Tea Farm Adventure

The senior sister's group that we attend organized a trip to a tea farm this week. To be honest, it didn't sound like the most exciting excursion, so I was going to pass. But then, our driver had a family emergency and so the outing I had planned wasn't going to happen, so I decided to join the tea farm trip. Lizzie and Malachi were not too thrilled either. We had to get up early because it takes a couple hours to get there and we were supposed to meet at the area offices, which are about a 40 minute drive from here. So we got up early an were eating our breakfast when I received the text that the cost will be almost double for us because we aren't residents. Non-residents pay higher prices for some government run places like national parks and even Karura Forest, which I understand because we don't pay taxes and we have generally have a higher income than the locals. But when private businesses charge you more for not being a resident, it feels a bit like price gauging. We decided to give up on the tea farm trip and were just figuring out what to do with our day, when I received the text that she had talked them into giving us the resident price.

So off we went. We met at the museum. While we waited we took some pics.

Not that many sisters actually went. Marie was the organizer. She isn't a missionary; her husband does legal counsel for the church. They are from Calgary. The drive out there was full of chatter and quick subject changes ( 2 of the sisters have ADHD). I learned about their different mission assignments and I told them about working with the kids in Mathare. It is hard to tell them much more of what I do, because somehow the conversation always changes. So in their minds I work at a nursery school. Kenyan roads have speed bumps everywhere. Like everywhere. In the middle of the highways. On residential roads. On busy roads with 4 lanes of traffic. Everywhere. And they aren't always marked. Let's just say that Lizzie and Malachi were launched a few times in the back seat.

When we arrived at the farm it was raining. That was a problem because it had been hot for several days in Nairobi and it was when we left as well, so we didn't bring any warmer clothes. Instead we brought swimming clothes for the swimming hole. Luckily the rain stopped almost immediately after we had to leave the shelter, but Malachi still stubbornly held on to his umbrella.

The tour started with a "breakfast" of a small scone with hibiscus tea and hibiscus jam. The kids did not like the tea, but the jam was a big hit. After breakfast the we walked down to the farm where we were given baskets and taught how to pick the tea leaves.

It felt kind of weird just tossing the leaves over my head or shoulder and expecting them to land in the basket. After we picked a handful each, we took our haul back to the house where we roasted the leaves and then rolled them. I learned all about the differences between black tea, oolong tea, and green tea. There is also purple tea, white tea and yellow tea. All are made from the same tea leaves--it mostly has to do with how long they are left sitting before they are processed. The earlier they are processed ( green and purple are processed the fastest) the lower the caffeine.

The area was so scenic.

The pictures look like we are standing in front of a backdrop, but it was real. After our tea education, we walked down to the waterfall. We walked through a bamboo forest.

The bamboo was so big and arched way above our heads.

Of course the waterfall was beautiful, but none of us went swimming because it just wasn't quite warm enough. The tour concluded with a fancy lunch. The chef shared all his recipes with us, which was surprising and we drove back feeling uncomfortably full and with Marie hitting only a couple speed bumps at full speed.

Yesterday we attended a farewell and welcome party for the senior missionaries going home and the recent arrivals. For us, it was the first time meeting most of the husbands. It was nice doing a little socializing. The sisters that went to the tea farm with us greeted us like we were old friends. It seems like a really special tight knit group and we feel privileged to be included. They invited us to attend their FHE which was tonight, but we had company coming couldn't go.

I think I mentioned before that the founder of the organization I work with lives just around the corner. Today he and his family came for dinner. I wasn't sure what to make, so we opted for tacos and taco salad. I'm not sure what they thought. Elizabeth practiced her card tricks on the kids and then we were taught a few card games. One of them was basically Uno but with face cards. It was fun. I managed to not get too competitive. 😉

I Hide Behind Elizabeth

 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.

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.

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.

Writing Stupor

 This week for me was all about finishing the report. I had some very late nights.

Pestering me while I write

I had to do analysis that were too complicated to me. Thank goodness for AI. It created all the excel formulas for me. I never could have done that. On cleaning days we went to the church so I could just write while the reds worked on their Marvel marathon.

