To work is to do

To learn is to go

But with doing so

I hope you know

That I would like to show

Something to you.

I know it’s been forever

With much time passing

And always glancing

But forever dancing

With time and chancing

Since my blog has been clever.

But here I am now

So please stay calm

I know I was wrong

Making you wait this long

Like making flan

But here I am…some way some how!

Sorry I’ve been so MIA. With terrible internet connections and a lot of…well…lets call it “bussy-ness” at school, blogging has taken the back burner. But seeing my time in Kenya is quickly coming to an end…I figure I better go out with a bang. Posts are coming! I promise! So for now…enjoy my terrible little poem. I hope it makes you smile. And to make it up to you (and to myself) here is a brief overview of somethings that have been going on:

I went home for the month of August to spend time with family and friends. I made it just in time for my dear sweet friends Molly and Sam’s wedding. Beautiful no?

I spent so much time with my family and friends and soaked up every minuet I could with them. I even took my little cousin Sofia to her horse back riding lessons. She loves her horse. Like, a lot. Not kidding.

What a professional.

Went to the museum and got to see my favourites:

I got one last car ride with my little Butterball… I mean, buddy, Casey. Our house won’t ever be the same without him.

We had a birthday party for all the women in our family who have their birthdays in August. Meaning, Grandma, Aunt Carole, Mom and even little Sofia who is now officially 6! Crazy I know.

Catie and Allison even came too!

I even got to go to Seattle with my Grandma and Aunt Carole to see my cousin Todd and to finally meet his 2 precious little kids for the very first time! Talk.about.precious. (Pictures blurry. Pole sana. Dumb wind ruining everything)

All in all it was a great month home! Flew by so fast. Got to see lots of friends and so much family. It was incredible. Then Daddy came back with me to Kenya. We safari-ied and walked around Nairobi. Then he came up to Korr with me. It was so great! Loved every second of it! I’ll be posting a brief overview of what’s been happening Kenya-side later this afternoon (hopefully). Thanks for being so patient and hope this satisfies for now.

While ponies gather in large herds,

A song is heard from the twittering birds,

Smoke arises from a chimney top,

And small brown hares begin to hop.

Flowers open to a sun shining bright,

Wet leaves glisten in the light,

Deer arise from the wet purple heather,

To the beautiful sounds and warm bright weather.

By: Alexandra Growden

So I’ve been in America for about a week and a half now. It’s everything I remembered it to be. Home looks and smells the same. Traffic is just as crazy. Summers are just as hot. Houston is just as humid. All is as it was before. I really hadn’t expected it to be much different. I mean, I’ve only been gone a year and that really just isn’t that long. But with all this normality it makes everything else seem…not normal. Almost like it never really happened. Like it was a dream. The greatest dream of my life but still, just a dream. A vivid workings of my over active imagination dreaming up a desert paradise and creating fictional relationships that would change me forever. That I have opened my eyes from a “sleeping beauty” kind of sleep and only now I can see that it never really happened. But then I remember. I remember names. Seating arrangements. Thorns in my feet. The taste of smokey camel’s milk. The sound of 64 voices harmonizing in song. The feeling of my Rendille mother’s kisses on my cheek. It’s so real it’s tangible. Then I remember, that’s because it is indeed real. This feeling I have of it all being make believe is whats fictional. It’s a nightmare actually. One that I’m walking in every morning until I remember that my Rendille home is real. That my family there are real. And that I am getting to return to them. In 23 days I will be back with them. Safe and sound. In my home. With Claire. I have missed my friends and family. I have missed my desert. I have missed my kids and fellow teachers. I have missed it all. But I am very content here as well. With my Dad and family. With everything that is familiar. Language I can fully understand. Worship that I don’t have to translate. Modern convinces and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables at my finger tips. It’s nice. But for some strange reason, all this normal just doesn’t seem to fit anymore. I’ve grown and this old life just doesn’t seem to fit anymore. It’s a little too snug in some places and a little too baggy in others. I haven’t felt too overwhelmed being home like a lot of people do. Its my home and its comforting. I am enjoying it. My vacation home. But maybe that’s why its all been so pleasant. That I know it’s only my vacation for right now. It’s not a permanent state at the moment. I’m not staying here. I’m leaving. Once again. I’m going. And I’m excited.

I will be updating on things that have happened this past year while I’m in the states with high speed internet. So get ready for a lot of blog posts in a very short amount of time.

Saturday afternoon we went over to our language teacher’s (Amina) home for a lesson. But not a normal lesson. This time we weren’t learning about Rendille language, we were learning about Rendille food. Chipatis. The greatest thing ever ever ever. I love chipatis. I honestly don’t know anyone who doesn’t. They are flat circular pieces of flour, fat, salt and water mixed together and cooked over an open fire. They kind of look like Kenya’s version of tortillas. Claire and I have made them plenty of times at home but they never turn out like how the Rendille make theirs. Fail. So Amina was determined to make us as authentic as possible and invited us over for a real lesson. So of course we accepted.

