Love at first sight

I don’t think I’ve ever really felt it, until now.

This arrived at our house this week as a total surprise:

Our new "old" washer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It belonged to another ex-pat  who went back to the States in June and I had almost given up on the fact that it might arrive.

This is what it looks like inside, not your typical American clothes washer:

Washing tub on the left, spinning tub on the right

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whoops, the picture didn’t rotate, but you get the idea.

Now, laundry can take the usual 30 minutes per load to wash (including manual draining and refilling for rinses) and spin instead of the usual 7 hours or so it takes dear sweet Esther twice per week.  She is thrilled with the washer (as are we all) and now there is time for her to help me with other things around the house, like the constant job of keeping all of this Kenyan red dirt off of everything!

 

 

 

A Kenyan Halloween

 

I’ve never been real keen on the idea of Halloween….except that I love the whole costume and candy part.

Around the first part of October, we received an email from the Embassy warden, who is basically an American in our area of Kenya assigned to keep other ex-pat Americans up-to-speed on security announcements and other general information.

This was a different kind of announcement though!  A flyer about a community picnic/trick-or-treat party put on by the American Chamber of Commerce.  I have been excited about the prospect of a costume party since hearing about it.

We got the kids all costumed up, Eli a lady bug and Lucy a fairy.  Not bad for Africa:

The trick-or-treating ended up being kind of a trick because there really wasn't much candy

Her face paint started out pretty....

Squintville

Working the beard...on the International School Campus in Nairobi

Finishing the day with driving the 4-wheeler at the mall

 

12 years

This weekend, Ian and I will celebrate being married 12 years!

When we first met, my freshman year of college (his sophomore), I had a boyfriend and he had partying and skiiing. Ian was the bad boy on campus with long (past his shoulders) hair and I was the good girl with permed hair and size 4 jeans.

How things change in 15 years.

I can really say that I love him more today than the day I met him. I have seen remarkable changes and growth in this man since meeting him 15 years ago. He brings out the best in me, and I hope I do the same for him.

In honor of the occasion, Megan has offered to watch the kids overnight so we can have a mini get-a-way!

Bless the woman.

Tonight, we are driving into Nairobi for dinner here:
www.cafedesarts.co.ke/index.php

Then perhaps a movie (my first in a theater in Kenya & we have been here 5 months) here:
www.villagemarket-kenya.com/home.php

We are staying in this awesome hotel, in the cheap room, but still:
www.serenahotels.com/kenya/nairobi/photo

I absolutely can’t wait to sit by the pool in the morning and have a lazy breakfast filled only with uninterrupted adult conversation.

I love you and our family Ian!

BTW, I have a lot of trouble getting links to go in right in wordpress, if anyone has a tip, let me know!!

 

A baby.

This week we welcomed the 2nd baby born to a vulnerable mother at Karibu Centre.  Baby Ian. 

This baby was born to an 11-year old (no, that was not a type-o) girl who was supposedly 5 months pregnant.

After 3 days of backache not alleviated by tylenol, we took her to the doctor.

The Kenyan system is interesting.  We were told that she bore a 6kg baby.  Folks, that is 13.2 pounds, by an 11 year old who is 5 months pregnant.  It wasn’t hard to figure that someone bearing a child that big had to be full term.

Something doesn’t compute right?  Even more, we were told that the hospital was isolating the baby because it was too big, and they didn’t want the mother to feed it.  They the baby to lose weight.

HUH????   At this point I think Ian and I truly, if we are at all honest, were thinking, “Are they crazy or just really uneducated?”

Turns out neither.

Our social found out that the doctors lied.  They were actually taking the baby from the mother because they thought she was too young to have one, and if they discovered that she had no help, they would keep the baby and tell her it had died.  Our social worker and our house parent talked to several doctors and assured them that there was a great deal of support for this girl, including some familial support….and so mom and baby are finally home!   And, the baby is a healthy 6 something pounds.  Can YOU EVEN IMAGINE if you  found out your doctor in the states had lied to you???  Litigation of that type just doesn’t happen here.

So, we decided that it was better that the “system” was just corrupt as usual rather than crazy or wildly uneducated. 

Pictures/video of the new mom and baby should be up on the Karibu Centre facebook page.  If your not a fan of it yet, you should be!

 

Crazy week!

Well, it has been a crazy week.

Getting the guest apartment  ready.  We have named it the ‘tree house”.  For the flame trees.  I think it’s a catchy name, and we’ve always named all of the houses we live in…usually by the address, but scenery works too.  Megan has done a great job of taking over while I lay in bed or shuffle about the house trying to manage 2 little kids.

