Today is Thanksgiving... And I'm in Kenya. And there is no such thing as Thanksgiving in Kenya... And unless I ate a goat or a stork or something... maybe a scrawny chicken, the whole eat turkey thing on Thanksgiving is pretty impossible. And I just said and at the beginning of lots of sentences. Sad day.
P.S. And I'm listening to John Denver... singing about how it's good to be back home again. That's somewhat ironic or something.
However, my illustrious friends and I are actually doing things for thanksgiving. Jill just made a little cut-out turkey to give to Bethany but she ran out of room at the bottom of the paper so the feet are very awkward. Ha. Right now, the girls are upstairs making french toast.... I will probably be in love with the both of them in about an hour because of that (sorry Steve). We bought two loaves of bread to make it with so that should be able to dampen my bottomless appetite. I'm getting hungry thinking about it.
Then, for lunch, Bethany is making chapatis (the Kenyan tortilla- sugar, salt, flour, and water rolled out) and the three of us are going to make apple pie filling to put on top. Man, we need some ice cream. There's not exactly any pumpkins around for us to make pumpkin pie but Jill and I made an executive decision that we don't like pumpkin pie anyway.
So that shall be our Thanksgiving. After lunch, we'll be wrapping Christmas presents for the kids and listening to the limited Christmas music on my laptop. I have decided that only for today, I will miss the football, family time, and the day after Thanksgiving when my cousins, brothers, and I laugh at the women of the family because they try to shop and then get home whining about how cold it is and how crowded everywhere is... But I will definitely miss the day after Thanksgiving even more than the day itself because the day after Thanksgiving is when my family decorates for Christmas, goes to the back of our land to cut a Christmas tree, and begins to listen to the Christmas music that I really enjoy. I'll definitely miss the decorating and all the memories that come from putting on all the tree ornaments... so many of them are associated with memories or are completely characteristic of my brothers' personalities or things that all three of us enjoy or do.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!! (for the Canadians- just imagine I said that about a month ago.)
Now for a brief update. My parents tell me I should blog more about what we do daily and about Africa in general, so the frequency of blogs may increase. Hopefully, I'll keep them short so that it can become a weekly or daily part of the day for whoever is interested.
We are still at Huruma Children's home in the Ngong Hills outside of Nairobi. We've been here for about a month and have definitely learned a lot from the kids, God, and each other. I'm learning a seemingly infinite about of things about myself (most probably not good... but that in itself is probably a good thing), God, and love/life in general. We are working on sifting through the options of what to do next... To name a few we are considering Swahili school in Nairobi (classes every other day and work at orphanages, slums, and the like on the other days... probably work with a pastor we know who works in Kibera. And continue our work with the street kids.), an orphanage and family close to Lake Naivasha, and a couple of ministries we learned about from a doctor friend we met. Please be praying for our direction about what is next for us.
Hopefully, that will give everyone an idea of where we are at the moment and an idea of what we need prayer about... (and that was an absolutely pathetic and terrible sentence grammatically) So I'll close with a random funny Kenyan story.
Last Friday, I had the opportunity to go to a Masaii village with a Kenyan social worker to pick up a girl that was going to be put into a forced marriage with a Kenyan man (probably around 70 or 80...the girl is ten)... Forced marriage occurs after a ceremony where the young girls are circumcised (FGM- female genital mutilation) and are sold at a dowry. Polygamy is normal in Masaii culture. I'll try and write about my experience in the village at a later time.
Anyway, on the way back from the village we are going up this hill, and I hear this huge, terrible noise and feel a bunch of smashing and thumping on the bottom of the truck. Uh-oh. Welcome to Kenya. As the truck slows and starts to roll backward, the driver pulls the parking break and we screech to a halt on this huge hill in the middle of nowhere. When I say nowhere about a place in Africa, it really is nowhere. We get out of the truck and look underneath the chassis... only to see that the drive shaft had pretty much self-destructed and ripped apart. And I'm thinking... awesome I'll get back early today, get a great lunch, and not have to walk a long way, deal with Kenyan mechanics, or enjoy a day stuck in Masaiiland. Ha. What ended up happening was the driver calling his mechanic "friends" who came in an old, midget, decrepit Datsun POS pickup (three of them crammed in) and they proceeded to convince me that they had no idea what they were talking about, were going to overcharge us, and would probably not help at all. We then connected our truck to theirs by a tiny little trashy rope connecting both bumpers and then we slowly groaned up the hill with the drive shaft thumping beneath my feet. At the top of the hill, the rope of course snapped but thankfully we had enough momentum to make it over the hill and coast downhill for an hour and a half... (Seriously I wanted to commit suicide or something... sitting in a hot truck going -7 mph on this barely sloping hill for an hour and a half... I took a nap.) Finally, we made it into town and I'm thinking we'll have to get a matatu to go home as the truck will need repairs... But no, it's Kenya and we went and ate lunch while they repaired the drive shaft... welded it on the spot. So an hour later they welded the pieces back together- welding is sketchy here though. We got back to the truck and the mechanic says, "You should wait a while because it is still very hot and not solid yet..." Oh boy. And guess what, our driver decided against waiting and we took off immediately, the underside of the car smoking and all. Sigh...
But as you can see, I'm still alive.
As Jill would say, "Will, that's pretty sketchy."
Oh really...
lovewill
ps: Will forgot to mention the amazing fried brownies we've been having on our down days. One day Jill and I trekked all the way to Karen, bartered for a pan at a dodgy pan-vendor, and came back to realize that the oven in the guest house does not work! I was a little disappointed, seeing as we had just spent a good two hours preparing to bake brownies. So instead I decided that I would make the batter and fry in in a frying pan. I was expecting them to turn into brownie pancakes, but they were more like scrambled brownies. Mmm they were delicious. It's been good to be able to bring elements of home into our Kenyan lives, even though , more often than not, we have to modify them in some way. I'm pretty excited to celebrate my first American thanksgiving ever, and what better way than with french toast and chapati apple pie.
Bethany the fried brownie gal...
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