Amina was/is Jamie’s Rendille mother as well as the mother of one of our students at Tirrim Secondary, Shammy. She has become a huge part of our lives here. She makes our dresses, helps us with beads, supplies us with our household necessities (including cokes), and, of course, teaches us Rendille. She is a beautiful woman of the Lord and such a joy to be around. A riot really! Well Saturday afternoon Claire and I walked into town to her shop and got some flour as well as Amina and her sister. They are both technically my Aunts but on my father’s side so I must call them Adda (Auntie). Amina lets us just call her “Amina” but since I wasn’t all to acquainted with her sister yet I continued to call her Adda which she loved and giggled about appreciating the respect from her little niece “Shorty”. We got to Amina’s and went straight to work. She ushered us into her kitchen which is a little min (hut) outside her proper home. It was filled with smoke instantly as Amina began to prepare her world’s famous chai for us with goat’s milk and her secret ingredient, cloves. So delicious. Then we got crackin. Adda showed us the ropes. She’s the expert. She told us the proper ingredients which are of course different from what we’ve been doing on our own. Then had us roll and cut and slice and knead and so on and so on. Claire is a natural at it. Making hers perfectly round and making it look almost as easy as Adda did. But not me. Whenever I would roll mine they never made circles. Not even ovals really. Just weird shapes that would baffle any geometry whiz. But still, the women gave me encouragement and said that it didn’t matter about shape, they would still taste delicious. Hey, I tried.

We spent the whole afternoon laughing and talking in Rendille. We are really learning a lot these days. It was fun to listen to the women slip in and out of the language. Swinging back in forth between English and Rendille. Adda soon realized that the only time we couldn’t understand her was when she spoke Kiswahili. We felt very proud and we could tell Amina felt quite proud of herself as well, being our language teacher and all. The women kept laughing every time I rolled out my chipatis and I kept assuming it was because they were such awkward shapes, but I was wrong. Apparently I make mine uber thin. Oops. But Amina kept saying that thinner is better so I pressed on. Turns out when it came time to cook them mine were so big the engulfed Claire’s. Bahaha oops, again. When you put them on the jiko (the little cooker that’s heated by charcoal) you stack them on top of each other and keep flipping them and rotating turns between each chipati while adding more oil to the bottom to keep them from burning. Mine were so much bigger and thinner that we stacked them with Claire’s it caused such a riot of laughter in the little hut that the walls nearly shook. But once again, Amina just encouraged me saying that the thin ones were her favorite. Ha. Awesome. Thanks Auntie Amina!

After we were done cooking we left the stiffing smokey kitchen and sat out in the breeze and watched the sun set behind the mountains while sipping on Amina’s delightful chai. We even tasted some of our chipatis. Weyti haagiiyahey (very good) if I do say so myself. We even got to bring home a little canister of them and gave some to our Abaya (Uncle) who is our night guard. He was delighted, cause like I said, everybody loves chipatis!

Well, you may remember last week that we had some Korean doctors here with us doing some medical check-ups for the Rendille. Well they are gone now but they left behind some little goodies. Including one of their incredible pop up mosquito net tents! Claire and I decided that it was too much of a beautiful night to spend inside. So…we tested the sucker out. We slept on the opposite side of the veranda of our Abaya who was ridiculously impressed with our little min (hut). We promised him that he could use it from now on if he let us use it for the night. That thrilled him to no end. I can’t wait for him to come back to see him his cute little pink mosquito net tent! I must say it was so nice sleeping outside and it really did the job. Claire and I are very used to sharing a bed since we’ve been having to do it for 7 months now, but normally its a huge massive bed where we each have our own sides. In this little netted hut we had to share a twin mattress. But thank goodness it was cold so closeness was no big. I felt bad for Claire though because I kept scooting closer to her side in the night because our net kept trying to kill me. Yes, kill me. The corner where the wind blew just so kept falling in on me and smashing into my hip. Granted the thing is just mesh it didn’t hurt. Just stinkin annoying. I kept scooting up to Claire to get away from it. Poor girl. But next time we’ll be smarter where we place it and not allow the wind to be a co-conspirator in my death. Rude.

But it was a gorgeous night. A beautiful moon. Breathtaking stars. Pleasant wind. Warm blanket. Sweet little sister. And one incredibly annoying cat. Sigh. I love our home.

Next morning woke up with the sun and was able to pull the determined mesh hut off of me and put it away before too many of the neighbors came out to see in the insane white women sleeping in a….well…mesh hut! Then ate 2 chipatis for breakfast before church. Perfect weekend.

(The kids had to take my finals early since I leave on Tuesday. So they took them on Saturday morning. So now I have a ton of grading to do. Weekend fun time is over. Back to work. See you stateside in 4 days! Didn’t know!? Ooops…well guess what? I’m coming home in 4 days for 1 whole month! Get excited!)

Quote of the day:

Preface: In my Form 1 (9th grade) Business class we were reviewing for the kid’s test which is this coming Saturday. I asked the simple question of “What are the two types of Human Wants?” The answer, as one of my students eagerly answered, is that there are Basic Needs and then Secondary Wants. When discussing this further I asked another question, “What is an example of a Secondary Want?” This was my answer:

Me: Okay, so who can give me some examples of Secondary Wants?

Ryan: You know those things that women spend their money on…

Me: [shooting him and incredulous look]…please, continue Ryan. Now I’m curious.

Ryan: You know Madam, those things. The ones for women. The “take me highers”!!

Me: The what?

All the boys in class: Madam the “take me highers”! Yes Madam, the “take me to Heavens”! The ones that make you go up like this. For women. For their fingers on their feet!

Me: [More confused than ever with all the boys in the class yelling at me about something called "take me highers" for women!?]

Neseyku (one of the girls): [whispering while sheepishly smiling] Madam. They mean high heels.

Bahahaa!! They called high heels (which they’ve never seen a person in real life wearing, only in movies!) “take me highers” and “take me to Heavens“. They all think that short people like to wear them and walk around all awkwardly while doing it. But they are apparently very smart according to my students and super stylish. For the rest of the day my Form 1 boys have been prancing around acting like they are super models wearing some 4” high stiletto “take me highers”. Doesn’t get any better than that.

Form 1:

Form 2:

TSS School Choir at AIC Korr: