describe how welcoming the community has been. We just know that this is the start of a lifelong connection to this community. We both agreed that we would like to return and live in Kenya for some years in the future. Everyone encourages us to return and bring others. So if you are interested we can hook you up with the friendliest people you will ever meet.

We've been to two different churches, both Presbyterian. The first was a small church near our home. Last Sunday we went to a larger church. Because all of the matatus were filling up we ended up in the carriage of a van packed in with about 15 children. We sort of felt like immigrants crossing the border, but as we are frequently reminded...this is Africa.

The matatus are quite an experience. They are 15 seater vans that they pack 25 people into. Today on our way to Kiserian we had so many people in but then the driver saw a police checkpoint ahead so he veered off into an alleyway before we reached the city and had to walk the rest of the way...just a regular day in Kenya. The roads are really bad everywhere. You can't call them potholes so much as missing pieces of the road. There isn't even a real road to Alex's home, just uneven ground that was formed by cattle. To see the road you wouldn't believe a car could even travel on it...but apparently it can.

We are leaving tomorrow for a Safari to Masai Mara the game reserve. We are very excited to see some more scenery and animals. Next Friday someone from school has planned to take us to a Maasai camp where the men go and slaughter cows and take a sort of retreat. So that should be quite an experience. We also plan to hike the Ngong hills and see a children's church singing competition that weekend.

As for the language mostly everyone speaks Kiswahili to eachother but then each tribe has a mother tonge that they use at home like Maasai or Kikuyu. They teach everything in English and use that for business etc.

We could go on further about everything but we need to go buy socks for our Safari. We did a load of wash (hand wash) back at home but we didn't get the socks so clean so Kariz ended up redoing them when we were at school and so they weren't dry yet.

Till later...I bless the rains down in Africa...