Home

It is so good to be home.

We left Nairobi Wednesday morning and arrived in Ghana around 12pm. We were carrying medications for the Ghana Village in our carry ons. We were concerned that we would be stopped and the medications would be confiscated. One of the ROS in Kenya reminded us that we should have the home office e-mail us the letter that they usually send to people bringing supplies. We got the letter. I was stopped in security as they saw the bottles on the scanner. There was no hassle, the Security person looked at the bottles and the letter and let me through. They didn't ask Elaine, but I was the one carrying the medicine in bottles.

We were met by the Health Care Nurse from the Ghana Rafiki Village, had lunch, went shopping and passed on the medicine. We filled our bags with newly required purchases.

The trip home was a midnight flight. We arrived in Atlanta at about 8 am and then on to Denver .

I am pretty tired. There were 13 flights in all jetways only in Ethiopia and the American flights. This meant going up and down the stairways, in and out of planes and terminals. Elaine would rope someone into carrying her bag up the stairways to board the plane. We walked through tarmacs to get to our plane or into the terminals. In Nairobi we had a long stairway to climb to get in and out of the terminal. When we left for Tanzania we could have easily boarded the wrong plane as there were 2 rows of people boarding planes. I have to admit it was rather strange boarding the Atlanta/Denver flight. It was full of white people.

In all we must have seen around 300 to 350 orphans, mama, employees and also some families of employees. We did general counts except in Kenya. This is all pretty tiring. The hardest part is all the plane changes, lugging heavy luggage in and out of countries. We kept saying were weren't going to shop anymore but we both did. There is a lot of the same stuff everywhere, but you can find beautiful and unique things. The best shopping is in the dusty market places where they try to sell you everything you look at. My best purchase was a giraffe carved from Rosewood for less than 20$ from a wood carver's shop in Tanzania. You can buy carved giraffes everywhere but the really nice ones are costly and hard to find. The one I bought was an unusual find.

As also we have a chuckle or two. When we went to the Mall in Kenya, our driver was asked by the security people at the mall if he was the driver for Madeline Albright. They thought Elaine was Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State under former President Clinton. Elaine didn't think that was too flattering. Apparently Madeline Albright had been in Kenya the previous week. I think the only similarity might be hair color. Elaine is much more attractive.

Other than our trip to Kilimanjaro, this was a working trip with some quick shopping trips. It was less stressful than the community clinics I have done. The people we saw were for the most part healthy, but there was a mama who had a tumor the size of a 6 month pregnancy that will need surgery. The good thing is that the tumor is benign. There was a sick 5 year old day student that walked 8 km to and from school. They wanted to bring her into the orphanage but found out she had a mother. There was a little boy that had just been admitted to the village who came to be seen several times with an allergic reaction that is believed to be from eggs.

It is hard to imagine the situations many of the day students come from. It is hard to imagine a little girl walking that distance to school, but people in Africa walk long distances. It is not unusual to see children walking along the roadsides, sometimes alone, sometimes with another child.

I marvel at how they can walk so tall that the can carry baskets and all kinds of stuff on their heads. It is mostly women and young girls who are carrying these loads. You see a lot of old bikes on the road. The roadways are filled with all sort of unusual sights from big open trucks hauling people from place to place to men pushing heavy carts.

Life in Africa is not easy for most of the people. There is much corruption in the governments but some of the leaders are really trying to help the people.

In Kenya, we met a young man who grow up in Kibara, one of the worst slum areas in the world. A missionary sponsored him to go to nursing school. He still lives in the area and is working with young HIV patients and wants to volunteer with Rafiki. He is a midwife. That may sound unusual for a man, but in some places in Africa when you go to nursing school they tell you what field you will be trained in. He was interesting to talk to. His goal is to go back to school to get a degree.

It takes me a while to process all I have seen and experienced. Africa is a reality check. It keeps life in prospective.

Count Down

When all is said and done we will have seen around 115 students and children here in Kenya. This is a busy Village. The children have grown a lot and some I can hardly recognize.

The rains have started. Things in the Village are green but outside it is muddy. Tonight we went to The Bible Fellowship Class. As we reached the church it started to rain. It poured. When we started our discussion groups we could hardly hear. It is hard enough understanding the Africans, even though they have a good command of English, but imagine trying to listen when rain is pounding on a tin roof.

We must have had about 10-15 minutes of heavy rain. It was still raining as we drove home.

The roads are a mess, worse than my first time in Kenya. They had put new roads in 2007 and now they are full of potholes. They are working on the roads but this area is pretty bad. The traffic is horrible and then there are people darting in and out of it. They also wear dark colors so between having to watch for potholes and people it is pretty scary at night. You have to be so careful.

