A Little Rest and a Lot of Work

We are doing well in Eldoret, but it has been a very busy month. Sorry about the absence of posts for awhile, but it may not get much better as our schedule intensifies with the arrival of summer volunteer teams and the uncertainty of internet service at the village when we move out there in the next few weeks.

We started out May with a new term at school and the arrival of three new children: Ken, Zadok, and Victor, all brothers who were rescued by another agency and sent to us by the local district children's office. We also have just received a fourth new boy at the village this week named Martin.

We have had quite a lot of activity at the village: Sunday morning services with the children, a new youth group and children's church that Matt and Cheryl started, Wednesday afternoon Bible Study with the construction crew, and of course the day to day activities at the farm. The new dairy cow at the village has just given birth to a calf which has turned out to be quite a blessing for the village - maybe too much of a blessing - since the momma cow is giving at least 30 liters of milk every day. Along with the other dairy cow, this leaves more than enough milk at the village, so Matt has become a milk man along with an egg salesman.

The absence of two volunteers from the UK for five weeks, Dave and Linda Munsie, has also increased Matt's duties, since both of them were drivers for Open Arms (available drivers are scarce here since most of the Kenyan Open Arms staff don't have drivers licenses or driving experience and much of the other UK and US Kenyan staff are too scared to drive in Kenya - including Cheryl - can't say I blame them - I was driving in downtown Eldoret a few days ago and a matatu driver or what we might call a taxi driver in a van came out of a store parking lot and rushed across busy traffic just missing me by inches only to park on the other side of the street - that is a normal everyday occurrence in Eldoret).

We got a break from the business of our schedule and spent two nights at a lovely lodge outside of Nakuru next to the Menengei Crater. It was a beautiful view to wake up to every morning, and the food at this lodge was by far the most spectacular food we have had in Kenya. It was a lovely way to spend our 2nd anniversary! And a wonderful two years it has been!

On the way back from Menengei Crater, we stopped at Lake Nakuru National Park. We decided to just go to the entrance and the gift shop to forego the expensive entrance fee since we are planning on going back there with some friends later in June. However, sitting outside the gift shop was a treat in itself as we were beseiged by playful monkeys that made several attempts at sneaking inside our vehicle and wanting food from us.

After we got back from Lake Nakuru, we celebrated Diana's 2nd birthday that night. We bought a nice doll for her in Nakuru and everyday for the next two weeks she sang happy birthday everyday and reminded us that she was now two years old.

We hope this month we'll be as exciting as May, but a little less busy.

We'll blog again soon,

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

Matt and Cheryl had a Farm...E I E I Yo

The last few weeks have been fairly busy down at the Open Arms farm. We have been searching for a new cow for quite some time. One of our two milk cows got too old and so it became ground beef. However, searching for a new cow is not as easy as it seems. It involved searching at quite a few farms, negotiating, and finally when we found the right cow, we had to find a way to transport it to our village. I was looking forward to spending some quality time with "Bessie Mae" in the back end of a pick up truck, but as it turned out we had plenty of help to get the cow to the village and she behaved very nicely as we drove the 35 kilometers from one farm to our village.

"Bessie Mae" as we'll call her for now (some people who donated the money will actually name her) is a very large Friesian cow who will probably give about 25 to 30 liters of milk every day after her new calf is born in about a week from now. With the addition of this cow we will have plenty of milk for the village, the office and the babies in town, and even a fair amount left over to sell.

We have also been into chickens quite a bit lately...literally. Of course we have had our layer chickens laying about 90 eggs per day, and while the village and the office eats almost half of these, that still leaves a lot of eggs to sell every week...and Matt has been the designated egg man, finding restaurants and small stores who want to buy the eggs.

However, the chicken project that has really occupied Matt's time the past week has been the broiler chicken project. 61 chickens were ready to be slaughtered this week, and Matt had to get his hands dirty, cutting, plucking, cleaning, bagging, weighing, and marking each chicken. At the end of the big harvest day, Matt didn't "feel like chicken tonight" but he sured smelled like it. Cheryl wouldn't even let him enter the bedroom until he first took a shower.

If that weren't enough to deal with this week, Matt also had the opportunity to help slaughter a ram for a big feast at the village as the children prepared for Guardian's Day, a quarterly celebration where the children get the opportunity to interact with aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who get to spend the day with the children. While the ram had to be manhandled quite a bit since he wasn't eager to become that days meal, Matt somehow managed to avoid too much of the prep work for the ram as he prepared for the Guardian's Day ceremony.

We probably had close to 100 people attend the Guardian's Day ceremony as Open Arms staff, children, and nearly 50 relatives and friends of the children joined together to share a meal (which of course included mutton). It was a great celebration, but Matt will probably be avoiding mutton and chicken for awhile.

A Bugs Life - In Africa

My Bad. I haven't written on this blog for 3 weeks. I could say we've been busy, which we have but that is still no excuse, even if you're fighting flying termites from hell and spiders so large they really belong in a horror movie.

The flying termites first showed up at our house last Saturday, April 24 just after dusk during a rain storm. They were attracted to the light and soon some of them found their way inside our house. Fortunately only about 3 dozen got inside before we closed all the windows and sealed all the cracks, but Cheryl was a little freaked out. We could hear them outside of our bedroom window hitting the window because we had our bedroom light on. The next morning we saw hundreds of wings left from these termites on our front porch and when I turned the corner I saw several thousand wings piled up under a security light that had been left on all night long. In that pile there were still hundreds of termites who had shed their wings and were now travelling who knows where.

