A New Day, Rain, and the Return of Tammi

Hello everybody!

From now on we will be coming into town on Wednesdays instead of Fridays due to confusion with purchases Cyrus must make and the picking up of Margaret. They thought it easier for us to come to town midweek. It was fine with us because it splits our week in half giving the illusion of two Fridays instead of only one, which is pretty cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet.

"But Michael", you say, "by our International Date Line Decoder Ring, it is now Thursday, not Wednesday, you silly goose!" I can answer this anomaly for you in one word: rain. A pirate's booty of the stuff. This much rain mixed with the 4-wheel drive of our van going out means no town for the Mzungus. So being short on food we hatched a plan: wake up super early and ride into town with Margaret on Thursday and then take public transportation everywhere we needed. So that is what we did, and after about 20 minutes of pushing by every grown male at House of Hope we were on our way, and here we are! We navigated through the Town Centre (Center or Downtown) on foot and took a matatu for the first time to the Westlands and our ever beloved Sarit Centre (CENTER!), all for 20/= each (about forty cents). We will be taking some form of transportation, whether it be matatu or City Hoppa, to the Nakumatt for some much needed shopping and to be picked up by our now gimpy/ hopefully fixed van. What a day!

So now that the wet season is here (hopefully), we will have to now stop thinking about it and actually buy a pair of gum boots (rain boots).

A majority of the pictures posted this week (all 26! We thougtht we would give our avid readers a break from staring at flickr for a crazy amount of time) are from a walk we had with about half of the kids from House of Hope and a few kids from the neighborhood last Saturday.

Sorry, no new videos, maybe that will be remedied by next Wednesday. Remember that day; if you have something to e-mail us, do not, I repeat DO NOT wait until Friday, we won't see it until the next week.

And now the long awaited return of Tammi:

