Meru and Meat!

Well its been a busy few days. On Wednesday we traveled to, Meru. It is about 4 hours away. It was a nice car ride. We stopped at the equator again to take another picture. We stayed in the Safari Hotel there in Meru. This village is located in the mountains of Kenya, so the altitude was a bit higher. Speaking of villages…to people here they think that the 100,000+ people living in Meru makes it a village. To us a village would be very small…but they think that a “village” of 100,000 people is small. Anyways, when we got there we ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. I had chips (French fries) and samosas! The power went out for a bit while we were there, but the generator eventually kicked in. The hotel was nice. It is equivalent at the most to maybe the 2 Acres Motel in Greenville or any hometown motel here in the states. We had a shower with hot water, but the only two temperatures it had was either really cold or scorching. We had blue mosquito nets to sleep with. We woke up to the Muslim prayer at 6am. There was a muslim primary school out back of the hotel…so we also woke up to children screaming and laughing. It also sounded like either a cow was dying or giving birth somewhere behind the hotel. There were lots of noises so we didn’t sleep too well in the morning. We ate breakfast down stairs. Then we waited for Vickie to come back from the church to pick us up. We were supposed to be picked up at 12:30pm so that we would eat lunch out at the church, but plans changed and we ate lunch at the hotel. We ate lunch on the terrace listening to a band play. It was nice. Katelyn, Jordan, and I walked up the streets of Meru a bit. We walked to the grocery store and back. Vickie finally came and got us around 4pm. We went to the church and did a childrens program. We sang songs, did a lesson, played a game, did a craft, and ate a snack. It went well. The kids here at the church in Meru are really fun. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. We ate dinner at the church with all the Pastors Wives because they were having a Pastors wives conference at the same time. All the pastors wives in this district came to Meru for a conference. The power went out at the church too. When we left to go back to the hotel we came back to a dark hotel because the power was out there too! They had candles lighting our way in the hallway so we could see where our room was. We sat out on the terrace with everyone and drank a cold coke and talked. We got up early on Friday morning because the superintendent took us to a cultural, community court. It is called an Elders court. People from the Meru community can bring cases to the elders. Most of the time the person would be fined or have to offer an animal sacrifice to the spirits. Its kind of a cult too. The government acknowledges it. Sometimes the civil court will send a case to the elders court. It was weird. Something like that would never go in the states. Its definitely a cultural thing here. We’ll put up picks later. Then we drove an HOUR away to see if we can view Mt. Kenya, but of course when we got to a viewing point it was too cloudy to see it…oh well. We were also shown this cool lake that was formed by a volcano at one point. You can’t even tell it’s a lake because of all the weeds growing in it. They told us that elephants come here to drink water!! We wanted to see an elephant sooo bad! We stopped to eat lunch at the river lodge place. It was in the middle of nowhere. It was kind of cool though. It is where we saw those big black and white monkeys with long fur. There were like six of them running! It was awesome! We eventually made it back to Meru to do another childrens program. Now we are back in Nairobi! With power! Ha…

We just got back from the restaurant called, Carnivore! It is a tourist place here in Nairobi. They serve lots and lots of meat. You go in and pay one price and then they bring meat to your table and you eat until you can’t eat anymore! We have been waiting for this night for a long time! We ate 10 different kinds of meat. We had…
Chicken Liver
Regular Chicken
Turkey
Pork
Lamb
Crocodile
Ostrich Meat balls
Ribs
Roast Beef
Sausage

PLUS a baked potato and Ice cream!!! Tell me about it…Im sure your stomach is hurting just thinking about eating all that. We did it though. I liked it all except for the chicken liver and crocodile…the crocodile had too much bone in it. We are fully stuffed though…man. We surrender. Then we went to a gift shop there and looked around. A man dressed in traditional Masai clothing came up to us and had us put on the Masai Womens traditional wedding clothes…ha…and we took pictures. It was really funny. It was a good day. No more meat for awhile though. We have church in the morning!

