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