Uber eats lunch at the church

Last night I sent the report to my professor, but I felt no relief...just disappointment in myself. This has been the strangest writing experience for me. Maybe it was because it was in a sleep deprived brain fog, but I felt like I hadn't written it cohesively enough. The end, where I'm supposed to make all the points feels incomplete. I hope my professor isn't disappointed in the work I did.  I sent it off to her and then she told me she will look at it on Wednesday...I could have had 2 more days to work on it. I guess I can go back and read it with rested eyes tomorrow and make any adjustments I need to. I am glad it is done. Now I can focus on other things here. And start on the next report that needs to be done before I leave.

Elizabeth and Malachi went to their movie yesterday. Elizabeth has been excited about it for about a month. Malachi and her barely finished all the movies she made them watch to prepare for it. They had a good time. 

Every day when I cook dinner, I get Elizabeth to come in and help me. Her job is always to wash the vegetables which is a bit tricky because the tap water isn't safe so you can't have a droplet of water on your lettuce or cilantro. She has to use boiled water and a special rinse to wash them, so that is her job. She is also the deejay for my evening cooking. Lately we listen to Natalie's k-drama playlist with some Lewis Capaldi. It is all mellow music. Then when dinner is ready she plays "We don't talk about Bruno," but just the line that says "time for dinner!" which she plays over and over until Malachi gets off the iPad and starts to help set the table. Malachi's job when I'm cooking is to get water if I need it--for cooking rice or noodles. We don't use the tap water for those things. It isn't like what you might imagine since we are in Africa. He just has to fill the pot up at the water cooler.

Another little ritual we have here is getting these ice cream bars to give us a little boost when we don't feel like grocery shopping. It does wonders as a pick-me-up. 

Since I have emerged from the frantic writing fervour, this week we will do something fun. 

Do I look like Santa?

 Wednesday and Saturday are cleaning days, and I always have to find a place to go while our place is cleaned. The cleaning lady is supposed to arrive at 10, but she often comes early and then she is here until after 3. It is nice to have someone do all the cleaning, but also a little inconvenient when I need to be writing.

We've started the routine of going the temple on Wednesday mornings. This last Wednesday I did an endowment session while the kids did baptisms. They were done way before me and rather impatient to leave, but it was soul soothing for me. 

While waiting for the session to begin, I met an expat who invited me to join their Thursday morning scripture study and she turned out to be from Canada. Her husband is working for the church as legal counsel. She said all the senior sister missionaries get together on Thursday mornings at the area office buildings to do a little scripture study. Once a month they go out for lunch to celebrate the birthdays in the last month. Elizabeth vacillated a lot about going with me or not. Finally, when I had to leave in 10 minutes, she decided to come. (I think it was the prospect of going out for lunch).

 

When we arrived, we received a little tour of the office building and then sat down in the conference room for a little discussion based on a conference talk. There were more than 20 ladies there and only one was a typical sister missionary. They went around the room to introduce themselves and everyone basically said I'm so and so and my husband does this. (ie: my husband is in the area presidency or my husband is the CES guy for the area etc).  They were all very nice and welcoming to me and Elizabeth. Elizabeth ended up having a great time socializing and made some connections that may help her with getting her papers completed.

naptime for the younger ones

In Mathare this week, we went back to the nursery school and coloured with the kids. The littlest ones were chanting "wazungu! Wazungu!" over and over. I suggested to Elizabeth that she sit and down and start colouring at one of the kids' desk, which she promptly did. Malachi on the other hand was way more hesitant and shy. I had to take a chair for him and sit it down by some kids before he would do it.

Once he got going he was fine and even said afterwards that we should do this every week. At the request of the school we brought some little candies. Many of the kids licked the wrappers and stuck them onto their faces. I don't know why...When they were all done they crowded around Elizabeth to play more janken. Soon I was surrounded too and they all started to try to sit on my knee. I felt like Santa.

Today was the primary presentation. Malachi and Elizabeth both played without any problem. All the primary kids and even the leaders wore white for the event. It was adorable as usual. Hardly any of the children needed any prompting--in fact many of them had their scriptures memorized. That being said, most of them seemed to be about 7 or older. It all would have been finished on time except that they called on the stake primary presidency to speak and each person spoke. 

My professor has given me a deadline for completing the report I am writing. Writing it is time consuming because she added in these sections that I need to have sources for, so it takes me a few hours to find sources for each section. It needs to be done this Saturday, which means this is going to be an intense week for me. But the good thing will be that it will be done and then I can focus on other things.