Kawangware

Today and Yesterday we were at a Free Methodist Primary School in Kawangware. It is a different area of Nairobi. It is another slum in Nairobi, but not as big as Kibera. We arrived around 9am and taught a few of their classes. A few people from our group taught math and english lessons while the others helped out in the kitchen with preparing lunch and such. Then we ate lunch, and after lunch the younger kids had PE. So we played games with them during their PE class. In the afternoon after their classes are over with we did a bible school. We did a bible lesson for them, a craft, a game, and some singing. There were about 300 kids at that school. They enjoyed it a whole lot. The kids there were really fun to be with. They kept asking us when we were coming back, but we didn't want to tell them that it was most likely that we would never come back...but ya never know. Today was a hot day. We got a little sun burnt but not bad. Its not bad for being in Africa almost a month and this being the first sun burn we have. On Sunday we had no power at the house almost all day so that was interesting. Tomorrow we leave for another town which is about three hours away. We will be there until saturday I believe. It is a pastors wives conference. We will be doing a childrens program in the eveing though with the children from that community. Tonight is Pizza night! We are almost to our halfway point! It seems like we've been here for a long time, but it hasn't been that long. The people here are very grateful that we have come and that want us to keep coming back and visitng.

Here are a few pics...some of children we've seen. One pic of us taking communion at church last sunday. The one pick of us sitting down outside in a wooden shack...that is actually a church. They meet on those wooden benches and its located in the middle of a cow field. It was kinda cool. There is a pic to of betsye and I serving some kids juice and cake after we did a childrens program.

It's a Jungle out there!

Well, oh boy oh boy oh boy...
We had an adventure today. If mom was here, she would never have let me do this by myself...hehe.

This morning around 10am Betsye and I went to the bus stop. We saw the City Hoppa bus coming and got on. We rode the bus all the way downtown..its kinda far to walk. It cost us 20 shillings to ride the bus. We were downtown once before with a friend who lives here but we didn't pay attention to where we were going. We were headed downtown blindly this time. We had a list of items to get, but we were not given a store name or street name to find these stores. The only thing that looked familiar was this Statue in the middle of a roundabout....so when we saw that we got off the bus.
We stood on the side of the street for a minute trying to figure out which way to start walking. We knew where the souvenior stores were at because they were right next to the Hilton hotel and thats easy to find...so thats our meeting place and point of reference. We just began walking and walking and walking...we didn't konw where we were going. There were tons of people!!! and so many cars!!! Its a real task and risk to cross the street here. I feel like I have become a real expert at crossing the street. Even if the cross walk light is red you still go it doesn't matter, ha. I feel like we almost got run over several times, oops. Last time we were down here with Dorcas and Vickie we went to a 100 shilling store...where everything in it is 100 shillings. It is equivalent to our Dollar store here in the states. It took us a long time to find that store. When we were at the kenyan dollar store we bought ice cube trays!!!! yay!!! Now we can have cold beverages! I am sooo tired of warm drinks. I love ice. We kept trying to call Dorcas and have her give us a street name for where the store is located...eventually we figured it out. We walked amlessly for a couple hours. We walked around down town from 11am-130pm. We called a taxi to take us to Java House where we ate lunch! shoot...I had myself a double mocha milkshake. I needed it after that adventure downtown. There weren't too many white people downtown. We got lots of offers from people...they wanted to give us a ride somewhere or just have us come in there store...everywhere we went people were staring at us and wanting us to talk to them. I was determined to find those stores so...there was no stopping to talk to people. Ha, but we made it back alive. The first thing we did when we got back was take a nap!

now we are ready to take the other three students who are coming tonight downtown and show them around....because now we know street names!! Tomorrow we are going to an orphanage and that should be fun, im excited.

We did it!