Being sick.  Lucy, Eli and I have all proceeded to round 2 and week 3 of this sickness which appears to just be the Kenyan cold & flu.  We’re getting acquainted with Kenyan versions of ibuprofen and children’s tylenol and cough & cold products.  Did you know that a bottle of pepto (the real kind) costs $10 here?  I passed.  I took some of the kids pepto  tablets I brought from home.

Our new Captain arrived on Thursday.  She takes over for the previous administrator, Haron.  She is Captain Sarah.  We are happy to have an administrator back after about a month without one.  It has been a lot of extra work for Ian.  She arrives with her younger sister and brother that she cares for.  We look forward to getting to know her better and working with her.

My other project on top of all of this has been to help an 18 year old boy from the Gachagi Slum.  His name is Halaki.  More on him to come in another post dedicated just to him.

And finally, making the final arrangements for our American training team of 7 women.  There are things to worry about here that you wouldn’t even consider in the States.   Furniture that isn’t finished because product is in short supply, shower water heaters overheating (scalding…..ouch!) and then exploding (I hope they get fixed, Megan is there now working with the maintenance man who seems to break more than he fixes), not being able to drive long distances in the Centre van at night (it is speed restricted, so it would be able to outrun anyone scooping out the fishbowl of whities and their stuff), and arranging for an extra vehicle driven by Kenyans to deliver all of the baggage separately and directly to the Centre at night.

Phew.  It will be nice to visit with people from home and to have all of the extra hands around here!

 

Mental Health Confessions

Anyone who knows me well knows I can get a little obsessed with things.  It usually last about a month or so until I’ve read, researched, and experimented with that specific activity or topic way more than I’d like to admit.   My sweet wife chooses to call it my intense personality, I’m sure it’s been called many other things by other people in my life.  Well one such obsession has never really gone away, slowed down, or even shown signs of fading.  Bicycles.  I just can’t seem to get enough, I even still read about procycling almost daily in a country where no one can even imagine what that sport would look like.   My bicycle obsession has lead me to buying, repairing, building probably 20 bikes over the past 10 years.  It has consumed thousands of hours reading, riding, and training for races (not to mention an embarrassing amount of money).  It has resulted in me scraping probably 60% of the skin off my body, loosing my front teeth, and I know it’s taken years off my poor mother’s life.  One time I was taken to the ER and she just happened to be working at that hospital, she came to the room to find her son with half of his face scraped off.  

Sorry mom, it could be something much worse though you have to admit. 

This particular obsession has broken my spirit when races go wrong after months of training and it has thrilled me more than I knew possible when everything falls into place.  It’s given me memories with family and friends that I’ll never forget and some I only wish I could forget.  It’s humbled me and built my confidence.  It’s also used up a lot of energy that might have ended up spent on less productive things, I don’t do so well when I’m idle and not working towards a goal.  Anyway… when we decided to move to Kenya I knew that breaking my dependence on cycling would be a major obstacle to overcome so I started weaning myself off my 150 miles / week training early and slowly.  It’s hard to describe what a hole that left in my life.  I began commuting by bus, and tried to substitute other forms of exercise into my daily routines.  I was somewhat successful, but during the winter I began commuting to my new job on an Extracycle I built up from an old mtn bike just to keep sane.  There is something about being outdoors, working my body until my mind calms down, and feeling the world around me in a physical, tangible way that I really need on a daily basis. 

When I moved here it was the end of that for me.  My parents had even given me money for christmas to buy a bike here in Kenya when I arrived, but folks, if you think cycling is risky at home, here it is beyond description.  Driving is enough of a risk on it’s own.   At least that’s what my sane mind tells me.   But this week I couldn’t take it anymore and after much talking with centre staff I decided to donate a couple of bikes to the Karibu Centre.  I bought two sweet Indian machines and then took them to the Jua Kali (street metal workers) and had them fabricate some strong racks and reinforce the frames.  

These type of work bicycles are everywhere here in Kenya and they will really help the centre and staff in many ways.  Two of our staff live in Kiganjo, a community that is about 5 miles down a long dirt path from Karibu Centre.  They WALK every day and it takes them about 45min - 1 hour each way.  They will be able to take one bike and ride together, the racks are strong like the bicycle taxis here and this should cut their commute down to about 15 min.  When the cook goes to the market, she hires bicycle taxis to transport a weeks worth of fruit and vegetables to the centre, now she can take a groundsman and transport it all on our centre bikes.  When we have errands to run in town,  workers are frequently sent on foot for a 1 hour walk to do some routine business.  Well, one hour just turned into 15 minutes with a nice breeze in their face.   Volunteers wanting to head back to the guest house early can now get a ride the local way, on our very own boda-boda piloted by the gregarious and saftey conscious Karibu Centre security chief, Tito.  And finally, I came to the conclusion that if I can race down curvy mountain roads in a tighly packed peleton at 50 mph I bet I have better than average cycling skills for Thika and they all seem to get around fine on two wheels.  So we’ll have a much happier boss around this place if he get a ride in once in a while.       