Playdates, Planting and Piano

 

We love these purple blossom trees--this is one we see at church

We did a bit of socializing this week. It turns out the founder of the organization that I am working with lives just down the street from us, so he brought his 2 little children and came over for a visit. His kids are still quite young, but it was still fun for Malachi to have someone play the switch with him. He has been asking me to connect so he can play with his new little friend again. I can see he misses being with friends. And we also met up with a girl who has just moved here from Canada (her dad is Kenyan). We will see if anything more comes from these encounters.

flower at church

Our visit to Mathare this time consisted of visiting an older school. We went to help in their little garden they have going, but the children were in class until 6, so we ended up working with the organization there to do all the planting. To maximize space they plant in these terraced structures they call cones.

Apparently you can plant a lot of plants in that space. It was interesting for me to actually work on one of them, because I created a training for this community that includes "cone gardens". The soil was really fine and packed in. So it wasn't easy to plant. They used a machete to soften the soil in really hard places, otherwise we used sticks. I occasionally use a dibber stick at home to create the holes to plant in, but my soil is much softer. I ended up with a blister and a new callous in the palm of my hand. 

We planted "spinach" (I'm pretty sure is was Swiss chard--even in the store Swiss chard is labelled spinach), kale that looked more like cabbage to me, and managu--a plant in the nightshade family that they eat here. If those plants turn out to be cabbage (they weren't labelled and were just donated to the organization to plant), they will probably be too close to grow properly.

A couple of kids did join us and wanted to talk to Malachi. They don't usually see mzugu kids there. Malachi is really treated like a celebrity, but he is too shy. He just does not know what to do with that kind of attention. They want us to come back next week to see their debates.

Things are getting intense here for me. There is so much to do and a paper I am writing and now classes have started. I am taking 2 classes in addition to my internship. It feels like I don't have time for things like sleep. Hopefully I figure out a way to juggle everything. It will be a lot better once I get the report done, but it is slow going for me.

Today Elizabeth played the piano for church. They have asked her to do that while we are here. But they didn't tell her what hymns they wanted her to play until an hour before church, so she was only able to play one. Next week is the primary presentation, so she has been working on those songs. Malachi is also playing a couple of the songs. She practiced with the primary today, but it seemed they weren't told she would and they have a different way of singing the songs--one child stands in front and sings the first line and then all the children join and sing that line again. They aren't used to having an intro...so we'll see how it goes on Sunday.  I am sure I will enjoy it.

Flying toilets don't necessarily make it to the river

We went to Mathare twice this week. The first time was to join in a children's program with the library boys. The library is now run by three boys--the girl who used to run it is about to have a baby and has moved out of Mathare. Whenever we walk through Mathare, we are always accompanied by at least one of them and often all three. They keep anyone away from harassing us. Yesterday, someone approached Malachi but just before he could touch him, one of the library boys grabbed his outstretched arm and stopped him. Last year when I was here, I was always approached and asked for money or food. It hasn't happened once in Mathare this time. And these boys have such good intentions. They love helping the children with their homework in the library or helping an adult that is struggling with literacy.

Anyways, I digress. We walked through Mathare to a 'nursery' school. The building was...rustic. The floor was rough concrete. There were no lights on inside, so I am not sure if they have electricity. It was lit inside by a couple of "skylights" where the corrugated plastic roof wasn't layered and more daylight came through. It was pretty dark. There were about 80 children there sitting at little tables and desks. They all wore dark green uniforms and many also wore touques. (it was 26 degrees that day). We arrived at the start of lunchtime so they all filed past us to wash their hands at a little water dispenser. 

After lunch we accompanied them with one of their teachers to the park (the organization that I am working with built the park a few years ago--I wrote about it last time I was here).  The library boy brought a soccer ball, 2 badminton racquets, and a volleyball. He got Lizzie to teach some kids how to play badminton and Malachi to teach some how to play volleyball.

Can you see the boy with the unraveled sleeve?

These kids were about 4-5 years old, and hadn't yet learned English, so teaching them wasn't easy. They kept crowding in on Malachi. One of the kids sweater was unravelling, but he didn't seem to care. We taught them a janken game where the loser has to lengthen their step until one of them falls over. It was fun.