Today, betsye and I ventured out on our own for the first time since being here. We thought we would brave the Kenyan roads and city...so we walked to the grocery store. It is quite a ways to walk. We were given a list of things to get at the grocery store. We got there...in a very timely manner...of course there were lots of people yelling at us from the cars driving by...we've learned to ignore that. We got to the grocery store and purchased all the items on the list. We then stopped by the movie store and picked up Pocahontas and Mulan! yay! Last night we had called the movie place and had ordered for Pocahontas to be delivered. (they deliver movies here, its great!) When the movie man arrived...we were expecting to get the disney version...but instead we got a weird version that said it was for ages 4-9 on the cover....ha. We watched it anyways...and it was funny because it was so bad.... SO when we got to the movie store today and found the disney version we were sooo happy!!! Our bags were very heavy so we didn't want to walk all the way home. So..we got a taxi! Yup, we got a taxi all by ourselves. Its kinda funny that the only taxi rides I have ever had have been in different countries...Israel and Kenya.

We had a short power outage last night..and so we put up candles and played Pit. I love that game. Tomorrow we have three more college students arriving! It will be a nice change. They will be here for two weeks, and they will be putting on a VBS program...so we will help them with that.

Well, Today was not a real busy day. We went with Wendy and Peter, a couple from the UK, to a small feeding program they have. We went to the otherside of Nairobi today kind of on the outskirts of the slum. They have scanned the neighoborhood area for the 20 most needy children, and they feed them lunch several times a week. A few of the kids or physically and/or mentally handicapped. So, we went today and played with the kids and helped set up the lunch and such. We also helped them sort out clothes. They had recieved a big donation of clothing, so we sorted them out as well. It was pretty fun.
Driving in Kenya is crazy...the drivers here in Nairobi are crazy. It took us almost an hour and half to get home because of traffic jams.
It is the end of the rainy season here and the beginning of the "winter" season for them...ha...July and August are the two coldest months for them...and cold meaning as low as 70-75 degrees...ha. You will see some kenyans walking around in coats because they get cold so easily.

Some kids at the school in Kericho. And us at the equator!

This is a mud hut of one of the widows we visited in her home. Also a picture of a zebra we saw on the side of the road!

Back in the City!

