Mystery Meat In a Dung Hut

Bumping along a dusty, crumbling road with the window rolled down I sit in the front seat of Mama Martha's old boat. In the back sits Nicole and Elizabeth, a Maasai nurse from Martha's clinic. The trunk of the car is stocked with biscuits, water, juice and bread for the our visit to Maasailand and as we drive into the heart of the Ngong mountains I can feel the familiar excitement I get just before an adventure. The car turns around a sharp bend and then suddenly the horizon explodes into a magnificent display of mountains like I've never seen. Nicole is gasping in the back seat making me smile, I turn around to catch her expression and watch her snap endless shots out the open window. Mama Martha is pleased with our amazement and she begins to preach about God's glory and love in her beautiful African, motherly way. Cows crowd the road at points and the Maasai shepherds can be seen sitting underneath the scraggly trees scattered around the dry earth. Martha zooms along the roads dodging the potholes as they appear and Nicole and I stare contently out the window. Suddenly Martha takes a sharp turn right into the shoulder of the road and, feeling a little shocked at the erratic off roading, I hear Nicole question whether or not this is even a road. Mama Martha laughs and says yes, it is a road. The dirt path takes us to a quaint, little village and in the distance I see children standing under the shade of one of those magnificent trees that one always imagines when thinking of Africa.We pull the car underneath another, similar tree a short distance away and park in a cloud of dust. Moments later I am sitting in a lawn chair and being introduced to the members of the tribe. Our translators name is James and he looks to be of about 17 years of age. His father, he tells us, had 8 wives and 62 children. He is the youngest and the only one that has gone to high school. We smile and congratulate him as I inwardly am starring opened mouth. 62 children is a lot of children, it was like listening to a bible story or some other ancient tale that is too old to really comprehend but there you have it. The women were beautiful, wearing layers of colourful clothe strewn elegantly over their skinny arms and backs. Theirs ears, as was tradition, were decorated with beads. The lobes of the older ones ears had been punctured with a knife and then stretched out to an impressing length. The larger the lobe the more experience the women had. Mama Martha was launching into another powerful sermon telling them that their children were equal to all the children of the world and they deserved education just like every other child. She then looked over to me indicating that it was my turn to stand and preach. I swallowed nervously eyeing the tribe elder that had just joined us. I stood and started preaching, stopping after every sentence so that James could translate for me. They seemed to enjoy it any ways. My age is cancelled out by my colour and they drink every word I speak and then clap for me when I finish. It was simply invigorating! I feel like a true missionary now that I've preached to a remote African tribe but at the same time humbled because they, in many senses, are so much more in tune and in love with God then I. Next, after handing out food to the adorable children and listening to them sing to us, we headed over to the dung huts to my great, great pleasure. How many times have I envisioned myself sitting in a dung hut and now I am passing through the threshold of one! We sit on wooden benches and I run my hand on the wall of the hut. Its very dark inside and quite a few degrees cooler. James explains that the dung/mud mixture is both a shield from the sun and a water proof seal. Its hard to see but Martha points to the side and says that there is a kitchen in that area. Two Maasai figures hand out a meal containing some chipotle and potato meat mash. This was the challenge that I had been destined to face since my arrival. The mystery meat. In the dim light I push the lumps around with an old tin spoon. Lump by lump I slowly masticate and, tilting my head back with closed eyes, I try to keep what had already been swallowed down...
The entire day was amazing and spiritually rejuvenating. From the sites to the company to the tribal education I received, I shall never forget any of it. In fact, now that I have the low down on how to make those huts I think I'll be ordering a load of cow dung upon my return.

