It's official...

I've gone national.

I *may* or may not have incredulously uttered the words, "Where did all these WHITE PEOPLE come from?" today.

I'm turning into a Rendille.

Today is a national holiday in Kenya - it's Moi Day. Moi was the second president of Kenya - he was actually a HUGE supporter of AIM missionaries, but that's a topic for a whole other post. Point is, each fall Tirrim Primary and Secondary schools hold a Culture Day on Moi Day. It's an opportunity for the kids to show off their Rendille culture to the community! (Which is all Rendille too, but that's beside the point...)

Over a THOUSAND people were there. Traditional Rendille who walked up to 20 kilometers to come watch their son or daughter perform. We saw traditional prayers, a wedding ceremony acted out by the Class 1 kids, several different tribal dances, and even a rap performed in Swahili!

Our kids at the Secondary School performed three Samburu dances - 3/4 of our class is Samburu and not Rendille. (The Samburu are cattle herders while the Rendille are camel herders, and because of this they get along as their animals graze at different levels - grass for cattle vs. eye-level for camels.)

I think I'm beginning to understand why my mom took so many pictures at all of my dance competitions and volleyball games growing up. Alicia and I were straight up OBNOXIOUS trying to get pictures of our students...we defined the term "Mamarazzi" that Kendall so lovingly coined. I've never been so proud of a group of people in my entire life. They were the highlight of the day!

Seriously. They are WARRIORS! I forget that sometime. In school, all I seem them as are students - teenagers who have fought through every hardship imaginable just to have a chance at a real secondary education. They inspire me in more ways than I could ever, ever express. But all the while I still forget sometimes that we are in Africa, that they are African, that they belong to a tribe, and that these tribes have their own distinctive, unique cultures.

Until today!

Needless to say, Alicia and I LOOOOOOVED Culture DAY :) I think we took, what...1000 pictures between the two of us? No big.

But back to the beginning of my post - there were twelve Dutch people at Culture Day today. TWELVE. All looked very out of place in their trousers -women don't wear trousers in Korr- and REI shirts. (They were guests of honor as they are building a Primary School in Ngurunit, a neighboring town.)

They tripled the wazungu population today in Korr.

It was as soon as I finished saying it that I realized I've grown more comfortable here than I thought. We are (slowly) learning the language; we have met and made friends with some of the women at church - both traditional and English-speaking. People are slowly less and less acting shocked to see a mzungu wandering through town at midday as we make our way home from school. I looked at the date today and realized we've been here over FIVE WEEKS! Time really has flown by.

Despite the cultural barriers and lack of comforts from home I took for granted, this place is really starting to feel like a home away from home.

Kenyan School of Thought

Picture a pick up truck. There's nothing special about it...a regular-sized pickup with a regular-sized bed.

Got that picture in your head?

How many people you figure you can fit comfortably in the bed of this imaginary pickup?

If you're like me, you said something around 8. Maybe 9 or 10, if they're good friends and don't mind snuggling and your destination is a short distance away.

Now if you're Kenyan, you'd say 20 without any hesitation in your voice.

I'm serious. Today at our staff meeting we were talking about a retreat the students are hoping to go on next weekend. (In Kenya, "retreat" means "get out of Korr, eat something, and then drive back.")

Only problem is, we're in the desert. Middle-of-nowhere, there-are-no-paved-roads-for-MILES, desert. So when we leave Korr, we have to go far. Ngurunit is a town about 45 kilometers away from Korr, and where the students want to go for this retreat.

Keep in mind we don't have school buses here - the Rendille don't even know what that is. Rendille walk. They walk EVERYWHERE. Alicia and I have already been made fun of by our students for this.

"Madam, you cannot run 5 kilometers?" (We had been talking about charity 5ks back in the States) They all snicker amongst themselves.

God bless Jonathan: "It's okay Madam. If you can run 5 kilometers, you can surely walk 10!" Even Kakume, our principal, had this nonchalant response when he heard there is a missionary family in Ngurunit that wants us to come visit except we have no means of transportation: "Just walk there!" (Oh, yeah....a 45 kilometer stroll through the harsh desert where lions have been known to roam. NBD.)

