The last day of 2006.

     A quiet day.

 

Brian & I went to town to get some snacks, soda and a deck of cards. We hired a taxi. The driver’s name was Moses. Moses’ own car sits injured in the shop so he had to borrow someone else’s.

 

The doors wouldn’t open from the inside. Actually, there weren’t even any handles - should you want to try.

 

Inside the store jam-packed with last minute holiday sh

Our internet connect decided to take a holiday this past holiday as well. A couple of times the phone line went out, too. And the electricity. It’s been raining a ton. As a result . . .I’m breaking protocol and back-posting. Surely, there must be a blog-exemption from posts-allowed-per-day for people living in Africa - or Vanuatu - or anywhere where phone lines and cables are still bunched in bund

 

Hi xxxx,

Thanks for your thoughts and your concern.  Whatever God is up to, I am sure it will bring Him glory!

Your comment, "I'm afraid that it gets missed and we end up cleaning people up but not doing anything for their eternal destiny" resonated deeply within my convictions.  It is not only a Kenya church problem as you most certainly realize.

The younger churches around the world struggle

Christmas in Africa. This year was my 6th Christmas in Africa and I can’t say that it ever gets any easier. I’m a last born. I used to love holidays. But  there is something about Christmas in Africa that taints it, I guess. For one, I miss home. Family. My mom’s incredible cooking and decorations. The stores being decorated with Christmas music piping through. Evaporated milk. Marshmallow Cream.

As an expat living in Kenya since 2000, I’m not sure how much of my take on things is completely as an expat anymore. I’ll always be an expat in Africa  - as long as I continue to live in Kenya - but there’s a bit of merge going on in my mind as time ticks. It’s a merge into the local culture somehow. While an expat in Africa can never become an African, an expat can somehow lose his or her own id

Brian phoned me from town today asking if I had any money. He wanted a beer. Not really. Actually, he’s had some help from a kid on a project he’s been working on for a week now.

                                               The kid looks like he is around 14.

   The kid (a boy) asked Brian if he would help him “to make Christmas.”

In Kenya, “making Christmas” means having a Christmas with a g

   I was on my way to the nearest reseller of any diet-caffeine-infused drink. It had been over 24 hrs since my last fix and I needed one BAD. (Or, BADly - for you homeschooling moms like me who are re-learning adverbs.)

    I wasn’t in the best of moods, to state the obvious. Nor in the bes

“2 pple killed by yesterday night

   in the kubera area. my hotel and

shop robbed barely 2 days b4

i arrived. My bro’s life threatened.

his house torched.  - robinson.”

   - ARK Bible school, treasurer

I promised a follow-up to Lucy: the SWEEL Doll (yes, that’s SWEEL  - not sweet). For starters . . . .

     We held the farewell jig in the new building. The building that isn’t quite finished yet. They started building it over a decade ago but Kenya isn’t privy to th

Maybe we should have known we were in for something when our first “real” date in ’86 ended up in a fender-bender in the parking lot of Metro North Mall. We had gone to see “Blind Date” at the cinema and on our way home . . . okay, rather, on our way out of the parking lot - ShBAM. And not the kind of Shbam you’re thinking. It was with another car. No, neither of us have ever “passed out” like dea

What to get that special someone who already has everything? That’s usually the problem I face in the States when I think about Christmas shopping.

Clashes continue on the mountain. Robinson stopped by our house this morning. His news wasn’t good. At least, though, all of the students & their families are still accounted for albeit displaced. So far over 1,000 people are displaced, several dozen have been killed. Hundreds of homes burnt.

        We go to the Anglican church in Kitale. The Anglican Bishop is lifting the call for an end to the

It’s true.

Her name is Lucy. She looked younger than me. Heavier, too. Quite a bit heavier, actually. Which is a good thing here. But I wasn’t jealous.

      She had come for help.  A stranger.

  Someone had told her what we have done for several of the widows and orphans in the area. So she came. A widow of only one year. With a daughter more beautiful than royalty. 5 years old and a smile to charm even the

Without electricty and a secure infrastructure on Mt. Elgon, it is difficult to get frequent or reliable updates. However, we did get a txt message today from the Chairman of the Ark Bible School telling us that each and every one of the 19 pastors has been accounted for and is safe.

            

 

     THANK YOU TO GOD ONCE AGAIN FOR

          PROTECTION AND GRACE.

 

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

 

I guess getting older has made me think down-the-road aBIT more than I used to do. Over the past 6 years, we’ve carted over to Africa a bunch of HIGHLY-PERSONALS. I even have some original photographs from when I was little as well as the CROSS-STITCH I started working on for Jordan when he was born. Someday I’ll finish it. Yes, he’s 11.

