Pie Day, Future Cheer Leaders, and other Kenyan News

Just saying hi again from beautiful Eldoret, Kenya. We have had a great week in Kenya with beautiful sunny weather, a high of about 78 degrees during the day, and a low of about 55 degrees at night. While the rest of you are adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, there is none here. Not really a need for one. The sun rises and sets at the same time every day of the year: about 6:30 in the morning and 6:30 in the evening.

This weekend was a great weekend for food and a little play time with the babies. Diana dressed up like a little cheerleader and a future cheerleader for Open Arms Academy. I will have to forgive whoever gave her the miniature Ohio State cheerleading outfit, but it did look cute on her.

On Saturday evening we were preparing dinner and quite by chance realized that everything we ate was a form of a pie. Cheryl and Renee made some Shepherd's pie, and Rachel and Renee made peach pie and pumpkin pie for dessert. In addition, Elliott ordered pizza pie since he is a 19 year old teenager who doesn't like much else other than pizza. The irony of eating all this pie is that I suddenly realized it was already "pi day" in Tokyo (get it - pi day - 3/14 - March 14). The student ministry I used to lead would always celebrate "pi day" by gathering together and making and eating as many different types of pie as possible. Here we are in Kenya once again, accidentally, celebrating that wonderful tradition.

On Sunday we had more leftover pie for breakfast, and leftover Shepherd's Pie for dinner, but in between we went to the village and celebrated our weekly worship service with the children at the village. The children at the village help lead the worship and also helped lead some skits during the service. Matt delivered his fourth sermon of the week at the village, a little higher than average. Matt also spoke at to the children at the village a week earlier, spoke to the Open Arms staff at the Open Arms office in Eldoret on Monday, and spoke to the construction workers at the Open Arms village on Wednesday.

Today seems to be a catch up day for everything we didn't get enough of this weekend. I think I'll go back to bed for awhile and sleep off some of the extra pie I ate this weekend, but not before I have another piece of peach pie!

Blessings,

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

Our time in Mozambique, and Back to Kenya

Sorry we have neglected our blog site for the past three weeks, but we promise to be more diligent in the future. Quite frankly, we were enjoying our time of rest and relaxation in Mozambique to be concerned about writing things down in a blog. While most of the United States was being blanketed with successive snow storms during much of February we spent February 16 to February 27 on a sunny, warm beach in Pemba, Mozambique getting a sun tan, and enjoying all the amenities of a beautiful view staying in a beautiful hotel. Sometimes it really pays off to be doing missionary work in Africa!

Just before we left for Pemba, we had one last Sunday at the Open Arms Village with the children. Rachel Gallagher came with her mom to the village and we got to hand out new school backpacks for the children that a generous donor provided. Two year old Beatrice helped lead worship on Sunday morning, and Matt gave a sermon on the story of Gideon in the Bible. We also viewed the farm at the village, and got to see the new broiler chicken project at the village with the addition of over 100 chickens who will provide many future chicken dinners for the children at the village.

After one of many busy weekends along with dozens of extremely busy weeks in Eldoret, we really needed the rest in Pemba. We got a great deal on a beautiful 5-Star resort in Pemba right on the beach. Just sitting by the pool all day was as relaxing as it appears in these photos. One day we went snorkeling, another day we went shopping in Pemba, one day we went sea kayaking, and one day we walked around old-town Pemba, but most of the time we spent time at the pool or taking long walks on the beach. (Don't you just want to join us in Africa right now). While snorkeling we saw all sorts of tropical fish, coral reefs, and dolphins. While sea kayaking, we mostly saw a lot of waves, as both of us capsized while trying to exit or enter the surf.

We didn't see a lot of wildlife in Pemba, mostly the largest snails we have ever seen, lots of crabs on the beach, and on one late night stroll along the beach, we saw dozens of eels trying to apparently spawn in the tidepools during a full moon. They splashed around quite a bit when we approached the tidepools, but it was quite a site. We also saw the largest baobab trees we have ever seen (they apparently grow quite well along the coast of Mozambique and Madagascar).

After 12 days in Mozambique, we were rested and relaxed and ready to go back to Kenya. We stayed two more days in Nairobi before we headed back to Eldoret. The last night we were in Nairobi, we went and watched a movie in a movie theater for the first time in six months (there are no movie theaters in Eldoret but Nairobi has several of the dozen or so movie theaters in East Africa). We decided to watch Avatar in a beautiful theather (unfortunately it wasn't in 3-D so we'll have to wait until we come back to the US to see it in 3-D), and after 3 hours of sensory overload in the theater (the special effects were amazing), Matt took Cheryl to the Carnivore Restaurant in Nairobi for some gastronomical overload. Cheryl had never been to the Carnivore before but it is one of the most famous restaurants in East Africa for good reason. After they sat us down at the table, they began to pile roast beef, 3 types of chicken, 3 types of sausage, ostrich meat, crocodile meat, 3 types of pork, and probably a few other types of meat on our plate, until we finally said enough (not a place for vegetarians).

