I Will Tell Them

I am sitting still
I think of Angelique
Her mother's voice over me
And the bullets in the wall where it fell silent
And on a thousands hill, I think of Albertine
There in her eyes what I don't see with my own
Rwanda

Now that I have seen, I am responsible
Faith without deeds is dead
Now that I have held you in my own arms, I cannot let go till you are

I am on a plane across a distant sea
But I carry you in me
and the dust on, the dust on, the dust on my feet
Rwanda

I will tell the world, I will tell them where I've been
I will keep my word
I will tell them Albertine

I am on a stage, a thousand eyes on me
I will tell them, Albertine
I will tell them, Albertine 

I will tell them, Benson.

I will tell them, Peter.

I will tell them, Denise.

I will tell them, Abel.

I will tell them, Victor.

I will tell them, Elijah.

I will tell them, Rahab.

I will tell them, Hannah.

I will tell them, Stella.

I will tell them, Lillian.

To the children in Rafiki Village Kenya - I will tell them.

I will tell them of your matchless love for Jesus, even at 4-years old.  I will tell them how you pray prayers so selflessly and without thought to your own needs.  I will tell them of how you love to learn, how your minds are like little sponges.  I will tell them of how you make me weep over your purity and innocence, how the faith you possess is deeper than any faith I have ever known.  I will tell them of your longings to be pilots, pastors, doctors, and teachers.  I will tell them of your dreams for Kenya and how you proudly sing its national anthem every morning before school.  I will tell them of how you make me laugh at your silliness and joyful spirit.  I will them what it's like to hold your little hand in mine and marvel at the sovereignty of  God in a land and in a country that often seems as though God forgot it.  I will tell them how you consider all 91 children in the village your brothers and sisters though you may not be related by blood.  I will tell them how you sing hymns from the very depths of your heart, so off-key and so very loud.  I will tell them of a God whose grace has abounded in the hearts of young Kenyan orphans.   

I will tell them.

Now that I have seen, I am responsible.

I will tell them where I've been because I carry you in me and in the dust on my feet.

I will keep my word.

Do Good - Helping Haiti, Helping Africa

I probably would have come seriously close to dropping out of college if not for Kristina.  We were each other's form of sanity during my freshman year, her senior year.  We were suitemates, sorority sisters, sisters in Christ, and eventually Big Sis/Lil Sis.  How we met started sometime before I even set foot on the campus of William Woods.  When I first started looking at WWU, I wanted to talk to some current students.  So I hopped online and I randomly happened to find her profile.  We began chatting and kept in touch off-and-on over a year or two as I began to get closer and closer to high school graduation and my freshman year of college.  I arrived on campus, met her during recruitment, and the rest is history.  We have both bounced all over the world for quite a few years now, whether for school, jobs, or missions.  We've managed to stay in touch, even though sometimes we may go for months at a time and not talk simply because of schedules and life.
 
I have watched Kristina and countless other women in Delta Gamma live by the open motto of Delta Gamma, which is "do good."  It's the words we are called to live by within the organization.  Whatever you do, do good.  I have watched them live by a higher standard and live according to higher expectations.  In one of the recent editions of Delta Gamma's magazine, ANCHORA, Kristina and others were featured in a story called "Helping Haiti."  It followed the lives of several DGs who had volunteered their time and service in the wake of Haiti's devastation.      

So I figured it would be appropriate to show a photo of one Lil Sis helping Africa with one Big Sis helping Haiti.  I brought that edition of the magazine with Kristina's photo and story with me to Africa with the intent to take this photo.  She is, in fact, down in Haiti right now continuing to work amidst the ruin and you can follow her blog here.

Hopefully we'll each continue to do good, wherever we end up.   

Eaten with a Fox or in a Box?

God bless teachers, especially of little ones.  I've learned that keeping track of these kids is like trying to herd cats, although I guess in this country it would be like trying to herd meerkats.  They have the attention span of a gnat, which drives me crazy sometimes but then I have to remember that they are four, not forty.  Mid-mornings are spent corraling the pre-K and kindergartners since they either aren't in school at all or are in school only half-day.  So Kate and I usually go down to the cottages around 10:30 and spend the mornings with the youngest ones in the village while the older ones are in school.   

