Chicken...Kenyan Style

To say yesterday was a lot of fun is an understatement…Lydia form Oasis of Hope threw a birthday party for all the kids form Oasis. Most of the boys don’t know when their real birthdays are so Lydia has one big birthday party for all of them. It was massive...and so much fun…I am so excited to start working at Oasis. Tomorrow is our first real day and we’re going to be there 4 days a week.


There was so much amazing food!




David



Jerrfey & Joseph...A.K.A. Mr. Spark...I called him Sparky tho


the shirts the boys made


Evans

Some of the girls from our bible study...

Evans & Joseph


Carol and I also did Pilates today…I didn’t take any pictures unfortunately but just use your imagination…
For dinner tonight we decided we wanted to have chicken, so yesterday we had Mary kill and de-feather a chicken for us and I was a genius and offered to prepare it today not thinking that all the organs would still be in the bird... So imagine my surprise when I opened the refrigerator to find a chicken with all of its organs including the heart, kidney’s and spinal column…its cooking now so Ill have to post an update with how it turned out…
my first time...gutting a chicken


Here’s some other fun pics I thought I’d post, like my first ride on a motor boda
my first motor boda

So...I just realized at this very second how much I love playing catch…Allison and I just played and it was awesome!
Some other awesome things include Nutella, Kenyan Peanut Butter & Biscuits (altogether) Chipati, Motor Boda Bodas, and the various Kenyans we get to have be a part of our lives…As I was going through my photos I noticed some funny pictures I wanted to share…

Today was the most random but fun day…Running, Chocolate cake, cutting down a large tree, farting, small cars with too many people, and a Kenyan discotech were all part of it
This isn’t so fun but first, I went running today for the 2nd time! Yesterday I went for the first time in over 6 weeks and it was awesome! It’s a bit of a challenge because we cant go outside of the compound for safety reasons, but the property is about ½ mile around so about 2 laps equal a mile or so, apparently…



I say apparently because no one really knows and were only guessing, but that’s not the point. The point is that I actually ran and it was awesome. And definitely needed because of all the Chipati and biscuits with peanut butter and nutella we’ve been eating lately…and when I say biscuits I mean cookies…
I also loved it because it’s a bit of something normal and regular for me, so getting to do it here was refreshing and somewhat theraputic…
Another awesome thing that happened on the compound today included a giant tree outside chris’ window getting ripped out…They had to, again for safety reasons take it out, if someone was able to get onto the compound they could easily climb up the tree and into chris’ bedroom and kill him…Which would suck, so they had to get rid of it. Getting rid of the giant tree consisted of a group of street children spending 3 days digging it out by hand then having Stonic pull the trunk out with his car





I think one of everyone’s favorite events of the day was when James got back from Nairobi with a huge chocolate cake…Allison had asked him when he went to Nairobi a couple days ago if he could get us chocolate cake mix…Well, James being the awesome Kenyan that he is, bought us an entire chocolate cake! So we had a nice surprise when we woke up this AM..its almost already gone!
We actually did get some business done today, while all of this was going on we were having meetings with all the people we are going to be working with in the following months…




Later we went to a place called Pinewoods for dinner with a huge group. While we were waiting for Stonic to come and pick us up we noticed there was some music playing next door…I guess I should tell you that Pinewoods is a nice hotel/restaurant (that has great Chinese food).
Well, apparently they have a discotech as well, so while we were waiting we decided to go check it out…They sucked us in with their awesome music and we ended up staying for about 45 min. We were the only ones in there besides some random Kenyans that were either the DJ or homeless.



The DJ was actually legit. He played the most random but good stuff from Black Eyed Peas to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to Enrique Iglesias…I know, those of you who know me, probably thought I was cringing, but sometimes you just have to let it go and dance…Which we did cuz we had the whole dance floor to ourselves…
I think one of the highlights was Caroline dancing with the random homeless man that had wandered in from the street, he also happened to be smoking in an entirely wooden building. And when I say dancing I mean he just stood there as Caroline ran around him in a circle…



I don’t know if it gets better than that but it was definitely topped off by the taxi ride home, when we tried to fit all 6 of us into a Toyota Carolla…7 if you include the driver…

Kipsongo





Today was definitely interesting and stretched me a bit…we went to a part of Kitale called Kipsongo. And through all my missions trips I thought I’ve seen most everything there is to see. Before coming to Kitale I felt as though I had a handle on what poverty and the 3rd world looked like. Not to say that I was desensitized, but I could handle it.
You know what Bono said about God being in the slums and in the cardboard boxes? I found myself asking where was the Lord today as we walked through Kipsongo.
It sounds harsh and Im not saying that to make it sound like I lost my faith or questioned the Lord’s sovereignty in all of my surroundings, but its another realization that Im going to struggle with and have to work through…It’s a different kind of poverty than I’ve seen.