The Rendille are straight up crazy sometimes. Case in point: we have no cell phone towers in Korr...but if you're desperate to talk on the phone, fear not! There's a mountain near Korr that if you climb to the very top of it - over the boulder-sized lava rocks and past all the puff adders, scorpions, and cobras - you can get a cell phone signal. People walk to it "all the time," we've been told. "It's not far, Madam!" our students say.

This mountain is 17 kilometers away from Korr.

Would you walk 17 kilometers and taunt death (or severe injury) just to talk on the phone? Would you walk for an hour and forty minutes under the beating, harsh desert sun just to use your cell?

Heck. No.

Some of the Rendille do it regularly!

But I digress.

20 people in the back of a pickup. No problem! It was comical to think about for me....the differences in Kenyan and American rationalities. All I could think about: How unsafe is this? How could we even FIT 20 people in one pickup bed? It's not a paved road we'll be driving on...it's a bumpy desert road. What if people fall out? Ngurunit is at least an hour's drive away! What if something happens in between Korr and Ngurunit? Will the truck be able to handle the weight of 20 people who will surely be standing in the bed and not sitting?

Every Kenyan teacher: "Yeah. 20 is not a problem. There are 43 of us...so we only need two cars!" End. Of. Story.

TWO CARS FOR FORTY THREE PEOPLE.

One thing's for sure: I'm calling shotgun.

We all speak the same language after all

One of the first nights we were here a group came down from Kalacha – another mission station about 3-4 hours from here – to learn more about the literacy program Nick & Lynne started in Korr. Lynne figured that there’s no one better to hear from about how the literacy program can bring people to Christ than from someone who actually accepted Christ through the literacy program, so we trekked to a goob just outside of Korr to visit Nariyo.

Nariyo is a woman here in Korr that LOVES the Lord. I say that in capital letters because I have never met anyone who exemplifies Christ in every single one of her actions like Nariyo does. She is a passionate, humble, ardent follower of Jesus – she spends her time trekking out to many of the goobs surrounding Korr with other Rendille believers to share the Gospel and try to explain to the Rendille just how knowing Christ has completely changed her life.

We came upon Nariyo’s goob in Grant & Loki’s Land Rover at dusk – 9-10 people packed in to a 7 seat vehicle (you know, the African way). We parked the van and trekked across the lugga (a dried riverbed) to enter the goob so the Kalacha people could meet Nariyo. A group of wazungu can attract quite a crowd, so we decided to move outside the goob to talk to Nariyo; it was quickly decided that the lugga would be the best place to talk.

As the sun set, the stars came out in the sky and with a cool breeze at our backs, we listened to Nariyo speak with such passion and conviction of how the literacy program had led her to know the Lord and how much of a difference it made in her life. I couldn’t understand a WORD she was saying in Rendille – Nick was translating for the rest of us - but I clearly understood the message she was conveying to Nick.

Jesus saves.

Being here with the Rendille makes me feel like I’m back in the Old Testament. The Rendille still make sacrifices to their god; they refuse to eat many animals because they are ‘unclean.’ Many Rendille Christians are shunned by members of their families because they refuse to participate in these ritual sacrifices after they are saved. How do you explain to all of these lost people that Christ is the ultimate sacrifice?

Nariyo and I may not speak the same verbal language, but we most definitely speak the same heart language. It is a language that speaks of this understanding – that Jesus died for us so that we may truly live.

We came back to visit Nariyo a few nights ago. Her brother is very, very sick – just like many of the people are here. The drought in Kenya has completely devastated many of the Rendille – they have no food and many of their animals are dying. (The Rendille are herders – camels, goats, donkeys, etc.) To make matters worse, sickness is running rampant in Korr. A cholera epidemic came through northern Kenya earlier this year (but not Korr, praise the Lord. A HUGE answer to prayer) – one of our new students at school lost both parents and his sister to cholera this past summer.