Five people live in this dung hut

A Real African Experience

So Antony, a teacher at Compass Foundation sent an email to me a few days ago asking if I would go over to his house for supper to meet his wife, Jane, and " spiritual" son, Daniel (a kid that Antony had taken under wing. Daniel is about 19 and lives in a very poor region of Nairobi). And so I emailed Antony back and affirming that Nicole and I would definitely like to go.We had decided on Tuesday so that se could work for the day at compass and then walk home with Antony after school. The first activity of the day, we had decided, was to teach the class without a teacher an English lesson. So we spent the morning in the staff room preparing our lesson. I was tracing a body on a large sheet of paper and making lables for the kids to place onto the body and Nicole was making a list of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Our minds were filled with visions of cute, little, well behaved children waiting with baited breath to catch our every word. The term "wishful thinking" has never been more appropriately used. It turns out that us mzungus, the term for white people, were more of a novelty toy than a object of respect. Of course it didn't help that the class without a teacher that day happened to be the pre-unit class (equivalent to sk). The children were quite literally hanging off the ceiling, boucing off the thin plywood walls and screaming to the best of their ability and all the while Nicole and I were "teaching" our lesson. Thankfully the clouds had taken on a threatening look and so school was ended early so that the children could get a head start home before the rain hit. At 2:30 we were walking down the dirt road laughing about the day and chattering about African rains and then suddenly, about two steps down the back road, it began to pour huge droplets of rain. Nicole and I were all set to continue on since that morning we had purchased "gum boots" (the Kenyan rubber boot) and were eager to splash through the muddy puddles Antony assured us the best idea was to take the Mutatu since it was about a 20 minute walk. The Mutatu was crowded and steamy in the humid atmosphere that the rain had created and Nicole was half sitting on my lap. Everynow and then I would catch a glimpse out of the window between the many heads blocking my view and the foggy window and see gushing, red rivers flowing out of the ditches right across the road. It was wonderful and a complete new experience! Soon the road had become to conjested to move and so the three of us squeezed out of the van and began trekking through the sheets of rain happily. The area of town was just a wee bit sketchy and, if the circumstances had been different, I would have felt uneasy because we were the only white people for miles so naturally we attracted alot of attention. The rain was our gaurd, however, ushering all of the locals under tin roofs and creating numerous rushing rivers between us and any of the potential dangers. We were laughing and carrying on as if we had never seen rain before (and indeed, we had never seen rain like THIS before) it must have been quite a sight. Once inside Antony's quaint little house we were served popcorn and ground nuts (peanuts) while awaiting the return of his wife and Daniel. They arrived a little while later and Jane went into the kitchen to prepare our traditional Kenyan meal leaving Antony, Daniel, Nicole and I to chat about Canada, snow, rain, sports and just about everything else. It was extremely enjoyable and they even gave us our very own African names which every true Kenyan has. Mine is Nyambura which means, quite appropriatly, child of the rain. The meal was just as it promised to be, different. We ate with our hands (to Antony, Jane and Daniel's great enjoyment, we were down right horrible at it) which created a great mess and my foggy glasses were still stored in Nicole's purse and so I was not quite sure of what I was putting into my mouth at times. The meal consisted of ugali (like a thick, creamy porridge that has been left for a day in the pot and turned into a thick clump) and sukumuwiki (spinach, except much tastier) mixed with a very tough meat that they claimed was pork chops. Whatever it really was it was like chewing on a shoe that had bones and fat attached to it and I seemed to get all the bones. And the ex-vegetarians stomach turned as she politely nibbled... But I was saved by the bell, hands covered in juicy spinach my cell phone rang. It was my aunt Lois proclaiming that she had not been thinking earlier, she would have to come very soon to pick us up because driving in the dark at Dagaretti (the small area's name) when you are white is not a smart idea. So we hopped onto a mutatu with Danial and Antony and headed out to meet my worried aunt. When we met her at the pre-determined junction we jogged quickly racing the darkness. It was slow going, the roads were narrow and for some reason a place of night life fellowship, crowds of people were engulphing the car and at one point we were going so slow that a guy in a wheel chair passed us hahah but, we got home safely and the evening was so much fun, I shall remember it forever.