So...its been a few days since We've written anything. We just got back today to Nairobi. It was a six hour car ride from Eldoret...another town in Kenya. We traveled to three different places this week. We went to Kericho, Shirut/Koitabut, and Eldoret. I had said that Kericho was the place of Tea feilds. In Kericho we did the childrens program and met with the widows. It was fun to watch the kids do their traditional african dance. We left Kericho to go to Shirut and Koitabut. They are much smaller than Kericho and they have no electricity. hmmm...yes you are thinking the same thing I am, ha. No showers, tv, or toilet...ha. We stayed in a mud hut/house. The house reminded us of a Hobbit house!! It had several rooms, but the house was short...like I was as tall as the door ways! Ha...we'll try to put up some pics of it. Betsye and I shared a room here. It was so dark at night...so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face. We journaled by lantern at night. In the morning we took a bucket bath....mmm...my favorite. You were in a little wooden shack outback, and you had a bucket full of cold water and a bucket full of hot water. You were to mix the two buckets to make warm water and then you poured it on yourself. It wasn't too bad...just different and I don't think I could do that forever. Then the potty (out house) was interesting. It was a clean out house at least. Except...everytime I went out to use it...there would be a ton of lizards in there! ah! it freaked me out. Once again there was no variety in the food...we had just killed the chicken and cooked it...some rice and pumpkin leaves...it was good...I was just a bit bored with it. We were both really really exhausted by this point. We had done a lot of traveling...and meeting new people does wear you out.
So....out here in the village there are some kids who have never seen a Mzungu (white person) before, and the others ahve only seen a Mzungu a few times. So...everywhere we went we drew a crowd of children. There was one time Betsye and I were sitting at a table filling out some papers and we looked up to see about 15 kids just standing there staring at us. Yup, they had been there for about 2o minutes just looking at us...they never said a word. Then the pastor came out and told them to all leave. When were driving to a ladies house, I saw a little girl that we passed and I could see her and she just mouthed the word, WOW! ha it was funny because they all yell Mzungu, Mzungu, Mzungu! and point. It was kinda hard for us to just get used to people just standing around staring at us.
I am tired of eating so much!!! We are guests in everyones house and so they feel like they have to make us some food..we have to eat it or we offend them...but guess what we are doing all day? visiting peoples houses!!! so we just get to eat a lot. We met with the widows again in Shirut. Betsye and I had to talk in front of them. We were to give them some encouraging words or a story of how God has been faithful to us etc. I was a bit nervous...but they told me I did fine. We had a translator with us. There were about 21 widows there. We then drove to koitabut and spoke to the widows there. There were about 95 widows with a few single mothers there!! now...thats a lot. Betsye and I had to talk in front of them again! this time I was a bit more nervous because there were a lot of them. But we did fine...they liked what I had to say. The superintendent of the church, James, told me I did a good job, and that they were surprised when I got up there and began to TEACH. He said I had a lot of wisdom that they weren't expecting because I am young still. So that was encouraging...that they liked it so much. It was still sad hearing all the widows stories, but it is also very cool to hear how they have persevered and grown closer to God. This group of widows meets everynow and then to pray and encourage one another. They also raise money as a group and give it each month to the widow who is in need the most, which is cool because they don't have money to begin with.
While in koitabut we stayed at Mama Evelyns house. She is a widow that lives with several of her grandchildren. Mama Evelyn wanted me to tell all ya'll hello. We exchanged addresses because she wants us to send her a post card sometimes :) It is sad to hear how society here treats widows. They treat widows as outcasts...they no longer get respect. Relatives are very hard on them and a lot of the times disown them even though their husbands died and they couldn't do anythign about it.
We went to church yesterday morning and church went for three hours! Shoot...if church went that long in the states people would complain so much. We had communion. Church is a lot more charasmatic here. We had to sing a song with Vickie in church today! I was nervous..because I can't sing! but it went alright, ha...and now I can't get it out of my head. Its a song in Swahili. After church a widow gave me a necklace that her and some orphans had made and she told me that everytime I wear it I need to remember them.
Well, I am very happy to be back in Nairobi. I took a nice hot shower! I ate some ice cubes! ha...while in the villages..I just kept wanting a coke so bad!! Tomorrow is going to be an easy day for us...so we can rest up. We watched finding nemo tonight, ha...because we had been quoting it so much this past week.
Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers!

TEA!

Today we went to Kericho and visited several widows. Kericho is known for Tea fields. There are a ton of tea fields. We drove by and saw a ton of people in the fields picking the tea leaves. It is a very mountainous area. We visited three widows today. We talked to them and they told us their stories. They are very sad because Widows here are despised and disrespected. They kept telling us that once their husbands died, they were no longer respected. Their familes don't help anymore, and a few of them lost respect from their own children. They are having to provide for their families and now be the mom and dad for their family. Their houses are just shacks...mud shacks with a grass roof. The custom for them to do is when they have visitors they prepare something for the visitors...because if the visitors leave the house without anything then they feel bad. So...every house we went to they made us Chai (because we are in the land of tea) and Maize or rice and beans. I have never had soooo much tea or chai before in my life! I don't like tea at all...I don't like any kind of hot drink...so I didn't like this but I had to drink it or they would be offended. Every where we went they offered us Chai...oh man...so much chai. Ha and then we got to walk through the tea fields. We took pictures in the tea field. We did a childrens program too. The kdis are so funny here. I am exhausted. We are headed off to a small village now outside of kericho. We will not have electiricity for three days. So...please keep us in your prayers.