Nariyo's brother is a new Christian. He is a Rendille warrior, and his job is to herd and keep his animals safe and fed. The Rendille are one of the only tribes in northern Kenya whose land does not cross international borders - many of the tribes have "their" land in Ethiopia. It is much easier to get weapons in Ethiopia too. As a result many of these neighboring tribes use AK-47s as weapons while the Rendille only have their spears.

The Turkana raided Nariyo's brother and his fellow warriors one day when he was out in the bush. He was the only survivor. He came home and told Nariyo that he felt the bullets flying by all around him, but none hit him. Nariyo told him that it was because she prayed for his safety. Her brother was so perplexed and confused by this statement that he went out into the bush and sat for two days. Two days! At the end of the second day he came back and said to Nariyo, "You must tell me more about your God."

It is this same brother who is now very, very sick. Out here, being sick is not a good thing at all. There is no hospital in Korr – just a small dispensary run by the Catholics. Nick & Lynne have been sending their car on medical runs nearly every day these past week – people here are desperate for medical attention and they have almost no access to it. We heard the dispensary has seen over 150 people this past week- that is an enormous amount of people to be seen when there is not much medicine that can be given to them.

Please pray for the Rendille. There are tentative plans in the works to build a hospital in Korr, but it will take years before it is possible – if funding even comes through. It is heartbreaking to see so many people sick with diseases and ailments that are treatable – that is, if they had adequate medical attention. Fuel costs are sky high up here and Nick & Lynne cannot afford to pay out of their own pockets the cost it takes to get these people adequate medical attention, but they do it anyway because if they don’t these people will die. There is essentially no government up here in the north – minimal funding ever makes it to these tribes. The people here are more scared of the police and the government – the ones who are supposed to be protecting them – than they are of neighboring tribes they are feuding with. There is no one up here to offer care to the Rendille…no one except the church.

How do we deny health care to people? What makes us “worthy” of medical attention? We complain about sky high health care costs in the States…at least we have access to doctors, even if it is expensive. At least we have hospitals that have qualified, trained doctors and nurses who can take care of their patients. I can’t even begin to share the atrocities I’ve heard about that occur in many “reputable” African hospitals. The entire situation is completely overwhelming.

Please pray for the Rendille.

How Bore-ing

A lot of people have asked me about the drinking water situation here. No, we don’t have running water. I take a bucket bath every night and Alicia and I each have basins in our room that we use to wash our faces and brush our teeth. I promise it sounds worse than it is, but oh how I do miss running water sometimes!

We get our drinking water and everything-else water from boreholes. A borehole is a well that’s been drilled down way way deep into one of the dried riverbeds around here. The water comes from so far down that it’s perfectly safe to drink, but it has…a taste. It tastes like a mixture between salt and metal…mmm. Thank goodness for Crystal Light!

Life here revolves around the sun – it’s up by 6:30 AM and it sets by 7:00 PM. “Sleeping in” is 7:00 AM – by that point the sun is so bright you’re not going to get any more sleep anyway. It is DARK at night here – so dark that you can see all the stars in the sky. We can see the Milky Way! I don’t miss the city lights when I can see a sky like this one every single night. By “missionary midnight” every night (9:00 PM) we’re well on our ways to going to sleep.

But back to the title of the blog entry – we have these *lovely* bugs here that are carpenter bees…or the African version of a carpenter bee. They bore holes in wood. Guess what? All of the supporting beams in our little house are wood. These bees seem to think that our support beams are their home. Alicia and I strongly disagree.

It would be fine if these bugs weren’t so stinking loud. Every morning at 6:00 they come in our open windows and start buzzing around, trying to find a hole that we haven’t duct-taped over in our feeble effort to tell them they aren’t welcome. A single bee buzzing in my room will wake me from the deepest slumber – it’s like an African alarm clock but it leaves a mess behind. I’ve managed to kill quite a few of them (so THAT’S why I packed those other shoes!) but they STILL KEEP COMING BACK. You’d think they would get the message when all of their buddies quit buzzing around…nope. There are a few persistent ones that will be dead soon…that is a promise.