The Cake Day

When Anastasia, the head mistress of Compass Foundation, was explaining different things about the school to us, she came to the kitchen where she picked up these little tin bowls shaped as hearts. She told us that they used to bake cakes for the children before they ran out of funding for the ingredients. So now the children get one very conservative scoop of beans and maiz a day which, for some of them, is all they may recieve until the next day. I just couldn't get my mind off these cakes and before we left I made sure to ask Anastasia for the ingredients. I had decided that I wanted to bring back the cakes, even if for just one day as a special treat and all the ingredients came to under fifteen dollars in which Nicole and I split. It's amazing, you can literally feed an army of children for fifteen bucks. When I had envisioned the children feasting on the delicious little cakes I never really thought of the preperation and who would do the brunt of the work. Turns out that we were. And the conditions? Well lets just say they were like nothing you'ld ever find in Canada. The kitchen is the most backward and shack-like thing you can imagine. Constructed with a tin roof and walls held together with a basic wood frame and one window (and not a window with glass haha heavens no! I guess it's more of a square hole with planks of wood on hinges if one so desired to close the window) cut jaggedly into the tin wall. Theres also a point of entry (a larger hole) but other than that there is no ventilation. The kitchen contains: a double burner stove, a fire heated oven, three wooden tables for food prep and counter space (one on each wall, except for the wall with the stove and oven, which left a considerably small amount of walking space) and a small closest filled with broken cleaning tools and mismatched dishes etc. The first thing to do was get the fire started for the oven and stove so each was loaded up with long pieces of fire wood and the burning limbs hung rather dangerously out of the small fire compartments of the stove and oven. All the while the kitchen filled up with the vast amount of smoke produced from the fire. At first this was unmanageable, my eyes would tear up and my throat would burn to the point where I had to thrust myself out of the kitchen and gasp for fresh air. The cooks always got a good laugh out of that. The cooks, by the way, spoke no english so conversing was always full of hand gestures. There was one parent that was helping out, however, and she did speak English and sometimes translated for us. So the next arduous task was washing the ancient and long since used tins. Instead of placing the tins in the closest, the sensible place to put unused items, they had been littered on the counter tops but mostly on the floor behind the oven. And so along came the cooks with long straw brooms and swept out all the tins from the corner along with lumps of dirt and filth. Then the tins were carted out to another cook who scrubbed them in a tub of hot, soapless water. Once the tins were "clean" they  were brought back into the kitchen for our disposal. So while all this hustling and bustling was happening Nicole and I mixed the ingredients for our wonderful cakes. Three cups (a literal drinking cup) of Not For Sale Kenya Government Vegetable Oil which Anastasia supplied us with. Then 2 kg of sugar, 3 litres of milk, a kg of margerin, two packets of strawberry drink mix (for colour), three bags of flour, 12 eggs and lastly water measured out by the cooks. I think they added about three litres. The water, by the way, was brought in from a cart pulled by a donkey lead by a rather angsty Kenyan man. The water had to be purchased for 120 shillings, roughly a dollar fifty. The consistency of the mix was similar to that of pancake batter. The next task was not pretty. We had to oil each tin (fifty per batch) by hand. This government not for sale oil had become chunky and solid, down right revolting and even worse when you had to dip your fingers into it. Next we filled each tin with a table spoon of batter and popped it into the oven aall the while we would dash outside to breath fresh air whenever our lungs became to filled with smoke. When the first batch came out of the oven we realized we had not oiled the tins enough and so before we could use the tins agian we had to scrape the cake remnents out. I was handed a pair of broken scissors (from the ground haha) and Nicole a dull buck knife. The saying appropriate here is T.I.A or This Is Africa haha. Oil, fill, scrape, gasp for air, repeat, repeat, repeat.... We did this from 9:30 til 3:00. By the end of the day I hardly even noticed the smoke in the kitchen or the complete shade of black that my hands had taken on. The Swahili chatter from the cooks was really quite melodic. It was a true taste of Kenya. So just as we were finishing up with the last batch we began to hand out the treats! I felt like I was a disciple complaining to Jesus saying "there are still 200 children left to feed and we've already given away half of the cakes!" but miraculously there were over fifty cakes left at the end of the distribution. Thank-you God! And thus concludes the wonderful Cake Day.

