A New Resident at the Village

We have had a great, wonderful, busy, relaxing, challenging, fulfilling and frustrating time over the past two weeks in Kenya.

On Monday, January 18 we started a new week with our usual staff meeting, but found out after the staff meeting that one set of the house parents at the village, Daniel and Lydia, were resigning. That sent us into a bit of a scramble as we have been deciding who we can hire to replace them. Fortunately, we have a set of house parents who we just hired that can assist with the transition, and we just interviewed six sets of prospective house parents, but the announcement to the children of Tumaini House was still not easy on Sunday, January 24.

We have been working on a few projects lately, trying to get new beds made for the children at the village including all of the future children at the village we will be accepting over the next two or three months as new homes open up. In addition, we are still helping the school operate at a good level; this week blackboards were finally installed in all of the classrooms.We also have made a lot of progress with building at the village, with roofs being placed on two of the visitor cottages that will house short term missions teams.

We also had two new visitors from the UK come to stay at the Open Arms Office with us for the past two weeks. They will be our first wazungu (white) residents at the village (at least ones that will stay more than just a few days). It has been fun bantering back and forth with them about the different words and accents the UK and US have developed. Occasionally, I have to double check to make certain I understand what they are saying. Of course, since Kenya used to be a British colony (so did the U.S. and the Brits occasionally like to remind us of that), Kenya has developed many of the same colloquial terms as modern English in the UK. When I went to the gas station (petrol station) to fill the truck with some fuel, the attendant asked me if he could look under my bonnet. I wondered if he was suggesting that we do something indecent, but after I calmed down, he assured me that all he wanted to do was check the engine oil.

Of course I can understand the English of our UK guests much better than I can understand the English of most Kenyans. It seems almost impossible to have a conversation with most Kenyans over the phone so face to face conversations seem to be the preferable mode of communication. Nevertheless, Kenyans begin learning English in primary school, albeit with a Kenyan accent. I learned a few days ago that the comprehension level of Kenyan English goes two ways when a carpenter at the village told me he couldn't understand my American English so the foreman told him the same thing I told him in Kenyan English and he finally understood what I was saying.

During the middle of this week, we also received a new guest at the village who is now a permanent resident of the Open Arms Village. The local District Children's Officer remanded Mary into our care on Wednesday and she arrived at our Open Arms office in Eldoret late that afternoon. Her parents both died of AIDS leaving her an orphan. In addition, many tribes here consider AIDS orphans a pariah and often no other relative is willing or able to care for them. Mary arrived hungry, malnourished, with a distended stomach, and having a severe case of jiggers (a parasite that bores into the feet and legs people here, often leaving them unable to walk if not treated). She looked up at all these wazungu (white) faces greeting her at the office and looked terrified. What was worse, none of us knew Kiswahili very well, so we couldn't talk with her very well. Nevertheless, Cheryl gave her some bread, and she devoured it and seemed a bit happier.

However, when we got to the village, and she was surrounded by a group of friendly, welcoming Kenyan children at the village who spoke her language, she immediately responded, and even ate a large bowl of stew and ugali as we all sat down for dinner. Afterwards, Matt read to the children, and they had a wonderful time of prayer with the children before heading back to the Open Arms office in Eldoret. The next day I checked on her, and she had a full night sleep, and even ran around playing with the younger children that morning. Mary still has a long way to go to recover, but she is responding well, and she is even beginning to smile.

Matt and Cheryl also had a chance to smile last Saturday when they went to a new area near Eldoret where they had not gone before. There was a lovely pool to relax at in this 85 degree warm, sunny weather we're having right now at the end of January, and we had a wonderful time dipping our feet in the pool and playing with the babies. There were also beautiful gardens and a river that surrounded the pool along with some very large poinsettas and other colorful plants. We are also looking forward to a little time off this weekend, but you just never know. Nevertheless, in two weeks we will need to take a forced vacation and leave Kenya for two weeks because of visa restrictions. We are planning on going to Tanzania and visiting a few national parks, hopefully seeing elephants, lions, and Mount Kilimanjaro. We'll be sure that our blog after that vacation is filled with plenty of photos and videos.