If you get a chance this week, say hello to flushing toilets, chocolate chips, fresh fruits & vegetables, pants & shorts, reliable power sources, and high speed internet for me J

Reflections

The internet here is a little bit finicky. Meaning, if you don’t hear from me for a while, assume that no news is good news.

Warning: This post is allllll over the place. A few reflections on my first week in Korr:

In the past week I’ve managed to rip BOTH dresses I brought and one of my three skirts. Meaning, my students are going to see a whole lot of this stylish black and white skirt I bought from Ross that looks like it jumped straight out of the early 1980’s.

The only shoes I’ve really worn are my Chaco’s - the desert is ruthless and rough and will rip most shoes to shreds rather quickly. The other ones work well for killing bugs in our room, though.

We have a lizard that lives in our cho (toilet…latrine…whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t flush because it’s a hole in the ground. BUT we do have a toilet seat!). I’ve named her Bertha Junior – mainly because thinking that the giant lizard peering up at me from inside the cho or from behind the stack of toilet paper is a female somehow makes it less terrifying. I stopped trying to name the cockroaches and spiders a long time ago…too many to count. By “terrifying,” I mean I have this huge fear that one of the aforementioned creatures will crawl on me why I am trying to use the restroom. Most of the time this results in me using Nick & Lynne’s cho instead of taking the chance of a cockroach or spider crawling up my leg.

Some more shuffling of subjects occurred and now I’m teaching Geography instead of Chemistry…don’t worry though. I’m still teaching Kenyan History. I tried to explain the irony of an American teaching Kenyan History to my class the other day (because I find it HILARIOUS – they know more about it than I do) and they just stared at me blankly. Apparently American irony does not translate well into Kenyan irony.

Tirrim Secondary School – AIC’s first secondary school in the north. BIG deal – there aren’t that many secondary schools for kids to go to up here – especially Christian ones. Tirrim just opened in January, and we only have Form 1 (9th-ish grade) this year; we are hoping to add Form 2 this January. We have 32 students in Form 1 – 29 guys and 3 girls. They range in age from 14-27. They are the EXACT opposite of American students. Attentive…polite…studious…and they have SUCH a desire to learn. But the combination of soft Kenyan accents and too many eager students trying to answer my questions at once results in me saying a lot of “HUH?” “I’m sorry…WHAT did you say?” and “Whoa. Uh…could you say that again slower?”

Like for example – today we were talking about what the students eat for breakfast in the morning. “Kahawa!” they proudly told me.
“I’m sorry…kaha-what?”
“Coffee, Madam!”
A few exchanges later I figured out that kahawa is coffee in Swahili.
“Oh! Yes, Kenyan coffee is good. I drink Kenyan coffee back in the States!”
“Yes, Madam. Here we drink coffee from (soft mumbling)-opia.”
“Um…what?”
“Utopia!” (or so I heard)
(Me, trying to think fast and make sense of what I think I just heard) “You drink…Utopian coffee?”
“NO, Madam. ETHIOPIA! We have coffee from Ethiopia.”
(Cue me trying SO hard not to laugh and feeling like a complete fool) “OH. Ethiopia. Well, that makes sense.”
“YES, Madam. They are so near!” (The Ethiopian border is just a few hour’s north of Korr.)

I also catch myself using intelligent phrases like “between a rock and a hard place” and “a rule of thumb to go by,” as well as using the word “y’all” about every three sentences. None of my students understand what I’m saying, but they’re way too polite to tell me that.

There’s SO much more…I’ll be posting again soon. But for now, know this: the Lord is moving mightily here in this small desert town, and I am so humbled to be here to play a part in it.

I know what I'm teaching!

Are you ready for this?

For this term of school...

I will be teaching...

Chemistry and History/Government.

KENYAN History & Government.

Can we all just stop and laugh at the irony here? I came all the way from America to teach a classroom full of nomadic Kenyans the history of their own country. A country I had never been to until 9 days ago.

9 days does not make me an expert on Kenyan history!

