Momentarily Forgotten

“So, tell me about how you guys came to adopt,” a student asked me as I sat in the baby room of an orphanage (Amani Baby Cottage) in Jinja, Uganda.  I was on a student trip with 20 Rift Valley Academy students to Uganda and on the agenda for this morning was a visit to a local orphanage.

It had been a long time since I had hung out in an orphanage.  The heat, the smells, and the children at my feet brought back a flood of vivid memories and I had to excuse myself from the room as I was overcome with emotion.  Even living in Africa and serving at an MK school, I had somehow insulated myself for a few months from the plight of children around the world.  This morning was reminding me afresh of that plight and that I must keep it in the forefront of my mind.

Here are a few photos from the day.

Plenty of babies to go around.  Some of our group each holding a child.

 This is the main building of the orphanage which is new.  The second floor is still under construction.

 Miss Bookworm and a friend spending time with with a new arrival that was five days old.

 Most of the kids wanted to run and play.  This little guy found a friendly lap and just wanted to spend the whole time being held.

 Miss Bookworm giving wheelbarrow rides.

 I think you can spot who the trouble maker might be.  :-)  They take the shirts off of these boys when they sit down to eat and then put them back on when they are done.  A very wise move.

Bats, Rats, and a Bed

This boat carried over 25 people and their gear!

My room, the storeroom, and the kitchen.

“All of you will be sleeping here in this building, except for the teacher.  He will be sleeping in a room next to the kitchen,” our host was explaining.

After a two hour boat ride on a vessel I thought might sink, I had arrived on a remote island in Lake Victoria with a group of students from RVA.  We were to be there for a couple of nights doing a service project.

“Sweet,” was my first thought.  On an island with no running water or electricity, a private room next to a kitchen was sounding pretty good.

Little did I know.

The local pastor led me to another building that housed the kitchen, a storeroom, and a room where they had set up a bed for me.  When he opened the door, a wave of heat rolled out of the room.

The heaters (I mean stoves).

“It can get a little hot in here,” he said.  He should know.  He used to live in this room with his family.  The walls didn’t go all the way to the ceiling, so when the cooks have been using the coal burning stove in the kitchen, the heat flows into this room.  It may have been hot, but at least it smelled good, I thought, and I got ready for bed being sure to snugly tuck in the mosquito net.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.

A few of my bat friends.

As I lay there sweating, I heard the swooshing of bats flying around in the room.  They had come out of the rafters above and were flying around having their evening meal.  I felt good about the development because I knew we were in a malaria area and I figured the fewer the mosquitos, the better.

Then came the rats.  They were crawling out of the walls, scurrying around on top of the walls to the storeroom, then dropping down into the storeroom for supper.  I have no idea how many of them there were, but it sure sounded like a lot.  I had my flashlight with me, but I decided it would be better for me not to look.

The rats dinning room.

WOOSH, SQUEAK, Squeak, squeak.

I heard a noise that instantly took me back to my 9th grade science class.  A missionary kid was dangling a frantic rat by his tail with one hand and holding the tail of his pet python with the other.  The python was trying hard to get to the rat but his slithering got him nowhere since he was being held by his tail.  Then the kid let go of the snake’s tail and I heard:

WOOSH, SQUEAK, Squeak, squeak.

Each successive squeak of the rat got softer as the snake squeezed the life out of him.

Lying on the bed that night, I tried to put a positive spin on things.  “At least there is one less rat,” I thought.

The next day I was talking with the pastor and I brought up the rats. 

“Ah, yes.  The rats,” he said.  “They live in the walls.  We were wondering how the teacher would be with the rats.”

“Not a problem,” I said.  I did not want to complain since I knew he used to live in that room with the rats and his family.

Later in the day I overheard the pastor talking to the people in the kitchen.

“The teacher is fine with the rats,” he said proudly.  “He is used to rats.”

I felt no need to correct the misunderstanding.  Their life on the island involved rats and there seemed to be an appreciation that I was OK with that.

I did, however, move my bed over a few feet the next night so that the bat droppings fell onto the floor and not my bed . . .