Afterwards, we walked them back to their school. The younger ones were napping with their heads on the table. The owner of the school came and talked to me. From what I gathered, this is a service she provides to the mothers in Mathare. The kids bring 10 shillings (11 cents) to school everyday and from that she makes their lunch (beans and rice). It seemed to me she does not collect a wage from this. But I never clarified.

I have been working on a report about Mathare so I have learned some of the alarming statistics. It is the 2nd largest informal settlement in Nairobi and one of the most densely populated places in the world. There are 70,000 people per square kilometre. Most people subsist on less than $2 a day which they earn through informal labour. 50 of the 55 participants in our study rated severely food insecure. It makes me feel sad. But it just makes me admire the people volunteering here even more. 

There are no private toilets in Mathare. Several families will share one toilet. It may be 200 metres away from their home and it costs 10 shillings every time they use it. In my research I read that some people instead, make use of  "flying toilets," which means they do their business in a bag, then step outside and throw it--anywhere. I didn't  believe it, so I asked one of the library boys and he confirmed that it happens (mostly at night).

Elizabeth has started a rigorous schedule of marvel movies for her and Malachi to watch before Avengers Endgame--Encore comes out so that Malachi will be caught up and understand everything that is happening. Unfortunately, she can only get Disney plus on her phone. This is how they got comfy->

Saturday we were invited to join in a tree planting event and to watch the Mathare river queens football match. When we arrived, our library boy escorts were waiting for us. They brought us down to the river where there was a big clean up happening. The asked us which side of the road we preferred to work on, and the organizer was about to encourage us to work on the side without trees, but Malachi was adamant he wanted to work on the side with trees (it was hot!) . He soon came to regret this decision when we discovered that we had to carefully watch our steps because they area has been "used as a toilet" by some people and there was all kinds of human feces in various states of decay. Ewww. The task was to move the garbage to the edge of the road into a big pile. We were given shovels to help out.

I don't think pictures can convey the scope or magnitude of how much garbage there was

Eventually people came and took over from us. The reds told me that the library boys kept saying "your mother is very tired"...maybe I was moving too slowly? Once the pile was near the road, they just lit it on fire. 

This fire was left to burn itself out

The people across the river are planting trees.

From there we went and sat in the gazebo which felt nice and cool. Although after sitting there for awhile, Malachi said "my butt keeps falling through the holes." The benches were made of wood slats that had one inch gaps between them.

Eventually the gazebo filled up with all the people that were working to clean up the area. It was very crowded. Some brave children gathered around Elizabeth and were touching her hair and stroking her braid. Some reached across her back to pet Malachi too. My hair was up so they mostly left me alone. We had a brief meeting all in Swahili where a bunch of different leaders were introduced. Lastly, I was asked to say a few words...what? So I just introduced myself. Then the food came out. Everybody was handed a loaf of bread and a bag of milk. We brought our own sandwiches so we were walked back to the office for lunch.

Then we went to watch the football match. It was way on the other end of Mathare. While we were walking, a young boy starting talking to Elizabeth. I thought he was about 9 or 10 years old. As it turned out, 'he' was a 16 year old she--that was on the team. To be fair, I only saw her from behind. The soccer game was played on a red dirt field. It was so hot. Our team lost, but at least they scored a goal--that's always exciting. 

Today was stake conference. The building was so full. My highlight was the choir. Usually  on Sundays it feels like Lizzie and I are doing a duet. We can't hear anyone else. This choir sounded like what I expected the singing to be like in Africa. I loved it. It was a good Sunday.

Click here to listen to a snippet of the Nairobi East Stake choir recording

(It is after the conference is over, so it is a bit noisy)

Malachi gets licked again (okay, so do I)

This week we took an uber out to the giraffe centre with another UFV student. On our way we stopped at the mission home. Last year the mission home was in the building where we go to church, but now it moved far away and we needed to drop off a package for a missionary from Chilliwack that we brought. Luckily, it was on the way to the giraffe centre. The missionaries in the office seemed excited to see us and called the elder for us to talk to him...thing is, I don't actually know him. This call was the first time that I had ever spoken to him. There were some senior missionaries there that were talking to the reds about things to do in Nairobi. The big takeaway for us was that there is a place near Nairobi where you can go to ride ostriches. Really. So stay tuned for future entries because we definitely  have to try this out.

