Loving Life and Driving Through Zebras

Jambo!

It feels, once again, like a long time since I wrote on here! I have been thinking all week what to write about, but life here has settled into normal so there is less to write about.

I love life here. I love sharing the walking paths with cows- it is always interesting to see which ones expect me to get out of the way and which ones make way for me. All the animals are really calm here- probably because most of the people are calm- and you often see really little kids, maybe five years old, herding a bunch of really big cows along the roadside. I love seeing all the ingenuative ways that people use a motorbike- I saw a couch balanced and tied on the back of one the other day. Other times it is stacked high with bread or firewood or crates of chickens. I love walking and smelling the greenness of everything. After two years of drought, this year has brought many rains! So much so that it is getting to be too much. Flooding in other parts of the country has claimed 90 lives so far and there have been several major mud slides. The government has no money to help the people so 10s of thousands have been displaced and are walking around with their children and their possessions on their back until they find a place to stay. But in Molo, things get really wet, but the rain has been good. I love starting to hear my name called as I walk around and am recognized by one of the 150 kids at the school or some of the ladies from church. I love to sit with Lucy and Samuel and be part of their family every evening. I love the respect for each person that allows and celebrates personhood, even if it doesn’t ‘fit’ into normal, that I am trying to absorb as much as possible. I love eating bread with margarine every morning with a hot cup of tea. I love walking up the hill and being so high that I can see all around me and seeing all the tiny farms in the distance and enjoying the beauty of it all. I love the diversity in flowers and birds here (bird watching never made sense to me in Canada!). All in all, life is good.

My time here is going quickly, which is a first for being in Africa. Up until now, time has crawled and it felt like I had been here six months when it was only two. I am able to do computer work and organization at Chazon Children’s Centre, which is amazingly fun for me. They are putting up shelves next week in the office and the staff room so then I will also get to help organize those!! I finally feel like I am doing something that is using my talents and something where I can be productive. We are starting to prepare for a whole lot of volunteers coming this summer so I am working on the orientation manual and stuff like that. Lucy and Samuel are really good at making me feel like I am part of CCC, rather than just visiting.

I am thinking at this point that I will stay here at Chazon until I head back for home. It seems like there is enough work for me to keep busy and I fit here. I am going to head to Mombasa in a week or so to see something different and swim in the Indian Ocean. I went to Nairobi two weeks ago and on the way, I got to see zebra, right up beside the road! It was beautiful. I also went with Lucy’s sister to visit the volcano crater in a near by town and went to the entrance of a national park where I got to stand among baboons and monkeys. They are so fascinating to watch! I have a lot of cute pictures of the babies being carried around on the backs of the mothers. I got to see a lake in the distance with shores that were pink because of the flamingos that migrate there.

I have to laugh at myself- I keep thinking I am living in the mountains, but they are only hills. I was talking to Ronin this week for his birthday and I told him that I lived really high up. He also thought I lived in the mountains. I must be a prairie girl.  Well, I am headed off to market to buy groceries for the week. Have a great week, all my friends!