Bat droppings on my bedroom floor.

It should be noted that when you ask students about the highlight of the trip to Uganda, many of them will say that it was the trip to the island.  It was the highlight of the trip for me as well.  Any discomfort with the sleeping arrangements paled in comparison to the privilege it was to be hosted by the missionaries on the island and to be able to see firsthand the work that is going on there.  The experiences that take me the farthest out of my comfort zone are often the experiences that bring me the most comfort. 

It is STEEP here!

When Grandpa D and Grandma D were here over Christmas, I asked them what seemed different than what I have been portraying on the blog. The first thing they said was that they were surprised by how steep it is here.

To get an idea of the steepness, consider this part of the map of RVA. Notice that we live across the street from one of the playing fields here, which has been a lot of fun. But just because we are across the street does not mean that we are at the same elevation.

First term I helped to coach junior high boys’ soccer. When practice was over I would put on my backpack and walk over to the side of the field where there are stairs that lead up to the road.

After climbing these stairs, I would walk down the road to our driveway. Part way up our drive I would then ascend the stairs that lead up to our house.

Needless to say, I was tired by the time I got home from practice.

Here is a photo of the back of our house showing the wall that is keeping the mountain from overtaking us. It is STEEP here!

Street Ministry in Mai Mahiu

One of the great things about teaching at Rift Valley Academy is all of the opportunities just outside of our gates.  On a recent Sunday morning I hopped in a car with a group of juniors who were going down to the valley to minister to some of the children in the town of Mai Mahiu – an outing they do every Sunday morning.

We got dropped off a couple of hundred yards from the tree where the church “service” is held to walk the rest of the way and by the time we got to the tree all of us were holding the hand of a child or two with more gathered around.  The students did a great job singing a few songs with the kids, acting out a Bible story, and then just hanging out and playing games with them.  It was a lot of fun to tag along and see yet another ministry of the RVA students.  

A local pastor who went along with us.

A girl caring for her younger sibling.

These kids loved to act like they were doing karate.

Building a Rocket Stove

On Saturday I had the opportunity to head out with a small group of students to build a rocket stove for a widow in the community, something that I knew hardly anything about when the day started.  Good news for us was that a national who is on staff with RVA was going along to show us what to do. 

View from the widow's house, which was inaccessible by road.

Deforestation is a big issue here in the hills of Kijabe with people slipping into the forest to illegally cut down trees to make charcoal to sell to people who use it to cook their evening meals.  Rocket stoves are one of those win-win devices because they help reduce the pressure on the forest by consuming significantly less fuel and they also help people save money because they don't have to purchase as much charcoal.

The clay core of the stove.

What I really love about rocket stoves is how nearly all of the materials to make it are available to just about anyone.  We used dirt from the widow's yard, ash from her fire, water, and a stalk from a banana tree.  We brought sawdust with us, but we could have used dried grass.  The one critical piece that has to be purchased is the core of the stove, but it is a piece of clay and not too expensive.

Mixing all of the materials together was fun, but the real party started when we added water to make the mud.

Here is the source of water for the house.

Mixing the mud!

 After the mud base was put down, the core was set on and leveled.  The banana stalk was then put in.  Then mud was added around these two parts.  When the mud dries, the banana stalk will also dry and shrink so that it can be pulled out leaving a hole where fuel can be added when cooking.

Setting the core and the banana stalk.

Smoothing the completed stove.

The students with the final stove (the blocks on the left were the old cooking area).

While the stove is done, it will not be ready to use until it dries - about 3 weeks.  The students want to go back at that time and see the stove in action.

I told CrazyMom about how great the rocket stoves are, but for now she is still wanting to cook inside on her gas stove.

A Church Service and, Sadly, a Funeral

Two of the national workers here at RVA are heavily involved with helping to establish a church at a nearby IDP camp - a camp for people who fled for their lives in the violence that followed the December 2007 election here in Kenya.

These two guys – John and John – are remarkable and not only help with the church, but they also feed close to 200 children from the camp each Sunday.  What a privilege it was for me and a couple of others from RVA to go along with them to the IDP church one Sunday a little while back.