Kericho

Today we traveled to Kericho. It was about an 6 hour car ride....on Kenyan roads...which means it was filled with lots of pot holes and crazy drivers. We were able to see Zebras, Baboons, and Warthogs on the side of the road as we were driving. We pulled over to get close to the zebras and take pictures!!! I got like ten feet away from the zebra! it was awesome. It is a beautiful country. There are tons of hills, mountains, and valleys. We drove through the famous Rift Valley. When we arrived in Kericho we checked into our hotel, and then we drove to the church/school. We were given a tour of the school. It was soo funny when we first arrived in Kericho because all of the children and others kept staring at us because we were white and stuck out like a sore thumb. White people are known as Mzungus. We had several groups of little girls that would just stand there for like fifteen minutes just staring at us....they acted like they have never seen white people before, ha. I guess they don't see white people that often becuase it is further outside of Nairobi. When we got to the school a group of the students were practicing a song and dance. It was a traditional song and dance and they wore their traditional african costumes as well. It was really cool to watch them. We hope to get video of it later on this week. The kids here at the school were funny. Betsye and I were walking down the side of the building to the church and we turned around and had like ten kids following behind us...ha it was so funny and again they all just say "How are you?" because its all the english they have been taught when greeting someone. It stormed while we were at the school...it rained really hard and they said that was unusual for this area at this time of year because the rainy season is over. Tomorrow we are doing a program with the kids at the school and in the morning we are making some more home visits to widows.

Cheryl's Childrens Home

yesterday Betsye and I went with a small group that meets once a week at the church here....and every month they do an "outreach". This month they have chosen to go to an orphanage called Cheryl's Childrens home. There are about 65 children living in this orphanage, and it is run down, but at least the children have somewhere to call home and it is better than living in the slum. Some of them are complete orphans and some of them are not. Some of them have been taken away from mentally, sexually, emotionally, and physically abusive homes. We just hung otu with the kids for a few hours and helped do some chores around the home that needed to be done. It was fun! The kids were awesome and sang us some songs to welcome us there. Right now I am off to church! Tomorrow we leave for a village. We will be gone for a week...so I will try my best to write on here while we are at the village.

Feel free to leave comments, thoughts, prayers, or words of encouragement! Thanks! Also, if you have any questions...please ask them! I would be more than happy to answer them or find an answer for you.

Wiodows...cont.

I have posted a picture of Miriam, one of the widows, and betsye and I. I told you I would tell you about the other widow. I can not remember her name very well. I know it started with a P. She was an older woman probably in her 60's or late 50's. She has been a widow for almost 30 years. She has around 7 children but 5 of them have died. She has three grandchildren living with her. Two of the children's father died and their mother ran off...the other grand child lost both parents. We asked this Widow why she can't go back to her husbands family and have them help care for her and the children. She told us taht the village and her husbands family blame her for the deaths of her kids. they say she is killing them and so she is not welcome at home. Therefore she is forced to live in the Slum. When her last son died which was almost 25 years ago...she took his body back to the village where her family was, but they would not let her burry him there. Ever since that day she has been ill. Miriam the other widow, and this one, stay in touch and encourage each other because they share in the same struggles. We will be meeting with more widows this week. We are traveling to a village that is several hours away...i think we will be driving 6 hours...which is gonna be rough considering the condition of the roads here. We will be gone for a week.