I basically get the good end of the deal when it comes to spending time with the kids.   I get to play games with them, read books to them, find bugs, and then send them home at the end of the day.  Like in this picture above, Kilonzi and I were practicing a hand-clap game I had taught many of them.  Kilonzi is just about the cutest kid ever (although I guess we say that about every kid we meet) and is missing his two front teeth.  Some of the girls are obsessed with this hand-clap game and now want to play it every time they see me.  They start forming a line and then shove each other out of the way to get to me first.  It's cute, but then after awhile I just have to tell them we are done clapping hands!

Then sometimes we go looking for bugs.  I think we were rather fascinated by some weird looking green spider in this photo.  We constantly have to tell the kids, "Look, but don't touch."  They are always trying to get their hands all over everything - cameras, books, our clothes, my hair, and for some reason they are fascinated by my long nails - so we have to tell them just to look at things.  Well that phrase was short-lived, especially when it came to bugs.  They always want to flick or move them or crush them, then Michael just proceeded to squash the spider all together.  That was the end of looking at the spider.


So we moved on and attempted to spend some time reading.  Again, it's like herding cats.  We're encouraged to read to them out loud so that they can hear a native-English speaker and know better how to pronounce things but also how to add inflection in the appropriate places.  No 4-year old cares about that, as evidenced by the fact that they spend their story time sitting in a tire and are generally fascinated by what everyone else is doing rather than whether green eggs and ham should be eaten with a fox or be eaten in a box.

  
But then there are, of course, moments when I do have their attention even though they have no idea what they are doing or why they are doing it.  They are just excited to learn something new.  I don't think I need to explain the photo further.  :)

O-H!

The Wonderfully Stunning and Stoic Masai Mara

Alternative blog title:  "If There is a Road to Hell, I Have Found It."

Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but that is the exact thought that ran through my head for about 6 hours as we made our way down to the Masai Mara.  Kate and I left Nairobi around 9:00 a.m. Friday morning, heading out with a safari company based in town.  We traveled with two of Kate's friends who are native Kenyans and had met previously on a trip to Kenya.  Four girls about to find out just how much we love or hate bugs and cold showers and whether we think baby wildebeests are ugly or cute.

We climbed into the van, complete with a guide, a cook, a driver who also doubled as a guide, and another employee of the tour group.  Then we set off into the bottomless potholes of Africa.  We slowly began making our way out of Nairobi, heading south down to the Masai.  And let me just add a tangent note here - John Deere is alive and well in the heart of Kenya.  There was a great deal of wheat being harvested so it seemed nearly everywhere I looked there was a John Deere combine or tractor of some kind.  So for those of you who might be wondering if I'm homesick, you needn't fear.  I've got John Deere out my back door here so it's good.

But seriously - I know I talk about the roads a lot here but this time it wasn't just that the roads were bad, it was just the sheer longevity of being on those roads for so long.  I sketched out a cartoon in my head as we traveled and then later put it in my journal - I just kept imagining this van with everybody settled in their seats in the first block, bouncing along the road.  The next block shows the same van with a bumper falling off, then the tires, and then the doors, and by the time you get to the last block all you're left with are the passengers sitting in their seats sitting directly on the road, with no car parts around.  I swear the tires on these vans have to be made of steel to withstand these roads. If a car manufacturer ever wanted to road test their car, send it out to the back forty of Kenya.  You'll find out real quick how well your car will hold up.  If the car's nuts and bolts don't rattle loose, the driver's brains surely will.  You feel like a human bobble-head.

So after we spent however many hours heading down to the Mara, we finally made it to camp.  We unloaded out stuff into our huts (cottages? houses? tents? I'm not really surely how to define this structure) and headed out for a game drive.  The great wildebeest migration is currently happening which is one of the reasons why we wanted to go this weekend.  This is when hundreds of thousands, if not MILLIONS, of wildebeest migrate from the Serengeti up to the Mara.  Think Dances with Wolves, only the African version would be Dances with Wildebeests.  Just wildebeests as far as the eye can see, with a few zebra, impala, and gazelle thrown in for good measure.

