If I were a pioneer...

My grandmother and I had a discussion the other day while we husked nearly 9 dozen ears of corn that neither of us would have made good pioneers.  I'm pretty sure my oxen would have died while fording the river, my family would have gotten typhoid, and I would have said "this is crazy, I'm going home."  And I would have chucked the skirts in the process and invented denim jeans.  While life in Africa has been good so far - the whole three days that I've been here - I already want to spend my days in a pair of jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt rather than a skirt.  But you know, I guess we're just going to have to deal.

But anyway - so what's the latest?  Well, in case anyone was wondering 3 o'clock in the morning in Kenya looks the same as it does in America.  Not a single difference.  It's a ridiculous hour either way.  I experienced it last night for the second night in a row as my body tries valiantly to adjust to the time difference.  We're not succeeding so far.  I was up from about midnight to 4 a.m., asking myself whether I should eat my last oatmeal chocolate chip cookie or save it for later when I'm really desperate. I chose to eat it.  And then I picked up Lord of the Rings - Return of the King.  It's the only book I brought and I figured it's better than staring at my mosquito net for the next three hours and wondering what the heck is making that ridiculous noise outside my window.  I eventually fell asleep and when I woke up at 7 I felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck.  But the show must go on.   

Today was the first official day of working with the staff.  We have staff devotions every morning at 7:15 - this consists of the village director, who is a wonderful lady by the way, two of the other full-time staff, and several of the nationals who work for Rafiki as maintenance, kitchen, and laundry staff.  We sing through a few hymns, then the director gives the morning devotion.  They have been studying the book of Nehemiah so this morning we ended up in chapter 10.  After that we break up into men's and women's groups and pray.  The Africans pray so sincerely and with such depth, it almost caught me by surprise.  I think in America it's easy for our prayers to become commonplace, every day life is so ordinary we forget just what a big deal it is to be living every day, and living every day with a God who is very real, very personal, and very near.

The rest of the day I spent with the new ChildCare Program Director, who has just moved from the village in Rwanda with her husband.  The exciting thing about Kenya right now is that Rafiki is trying to put some major pieces of the puzzle together in terms of developing the Kenyan village as the model village and the model school in Kenya.  Thus why they have some new staff coming as they will be key players in establishing this vision.  We spent the day inventorying supplies, both in her office and in the storage room, trying to figure out what needs to stay, what needs to go, and what just has a big ol' question mark next to it.

It's been a long day, but good - very satisfying.  The kind of day when you know when you get to sleep that night (if sleep should ever come in my case) that it will be the result of a hard day's work.  We'll spend the evening having dinner with the kids and generally hanging out with them, and likely ending the evening being pyrotechnics as we just have some trash we need to burn.  Hopefully I won't see 3 a.m. tonight.