The ROS forgot to call and let them know to let us in at the gate so we had to drive around for a while till they could get the key to let us in. It is also dangerous to be in a standing vehicle at night.

Wednesday morning we leave for home. We are tired and all the flying takes its toll. Pray for our safe return home and for us to finish strong.

Rakiki Village, Nairobi

One of the things I love about the Village in Kenya is the morning devotions. They are held on the steps of Kenyatta House. It once was the summer home of Jomo Kenyatta, the first prime minister of Kenya. We are staying in Wageni (Guest) House which was once the quarters for the guards. Devotions start at 7:15 and end at 8:00 in the morning. It is a time when the staff and employees come together for praise and worship and to ask for God's blessing upon our day.

The school assembly takes place in front of the house with the singing of the National anthem and an opening prayer. It is an impressive sight to see around 180 students dressed in maroon and Navy uniforms. The lower grades are in grey and maroon uniforms.

As I stood on the steps of Kenyatta house I was reminded of a very special blessing in Ethiopia. The children with their teachers, the mamas and assistants marched single file to greet us in the gazebo to say "thank you." These 4-5 year olds and a few 7 year olds recited the Apostle's Creed in understandable English. Then they sang, "I decided to Follow Jesus" in English and then in their native language.

This afternoon, also was one of the times that make this all worthwhile. Several of the students will be writing National exams next week. These exams will determine which colleges they will attend. They assembled in front of Kenyatta house for prayer. The younger students prayed for the older, cheering them on as they prepare to take the exams. These are the 8th grade day students who come from the surrounding villages. The Rafiki children are still too young and most are in the 4-6 grades. Most of the day students come from very poor or difficult circumstances. Some of the students are 18-22 years old. The chance for an education is very important to them.

The head teacher was in the clinic this morning with a bunch of sandpaper. It is traditional for the students to go to the place where they will write the exams and sandpaper the desk to make sure no one left any notes for cheating. Apparently if one is caught cheating the whole class fails.

Elaine and I are busy in the clinic. We have busy days tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday morning we head for home. This is the largest group of children. There are 97 children here plus about 87 day students. The majority of the boys were seen by another mini missionary doctor. We are mainly doing the girls and several new arrivals, one just came this last Tuesday. This afternoon Elaine gave the young girls a talk on Love, Sex and Infatuation.

We are enjoying some relaxing time and will be heading for dinner with one of the ROS couples in about a half an hour. Tomorrow, we plan to go into Nairobi to do a little shopping in the afternoon.

We received notice that we need use water sparingly as they are fixing some water lines in the city. It is affecting 80% of the city. We have water but must be careful. We stored up extra water last night. No shower tonight.

The rains have started and everything is green and beautiful in the Village. It is much cooler than I expected. I guess God is preparing me for the weather change when I get home.

It's hard to believe that we are in the home stretch.

Ethiopia Continued

Computer connections are a challenge.  I am in Nairobi now, but want to complete the Ethiopian adventure.

In Ethiopia it is 2003. They use the Julian calendar which is made up of 12 months of 30 days and a 13th month of 5 days and 6 days if a leap year.

We knew before we were picked up by the Village director that if we wanted to do any shopping we had to do it that day.  There are only 2 couples running the Village and one was on a short vacation. We were on the hunt for the small Ethiopian crosses but the silver place were we at last year was closed for remodeling.

We went back to a store we had been to last year but we had to make our way through a number of shops, all trying to sell us something.  It is hard walking through these shops as every where we turned someone wanted to shine our shoes, sell us phone cards or maps.  There was a child begging but in the background was a man encouraging him to follow us.  The village director told us to watch our purses.
We walked past a construction site.  There were workers hauling up dirt on stretcher like boards.  The hole was steep and deep.  There was no modern digging equipment.

We did a little shopping and went for lunch at the restaurant owned by the fellow from Seattle.

Thursday was spent getting settled into the Village.

When we were here a year ago there were no children at the village other than the staff's children. They were training mamas to care for the prospective children.  They got their first 2 children about 2 weeks after we left. Today they have 24 children, some had only been in the village about 2 weeks.  They also have several day students. There were about 27 employees that we saw including the mamas. The  four very young girls training to be mamas are all still there.  One is an assistant mama and 3 others each have 6 children under their care.  They have 3 national teachers and a national who is the right hand person for the Village Director,  5 guards,  5 cooks, 2 or 3 gardeners.

English is a big problem and communication is a challenge.  You tell someone something, you think they understand but they don't.  Birthdays, most people cannot tell you their birth year let alone the day they were born.  Most know their age so we used the Ethiopian calendar to figure out the year.