We arrived back in Eldoret on March 1, and we have been busy since then catching up on overseeing the Open Arms staff, hiring a new teacher at the school, a new staff employee at the office, overseeing construction at the village, selling eggs from the village, and introducting ourselves to the new children at the village. Before we left for Mozambique, the Open Arms Village had just brought Mary to the village and they had just hired a new set of house parents, Paul and Sarah Maswai. Now they have accepted four more children to the village: Desmond, Naomi, Rhoda, and Caleb. The number of children at the village is now at 31, with 3 babies at the home/office in Eldoret. With the new set of house parents, and a new orphanage home just completed (the Amani Home, which means "peace" in Kiswahili), the Open Arms Village will continue to grow rapidly over the next few months.

Other changes that occurred while we were in Mozambique included the addition of some furniture for the new orphanage homes. Rachel Gallagher and Renee Scobel purchased some carpets for the children's bedrooms and also some carpets, sofas, and chairs for the living rooms. In addition, washing machines, dining room tables, and other assorted items are helping to convert the Orphanage Houses into homes.

We wish all of you the best and we miss you, but right now we don't miss the cold, rainy weather back in Portland, and even more snow in other parts of the country. Come out and visit us this Spring or Summer. It stays warm (but not too warm) and sunny here in Eldoret year round.

Have a blessed week.

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

Going on Vacation and Other Assorted News

We are preparing to leave Kenya for a forced vacation, courtesy of the Kenyan immigration office. Not that we aren't complaining, we are actually looking forward to a little rest and relaxation. However, we were supposed to leave Kenya on Friday, heading for Tanzania, but a funny thing happened as we were about ready to head out of town. We knew that after six months were done we would have to leave Kenya for about a week or two, but we didn't know that Kenya had just changed their immigration laws in January requiring us to leave East Africa for a week or two if we wanted to return to Kenya.

Matt had already spent a great deal of time planning a vacation in Tanzania spending some time at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro and visiting some of the national parks to see some more scenery and wild animals. It is surprising how much harder it is to plan a vacation here since no travel search engines include the continent of Africa and no local travel agents cater to planning trips outside of Kenya. Nevertheless, Matt persevered to create the ideal itinerary only to be detoured after a brief visit to the local immigration office the day before we were planning to leave for Tanzania.

The detour has left us in Eldoret a few days longer, but rest assured we will leave Kenya before our visa expires. We were actually able to throw together another vacation at a beach on the coast of Mozambique. Nevertheless, we will be back in Kenya in two weeks with a new visa. Perhaps all this is for the best. We will probably enjoy a more relaxing vacation on a warm sunny beach and we won't run the risk of being eaten by lions in the Serengeti (Matt actually watched a movie a few years back where tourists ran out of fuel in the Serengeti and they consequently became a tasty meal for some local lions).

Speaking of tasty meals, Matt and Cheryl enjoyed a delicious Valentine's Day dinner today at Mamma Mia's Restaurant in Eldoret. It wasn't what Matt had quite envisioned, spending the evening looking into Cheryl's eyes at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, but it was nevertheless a romantic evening in Eldoret.

Things are progressing well at the Open Arms Village this week. We will be bringing on a new set of house parents, Paul and Sarah Maswai tomorrow. As they move into Home #4, we will prepare to accept 20 more children over the next few months. We are already planning on accepting 4 or 5 new children at the village in the next week.

We are also doing well at the school. We are planning on hiring one more teacher in the next few weeks to help prepare for the influx of new children at the village. Of course the babies are doing well also. We have had a lot of fun with all three babies back in the house. You'll enjoy this video of Baby Esther using the Johnny Jump Up to do a little dance.

There will be a lack of hands to help with the babies when Matt and Cheryl depart for Mozambique on Tuesday. Rachel's mom Miriam will be leaving on the same day which only leaves Renee to assist Rachel with three babies while we are gone. Please keep Rachel and Renee in your prayers as they will be knee deep in dirty diapers, formula, and baby wipes while we are gone.

Babies, buildings, beautiful views, and bodily hair follicles

It seems that as the weeks progress, our perspectives, or at least what we think is important has been altered by Africa.