Kibera Slum

Today was our first day doing ministry here in Nairobi. We drove to the other side of Nairobi...which was really far because there are lots of traffic jams. We went to the International Christian Center. The international christian center is located in a heavily muslim and hindu populated area of Nairobi. We went to this center to pick up some books. These books are called, The Book of Hope. It is a childrens evangelistic tool. They are used all over the world, but are changed and updated depending on the area and made adaptable to that particular culture. Here they are written in swahili and english. We picked up about 400 of them and we are going to use them next week when we visit schools. They are really cool. The group we visited explained the books to us and how to use them. They did a lot of research about youth in Kenya. I have a big book full of the research they did and what they found out. I will probably use it to write my paper at the end of the summer. The people at International Christian Center were very happy to see us and to give us the books. Oh, there are also like four different books because they have different ones depending on age too. I think they will be great for Africa and you can already see the difference they are making. They have given these books out to every school in Rwanda. They are almost done with all the school in Ethiopia. The books are being used everywhere and the children in Africa are being given the Word of God. 51% of the Youth in Kenya believe that the word of God is true. 80% believe that once they found God they found satisfaction and it made life worth something.
Then we went with Daniel and Neddie to Kibera Slum. We really felt like we were on a safari, ha...because the road we took to the slum was really really bad...it was dirt and very hilly and lots of holes...and it was surrounded by a forest...especailly the flat top trees taht you always see when you think of Africa. So, we really felt like we were in Africa, ha. We came upon the slum and you could see it stretching for miles and miles and miles. I had seen pictures of it before, but it was different to actually be there. There were tons of people around. We parked out car at the top of the hill and locked it. Vickie was not about to drive into the Slum because we didn't want to run the risk of someone purposely running into us and then taking us to court because that happens a lot in the slum...its how some of them get money. Anyways, we were at the slum to visit some Widows. Neddie is heading up a program to help widows who are in the church here. Neddie said she had known these ladies attended church but had no idea that they were widows. It was really funny because when you enter the slum as a white person, all the children run up to you...and the little english they konw is "How are you?" that is there way of saying hi. So...all we would here was a bunch of "how are you" "how are you" ha it was funny. It reminded me of the seagulls in Finding Nemo. When entering the slum, I was thinking that I had no idea how people found their way around. I would get totally lost. It smelled awful! It smelled like trash, human feces, and animals. After being there for a little bit you kind of got used to it. The houses are made of mud and sticks and sheets of metal for the roof. We enterd one house of a widow named Miriam. Her house was as big as my bedroom at home. She offered us a place to sit and she cooked us food. It is their way of welcoming you, and if you don't eat it then you offend them.
Miriam's story is sad. She lost her husband three years ago. She has 7 children. She hasn't seen her oldest son since 2007. Her oldest daughter is in bording school but has been out for a week because her mother couldn't afford it. Her husband died of TB. He got sick one day and then two days later died. She attends the church here in the Slum and is a leader among other widows. She is an encouragement to other widows and sees that as her ministry.
I have to go, but I will write more about the other widows later.

Downtown

We made our first trip into the CITY today. We took public transportation downtown. We took bus #24. A local lady who is a friend of the missionaries here took us around and her name was Dorcas.
Dorcas took us to some shops, after a few minutes of wandering around we found our selves making our way up a hidden flight of stairs to a hole in the wall shop that sells fabric. The shop was small and full of women and fabric. The store was filled with stacks and stacks of fabric. We purchased after 30 minutes of complete confusion of what fabric and what woman to buy from.Soon we will have our very own African skirt. Over all very exciting.
After an eventful trip for fabric we found an African dollar store, or what we would call dollar tree. Every thing was 100 shillings equal a little more than one U.S. dollar. Followed by our fantastic lunch at Wimpy Burger. (Laugh). Earlier we saw the sign finding it funny,Vickie decided that we would go for lunch. Not bad.
Our trip ended by taking the #24 bus home to take a wonderful afternoon nap.
Overall the day was good. We learned that this coming weekend we will be going to an orphanage with a small group to help out.
who know what we'll doing tomorrow but we will let you know.

We're Here!

We made it!! We arrived in Nairobi at 8pm local time.
Tomorrow Vickie Reynen, the lady we are staying with, is taking us down town to go shopping for some african material to make skirts! We are very excited to be here! I am having trouble getting used to the driving on the other side of the road thing...I was like..."why is everyone sitting in the passenger side of the car and their aren't any drivers...ha.whoops...thats because they drive on the other side. Anyways, We are off to bed because we haven't slept in 24hours. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers. Its gonna be great!

Betsye Reid and Elizabeth Fink