10/20/06

So this Friday was much different then any other Friday however we did not know that at first. We got up late because the kids were on vacation that day do to a special Kenya holiday that honors Jomo Kenyatta ( original last name was Kamau), Kenya’s first president. Kenyatta was the strong man that lead this country to independence in 1963. It is hard to wrap our minds around the idea of this country only really being 43 years old, it is beautiful to be a part of something so young and you can feel that one day it will be much better then it is right now, however you can also feel like it will come with great struggles. So back to our Friday, we got up and found out that we would be going into town at 11am or so. So we got ready to go to the Sarit center aka that European mall. So we get our computer ready and for some reason I think I should take our camera, just incase we see some wild animals on the way to town. So at around noon we head off with us, Kelly, Ben, Margaret and Charles, our driver, all piled into the van. We head into town and Margaret tells me that she wants to show us the countryside so she wants to take us on a drive. We all get very excited to go on a trip to see the countryside, we had read that the countryside is amazing. After about 3-4 hours of driving and stopping to buy fresh fruit off the side of road. We get to our final destination, a village where Margaret grew up, near mount Kenya. Mount Kenya looks amazing, we could see it from Margaret’s father’s garden. Mount Kenya was really neat to see it was almost easy to miss it believe it or not. The land is all lush and green mountains all around it and then you see in the distance the huge mountain behind it, it looks out of place almost, you could see snow on the top and we were sitting in almost tropical weather on the mountain we were on it. I hope you can make it out in the photos but I know the photos will not do it justice because the whole environment was breath taking, I have never seen such beauty in all my life. Coffee was everywhere, and people were everywhere they waved to us as we passed by. Charles our driver came from the same village and everyone knows him, so they saw him and saw he was driving a white person and they would began to wave and get very excited. Margaret told us that many from this village had never seen a white person. I hope I represented all white people well. Charles was very excited to be so close to home that he asked if we would like to go visit his family, and of course we did. His family was all very excited for us to stop by, they quickly greeted us with hugs and kisses. They were also quick to give us sweet bananas and greens from their garden. I know these people have very little and yet they were able to still give us so much. Charles’s mother was a very cute woman, she was very old, however she seemed in great shape, she was also incredibly short. His son and daughter seemed really nice. We stayed long enough to take some good photos of the family and see their sitting room but it was already late in the day and we really needed to get to Margaret’s father’s house. So off we went to what would be our final destination. Margaret’s father had not seen a white person since he was fighting for independence, it made us a little nervous to think that the last time he saw a white person he was trying to kill them. He was very nice to us and very excited for us to visit him and his family. When we got to his house we had not peed since we left our house so needless to say we needed to go badly. However they did not, have any western style toilets, just a nice deep hole in the ground with a concrete around it. So this was my first time and Kelly’s first time to pee in a hole, sure we have camped but this is a little different, I am note sure why it is different it just is. However we both did great and it was just a little smelly at times but it was nice and it worked. I think things would be different if I had to go poo or if it was that time of the month if you know what I mean. However all in all peeing in a hole; not that bad. Some women had already been cooking for us, we got a freshly slaughtered chicken for our first dinner. We had potatoes with the chicken and we had cooked bananas and a chicken broth soup to put on top. It was all very nice however we had a few difficulties with the chicken because it was super tough to chew, Michael was given the leg because the men are suppose to have the leg and it was so hard that Margaret keep giving him a hard time for not eating the leg. She said but that is the best part and the man are suppose to just rip it off the bone. Michael just told her that he was not a man and could not do it. He put up a great fight but in the end the chicken won and Michael left a little meat on the bone. So we ate and got very full and the sunset before we could see too much around the house. Margaret had asked us if it would be ok for us to stay the night or go into town and get a hotel room. We said we would love to stay and plus who wants to stay in a crazy African hotel in a town that has not seen white people. So we get excited about the idea of staying the night with all these great people. So we stayed outside with a lantern and some very good tea. We were surrounded with more coffee then anyone knows what to do and we are taking tea, crazy but it was good. So we have tea and talk with a few relatives that stop by to see the visitors and to have some tea. We enjoy our time in the beautiful night with the millions of stars right above us, until it started to rain. So we get excited about the idea of staying the night with all these great people. So we quickly move the party inside where we sit by a lanterns and listen to Margaret translate two men’s story on how they fought for independence. Margaret’s uncle and father both fought and lived in the bush for seven years only eating what the near by villagers would bring them. Margaret’s uncle began to ask us questions about our lives and how we lived before we came. He asked if we lived with our family and we said we did but we are the exception not the norm. He asked what we did before we came here and what kind of jobs do people have back home. He also asked if Michael paid a dowry to my family and when they found out that he did not and you do not do that they could not stop talking about that. They just keep saying that live would be so much easier for everyone if there were no dowry. We asked what kind of things could be a dowry and they said cows, goat, and of course money. We started to talk about something else for a while and then the two men started talking again and Margaret said they started to talk about the dowry again. Time was going by and we were getting kind of tired so we thought we would be going to bed soon but no not these people we needed to eat again. So we enjoyed some good old fashion BEEF, yes little bit size cubes of beef with lots and lots of nice hardy fat on them. So we eat what little we can and off to bed we go. Michael and I get a very nice room with a nice size bed and Margaret and Kelly sleeps on the couches in the sitting room. I am not sure where Ben sleep or Margaret’s father slept. We however slept very well and the extremely load rain was mostly funny because when it was barely raining Kelly said, “aww I really like the sound of rain”. But we knew that if it rained hard it would sound so load because the roof was just a thin tin roof. So after everyone went to bed it started to rain so load you could not even hear yourself think. I just kept laughing and thinking about Kelly. She said the next day that she was fine and that it woke her up a few times. The rain did not stop all night long and we got up to it still raining. We ate some small sweet bananas and some bread and waiting for the next meal to come. We found out that morning that a goat was going to be slaughtered for us, we had mix feelings about the whole thing because we had just had chicken and beef the night before so we were not really jumping at the idea of having yet a different meat. If you have not figured it out yet, meat is kind of a big deal here, so if you are different and special you get tons of meat and you should feel very honored. So we met our fate with open arms and started to eat tons of food. We ate some kind of a veggi dish right before the goat came that was pretty good. Beans, potatoes, maze, and greens all mashed together. We sat very in the kitchen and at it with all the other ladies. The food sat very heavy in our stomach so we all decided to take a nap and by we I mean me, Michael and Kelly took a nap. We were woken up by the smell of goat. Just the first course of goat meat; the intestines and liver and some mystery parts. Kelly ate way too much liver I think because she was sick the whole next day. Neither Michael or I ate the liver, good thing I guess huh. The next round of goat meat was shared among many friends that all came to have goat and visit with outsiders. So we enjoyed lots of goat and had a soda to wash it all down with. We got asked many questions and we took many photos. The time was passing by and if we wanted to get home anytime soon we need to be heading out soon. So after the large fest we packed out things and we headed back home. We said all our good-byes and gave many hugs and kisses and we were invited to return whenever we wanted. Margaret asked if we wanted to stop at a large market on the way back home and we said of course. So we stopped and we all got some goodies. Kelly and I got a nice bag/basket and a nice wraps and a few other things. We did not stay long which was a good thing because people were starting to say some rude things to us in Swahili and asking us for money. However people keep mistaken Michael for an Israeli man, I guess it is the crazy beard. Margaret over heard a man tell another man, that had been saying some bad things about us in Swahili, that how could he say that about a man that comes from the line of Jesus. We all had a good laugh about that on the way home. Our journey home was nice but long. We stopped to pick up Moses at his school that was on our way home. By the time we got home, Kelly was feeling very sick and was quick to go to her room. Michael and I felt fine and we cleaned up and cooked a good meal. It was nice to be excited about coming home to house of hope. We had not really had that feeling yet, to miss this place. We still had that feeling of living out of a bag and well you don’t really miss that. So we had a home to miss now and that was a good feeling. We feel at home here and we still miss things every now and then but for the most part the homesickness is gone and that is a nice feeling.


Bonus Image:
This is an abnormally large fly (notice the other fly for scale) I assassinated in our bedroom last week. I think this guy ate whole turd and half a lime flavored Life Saver himself. He is still laying in that same place as I type, if you really wanted to know. I have never been a hunter, but this hoss is worthy of mounting (no jokes, Tim or Joel)


See you next when?

That's right, Wednesday!

Love to all of you!