The giraffe centre was fun. A tour bus arrived the same time as us, so it was a little crowded at first, but eventually the group dispersed and we got plenty of access to the giraffes. The giraffes have very long tongues that they stick out for you to place food on. If you are not careful, you will get slimed.

We tended to be too careful and dropped plenty of the food off their tongues. Some of the other tourists were unphased and stuck their fingers right into their mouths. One giraffe refused to take any food from us--I think it is because we missed too many. 

How many giraffes can you spot?

When we were done there, we went to lunch at a cafe that seems to only feed older wazungu women. I never saw any Africans or men there. Afterwards we took the long drive back to Mathare. On our way, we got stuck at a light for a long time. A huge group of motorcycles rode up on the other side of the road honking their horns, blowing whistles and revving their engines. I was a little worried that we had come upon a protest--there had been one the day before--but it turned out to be pretty tame other than blocking traffic.

At Mathare I conducted a focus group discussion for the project I am working on. This was my first time doing something like this. I thought my professor would conduct this discussion, but she left Kenya without getting it done, so it fell on me. We only had 4 participants and mostly only one girl spoke, but I learned so much from it. One thing that you might find interesting is that Mathare has its own kind of street food that you wouldn't find anywhere else. I asked for an example and she told me about moshiogi which is a stuffed chicken head. They stretch the neck out and fill it with potatoes and then boil it. Apparently it is quite good. I'll take their word for it.

After the focus group they took us to see the school that we will be helping out at. The reds were not impressed. They wanted to go home. But I thought seeing the programs they do at the school was really cool. They have a cooker there that they call taka taka zero. Taka is Swahili for garbage. This cooker operates on non-recyclable waste. They cook bread in it which they sell to raise funds for school programs. They also have a little farm there that they showed me. Right now it is only growing managu--some kind of leafy nightshade that they eat a lot of here. Apparently I will be working with them and helping to scale this program for other schools. It seems like the list of things I will be doing is getting longer.

This week I have been working on an application for a competition for innovative ideas that strengthen flood resilience. The applicant is supposed to be a youth and the project is supposed to be locally led...I don't fit either of those categories. I expected to at least be given the ideas they wanted to use, but no. I wasn't. My professor pointed out that this is one of the problems of development. I was asked to do the application because they are all too busy. It is competitive and difficult to get funding--especially for small grassroots organizations like the one I am working with. (In my focus group discussion I discovered they all work 13ish hour days 6 days a week!)

So how am I, a student of development, supposed to know what to do to improve a river corridor to make it less likely to harm the people that live near it in the event of a flood?! I had to do a lot of research, and talk with other UFV students that have been involved in river projects and also get some geo-tech ideas from Brent. I sent 4 possibilities to my supervisor from the organization and he said to do 3 of the ideas. I spent a couple days figuring out how to flesh those ideas out and what would be appropriate for this location and be representative of this organization. There has been some back and forth with my supervisor and professor trying to get it right and the way they want it. It has been tiring--I don't want to think about the Mathare river at all for a few weeks. I put all this effort into one application, and although they suit the requirements and focus very well, it is global and only 2 winners. Here's to hoping we are one of them. 🤞

Birthday in Kenya: Week 2

 This week I went to Mathare where I participated in the farewell lunch for the UFV students that were all going home. Besides me, there were 7 here this summer. In another week it will be just me. The lunch was held at their new community hub that they are building.

Currently Mathare Roots or Mto Wangu, (the organization that I am working with) rents the rooms they use and when they don't have funding, the leader has to pay for it out of his own pocket. I know it has to be a hardship for him. So the UFV students that were already here started a go fund me to raise $10, 000 to buy and build a new building for them. Those few students have managed to raise almost half the money already.

They proudly took me to the place where they are building. They already have the basement dug out (which they did by hand) and the walls erected. We had lunch on the floor above which is still partially open. They had recently poured the concrete beams and were waiting for it to cure. There is a lot of excitement about this building and how they will be able to have all their different operations under one roof.

The part of the story I didn't yet tell was that they were supposed to meet with me before the lunch, but showed up too late for that. Kind of classic. So our meeting got changed to a zoom meeting later in the week.

