The Lounge

“Hi everybody.”  These are the words that I say whenever I walk into our bedroom.  Our new home here at RVA is wonderful, but in order to have a guest bedroom (for all of you to come visit us!) we decided to put the office in the master bedroom.

Now our master bedroom has become The Lounge.

I understand why.  It has a bathroom, a comfortable bed that is always made, a desk with a computer, the best wifi reception in the house, and there is almost always someone else there to hang out with.

On Thursday I came home and had to quickly change before going to coach a soccer game.  When I walked into my room Little Foot was helping Ed study on the bed, F.G. was on the computer at the desk, and Buddy and his friend were just milling around in the room because that was where everybody was.  I had to go into our closet and close the door in order to change.

A few days before that I had flopped down on the bed to rest for a few minutes and before the few minutes were up Miss Bookworm and a friend were in the room on their school issued laptops working on a project for class.  They complained that the wifi reception was not good enough out at the dining room table.

Things have gotten so bad that CrazyMom and I can’t have a conversation in our room because the traffic in The Lounge is incessant.  We have taken to retreating to the guest bedroom to have needed conversations.  The kids avoid the guest bedroom like the plague since that is where all of the clean laundry gets dumped that needs to be folded.

I am not complaining, however.  There are some perks to having your kids wanting to be in the same room with you all of the time.  But then again, when I asked Ed to put her backpack that was in the living room away last night because people were coming over, she picked it up and took it back to The Lounge.  :-(

Experiencing “Internally Displaced People”

Me and Paul

“Can you come back tomorrow?” Paul was asking me.  He was one of the elders in the Maai Mahie IDP camp that I had just spent the last couple of hours with. (Note: Real names are not used here).

“I can’t come tomorrow, but I will come again soon,” I promised, feeling a range of emotions that I am still unpacking today.

It was Outreach Day for RVA and I had naively boarded a bus with 42 other students and a few adults to travel down the mountain to visit the IDP camp.  I was no longer as naïve.

IDP is a term that I had heard in the States before, but it rolled off of me because I had no real understanding of it.  It stands for “Internally Displaced People.”  In December of 2007 there was a presidential election here in Kenya and the results were hotly contested.  In the aftermath of the election there was violence, some of which went down ethnic lines.  Over 1,000 people died and half a million were driven from their homes.  That is how a group of several thousand came to the valley floor below RVA.

IDP Camp is in the distance in the center of the photo.

Every day as I emerge from my second period class, I walk down a walkway to go to third period and this is what I see.  I see the lushness of the school with manicured flowers and the sculpture of a giraffe eating from a tree surrounding the view of the bleak metal roofs from the IDP camp in the valley below.   It is a powerful sight that helps me keep life in perspective and drives would be complaints from my mind.

The RVA bus pulled into the camp and parked in a large barren field.  Even before the bus doors opened, kids were streaming out of the camp towards the bus.  When we got off of the bus, James – a national who was with our group and who works at RVA with CrazyMom – came up to me and said, “See over there?  That is where we have church.”  James and a friend come down to the camp each Sunday, have a church service, and then feed about 200 children.

The Church

I looked, but could not see the church building.  “Where?” I asked.

“Over there, under that tree,” he replied.

We divided the RVA students up into three groups and my group had James, Elder Paul, and 8 other RVA students.  We walked through the camp and past the homes built by Habitat for Humanity.  At the far end of the camp, Paul pointed to where we were going.  About a quarter of a mile away across the plain was another settlement.  These were people who did not have homes, but rather they stuck sticks in the ground and the covered them with plastic and cardboard.  We got to visit several homes, spend a little time together, and pray with the people there. 

When we were done visiting, we headed back towards the main camp.  As we were walking along, I asked James about the elections that are to take place later this year in Kenya and whether or not there might be trouble again.

Looking back at the camp with "tents."

“I don’t think so,” answered James.  “The memory of the trouble from the last election is still too fresh in people’s minds.  Everybody lost and people don’t want to see that again.”

Paul was not as confident.  “It is all the same people.  The same people are running for office and they have just gone from wearing their hats forward to wearing their hats backward.”

For the sake of the people of Kenya, we are praying for a peaceful election.

First Broken Bone in Africa

“I know I am going to regret this,” CrazyMom was saying, “but I will let you guys go play at Titchi Court anyway.”

Little did she know.