 

            

It all broke out on the mountain. The message today from the treasurer (Robinson - c,pic to the left) of the Ark Bible School Brian started with the Saboat Christian leaders said:

 

        

 

 

                  “Total unrest.

                    Shooting everywhere.

                    Place deserted.

                    We are stranded.”

End of term & time for the annual Gloucester Vale School Play. Yip-yay! whoop!. Kat had a blast & she made it fun for all of us.

        Kat goes to a private school owned by a German/Kenyan (she’s German, he’s Kenyan) family & run by a Scottish lady & taught by a Kenyan woman who speaks with a British accent. The kids are about as diverse: Kenyan-German, Kenyan-Indian, German, American, Kenyan-Br

All i can come up with is the move I made when i was 7. I had been living in California. Mission Viejo. Ventura. Both. My friends had interesting names there like Monique and Jocelyn and Vikki Pazanti.

                           Vikki lived across the street from me. Her family was Jewish. She was pretty. Her hair was soft. Her skin was tan. Their home smelled nice at Christmas time but it didn’t

i can talk about my nightmare. a bit.

 

it was a bad one. but not bad as in a sense of bad. not like my PTsD ones that have kept me company for 2 years & 10 months now, and counting.

                          this was a                   bad. A temporal bad. A bad that probably won’t-come-back-again-every-week-bad. it’s not a ptSd bad - so i’ll get over it. but it doesn’t make it any less bad when

I had a nightmare. It wasn’t my normal nightmare.

Completely different.

 

I still don’t know exactly what triggered it.

 

My normal nightmare has been going on for almost 3 years now. My counselor in Dallas told me earlier this year to re-write the ending of it. Good advice. I had tried other things before but nothing worked. Not even sleeping with lemon-halves on my head. But my counselor told m

Well, let’s just say my culture [American culture] taught me to value cleanliness at an obsessive level. You can spot an American in Africa because of the 5-gallon containers of Purell and suitcases of handywipes they carry with them. Africa is a shake-your-hand-kind-of-culture and Purell doesn’t go as far as it would back home. When we moved here in 2000, I probably brought a dozen or more of tho

Which character in the movie “The Breakfast Club” are you?

 

Which one did you wish that you were?

December begins the season when those of us who are unmedicated but probably should be medicated really, really probably should be

                        

        medicated.

 

It lasts through the end of February, in case you are one of those people who are not medicated and probably should not be medicated. Because you wouldn’t know. That’s why

I told

     you.

 

It’s open season.

 

Let the

b

 

  

The morning started off well enough. Brian blasted U2 throughout the house before I made it downstairs to switch it to some Boy George & Bonnie Tyler. I cooked up some bacon, eggs & waffles for B & the kids while i ate my healthy cereal with a picture of a girl’s waist on the front about the size of my left ankle. Or right, take our pick.

 

I had gotten a phone message from the District Children’s

Today Greg (the taxi driver Greg) brought 2 bags of stuff I had left at the Supermarket last week. The Supermarket people had just set it to the side and since I don’t usually go there, they couldn’t tell me. But when they saw Greg (who had been with me on that day when I was shopping), they told him about the bags.

           He came & got the receipt and went back & got the stuff for me. Very n

I admit it.

I’m a bit of a pickle. I’m coming out. No more denial.

Like today when I went to the gym for a workout w/the girls - the gym-guy named Saida politely told me that the gym would be closed tomorrow.

 

A non-pickle would have said, “Okay. Sweet. See you Wednesday.”

 

But it’s like this uncontrollable urge exists inside of each and every pickle to want to respond in the most accurate, preci

When Brian left home for the Ark today, it was raining. Last time he went to the mountain, the lorry got stuck N the mud and he ended up walking 2+miles in the slippery-stuff, at night, uphill at 11,000 ft. altitude in a partially-evacuated area of civil unrest [i kinda thought it sounded sexy.] He said he didn’t slip because he relied on his old highschool football days where he learned how to ke

My mind keeps going back to Thanksgiving.

We spent it alone as a family, like I said.

But there was something I didn’t mention. It happened early in the wee hours of the morning. We sent Joseph&Tait on their way

                                                              home.

To Maasailand. Kenya. East Africa.

     They are Maasai.

 

We prayed before they left. In a circle.

          Holding h

Is    

       “warm” a temperature for a shower?

 

If it’s cold then you know it’s cold and you brace yourself.

If it’s hot then you know it’s hot and you embrace yourself. Aaahhhh . . .yes.

 

But  . . . warm?

And a drizzle?

 

 I take a shower in our bathroom using what is called a “steamie.”

It’s sort of like a coffee maker . . . but for showers.

It’s supposed to heat the water before it reach

Someone had mentioned Thanksgiving in an email last week. Asked if we had plans. I said, “Not really.” Then I left it at that. It never dawned on me that Thanksgiving was like in just a few days. I always thought it was around the 27th or 28th.

