Since I "finished" writing the report, we went out a lot more this week. It can be hard to find something to do that will interest a 13 year old boy. He usually rejected any of our ideas, but couldn't give any alternatives so we went ahead with our ideas which he mostly ended up enjoying. On Monday we explored Arboretum Park, which is only a km away from our house, but the reds would not walk there.
The only way I could convince them to go was to go by uber. I felt kind of ridiculous asking for an uber to only go that far. We had to pay 700 shillings each to enter, so we probably won't go back there, but it was a nice little park. We saw tree sized cacti and other beautiful trees.
As we walked Elizabeth made us play the game of who she was going to marry. Malachi and I each had to suggest a guy each and then she had to pick one. Let's just say it was very revealing...😉.
On Tuesday we went to the Maasai market, which changes location everyday. On Tuesday it was at the mall not far from us, so we decided to give it a go. I expected it to be like when we were in Twala last year where all the women had all their goods out on display and quietly waited while we looked and made our decisions. Well, it was not like that at all. As soon as we walked in, people tried waving us over to their areas to buy from them. We started at one end and soon were surrounded my 4 or 5 vendors. Someone took Elizabeth off and started wrapping a skirt around her, a woman kept showing me different things, someone else tried selling Malachi T-shirts (he would have none of it). I think we were the first ones to show up because everyone said we were their first customers and that we would bring them good luck and they would give us a good price. Haha. Most did not.
Elizabeth became very adept at handling the aggressive sellers and ridiculously high prices. I just started telling the people they needed to talk to her. It worked way better when I did that.
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| One of Lizzie's favourite finds |
At one place where they were selling Maasai blankets, they told her they would give a good price to the big American. She told them she was a small Canadian. They asked 15 000 shillings for the blanket (roughly 150 CAD)! She got them down to 2000. In the end we never made it all the way through before we were done. All the haggling and pressuring to buy things wears on you after awhile.
We also went to Karura forest--one of our favourite places in Kenya. This time we brought a friend we made at church. Her husband works for CES here and she hasn't really been able to explore Nairobi much yet. The reds, extroverts that they are, really like having another person join us.
She also went to the Maasai market with us. (She said I was very kind, but a sucker).
As you may know, it was conference this weekend. For us, the first session begins at 7 pm. Because of that, they held normal church this week and next week they will show a couple sessions of conference at church. Wanting to keep our conference traditions going, we had breakfast for dinner and bought some Kenyan candy.
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| whipping the cream by hand |
We made up our list of words (when one of the words is said, we get to eat a candy), and started watching. Two talks in and we were all done (with candy). I think Elder Gong said almost every word on our list.
We missed having Brent's...more specialized phrases like "providential living" that we discovered actually prevent us from eating too much candy. Nice strategy Brent. We watched Saturday afternoon session after dinner today (Sunday). Nobody wanted to watch conference while fasting. Next Sunday when there is no church, we will watch the rest. So no spoilers--so far it has been so good.