I would ask them to write their name but most seemed to think I could just spell their name.  They don't have names like "John Smith."  I suspect many cannot write.  The National who is the assistant director had a good command of English.  His name is  Million and his children have birthdays and also use our calendar for birth year. His daughter's name is Heaven (Ganet) Million. The last name of an individual is their father's name. He did most of the translating for us.

Prenatal care in Ethiopia is practically non existent.  Many families have lost a baby before birth. Immunizations are also an issue.  They do give the children Vitamin A.  Interestly, most of the eye checks were 20/20 vision.  They could read the smallest print.

The men do not marry until they are about 30 years of age or until they can support a wife. They are for the most part very poor.  If one member of a family is earning money other family members expect them to give them money.  Several of the workers have children in the day school.  We did physicals on their children.  It was a shock for me when I was getting a couple of kids ready for their physical that they did not have underwear  or what they had was tattered and worn.  This really bothered me.  If do this again I am going to put together some kites of underwear.   Toothbrushes are a big thing. We do come in with lots of toothbrushes, but underwear needs to be on the list.

The orphan children here adapt very well.  They are beautiful children.  We saw all of them on Friday.  Many of them had just had the experience of being immunized for polio.  As you can imagine, many of them were not to keen on seeing us.  Each child got an animal mask which gave them a lot of joy and us a lot of laughs.  They kept putting them on with the ears upside down.   They looked pretty comical.

Saturday morning they were all in the play area with their animal masks.  We laughed as I was trying to take a picture.  They kept moving toward me, finally someone got them to stay back so I could take the picture.  Then they all mobbed me  afterwards so they could see the picture.

Saturday and Sunday were very quiet.  Sunday the second family returned from vacation.  We finished our work Tuesday before noon and went into Addis with one of the families. They were going into Addis for their children's basketball game. Originally, were were going to leave for Addis on Wednesday, but this  saved a trip into town for them.  Addis is an hour an a half away, the roads are good but the traffic is scary.  The 6 children of the ROS families travel this everyday to school.  This makes for a lot of praying.

It is a different world in Addis.  The streets are lined with people selling all kinds of stuff, sunglasses, phone cards, shoe shines and also the beggars which seem to target any white person on the street.  It would seem that handing a few coins would be a kind thing, but if you did you would get mobbed.

We left Ethiopia and arrived at our destination outside Nairobi at about 6:45 pm.  They are doing a lot to improve the roads in Nairobi, but they have a ways to go.  There was a lot of detours because of construction.

The Village Director had a "light" dinner prepared, salad, fish, rice, vegetables and dessert.

Ethiopia

I am back to having some more Internet access.  We finished up in Ethiopia and now are in a hotel in Addis Abba.  It is interesting that in the 4 times we have stayed at this hotel we have been given the same room.

We arrived in Addis last Wednesday evening.  We had no trouble getting through the airport and to the hotel.  

I must admit we had a few chuckles getting here.  We flew up from Kilamanjaro on a big jet.  It was surprising as the airport in Kilamajaro  is not a large airport.  The good thing is we knew our luggage was on the plane as they had us point out our bags that were to be put on the plane. It was a long hike  up to board the plane as there was no sky way.  There were not too many on the flight to Nairobi. We stopped in Nairobi but had to stay on the plane.  Elaine had bought a carved Impala in the airport gift shop at Kilimanjaro.  Fortunately, we were able to secure an overhead bin on the plane in Kilimanjaro.  We did not want the Impala to fall out of the bin as others were boarding in Nairobi and were looking for overhead space. We kept stopping people from opening the bin.  One guy asked us if we had a chandelier in the bin.  He was originally from Seattle and went to Roosevelt High School.  He had overheard us talking about Seattle.  We were rather amused at how people were trying to get there luggage in some rather small  spaces.  One fellow was determined to get his bag into a bin that already had a large bag.  He succeeded.  

The trip to Ethiopia was uneventful except  we had a spectacular  view of the sun setting.  It was cool in Addis.  The shuttle from the hotel picked us up. Elaine and I with our 6 bags are the first in the shuttle.  They also had 5 men with their carry ons get on the shuttle. That took a bit of organizing getting everyone in  and rearranging luggage. One guy had his luggage on his lap. As luck would have it, ours was the first stop and we are at the back of the shuttle.   Several of them had to get out to let Elaine and I off at our hotel .  They definitely had much more room for their luggage once we got out.

In the morning we hit the shopping mall and the silver shop, bought some coffee and headed back to wait for our ride to Mojo.

I will stop for now as my computer battery is low and I do not have the right adapter to charge it.  By the way it is 2003 here.