Busy in Africa, back in America

The last few months have been both amazing and familiar, wonderful and bittersweet, full of change, goodbyes, hellos, tears, and smiles. In early Jul

y we moved out to the village and began to enjoy more time with the children and more sleep at night (there were no dogs barking, no car horns honking, no Islamic call to prayer at 5AM from the local mosque, and even the roosters crowing were far enough away so not to be heard until after we were awake.

Shortly after we moved to the village, a team of 23 volunteers from the UK and the US came to stay at the village to help volunteer with a medical camp that Open Arms was sponsoring in the Kambi Teso slum of Eldoret. One of them brought a gift for the chief welfare officer at the village, Meshack via one of our volunteers Anna, who had heard that Meshack was a trombone player who had lost his instrument 10 years ago. When

Meshack picked up his trombone and began to play, it brought tears to the staff and volunteers who began to hear his rendition of Amazing Grace.

One of the first projects Matt began to work on when he moved to the village was to start a small convenience store or kiosk where the staff and construction workers at the village could buy our excess eggs, milk, and chickens, and where the local villagers could buy their local supplies. Meshack was the general manager, and Matt helped get the store stocked and got a lesson in what sells in Kenya (Matt spent 10 years working in the grocery business in the U.S. so he thought he knew). What sold the most in our little convenience store? Candy, soda (no surprise there), phone cards (to add minutes), bracelets and necklaces that the children at the village make and sell for the Western guests, kerosene (for lamps since most of our neighbors aren't hooked up to electricity yet), cooking fat (at a convenience store?), eggs, flour, sugar, and bar soap (for washing your clothes by hand). Anyway, the convenience store is doing well now, plenty of customers, and some happy neighbors who don't have to walk so far now to get their sugar, flour, kerosene, and bar soap.

After getting the store started, Matt and Cheryl got busy with setting up the medical camp along with the 23 other volunteers. Soon people started lining up at medical camp. It was five days of long hard work, helping with crowd control, praying with people, playing with children, helping the doctors and nurses, and distributing medicine from the prescriptions. We treated over 1800 people during the medical camp, prayed with hundreds of people, saw people with everything from cataracts to worms, and we even saw God heal some of them. 95 people decided to become Christians.

At the end of the week, we were pretty exhausted and tired, but still elated and excited to see what God did during the week. On the last day, we were tearing down the camp, and it started to rain as we were packing up to leave (it was the rainy season in Kenya) We hurried to get out of the area because we had already been stuck in the mud once on the way back to the village, and we made it past the area we got stuck in a few days earlier only to get stuck again further down the road, and this time we couldn't get out. We pushed and pushed the bus, only to get stuck even more. Finally after an hour we gave up since it was getting dark and decided to try again in the morning. We told the office that we were stuck and they sent out the truck to pick up as many of us as they could. We managed to fit 7 in the cab, and 20 in the back, and the rest of us began to walk back to town. Cheryl stood with 20 other girls in the back of the pickup in the driving rain while Matt began to walk the 7 miles back to the office with about 8 other guys. On the way back, the pickup truck got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams and Matt and the guys wound up beating the girls to the office. They were all cold and wet, and it was a good thing that electricity finally came to the village that night so everyone could take hot showers.

After all the hard work, Matt and Cheryl settled back at the village and Cheryl got her hair braided by the children. She also got to spend some time in the traditional village kitchen learning how to make chipatis and drinking chai. Matt and Cheryl watched Meshack play the trombone and church a few more times, and we had another team of volunteers from Portland come and help paint the children's homes and the school. We had a great time painting with them and playing with the children. As they enjoyed one of their last sunsets in Kenya, we were also preparing to leave Africa.

The toughest part of leaving was all of the goodbyes. We said goodbye to members of our volunteer team who were heading back to America before us. We also had to do some last minute shopping in town so we said goodbye to the Nakumatt where we did all of our shopping (we also said goodbye to our favorite taxi driver, Douglas, standing with Matt in front of the Nakumatt store). We ran into our friend George at the Eagle Hardware Store in Eldoret and said goodbye to him. We said goodbye to Elizabeth at our favorite souvenier shop in Eldoret. We said goodbye to a random lady in a phone charging station (where you go to give your phone an electrical charge when you live without electricity but with a cell phone) and goodbye to downtown Eldoret.

The hardest part of course was saying goodbye to the children and the babies. We got to spend some time playing with Diana and Esther before we left. We even got to celebrate Esther's first birthday and watch her take her first steps in life. We also spoke at out last Sunday morning service at the village while wearing some traditional African clothing. There was a going away campfire for us at the village a few nights before we left, and some kind words were said, but the hardest part was watching our last sunset in Eldoret and a goodbye party at one of the children's homes the night before we left. We said some goodbyes to the children and the houseparents, but as we left we had a lot of mixed emotions about saying goodbye to some lifelong friends, some children, and babies and getting ready to say hello to friends and family in Portland.

Before we left Kenya, we spent two days in Nairobi accompanying our friend Ruth from the UK and saying goodbye to her as we visited the Giraffe Sanctuary where Cheryl got kissed by a giraffe. We also visited the Kozuri Bead shop in Nairobi where hundreds of mothers are employed to help provide for their families. We helped support them as Cheryl spent most of our remaining money on souveniers. We also went to the National Museum in Nairobi and got a little culture before we got on the plane ride home to America

In Portland, friends and family were waiting for us as more tears, tears of happiness, were shed, and lots more hugs were given. It was great to get back to familiar faces, foods, sounds, and scenery, but occasionally something or someone triggers our memories of things, people, and life in Kenya. We have adjusted fairly well, moved back into our house, and back to work, but there are still some things that are difficult to become acclimated to. The driving in Portland is actually kind of boring now after driving on potted roads with constant obstacles. The food in Portland is more familiar and we have no complaints except for the few pounds that we've put back on in the past few weeks. We actually found ourselves craving Mexican food when we got back since there are no Mexican restaurants in Kenya.

We thought of a lot of things we haven't had for the past year (mostly very minor things). No flavored creamer for our coffee. No television (they have television in Kenya, but almost exclusively soap operas in Swahili). No reliable internet. No good ice cream (mostly stuff that tasted like ice milk and is more expensive). I am sure I can make this list a lot longer and maybe include some more in our next blog.

Of course there are also things we will miss now that we're back in Portland. Most of all the children at the village and the life-long friends that we have made over the past year. We look forward to seeing them again when we got to Africa again next year.

Until then,

Matt and Cheryl