Take ear hair for instance. When I was a young boy I was always fascinated by the amount of ear hair that my 7th grade social studies teacher could collect in one ear, or the one single long strand of hair on my mother's chin that, no matter how long I would stare at her chin, my mother seemed oblivious to my fascination (actually she was purposefully ignoring me so she could avoid the fact that she was going through menopause).

However, no matter how long I may try to ignore the fact that I am getting older, the reality is that I am growing hair everywhere except the top of my head. About two months and a half months ago, my electric razor and my beard and mustache trimmer both gave up the ghost during the same week, probably due to the fact that they didn't convert very well to 240V electricity under the East African system. I tried to strain as much battery power out of each of these devices as I possibly could, but after a few weeks nothing happened. I finally resorted to shaving with foam and a hand razor which was fine for most of my face, but did nothing for my neatly trimmed beard.

I went around Eldoret shopping for electric razors and beard trimmers that would be suitable for my purposes, but all I found was a 1950s era razor that was good for giving the top of my head a buzz cut (one that I already had due to the natural erosion caused by aging and alopecia) but it did nothing for my goatee style beard or worse yet my nose hair and ear hair. After a period in time, I had more hair in my nose and my ears than I had on top of my head, and my goatee became noticeably straggly and bushy. The other American and UK staff here began teasing me recently about the amount of hair in my ears, and my dear sweet wife Cheryl even noticeably reduced the amount of times she would kiss me on any given day due to my straggly beard or possible the sight of ear hairs poking out of the side of my head (To the Kenyan staff and other people we have encountered in Kenyan culture, they seem amazed that we kiss our spouses in public. Any public display of affection between spouses here is shunned upon culturally, but when they look at us kissing, they think we are just crazy wazungus (white people), and they shake their heads). May I say on the record right now, that I am a crazy wazungu, crazy in love with my wife, and I would like to kiss her when I can, but when my bushy hair was getting in the way, it was time to get serious about this issue.

I called Rachel Gallagher, whom I knew was coming in a matter of weeks, and explained my predicament, she agreed to purchase a nice mustache and beard trimmer (with a nose and ear hair trimming attachment) at Costco, and she brought it with her. After she arrived this week, she eventually placed the trimmer in my hands, and after much more ribbing and teasing about the length of my nose and ear hair, I charged up the trimmer (with an adapter so that I wouldn't burn out the battery) and I proceeded to trim my goatee, my nose, my ears, and my entire face. I even went to the local barber in Eldoret, and got a haircut (if I haven't mentioned it already, I get the best haircut I have ever had in my life, and all for only about $4 US dollars).

Having said, all this, I might mention that not one Kenyan bothered to notice or tease me about my scruffy beard, my nose hair, or my ear hair. Perhaps it's because they are too polite to comment; perhpas it's because they just don't care. There are more important things to comment on or talk about on a blog than ear hair or scraggly beards.


Which brings me to the more important parts of this blog. This week has been less hectic in many ways with the arrival of Rachel Gallagher. She has been dearly missed with her organizational and leadership skills. Things have been progressing with the building of new orphanage homes, new visitor cottages, staff housing, and the school at the Open Arms Village in the past week. We are just weeks, if not days away from completing our next two orphanage homes, although one of them will be temporarily used as a central office for Open Arms. We are also making significant progress on our visitor cottages which should be ready in time for summer teams that are coming to the Open Arms Village in a few months.



The school is continuing to progress nicely now that all the facilities and teachers are in place. We still have to think about starting a library at the school, and eventually, as the village grows with new homes, we will need to hire more teachers, but things seem to be going well with the school as it adjusts and grows.

Mary, whom I blogged about last week, is doing well. She is playing with the children, smiling, laughing, and going to school in the nursery school. She is doing well, and she seems very energetic and well adjusted in spite of what she has gone through in her four young years.

Since Rachel has been back, our lives have also been full of babies. All three babies, Diana, Esther, and Belle are back in the house again, and we have had our hands full. It has been a fun experience, and with the arrival of Rachel's mom, Miriam, we have had even more hands to care for and feed babies.

We got to begin this week with another trip to Cario View to admire the view of the Rift Valley and relax. Diana got to play in her very first inflatable playhouse while we enjoyed the view. Today, we are relaxing again, but just enjoying the view of Eldoret from our house. The dogs are out front relaxing and actually asleep (they save their noisy howling for late at night when we are deep asleep). The neighbor is building a new fence (probably to keep our dogs from sneaking into his yard). Sounds of all different birds are echoing from the windows of our house. It is relaxing...think I'll go take a nap. Bye for now, until next week.

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

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