CrazyMom and I were on our way out the door for a half day of professional development and the younger kids did not want to spend the afternoon at the house. CrazyMom was concerned about how well they would be able to get along off playing on their own. It turned out that that was not going to be the problem.

The problem ended up being that Little Foot fell while on his Heelys (shoes with wheels in the heels) and hurt his wrist. When we caught up with him later in the day we thought it might just be sprained, but the next morning there seemed to be too much swelling for a sprain. CrazyMom and an RVA nurse took Little Foot down to the hospital, which is just a couple of hundred yards from the school. Fortunately, there was an orthopedic surgeon who had just arrived in Kijabe from Oregon and while he was not scheduled to start work until Monday, the nurse called him at the house where he is staying and he came over to read the x-ray. We are certainly blessed to have access to such good medical care while living here at RVA, although we all hope not to be visiting the hospital on a regular basis. :-)

 P.S. You may be wondering how much a hospital visit costs here in Kijabe. The consultations, x-ray, and casting cost 7,915KSH, which is about $94 USD. No, that is NOT our co-pay. That is the entire bill. As cheap as this may seem, it is expensive for the nationals here and most of them need help from family and friends to be able to afford medical care.

First Day of School at RVA

Today was the first day of school at Rift Valley Academy for our family.  I took a photo of our kids as they went out the door grouped by the different divisions that they have here at RVA.  We have our high school group (grades 9-12), our junior high group (grades 7-8), and our Titchie Swot group (grades K-6).  It was fun to debrief the day around the dinner table tonight and hear the stories from the day.  Today proved to be a great start to the year.

Even with Shoes

Even with shoes you can get a thorn in the foot.  Ed is holding the thorn that we pulled out of her shoe today that went all the way through the sole.  (You can see the hole in the shoe inside of the white box.)  Despite thorns, hookworm, and rocks, I see many kids romping around campus barefoot.  I guess us newbies wearing shoes are just a bunch of tenderfoots.

First Encounter with Safari Ants

Safari Ants, Pinching Ants, Army Ants, Flesh Eaters, Siafu. We have heard these ants called many different things. On our first morning here at Rift Valley Academy we passed by a column of them on the warpath and every day since we have simply stepped over a column of them whenever we walked by. Last night we were on our way to supper with some friends when we saw the end of a warpath of Safari Ants where they were disassembling one of these guys.

Then when we were at supper, the kids came running in yelling, “K.D. is getting bitten by ants!” We rushed outside to see him dancing about swatting at his pants. While he was eating dinner outside, some Safari Ants found him. Our host knew just what to do. He sent his son to go fetch a robe and had us strip K.D. down. We shook the ants out of his clothes, K.D. got dressed again, and we went on to have a wonderful evening. It is great that the ants don't sting you so that after you get them off, there is no itching or much ongoing pain – as long as you get them off before they remove too much of your flesh, that is. :-) You can read more about these fun little guys here on Wikipedia.

Teen Life at ABO

The teens at Africa Based Orientation captured life there in a video that they made. They had a chance to show it to the whole group during the talent show on "Fun Night."

First Birthday in Kenya

Ed turned 15 last week while we were at our ABO training. We had brought some gifts from the states and added a few with local flair – like a hand-carved baby elephant. We found a few minutes between training sessions to have a family party in one of our dorm rooms. The ABO coordinators were thoughtful enough to plan brownies and ice cream for dessert after dinner and the people there signed a large poster with birthday wishes. It will be exciting to see what will transpire between now and when she celebrates her next birthday.

Reliable Systems

I am coming to appreciate how unreliable systems can lead to more reliable systems.  At the school I taught at in America, if the power went out, school was cancelled.  Here on the campus where I am currently attending training, things are not that way.  Since the power goes out frequently, they have a backup generator to keep school in session during outages.  So in some ways, power is more reliable here.

I found out the other day, though, that not everything runs on the generator - like the water pump that fills the tank for the building I am staying in.  It can be a real problem when you have 70 people staying in a building and there is no water to flush the toilets - at least it is a real problem in America.  Here in Africa when that happens, buckets of water to flush the toilets magically appear in all of the bathrooms.  It turns out that they have a backup system for that too.

The Sun

The other day Anna was playing with one of her new friends who does not know much English.  When the sun came out from behind the clouds, I said, "The sun, the sun!"  The little girl immediately sang a little song about the sun and getting ready in the morning.  I am not sure if this is something they teach in school or if she learned it somewhere else, but it sure was cute!