In that meeting, they told me all the things that I could be involved with to support them during my time here. If everything goes according to plan, I will be:

•  submitting their innovative flood resilience plan for a contest
• supporting their girls soccer team in PR and to get sponsorship
• doing a campaign to help community members prepare for flooding which is supposed to be particularly bad this next spring
• doing some kind of community dialogue thing with the British Institute of East Africa that involves something around the history of flooding of the Mathare river

On top of all this, I am supposed to be writing an academic paper on an evaluation we did with them. I have been analysing the data this week on it. Most of our findings aren't surprising, but it still feels sad to have it confirmed that this is the way life is form most of the people there.

Anyways, I was asked to make up a work plan and present to them in person in a meeting on Friday. Problem was, nobody showed up. I waited there for  a long time, the boys that run the children's program and the library took me all around the community to show me around. I met both their moms and sisters. They were very nice and took care of me. 

I was pretty discouraged when I left though. I know it is a culture thing and that I was experiencing culture shock, but that didn't make it any easier. It felt like such a waste of my time when I am really under the gun to get things done. A talk with my professor helped me to get perspective and to not take anything personally.

Yesterday, I took a break for most of the day and we went to village market--a mall near the UN buildings that is quite high end with lots of wazungu (white people) there. It was my birthday, but I had been so busy working this last week, that I didn't have time to prepare a bigger activity to do. 

But the reds were happy. They like going to this mall because we always get shawarmas when we are there. In their nostalgic minds, they are one of their favourite foods we ate here. For my birthday Elizabeth treated us to gelato. I got passion fruit. It was delish! 

Elizabeth was very sweet and had secretly ordered me a bunch of sweets and snacks which she actually started giving to me the day before because I had had such frustrating day. It was a pretty low key birthday, but I got to spend it with some of my favourite people, so it was pretty good.

Back in Kenya

These make long flights endurable!

We have been here for four days so far and are just starting to emerge from the mind numbing brain fog of jet lag. I don't know why, but coming here I get really bad jet lag. I had a couple nights where I just lay in my bed awake until the sun came up at which point I would give up and get up. But then by 10 am (midnight back home), I can't keep my eyes open. The struggle to function with such overpowering drowsiness was real. 

Saturday felt like a true victory because I managed to get through a whole day without needing a nap. So far we have been just getting organized for our life here--buying groceries, getting sim cards and setting up meetings for my internship. We are back to the same 3 or 4 meals with Elizabeth making grilled cheese sandwiches late at night because she is still hungry. I have a hard time knowing what to make for dinner here, so if you have any suggestions of things I can make with simple ingredients, please give me some suggestions in the comments. For now we eat pasta, Thai curry, tacos, and stir fry. 

 The reds have been very nostalgic about everything we see here. They were happy to see Margaret, the street vendor that we buy vegies from. When we walk to the store Malachi points out so many little things asking if we remembered them ie: "remember this is where we saw the monkeys!" Things that bugged them before are charming and nostalgic like the elevator that plays Fur Elise. I'm glad they like it. The traffic is jarring all over again. I thought I had gotten used to it, but I guess not. Yesterday we went to Karura Forest and got smoothies, took silly panoramic photos, watched the monkeys and went for a long walk.

In case you didn't notice, there are monkeys on the picnic table

Today we went to church. Our uber driver couldn't seem to find it. I could clearly hear his navigation telling him to turn left and then he would turn right, but eventually we made it. 

 The highlight was a third hour meeting of "musical experience." After sacrament meeting the bishop asked Elizabeth if she would perform something, so she reluctantly performed her recital piece (Nuvoli Bianchi), which was beautiful even though she had to play it on a keyboard that she wasn't accustomed to. Nobody in the ward plays the piano, so most of the performances were a cappella. One guy gripped the top of the mike as he walked back and forth on the stand and sang. Some songs were sung multiple times. The best part for me was when that same young man started singing "There is a Green Hill Far Away" and it suddenly switched to a rap. The bishop cut that one short. Lol. When all the performances were done, it was opened up to anyone else that felt moved upon to do so. Surprisingly, there were 3 or 4 more performances. I just can't even imagine that happening back home. It was a good day.