I just might be the most under qualified person for this class in the school…no. Make that the COUNTRY. Yes, there are Kenyan teachers at our school…no, they’re not teaching History. Hilarious.

Not to mention that I haven’t taken a Chemistry class since my freshman year in college. Yes…that was FIVE years ago.

Alicia is teaching Geography and Business Studies. To the secondary students. Yeah…we’re in the same boat here.

School starts Monday. It’s Saturday night here. Looks like we’ve got a TON of reading and learning to do in the next 36 hours.

Good news is…any learning my students do will certainly not be attributed to me. These next three months will ONLY be successful because the Lord desired them to be so. It’s certainly a humbling yet secure place to be in…even though teaching two subjects which I know next to nothing about is being ANYTHING but secure.

Tirrim Secondary School – the school we’re teaching at – just started this past January at the beginning of the first term of school. (Kenyan school starts in January and ends in December. Three terms: January-March, May-July, and September-November. April, August, and December are their months off). This year we only have Form 1 (equivalent to 9^th grade). We have 31 students and one classroom that the teachers rotate through. There will be 6-7 teachers this term.

Thankfully, each student at Tirrim has a textbook each for every class they’re in (almost unheard of in Africa!)…and they’re in class a lot. School starts at 7:10 and ends around 5:00 each day. Then, the students have mandatory study hours from 7:30-9:00 PM three nights a week. PLUS…they have class on Saturday from 9:30-12:30. Crazy!

Not to us, O LORD, not to us

but to YOUR name be the glory

because of YOUR love and faithfulness.

[Psalm 115:1]

Tutaonana Nairobi...

A list of lasts that are happening tonight (at least, until the end of November when I come back down country):

- Last night in Nairobi

- Last time to wear pants for a while

- Last time to have running water and thus, a flushing toilet

- Last time to (possibly) eat veggies

- Last night to have a reliable power source for my laptop (and only connection to the "real world")

- Last time to have access to a cell phone

A list of firsts that are happening tomorrow:

- First time to fly on a small plane (I think it's an 8-seater...ish?)

- First time to ever step foot in Korr, a place that the Lord has been preparing me for since last October

- First time to hear Rendille spoken and meet a people I have grown to love without ever meeting in person

- First time to experience first-hand what God is doing in the desert of "Kenya B" (as it is lovingly referred to by the "Kenya A" people - south Kenya vs. north Kenya)

I'm excited, I'm terrified...I think I'm ready. Orientation has been overwhelming at times, but God has made it (yet again) abundantly clear we are completely in His will by being here. Just exactly how long, well...that hasn't been determined yet. But we are trusting that He will provide, just like He always has and will.

A few prayer requests:

- Safe travels tomorrow. The weather has been so temperamental in Nairobi since we've been here...70 degrees and sunny one day, 50s and rainy the next.

- That what the Lord has us bringing to Korr would make it there. (does that even make sense?) The plane tomorrow can only officially take 20kgs of luggage from each of us...I think we have upwards of 200kgs of luggage total. (Before you completely judge us...that's counting school supplies, supplies for us for a year, etc.) Thankfully there was another flight up to Korr yesterday that was able to take a good portion of our stuff, but we still have a decent amount left. I've been triaging my supplies for a few days now...figuring out what I won't need in the next three months, what I definitely need, etc.

- II Corinthians 5:7 - "For we walk by faith not by sight" has become true reality for us. We still don't know what we're teaching, or when school starts. Really the only details we know about the next four months is that we have a retreat in Kijabe November 27-December 1 that we'll probably go to. Other than that, we have no idea what our time will look like. Pray that we would trust God with ALL of the details - which really, isn't hard right now because we don't have any other choice :)

- Finally, for the new relationships that will be forming over the next few days - with the other missionaries, with the teachers in school, with our students, and with people in Korr.

Your prayers and support are SO appreciated. Please, please don't hesitate to call or email me - I would LOVE to hear what's going on in all of your lives! It's like having a piece of home with us here in Kenya...seriously. Call and leave me a voice mail if I don't answer, email me, facebook me, whatever. I will do my absolute best to respond to you as soon as I can :)