You basically just drive around the park, following the prescribed paths and just see what you see.  There are, of course, dozens of other vehicles doing the exact same thing so sometimes you just see little white vans criss-crossing the vast plains.  And I do mean vast.  I suppose it's similar to what you find out in western America on our own plains - just tall grass for miles and miles and miles.  Gently rolling hills.  Trees and shrubs scattered about.  I remember thinking when we first started that it all seemed so ordinary, so common, and sometimes even ugly.  It's winter here so everything is pretty brown and sparse looking at times.  And let's be honest - a wildebeest is a wildebeest is a wildebeest.  You've seen one you've seen them all and within five minutes of getting in the gate of the park you've already seen thousands.  Same goes for gazelles, zebras, and other members of the menagerie.   

But then.

Then the sun began to set.

And this became the Africa of my dreams. 


The Africa I had painted a thousand times over in my head and taken a thousand photographs of in my mind's eye.  The Africa that seemed so unattainable and so far out reach for so long.  The Africa that I wrote about as a teenager when I was in the 7th grade.  The Africa that I longed for when I read books about Beryl Markham, Osa Johnson, Luci Swindoll, and Karen Blixen (some of my favorite adventure-loving women).  The Africa I almost reached out and touched my senior year of college.  This was the Africa I had long thought a pipe dream.   This was my Africa. 

And I was stunned.  

And captivated and captured. 

It was this really profound moment, when I felt like I had been caught up in a spell of sorts.  We had stopped the van momentarily and turned the engine off, just to watch the sun set in silence.  You can't see it in the picture, but in that general area there had been a lioness resting, enjoying the cool evening.  We waited and watched as the sun sank lower and lower and lower.  I was mesmerized.  Then the van started and I felt like I had been cruelly jerked out from under the spell.  It was almost disturbing the abruptness of the sound.  It was time to move on, unfortunately.

There was never a moment quite like that the rest of the weekend, but it all came close.  We saw four out of the Big 5 - the Big 5 being elephant, lion, leopard, cape buffalo, and rhino.  The only thing we didn't see was a leopard, which is pretty elusive and hard to spot anyway.  And of course the wildebeest - can't miss those. (Can we also have another side note?  Wildebeests are smart animals.  Why?  Because unlike deer in America, they get out of the way of 1-ton vehicles coming toward them.  My American White Tail friends, take note. Move when a hunk of metal is coming your way.)  Zebras, gazelle, hartebeest, jackals, giraffes, storks, vultures, cheetahs, ostrich, hippos, crocodiles, impalas - what am I missing?  I think that was about all we saw, which was still a lot.  While we caught most of the animals doing the mundane things of life, the common seems somehow less common when you see it in the bigger picture.  We saw a lioness eating.  We saw an ostrich watching over her nest of nearly thirty eggs.  We saw the carcasses of wildebeest that didn't survive the trek.  We smelled the carcasses of the wildebeest that didn't survive the trek (It's rank, trust me).  We saw a mother elephant with her baby.  We saw a lioness with her cub.  We saw a large male lion sleeping gently under the shrubs near the dry riverbed.  We saw cheetahs sleeping under the shade of the acacia.  We saw zebras giving each other a good scratch and sometimes a swift kick.  We saw hippos basking in the waters of the Mara River.  We saw crocodiles waiting for their next meal to come along.  We saw the vultures scavenge for dinner.  We saw life happening in its common and ordinary moments and I wouldn't have wanted to have missed it for anything.

 We wrapped up the safari this morning, but before we headed back we went out for one last drive, bright and early at 6:30 a.m.  It was our luck, though, that we caught a couple of sets of lions.  This lioness here was just perched on top of a rock, sleeping.  Off to the side of the brush then in a separate area was a large male lion also sleeping.  (I have photos but for some reason Blogger is not cooperating, but I may be able to get it up later.)  We saw another set of lions but with a baby cub as well.    It was a wonderful morning and a great way to wrap up the weekend.  

So maybe it seemed like the road to hell on the way down, but coming out it seemed a bit less so now that I had seen a glimpse of heaven on earth. 