Church is held under a tree on the edge of a field.  When we arrived, people were emerging from the camp carrying benches and chairs.  A few others cleared the area of manure and even swept the ground with brooms made with dried grass.


As they were setting up, the children gathered together and stood in a tight group for Sunday school.  A man led a short lesson about Adam and Eve as someone else showed pictures from a picture book – the one Sunday school resource that the camp owns.

The church service started with singing and dancing and then different groups of children and adults would go to the front to sing a song.



Then the rain started.  As the rain picked up, people scrunched in tighter under the tree for some shelter.  It was a nice soft rain with no wind, which I thought added to the service.  This service was also the kickoff of a fundraising drive to erect a church building and the rain reminded everyone of why it is sometimes nice to meet inside.  (By the way, if you want to contribute to their church building, let me know and I am sure we can find a way for you to do so.)

Toward the end of the service, the rain tapered off.  As I was standing there, I happened to notice the shoes of the boy standing next to me.  Most all of the kids had shoes, but many of them were not in good shape.

After the service, the children were organized in order to feed them. Usually, hard-boiled eggs are brought and each child gets one, but today John and John tried something new and brought a large pot of beans and rice.  The children were lined up youngest to oldest to receive their portion, but the food ran out when there were about 20 of the oldest kids left.  They took the news well.  There is a strong desire to care for the youngest children, so the older kids would rather go without than for one of the younger kids to not have a meal.

The next day I was sitting in our brief daily staff meeting at RVA when I heard sad news – a young girl from the IDP camp who was at the church service died that afternoon when she was run over by a truck.  I can’t imagine the pain of a family who had to flee for their lives a few years ago to now lose their daughter tragically.  Life can be harsh, particularly here in Africa.

Water Conservation . . . is Relative

Back in America I practiced water conservation.  With nine of us living in the house, adding 1.0GPM faucet aerators to the sinks reaped immediate and large benefits.

Now that we have come to Africa, our water conservation has gone to the next level.  For example, when doing laundry we don’t just flush the water from the washing machine down the drain.  We pipe the water from the wash cycle into a barrel outside so it can be used to water plants in the yard.  The water from the rinse cycle we collect into buckets and then pour back into the washing machine when we start the next load’s wash cycle.

There are other practices here at RVA to help reduce water usage – such as the bathroom rule of “If its yellow, let it mellow; if its brown, flush it down.”  But all of these efforts pale in comparison to the water conservation of the nationals around us who have to walk a mile or two into the forest to collect water and then carry it back to their homes.  I will probably never fully grasp how much water I consume in a day because I will probably never have to carry water to my home, but living in a land where water is a precious limited resource has made me more mindful of the water that I use.

One World Run

One World Run is an international 5K running event where runners run in their own location the world over to help benefit orphans from the AIDs epidemic.  Someone here helped to organize the event at RVA and there were over 160 runners that finished the event plus a lot of people who did the 5K fun walk.  Five of our kids ran the event and CrazyMom and the other two walked.  Running a 5K on the sloping side of a mountain at 7200 feet is no easy task and it was great to see how well the kids did.  Buddy finished 14th overall in the race and Ed finished 3rd in her age group.  Here are some fun shots from the event.

FG ready to run!

Ed, Miss Bookworm, and a friend.

Anna with her big sisters.

Where's Waldo?  I don't know, but if you look closely you can find Miss Bookworm, Ed, and FG all in the pack somewhere.

Little Foot walking with CrazyMom.  No, I did not intentionally cut off her head.  :-)

These N guys made it a N+1 legged race.

Buddy looking to overtake the guys in front of him.

Buddy crossing the finishing line.  14th out of over 160 runners!

FG coming to the finish line.

KD finishing strong.

Coffee Staining

We all know coffee stains pretty badly, so when you acquire an off white slightly stained rug for your house – and have some free child labor – rather than reaching for the bleach, grab a hot pot of strong coffee.  Buddy and his friend stained a rug we got at a garage sale using coffee and it turned out great.