Until next week, kwahere.

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

Back to Work and Back to School

Sorry it's been two weeks since our last blog. We've had a busy time between getting the school started, getting the office back to work, helping to finish orphanage homes, moving in new house parents, and preparing to admit new children to the village. Last Saturday, Matt left Cheryl and the two babies alone at the house at 8AM in order to help move in our third set of house parents at the village. After driving over 100 kilometers to move in the house parents, he received a call from the carpenters who are building new beds for the children at the village and went to see the first sample bed. He arrived back at the home at 6PM and that was on our day off. Both Matt and Cheryl were exhausted, but now new recruits have come from the US and the UK and more are on their way soon.

We are very excited that Open Arms Academy is offiically opened as of Friday, January 8, and we have 26 children officially admitted into the school - 8 in pre-school and 15 in a primary grade school ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 5. We have hired three primary teachers, one who is the headmaster, and also a nursery school teacher. We will be hiring more teachers as the school continues to grow, but for now we have a very good student/teacher ratio of 6.5:1.

Starting a school took more work than Matt and Cheryl realized: purchasing textbooks, school supplies, blackboards, chalk, workbooks, exercise books, pens, pencils, rulers, desks, chairs, etc., etc. and the list goes on. We are about 65% complete on the conversion of the old Tumaini and Upendo homes into classrooms. We have 3 to 4 usable classrooms and a school office currently available, and we will have 3 to 4 more classrooms available within the next two weeks.

We also have a new set of house parents, Joel and Sally Too, and their two boys, Caleb - age 4 months, and Tim - age 4 years, who have moved into the village. One more home will be opening up in the next two weeks, and we are already in the process of admitting new children to the village. This week we are preparing to admit one new girl to the village who is an orphan, malnourished, ill, and has a severe case of jiggers (parasites that bore into a person's feet and often leaves them unable to walk until treated). We hope to help her and a lot of other children find shelter, food, medical treatment, and place they can call home.

Today we had a wonderful day at the village with the children and house parents as they had church. Afterwards, we went on a short hike as Cheryl, Matt, two guests from the UK, one of the house parents, and ten of the older children hiked to a waterfall near the property. It was a lovely sunny day, (about 80 degrees for those of you in cold, rainy, or snowy regions of North America right now). We really hope you are doing well, and we hope some of you can come out and visit us soon.

Blessings,

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

Happy New Year and Other After Christmas Specials

Happy New Year to everyone back in the US and elsewhere reading this blog. We would have posted this weeks blog earlier but our internet was down for four days this week, and seven days in the past month - a common occurrence here.

Nevertheless, we are back up and running today. We actually had quite a bit happen this week, so this may be a lengthy blog. It may be even longer due to the fact that I forgot to mention an important detail in last weeks blog - our Christmas safari at Mount Elgon National Park which is West and North of Eldoret, Kenya. The park is situated on the border of Kenya and Uganda and we were debating when we could go, but we were glad that we could go the weekend of December 20 because the weather was beautiful, and that turned out to be the only window of opportunity we had during this busy holiday season in Kenya. Most of the last two weeks in Eldoret it has been raining. This is a good thing since the region has been facing drought conditions for quite some time.

Nevertheless, our weekend at Mount Elgon was beautiful sunny 75 degree weather. The night before we drove into the park, the small cottage we slept in greeted us with some wildlife of its own - a giant moth which captivated us for a few minutes as it was captivated by the porch light in front of our bungalow. As we drove in to the park, we saw the outline of Mount Elgon (about 13,000 feet in elevation) looming in the distance. We also saw quite a number of babboons and water bucks as we entered the gate into the park. We drove further into the park with the assistance of a guide who was well armed to ward off potentially dangerous poachers and animals in the park. We drove into some densely wooded areas and saw more water bucks, gazelles, a very large wild pig (probably 500 to 700 pounds), and other assorted furry creatures. We stopped at two different caves, one being the largest in Kenya, and saw evidence of a wide variety of water buffalo, hyenas, zebras, babboons, water bucks, and other assorted creatures who occasionally took shelter in these caves. We also heard, but didn't see, a lot of bats in the caves. You can hear them but not see them in this eerie video I took.