Eat, Pray, Love

Last night when I had  dinner with the boys from Canaan cottage I was rather amused at what happens when their auntie gets up from the table.  Certainly the phrase when the cat is away, the mice come out to play was so true.  We had rice, scrambled eggs, and diced tomatoes (and I'm happy to report that I ate the entire bowl and I don't even like tomatoes - but I attribute that to the fact that it didn't contain beans so I was more apt to finish it all). Normally the kids are pretty reserved while eating meals - little conversation occurs.  But boy, once their auntie left the table, those boys started wheeling and dealing about who wanted their tomatoes and who didn't want their eggs, and who wanted more rice.

One little boy, Kilonzi, who is just in kindergarten and is missing his two front teeth, was just heaping his rice onto his neighbors' plates.  If the auntie had been paying attention, she would have noticed that half of his bowl was gone by the time she sat back down.  He just kept shoveling food onto other people's plates and they were happy to take it off his hands.  She left the table twice and both times, the boys would shove their plates across the table so that others could take what they wanted.  And then she would sit back down and they became good little mice again, minding their manners, and acting like nothing had happened.  I had to work at containing my smirk.

I was finally able to borrow Kate's (another volunteer here) computer so I could get a few more pictures up.  I'm glad she loves taking pictures because I just plain forget to take my camera to places or I just get lazy.  She's making up for my lacking and I'm so grateful. 

In this picture, several of us had to paint the main gate.  Somebody had crashed into it awhile back and it hadn't been repainted since the repairs.  Being that I love to paint, I was rather looking forward to the assignment.  But this is when the village director asked that I go to the market with her and get out of the village - also when I managed to motion sickness.  The painting project was short-lived for me. 

This is me with the boys from Beersheba cottage.  We had just finished dinner and managed to snap a few pictures before being shoo-ed out the door by one of their mamas.

Here I am with Daisy, a Rothschild giraffe at the Giraffe Center.  Kate managed to get a big, slimy kiss from Daisy but I said no thanks.  I've gotten enough kisses from horses in my lifetime.  I don't need any from giraffes.   

And then me having a very happy moment at Java House.  I just got my cheeseburger, fries, and vanilla milkshake.  This was after we had gone to the see the elephants and giraffes and were winding up the day before we headed back.  I had been yearning for some normalcy when it came to food and a cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake had never looked so glorious.  You can bet I ate every last greasy bite and thanked Jesus for each.

This weekend Kate and I are off to the  Masai Mara for a safari, which I am uber excited about.  We'll be gone for the weekend, heading out early Friday morning and coming back later Sunday night.  The really great thing about the timing of this trip is that it is during the great wildebeest migration.  It's pretty spectacular from what I've been told so here's hoping we encounter some stellar views of not just wildebeests, but hopefully some of the Big Five.  Mom and Dad, this is the point at which I said I would make no promises about possibly bringing home some extra luggage, which may very well come in the shape of a small furry lion cub.

Caterpillars and Elephants

I saved Johnson today.

It was a death-defying act, one I wasn't sure I would be able to successfully complete.  He kept screaming and yelling and I was trying to help him.

Caterpillars can do that to a kid, you know.  Johnson nearly turned wrong side out when he discovered a fuzzy caterpillar inching his way up the beam he was sitting upon.  So he instructed me to first move him farther down the beam, away from the caterpillar.  Then he proceeded to tell me that I needed to get a stick and move the caterpillar out into the brush.  I'm now taking directions from a 4-year old who is terrified of caterpillars.  He's not in hysterics by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Johnson doesn't find caterpillars particularly warm and fuzzy and has no desire to keep one as a pet.  So I grabbed a stick and moved the caterpillar to a safe zone and Johnson went on his merry way.  I'm sure that is why God called me to Kenya - to save children from caterpillars.

I was just wishing someone would have saved me today at dinner when I sat down and found an entire bowl of beans waiting for me.  If you've read my previous posts, you know my sentiments.