This woman suffered from Elephantitis



There are so many stories from today that I could write about and I actually really want to but at the same time I don’t want to feed into what Im already feeling, and I also feel that these people deserve more than those stories. If I was in the middle of it all and trying desperately try to see where God was in the middle of it, I can't imagine what these people think...Where does their hope come from? They deserve more than being thought of as nothing so instead Ill let the pictures speak for themselves and if you want to know more you can email me...I also ask that you pray for Kipsongo. One thing I was thankful for was Pastor John and the fact that there was a church attempting to work...
I'm thankful for being here because it yet again shows me that just because I've been on a ton of missions trips doesn't mean I've seen it all and I'm also glad because as much as it hurts and sucks to experience all these things as if I never have before, I'm glad my heart hasn't hardened...
This woman was drunk and had passed out in a gutter before villagers moved her to her hut...it was 2PM.
This boy was 18 months old and 1 of 5 children who's mother was dying




These kids mother had just died and they had been living in the hut with her body for 5 days...

Shima La Tewa

The New Well At Shima La Tewa...

Yesterday was awesome. And today was even better…
We did a lot of random but fun things.
Yesterday, first we visited Oasis in the late morning and then went grocery shopping, which in itself can be an exciting thing, except when you have to go to 3 different stores for the few things on your list☺
Around 5 we were invited over to our new friends, Meredith and Dan , house for a BBQ. They work for Transformed International, which is a great NGO working here in town. We were so excited for it and had been looking forward to it all week. They have one of our favorite houses in the neighborhood. They have a treehouse, a tire swing and a freaking teeter-toter!
The food was amazing, potato salad, baked beans, BBQ beef and salad. It was so great to have American “homemade” food…Not that we haven’t enjoyed what we’ve been eating so far but you can only eat beans and lentils and maze so much before you desire a little something else. And my tongue was sooooo ready for some BBQ sauce…
In the middle of the dinner we had to leave to go to do a radio show on Radio Imani. Now we were a bit bitter that we had to leave in the middle of the dinner, but the radio show ended up being so fun and we had such a great response from the listeners…so hopefully we will be asked to come back for more shows…Check out the radio station



AND…
Today could not be a more ridiculously beautiful and perfect day…it was so restful…The weather was phenomenal! For the first time in a long time it felt like a normal Saturday morning to me…
We slept in. I had coffee and spent some time with the Ukrainian girls, which was a lot of fun. I then carefully cut Allison’s hair on the porch and Caroline gave Allison a pedicure ~ she got hooked up!




After Allison’s spa day we went to a soccer game for the Oasis boys. It was so fun! They split the boys into 2 teams, complete with uniforms. Some of the girls from Oasis came to cheer the boys on too. It was a good game, of coarse, were watching a bunch of Kenyans playing soccer, even at their worst they wouldn’t be very bad…

The Road to Bosnia~Stonic's a Pro!

A 3-yr old suffering from Malnutrition

Mama Bosnia

Sister Fredas Clinic

Today I had quite a few firsts…Good, interesting, difficult, and everything in between…
This morning we went back to an IDP camp just outside of Kitale called Bosnia that had been set up back in 1992! We had visited the IDP camp yesterday and we went to disperse much needed supplies. Simple things like blankets, pots and basins for washing and cooking, sugar, salt, and rice.
I have never really been a part of a relief effort before so I was very excited about getting to be a part. I guess I should explain, I have been on a ton of missions trips and on most of them it has been more of spending time with the kids and giving them school supplies and clothes. So when I say Ive never been a part of a relief dispersment, I mean it more in a way where we are handing out the bare essentials of life…
About half way through I kind of just stood back and observed what was going on…The church was divided into 2 sections. One side was a medical clinic, where Sister Freda has brought her team and supplies to treat the villagers. The other half was where we were handing out the blankets and food. We started to notice that some people we coming through the line again and people started to become pushy, which I can’t blame them, but reality hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had to do everything I could to not burst into tears.
It just broke my heart to see people struggling and how desperate they were to get a bowl of rice and half a cup of sugar! I mean these are necessities! I’ve seen poverty and its effects so many times I was afraid I was becoming desensitized to it, but there was something about today. Im not going to get on a soapbox about it, but it was so hard to watch them be so desperate, knowing there’s nothing I can do other than hand it to them and pray it lasts as long as it can.
It doesn’t make me feel like I should sell everything and go live in a hut the rest of my life, that wouldn’t solve anything, but it makes me know even more so that I am who I am for a reason and that reason is to acknowledge these people and do whatever I can for them…Whether it’s be a voice back home or hand them a water basin with a small bag of salt…Do me a favor and pray for these people and the millions of others in their situation. Don’t look down on them or pity them, help them, however you can…
Another first today was riding on the back of a Boda Boda, a motorized Boda Boda no less…It was half amazing, half terrifying. Especially considering that the last time I was on the back of a motorized bike I was in an accident that sent me to the hospital! And even then I was in Nashville, not the middle of a dirt road in Kenya…But I made it home safely and it was soooo much fun…travling around Kitale by Boda Boda is the only way to go