As wecontinued further up the road, we saw some terrific views of Mount Elgon, Acacia trees, and other scenic vistas. We sat down and had lunch at one of these vistas, some other little critters, unbeknownst to us, were already beginning to enjoy our lunch, as Cheryl enjoyed the experience of having ants in her pants. Nevertheless, we continued to enjoy the panoramic view, but the most spectacular view was five large shadows towering above the middle of the road, which turned out to be four very large and one younger giraffe which resided in the park. The scene was almost surreal as we slowly got out of our truck to take some photos and videos of the beautiful animals. We concluded our day with a few more scenes of more babboons and other assorted creatures before we concluded a wonderful day in the park.

After Christmas, we went out to the village on Sunday, December 27, for what we call Guardian's Day, a chance for relatives or friends of the children to spend time with them. While all of the children are either orphaned or have been abandoned by their parents, most of them have other relatives or friends that want to see them from time to time. Overall, the day was an enjoyable time for the children and relatives as they spent the day together at a church service and shared a meal together.

On Tuesday, December 29, Matt and Cheryl were invited to spend the day at the home of the area chief, Chief Togum, to celebrate the engagement of his daughter. Each province in Kenya, (I believe there are 8 provinces), are subdivided into various districts, and these districts are also subdivided into areas, of which Chief Togum is responsible for, about 20,000 people. Over 500 guests showed up for the party, which had some wonderful food and even a little music as the two families negotiated over the traditional dowry which was to be paid to the bride's family (just the opposite of our ancestral European or Asian traditions of paying dowry to the groom's family). Typically the dowry consists of a number of goats, sheep, and/or cows. After the negotiations were over, the future bride and her attendants cut some cake for the guests and had a few speeches to give just as the rain began to pour on the festivities. Nevertheless, the guests were not dismayed as the festivities carried on for over eight hours.

Later the following weekend, on Saturday, January 2, Matt and Cheryl were able to attend the wedding of the brother of one of the house parents at the village. The wedding was held in Eldoret and about 400 people were in attendance. Many of the events and scenes in this wedding were similar to any typical American wedding with lots of people, a procession of attendants and groomsmen, the bride in white, vows made by the bride and groom, a meal after the wedding, in addition to cake cutting and speeches made by the famiies of the bride and groom. The major differences were the length of the ceremony (3 hours), along with a 5 plus hour ceremony (we didn't stay until the end - the babies were complaining). and the ceremony started two hours later than planned (we are finding that we need to plan on attending all social functions in Kenya about two hours later than originally scheduled). The differences between this urban wedding in Eldoret and the rural engagement party near the small village of Kipsaret revealed a little more about the variety of cultural and economic differences in various parts of Kenya, not to mention some of the differences with typical American culture and economics. The engagement party in rural Kipsaret had about 500 guests and only about 10 older vehicles. The wedding in urban Eldoret had about 400 guests and about 30 newer vehicles. The engagement party in rural Kipsaret had wonderful food, no electricity, and some music playing on battery operated speakers. The wedding in urban Eldoret had a full sound system with electricity and also some wonderful food. At both celebrations, Matt and Cheryl got quite a few stares as the only wazungus (white people) not to mention the fact that they were holding adorable Kenyan babies which brought a lot of attention and willing arms wanting to hold the babies.

Matt and Cheryl also brought in the New Year by having a small party at the Open Arms house/office in Eldoret. They invited Open Arms staff and a few local friends to come and eight people joined to help them bring in the New Year. Even the babies stayed up for a little while as Diana was fascinated by blowing bubbles. After the babies retired, the festivities got a little noisier with a rousing game of spoons. At midnight the room erupted in pandemonium with party poppers and noisermakers and even a spontaneous conga line. Finally the New Year began with some solemn prayer as both young and old alike offered sincere prayers for the New Year. May this year bring you and your family many blessings and exciting new adventures as God leads and protects you.

Matt and Cheryl Tallman