But since we're talking about saving things, it is fitting then that this past weekend I went to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust over the weekend with my new friend, Kate, who is also here volunteering for a few weeks.  The Wildlife Trust serves as an elephant orphanage as well as a rhino shelter.  They currently have 18 baby elephants most of which have been saved from Tsavo National Park.  They only open the orphanage for one hour a day as they are very protective of the elephants' time and exposure to people as ultimately they will release them back into the wild.  They also have a blind rhino, Maxwell, that lives there permanently which basically means he's a couch potato.  We also went to the Giraffe Center, which is more of a breeding facility/program rather than an orphanage.  I found the sign amusing hanging outside the facility that had a  picture of a cartoon giraffe head-butting a person and said, "Beware - giraffes may head-butt you."  People are able to feed the giraffes at the center and apparently they get a little impatient when people take too long.  I love animals but I kept my distance from my long-necked friends.  I had no desire to kiss a giraffe or get a swift head-butt from one.  I'll just stand back and watch it happen to others and maybe take a few pictures. 

We also managed to make it out to the Masai Market, which as I mentioned in an e-mail to friends and family, it's basically an open-air tourist trap for foreigners who don't know how to say "no" and feel sorry the peddlers.  It's the typical trinket and souvenir stop and I got a kick out of the fact that some people tried to sell me some scarves and I looked at the tag and I wanted to tell them that these are the exact same scarves I bought in Russia, but thanks anyways for the line about these being made in Kenya.  I might be American but I don't have "stupid" written on my forehead.  But nevertheless, I bit my tongue and politely said no thanks and walked away.  Even though places like that put you on sensory overload, it's always a good experience to wander through the area and figure out what the best strategy for bartering is and just generally see what's for sale.  And then realize you probably could do without most of it.  I didn't walk away completely empty-handed though.  I managed to snag some jewelry and some fabric and hopefully we can make it back again to pick up a few more things.

As far as work wise, I've plowed through the to-do list and so now we're having to create other things for me to do.  One thing I am really excited about is the chance to work with a young boy named Elijah who is hard of hearing.  I've got a crush on this kid because he is just the sweetest thing and has got such a contagious laugh.  I'll be tutoring him every day, basically just helping him with reading skills and whatever other help he might need with his homework.  He knows limited ASL and some Kenyan Sign Language and can speak okay for the most part.  I'm just anxious to put my education to good use and to love on this kid in a practical way!  

I'm hoping to get more pictures up soon so be on the lookout!

Say hello to Benson

Say hello to one of my very favorite little boys, Benson.  You can't see it in this picture, but he has a ring of light blue pigment around the center of his eyes with dark brown centers.  It makes for some very striking and beautiful eyes.  He is the most precious thing - and ornery.  He can be a little troublemaker but all in all he is a sweet kid.  He just likes to give you a good shove every now and then when you're not paying attention to him and then he makes silly faces at you during devotions when you're supposed to be serious.   :)   

And this would be Johnson, Benson's partner in crime.  He seems to be glued to my hip at times but is a very reserved little boy until you get him to playing a game or just generally give him your undivided attention.  Then the smile comes out.  

Car Ride in Nairobi = Sick American

"Kot-ney, you are very quiet today.  Ah you alright?"

"Yes, I'm just concentrating really hard on keeping my lunch down."

Okay, so maybe that wasn't really my answer - I simply lied and said I'm fine.  But I sure was thinking that.  I haven't been beyond the four walls of the village since I arrived last Saturday, and so the village director, Yeen-Lan, asked I go with her to the market, which was just a few miles up the road.  I thought those few miles were going to kill me though.  The roads are atrocious in Nairobi, with potholes big enough to swallow a car it seems.  I barely made it past the gate and I could already tell I this was not going to end well.  Me, bumpy roads, and in a car equals a bad combination.  It was too late for Dramamine at this point.  After crossing several goat crossings and wondering how anybody drives in this country, we made it to the market.  Yeen-Lan was kind enough to let me sit in the front seat on the way back, which made it mildly better.  But by the time we made it back to the village, I just had to lay down for awhile and hope the room stopped spinning at some point.