 

It came early this year. Here’s how it went down:

        

 

It was the day before Thanksgiving. We stood in the kitchen. We opened a package from the in

I sat by Cinderella today.

Went to the Legacy School end-of-the-year “Parent’s day.” Oh joy.

      Should I have gone? Yes.

     Did I want to go? No.

     Did I go? Well, for some of it.

 

                At first I didn’t go at all. I requested a taxi and happily sent along all the mums, Aunties and a brother of the sponsored kids to the school. I thought that would be good enough. But a couple

I’ve gone to the table in my life too many times with crunchy green beans. It’s embarrassing. REAlly. That, or going to the table and serving rice with small pebbles in it. U break a tooth. Or green grams - with the same pebbles. I’ve done that, too. Even w/visitors.

 

The pebbles are so small that you can’t even dream of getting them all when you sort the rice or beans. Plus they look like the ri

I warned u that I went ahead and reserved the right to post anything u write to me. And since it was a big, extensive effort to do that. First, my right was rejected. But then I remembered the tattoo just below the back of the neck on Angelina Jolie. It says,

 

                                                                             “Know your rights”

 

She is right.

How could I have been so bl

A gheko got smashed in our door today.

I’m not sure how he got caught in there.

we found him after it was too late.

No one wanted to volunteer to remove him to a place which could afford him a greater dignity in his death.

 

I think he’s still there.

 

 

 

 

 

Our church had a harambee. Today.

 

A harambee goes on for several hours. It’s an unofficial-official way of raising money in Kenya. They’ve b

I played chicken today on the walk home from the gym.
  
                   In Kenya, the car has the right-of-way.

But I wanted to see if he would really just hit me. In broad daylight. A stranger. A visitor, in fact, in his country.  So I played chicken. He was coming fast. Bryanne said that I should move but I said,                                   -------------------------------------------

 

It’s the mourning after my birthday.

 

I got hot fried eggs and hot green tea (w/lemon: brandname: Heath&Heather) this morning since I wasn’t allowed to be lazy anymore and sleep in until 8:30. Brian brings my breakfast to our room nearly each morning that he’s home (after I get the 2 out of the 5 kids off for school who go.) Maybe it sounds like I’m spoiled but he gets a handsome return on any b

I was sitting at the computer checking email. I had finished 2 cold fried eggs and a lukewarm cup of coffee. I don’t normally drink coffee. Something about making my face puff up like the girl in C&theC Factory. But for those oh-so-special-times [like birthdays, traveling or the stress of having visitors] ~ I guzzle.

 

2 cups today.

 

The eggs and coffee weren’t hot because Brian had brought them a

“Are you savoring this day, Mommy?”

 

 

 

“Because it’s the last day you get to be #%@.”

         I’m on a losing streak in Yahtzee.

 

I could make myself feel better since 2nd place is what I got most of the time and 2nd place doesn’t sound all that bad.

            It’s a red ribbon.

But the problem is that the times I got 2nd place, there were only two people playing – me and B. He’s on a Yahtzee roll or so it seems. So is Jordan. Which kind of worries me because my birthday is o

Do you get annoyed when you’re shopping and  you get an sms from someone at home who is telling you what to get? Like why didn’t he [I won’t mention names] tell you BEFORE you left? You already have your list and you’re already knee-deep in carts, potatoes and people and somehow, somewhere, someway you have to dig through your bag . . .past the leftover receipts that you use for scrap paper, past

I went to town on the back of Hollywood today.

 

The boda bike taxis name their taxis and they paint the name of their bike on places surrounding the seat. The one I rode to town on today is called ‘Hollywood.’ I use Hollywood quite a bit. Around 7 or 8 bike taxis are usually parked up at the round-about just near our house. So all I have to do is walk to our street and signal one and then about 4

I paid for a twelve-year old boy to have his thing carved on a bit today. It’s not that that is something I would set out to do it’s just that we try and help the people we know or who work for us when they need it. And Susan had come to me with a sheepish smile the other day and asked for an advance of 2,000 shillings.

 

                    She grinned really big and said, “Daniel is going to bec

Tears can’t type.

 

My fingers will have to do this morning.

 

We hired a friend of someone we knew to re-thatch the roof of our kibanda this past week. He worked here two days. It is our policy to pay anyone who works for us well above the normal rate. Plus other things that they need – like mosquito nets, medicine, clothes, beds, housing, etc. It’s tough here and you can’t help everyone because th

            Got an sms from Brian. Says, “Just saw a lion and a big bull elephant though not as . . . .” For the sake of discretion, I won’t include what else he wrote to finish out that sentence.

    Brian’s off on another adventure.

    My feelings? Joy with skittles on top. It’s kind of like on Survivor where two of the players gets a reward trip. And your stuck back at the camp. I mean – I’m happy