                           
                                These pics should give you and idea of the kitchen and it the smoke



Compass Foundation

Ahhh finally I am no longer a tourest but an inwardly tormented and selfless missionary, haha well maybe not quite but this private school is filled to the brim with orphans and desperate stories has definitley changed me in many ways. Our first visit to Compass was right after a visit to a rather well funded- still filled with orphans but pumped up with hope, love and very bright futures for the children- orphanage. I was rather let down in some perverted way that Hanne's (this was the name of our first orphanage visit) was not filled with clearly visable problems for me to fix. I seemed to just stand there with a couple other visiting white people, just looking around and feeling rather invasive. So after about an hour of chatting with Hanne (a Canadian who had come down on vacation one day and then just stayed and built an orphanage) we piled back into the van and headed over to Compass Foundation and MY what a difference! Here is a place that is just crying out for the touch of an overly motivated white person. First off, the teachers haven't been payed for 3 months and are rapidly resigning. Then there's the classrooms. 300 children divided up into dilapetated and dangerous cinder block, tin roofed rooms with no electicity and and wooden trusses drooping so low that one feels the entire thing will likey fall down at any moment. They do have some beneficial parts to the roughly half an acre in size lot though. There's the garden, which hasn't recieved rain in about 5 months so... then there's the cute little rabbits... that all have fungal infections and are really more of counted on mouths to feed... ahh but the fish pond will pull through! That shallow little mud hole that has no way of filtering water in or out and has turned so thick with talapia poop and all sorts of stagnant algea growth that it has now taken on a rather ominous glowing, opaque greeness. I could go on but the conclusion is the school is about to implode, literally in some ways, upon itself. *sigh. I am sleepy and the thoughts of filthy, hopeless, little children are fogging my mind and making me rather melancholly so I think I will continue this yarn after a hopefully peacefull sleep.

The Matatu Ride

This adventure took place on the third day of being in Kenya. I had heard of these infamously crowded, privately owned, public modes of transportation from my sister and dad had decided, along with my prompting, that we should ride one before he left for home. So asking Flora our maid (yes, a maid is a luxury for any one and seems a strange thing for missionaries to have a maid but in hiring a maid my aunt and uncle have created a job and a relationship) how much she paid for a Matatu which turned out to be 20 shillings. So we gathered our coins and headed out to the red, dusty side of the road to wait for our Matatu. After about five minutes I saw the dusty trail of the speeding Matatu. It screeched its breaks for a looming speed bump and then sped towards us like we were some kind of prey that was likely to disappear any moment. I jumped out of the way to avoid being run over then caught a glimpse of the interior of the twelve seater van. There were three people in the very front, most likely the driver’s family since the front seats were portioned off from the rest of the van, then the rest of the seats in the van were full except for two and there was four of us waiting to get on. I smiled and was just about to comment on how this was going to be crazy but before the van even stopped the side door slid open and a eager looking Kenyan jumped out and ushered us quickly in. And so, squishing and crawling in not at all an eloquant manner, we made our way to the one available seat in the back row and then Nicole and I squeezed into it. Once the other two were in the door remained open for the “spotter”, the Kenyan who made the driver aware of where to stop and also collected the money, hung out of the open door beside another misplaced passenger. It was truly invigorating! We counted 18 people the way there and 19 the way back. When the Matatu stopped at the Nakumatt (Kenya’s equivalent to Wal-Mart) I saw the spotter engaged in conversation with dad: “ahh, this one’s very nice too. How much to let me have them?” Nicole and I chuckled the comment off, our first marriage proposal!

Safe and Sound

Hey everyone,
sorry this is a little delayed for those following this blog it's just been so hard to sit down and type when there is so much to explore and see!
So here's what happened so far; Nicole and I flew successfully from Kinross to Detroit to Amsterdam to Kenya. We survived the 40 minute ride from Kenya airport to AIU campus where we are currently living in a quaint little apartment. There is not only running water but hot water for those of you who may have been wondering. The plants are, perhaps, the most breathtaking objects of attention for their leaves are twice the size of anything growing in Canada and somtimes are covered in brilliant flowers

The roads would be the next thing to mention; first off, there is no paint on the roads or speed signs but to make up for the missing speed sings towering speed bumps are placed every few Km. There is also massive, consuming pot holes mottled around the dark asphalt roads acting as another slowing technique. The roads are also a couple of feet narrower and the vehicles are larger than what is the norm in Canada creating a rather hair rising experience. Any ways we are safe and completely in love with Gods creations!