But you can bet I didn't leave that store without first grabbing a Snickers, a bag of chips, chocolate muffins, and chocolate cookies.  Hey, something has got to redeem the ridiculous amount of beans I've been eating.  I think I've eaten more beans in the last 5 days than I have ever eaten in my entire life or will ever eat.  I'd rather eat rice for every meal than eat beans at any point.  While the African food has been an experience, and not all together a bad one, it doesn't change the fact that I have wanted pizza, mashed potatoes, and steak more than ever.  Take note, family - one of those items will be on the menu as soon as I get in the door. 

Apart from all of the adventures in food, I'm really wishing that the gecko that was in my shower and is now in my closet would go away and find a new home.  I don't particularly want to put clothes on one morning and find him there. 

Photo Album Riots

I thought I was going to start a riot today when I pulled out my photo album with pictures from home.  I had just a few kids with me at first, showing them and explaining each of the pictures and then it was like I became the Pied Piper and they all just started showing up.  I made the mistake of sitting on the ground while showing the pictures so I became like a jungle gym in a matter of minutes.  I thought I was going to suffocate under a pile of African children.  And not everybody would come to see them all at once, so kids would come in at different points in the album and each time, they would say, "Start over! Start over!  I missed the first part!"  I must have gone through that album at least half a dozen times.  After dinner, other children must have caught wind that I had photos and they would come up ask me to show them my photos.  I eventually just had to tell them no because I knew it was going to be an endless cycle and quite honestly, I was tired of repeating myself. 

After my photo album riot and some general playtime, I went to one of the cottages to have devotions with the children.  Here's how the village is set up, to give you some understanding.  There are 91 children here, with roughly ten cottages now, separated boys and girls, with nine or so kids in each.  Each cottage has a "mama," a single woman who is a native Kenyan who has made a sacrifice to live with and raise these children as her own.  She literally is their mother, it's not simply an 8-5 job.  She lives with them, eats with them, disciplines them, cares for them.  So at night, each cottage has their own devotional time, led by their mama.  Tonight I went to Joppa cottage for their devotional.  They generally sing a few songs and then the mama reads from the Bible and then discusses it for a bit, offering the kids some basic application.

Well, tonight I sat squeezed between David and Michael. I'm pretty sure if you put Michael in a furry suit with just his face sticking out, he would look like an Ewok from Star Wars, and I don't say that to be funny just that the kid is so stinking cute.  But poor David - the kid nearly had me in tears from both laughing and crying.  We started singing a song which I can't remember which and this kid just let loose.  I mean, he was belting it for all he was worth and I nearly started laughing out loud and had to work so hard at keeping it in.  He was just so oblivious to how loud he was singing.  But it was so beautiful and so precious.  And then I wanted to cry because hearing these kids sing about Jesus both in English and in Swahili was just one of the sweetest and most sincere sounds.  They sang with a heart that was genuine, even at 3 or 4 years old.  The mama asked me at the end to share with them anything I had on my heart and I just had to tell them how grateful I was to be with them and to hear their beautiful voices.  And I genuinely meant it.

In other news - be praying for the country as a whole right now.  Kenya will be voting on a new constitution tomorrow.  I've only a limited understanding of what it means, but from what I've been told the current president promised the country would have a new constituion within his first 100 days in office.  That was 7 years ago.  There is division, no doubt, as to who is for and who is against.  But it will carry hefty implications depending on the outcome. 

The Secrets of Children

I'll interrupt this broadcast for a brief story:

So tonight at dinner, I totally thought this kid was being a champ by hiding his food in his milk cup.  They served this stuff called oo-gall-ee (I have no idea how it's actually spelled), which basically amounts to this weird flour/mashed potato like consistency, but packed hard, with zero flavor.  I was watching him out of the corner my eye and I saw him take a few spoonfuls, look around, and then dump it in his milk cup.  I thought, "You are my hero because that is totally what I want to do right now."  So I tried to discreetly keep watching him and every once and awhile he would add more.  I was super excited that the kid had the nerve to get away with it because they are instructed to eat every last bite, but here was somebody getting away with not doing it!  But then my happiness in watching this unfold was crushed when I watched him dump it back onto his plate and finish eating it all.  Maybe that will be my tactic for the next time I go to dinner and either can't eat it all or don't want to eat it.