Today Tito and I picked up our two new bikes and rode them back to Karibu Centre.  Poor Tito though he’d be funny and raced past me right away which triggered my racing reflex.  I gave it a little gas and about a minute later I looked back, he was nowhere to be seen.  I soft peddled it back to the centre, waited a few minutes, then turned around to go find him.  He eventually peddled up panting and sweating.  He said it felt like someone was beating him with a cane all over his butt and thighs.  I guess I forgot I probably have better than average cycling power too and what’s slow to me even in my untrained state is probably a little brisk of a pace for the average man from Thika.  Sorry Tito, I’ll slow down a  little next ride. 

Now for some pics, beautiful shots to a bicycle addict:

The 22 incher

 

 

The 24 incher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Close up of the boda-boda rack with foot pegs.

Happy Hillary!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tito and Hillary taking a little test ride.

 

Unpredictable

This morning I was greeted by our resident assistant, Naomi, and one of the centre girls at 7:30am on my front porch.  They reminded me that today was a graduation ceremony at the vocational training program a few of our girls attend.  All the girls had been up since 5am getting ready and they wanted a ride and I remembered I’d agreed to attend.  After 20 min or so we loaded into the centre van and headed out.  I got a call just when we were pulling out, my social worker asking for a ride.  No problem, we swing by, pick her up, and head over to Golden Top, it’s a 5 minute trip.  As I’m pulling in Naomi asks where I’m going and tells me that the ceremony is being held elsewhere so we proceed to the new destination which is 20 minutes away.  We’ll call this surprise # 1 of the day.

Now I’ve decided already that I don’t want to stay any longer than necessary and I tell Karen (my friend and the director of the Golden Top rehabilitation program)   this right when I arrive.  She puts up a big fight, insisting that I stay.  I tell her I have people to meet with at Karibu Centre and we agree that I’ll come back once the ceremony actually starts.  She accepts this compromise and says she flash me when they’re ready (no, not flash as in lift up her shirt, but flashing is when they call and hang up really quick so they don’t get charged phone credits for the call).  Side note, this is also what pretty much everyone does here and you are expected to call back on your dime.  Not fair, just the way it is. 

So I’m relieved, I head back to the centre and wait for my flash.  Kenyan events can take a LONG time so I was glad I was shortening the time I know I’d spend at this particular event.  At 10:20 I get a call from my social worker saying I need to come immediately, the ceremony has begun and they are waiting for me.  I beg her, can she please just represent the centre on my behalf and she explains:  That’s not possible, You are giving the graduation speech.  surprise #2.  Wow, really, I wish I knew that ahead of time.  So, I head over and am greeted by excited, nervous folks who rush me into a crammed room with about 120 people inside and another 100 or so outside.  I am seated at the very front, on the stage, facing the crowd.  There’s a program in front of me and what do you know, there’s my name printed right there, I’m speaker 5 ot of 11 (5 of which showed up btw).   It’s about 10:45 and I realize I am in for a very long  ceremony.  Back home graduation ceremonies really bore me, now multiply that times 5, at least.  

So, the MC announces me, I give a speech to the graduating class, families, and other "distinguished" guests which seemed to go over fine, especially for making it all up as I went along.  Then I sit down and survive two more hours of poems, songs, and Kenyan ceremony madness.  Finally we get to passing out the diplomas to the 75 graduating students and along comes surprise #3.  I get to hand them out, shake hand, snap a picture with the students…. you know, like the college president usually does.  Wow, awkward is all I can say about that.

Then after the ceremony ends I spend an hour outside trying to round up my people and get the heck out of there, it’s 2pm by now.  I take pictures with about 50 people I’ve never met who just came up out of the blue.  I did make some great connections with more local program directors and leaders and when I get in the centre van to leave I notice that the 7 people I came with has multiplied into 12.  Now this doesn’t even surprise me anymore because people here are extreemely good at filling up your car when you’re not looking and getting you to give them rides places.  No problem, as long as it’s somewhat on the way I’m usually OK with it, the van is a real luxury here and I figure it’s good program promotion being seen all around town with the centre vehicle. 

So I go to drop the extra riders off at their home and surprise #4, I’m told they have prepared lunch and a party for me.  This time I drew the line.  I really had some stuff to do at the office and I respectfully, but firmly declined, promising to come another time.  It was almost 3pm by now and I was tired, hungry, and just plain done.  Well, not to waste the opportunity, all my staff and the girls asked if they could go in and celebrate so I unloaded that van and headed home alone.  