We had talked to some of the staff previously about this annual migration of flying termites, and some of the staff said they enjoy collecting the termites and frying them. Cheryl said she wanted to try eating them until she saw hundreds of them crawling out of that pile last Sunday morning before we headed to church. She decided to leave them for any of the staff that might want to try them.

This Saturday, once again, at dusk, after a heavy rain, I spotted two of them on flying on the front porch, grabbed my camera, and within two minutes, there were over 100 flying around the light at the front porch. This photo doesn't do justice to the amount of flying termites we saw, but it gives you an idea.

We have also seen some extraordinarily large grasshoppers at our home in Eldoret, in addition to quite a few more at the Open Arms Village. We haven't had the camera ready when one comes hopping by but they're about 4 times the size of grasshoppers at home. And of course, the staff and the children at the Open Arms Village love to eat them as a snack (although they don't like some that are a certain color).

We have also seen quite a few spiders crawling around at the house in Eldoret, but according to one of our volunteers at the village, the mother of all spiders showed up in one of the homes at our village. Of course we have seen a fair number of average to good size spiders while we've been here, but apparently our village superviser confirmed and killed a spider that was in one of our volunteer's rooms at the village and apparently had a 12 leg span. Unfortunately, they were too terrified to take a photo, and the village supervisor grabbed a can of bug spray to dispatch of the gargantuan spider. I actually looked on the internet at spiders before we came to Africa and found out that the only spider that large is the Goliath Bird Spider which resides mostly in Brazil, but maybe some of the spiders here are eating some good meals or maybe this volunteer exaggerated the size of this spider as she fled the room and ran for help. This photo is not one of ours, just the one from the internet. Either way, Cheryl nor I are planning on eating any spiders soon.

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

P.S. We'll try and send more photos and stories in the next day or two to catch up on what is going on.

Ending the School Term, Easter Service, and other Events from Eldoret, Kenya

We have had a busy but wonderful time in Kenya for the past few weeks. At the beginning of April we had a brief ceremony at Open Arms Academy comemmorating the completion of our first term. We had several local officials join us including two area chiefs, a representative from the District Education Office, and the District Children's Officer. In addition most of our staff from our Eldoret Office, all of the children at the village, all of the house parents, and almost all of the village staff attended the event.

The children were very excited to be wearing their brightly colored new school uniforms. We began the ceremony with a flag raising ceremony, the first of its kind at the Open Arms Village. We concluded the event by awarding the top achievers in each class a special award and giving all of the children some sweets and other sugary substances which the house parents sincerely thanked us for.

On Easter Sunday morning every one at the house in Eldoret and at the village in Mlango got dressed up for Easter. This included Baby Esther and Baby Diana who were the two best dressed babies at the Open Arms Easter service. The children gave a very brief but creative version of the Easter drama beginning with the Passion Week, and the oldest boy, Abel (the one in the blue shirt) playing the part of Jesus. We had a wonderful time with the children at the village, and after the service we all had lamb, potatoes, and lentils (fortunately no goat intestines for this meal). After the meal, we had the first ever Open Arms Village Easter Egg Hunt or at least something like it. None of the children at the village were familiar with this Western tradition, but a group of visitors from the UK brought plastic baby chicks which they hid in various spots throughout the village and every child had to find so many of them. At the end of the hunt, each child was wide eyed with astonishment and excitement as they received chocolates, oranges, cookies, and other prizes.

This week involved several visits to the village as Matt inspected the progress on the building project at the village. In fact, four of the five orphanage homes have been completed and the three visitor cottages are close to completion as the first phase of the building project comes to fruition. In fact, the roofs are up on all three visitor cottages, plastering, plumbing, and electricity is completed in the first two cottages, and rumor has it that the floor tiles on the first visitor cottage are being installed as I write this blog. We hope that the visitor cottages will be completed in time for our summer teams to be able to stay at the village in June, July, and August. Matt has also been leading a Bible Study on Wednesdays with the work crew during their lunch hour. He started a month ago and eighteen men showed up at the first Bible Study. The Bible Study has been growing every week with a few new visitors and this week forty people came for the meetings. In addition, Elly Amollo, the local contractor overseeing the building project at the village says the workers have become more industrious, hard-working, and they are even beginning to pray for each other.

Cheryl has been busy working at the office, but help has arrived. Ruth from Manchester, England, just came back to Eldoret this week. Cheryl had been overseeing Ruth's job as the Operations Director for Open Arms while she's been gone for the past four months but now that she is back, Cheryl and Ruth are sharing duties much to the relief of both of them. In addition, another couple from England, Dave and Linda Munsie, arrived a month ago, and Linda has been helping to improve the accounting systems for the Open Arms office and Dave has been overseeing the construction at the village allowing Matt a little more time to work on more projects.

Nevertheless, this weekend, Matt and Cheryl are relaxing, catching up on some reading, some blogging, and a little well reserved rest. We will keep you updated on our adventures and events at the village soon.

Kwahere,

Matt and Cheryl Tallman