Right when I got back, I  ate a big bowl of Githeri and then got word that there was some serious momma drama in Umoja slum.  I headed right over and spent the next two hours talking to women, children, and the village elders trying to solve some silly problems that were impacting the children who come to our learning centre.  Made some progress, but mostly just uncovered more problems that I’ll have to solve another day. 

Not exactly how I envisioned the day playing out, but I suppose I did make some good connections and gave Karibu centre some good publicity in the community.   For the first time in my life I think I’m getting more excitement than I would like.  I’d take a boring, predictable day or two about now.  Ian

 

Our man in blue

We got to chat with a wonderful civil servant Saturday (on Ian’s birthday).

On the drive home from Nairobi we were stopped by the police at a police check-point.  Generally only buses, mutatus and trucks are stopped so they can pay a bribe.

Our man in blue did not state a reason for stopping us. 

Just asked the following, in this order:

Where are you coming from?  *Nairobi

Buy me lunch.   *Ignored

Open your boot (trunk).  (He paws through our bags for a while)Show me your drivers license. *Ian produces Kenyan paperwork for the license he has paid fees for but hasn’t received in the posta yet.

Where is your US license?  *Ian doesn’t have it

Why don’t you have it?  *Ian left it at home

Where do you live?  *Makongeni

What part of Makongeni?  *Across from the police station

I live in Makongeni.  *Oh

 

Obviously we were getting nowhere.  Then I popped up from the backseat with my camera and loudly said, “Hey, do you want me to take your picture?”  Silence.  Then a smile.  Then I said, “I’ll print it and leave it for you” knowing that by chance he would relish having a copy of his picture just like almost every other Kenyan I’ve met, adult and child alike.   Suddenly Mr. Policeman who was just downright gruff & soliciting a bribe for no obvious offense is nice and friendly and this results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should note that he was kind enough to hold his AK-47 down out of the picture. 

Really, there is a reason that Kenya receives the most US Foreign Aid of ANY African country, yet is still experiencing severe poverty, lack of development, drought etc., etc.

Anyhow, if you want to read up on Corruption, go here:  http://www.internationalreportingproject.org/stories/detail/1268/

 

You can buy me with mail

I truly can’t believe the way you all spoil us with mail.

I love it.  It is really one of my favorite things.  The kids too.

So, thank you’s go out to these recent package senders:

Bonita May (mother-in-law with a flair for getting as much as she can into a flat rate box)

Carol Barnum (mom who gets the prize for the most random collection of things that are amusing and fun like a toy mosquito on a spring)

Vicki Moore (a co-worker of Ian’s who sent a wonderful package with something for everyone..I really should met you rather than just hearing about your “presentations”! )

and Anna Goodworth (for thinking ahead and sending the most adorable Gymboree outfit for Lucy’s birthday next month and fun stuff for Eli)

 

This isn’t to say that you have to send us stuff to get a mention in the blog, but you do get a bit of a sweet spot in my heart!

 

Rent our House!

Ok, so here is a shameless plug for someone to rent our cute Portland house.

We had a great renter….who just needs to go back to his own house so it doesn’t get foreclosed on.  Long story, and it’s his.

Soooo.

Who wants to rent our house?

I can feel all of you just jumping out of your seats now.

It’s a cute little 50’s style house that has had some good remodeling done, including our jewel:  the entertainers backyard.  With 2 separate patios, a path for little ones (or you) to stroll or ride toys down and a pea gravel area made for sunbathing, it’s a dream.  Ian especially likes to sit out on the lower patio at night almost year round with a fire in a chimnea with a glass of wine.  In fact, we all kind of like too….even the neighbors.

Right in Cedar Hills, a few blocks from Commonwealth Lake.  Beaverton Schools:  William Walker, Cedar Park and Sunset.  Walking to Starbucks, Winco, Borders, a multitude of banks, Ross, Old Navy Powells, a variety of food venues, Coffee Rush, a massage/pedicure, you get the idea.

A great place for all ages.  Newly married, young families, older families, retired.  I love taking walks there at night and having people know me by name. 

The house is 3 bedroom, 2 bath.  Includes washer/dryer.  Awesome *NEW* AC, gas furnace, newer fridge, stove, dishwasher.  granite, & hardwoods.

Here’s a look at a few house pics, a little old now, but it should look about the same! 

Kitchen is the same except for white/nickel drop lights over the table now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The living room/dining area

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The master bath with oversized shower...not bad for a 50's house

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh how I miss you lovely back yard

 

So, it’s not a big ‘ol modern pad, but it is a lovely family home in a fun and friendly neighborhood.  We love it and know you would too!