revenge of the sheep

Kenya has a unique way of educating you. like if you want to know what matatu goes where, sometimes you must get on the wrong one. to learn what foods your body can't handle, you must get sick, and to love Africa, you must first hate it. the 2nd point relates to the title of this post. i planned an easter feast that i was very very giddy about. everyday i would look at the sheep who was going to be slaughtered and i would tell him, 'i love you, but your going to be food soon'. evil? maybe a little, true, of course. all i could think during the execution was that there would be good food for all the kids and me. i felt proud. until i cooked up my feast. the feast contained: liver and onions, fried heart with leg meat, and of course, rocky mountain oysters. it was frozen for 3 days, and i was very excited, i spent 3 hours prepping it, and it cooked just fine. but after eating the meals, we decided the meat had gone bad, except for the testes. the next day we paid for it, and tuesday i was in bed the whole day. we all reacted differently but i hated the feeling. revenge of the sheep i say. 

easter weekend was very fun, I gave the good friday message which made me very very happy to do and made me feel right at home. saturday we went into nairobi, but then sunday was the strangest day. at home, you all celebrated easter sunday, but not here. sunday was an average day. the main event is on monday. the reason behind this is that they want easter to be special, and since every person attends church on sunday already, make it even more special and do it monday. we were all sick for it, but it was interesting. the kids had a blast, they got tea and bread and butter in the morning, stew for lunch and dinner, and chapatis with their stew. they don't eat that well ever. we were so happy to give it to them, it was such a blessing to have them thank us for it, i almost cried. for about $70, we changed their whole weekend.

wednesday i got my visa renewed, fun process, like going to the dmv but with more english speakers working behind the counter (is that racist?). i found pepsi and snicker bars here, AHHHHH. so i spent a whopping $5 and bought as much as i could. Kenya is a coke dominated zone, so when i find pepsi hidden away like a refugee, i can only thank the lord, it's manna from heaven. my 3 month mark was thursday, which means that i have a little over a month till i return. idk how i feel about that. i love kenya, and i have made it my home and it has accepted me. it will be hard to leave. our internet took a header this week and won't work with our computer, so now i am at a cafe in nairobi that has free wifi, cheap food, and nice people. i am nursing cake and black coffee right now so they don't kick me out. 

school starts next week for the kids, which means i am back to teaching for my last month. i will be glad to see the kids who left again. but movie nights will have to stop. we watched a bootlegged version of diehard the other night, not a good movie for kids, but then we watched home alone and i felt a bit better about it. i buy bootlegged movies for the kids that are made for kids. Rango will be played tonight and it will be served with popcorn. very nice nite for the kids. 

your prayers are felt here, and the kids thank you for every prayer that you send their way. 

i love you all, naku pende. 

the past 7 days

well hello again. it has been a crazy past 7 days and after you read this entry, you will know why it was not posted sooner.

last friday-went into town to meet with some pastors for FMP. i get to a nice area called Nairobi Junction. full of whites. i open the door of my taxi, and accidently scratch the door next to me. the driver of this car get out and starts yelling at me, she's danish. she decides to call diplomatic security to figure this out. i am confused at what just happened at this point. security gets there, very mad that they had to come out for this. the option was work out a deal or they would do something. we worked out a price and i paid. i now regret this and would of rather dealt with diplomatic security. easy to say she was not my fav person of the day. i also left my house keys in the taxi i was in. bughhhh.

last saturday- a month before, we got invited to the wedding of the brother of one of the teachers we work with, the same one who taught us how to make samosas. we were so excited to go to a kenyan wedding. the wedding went for a pretty long time, but it was filled with lots of screaming and amens. the food was amazing, like most kenyan food is. the dancing was fun to watch and the traditions of the wedding. very very fun day.

last sunday-I gave the palm sunday message which i loved to do. I love holy week, so i treated it with as much care as possible. after service, we thought we were playing footbol. what really happened is that we saw a few chickens being carried off and we had to see what was happening. long story short i got a crash course in executing chickens, and dealing with the cleaning of the body. very very good stuff to know.

monday-wednesday-started interviewing teachers for the school, kinda fun, my butt fell asleep. i also bought an axe head for the school since all they had to split wood for the fires that heat the stoves was a sledgehammer. chopped all day wednesday and now my hands are thrashed. but so rewarding.

thursday- got the word that the sheep would be better off dead thursday then friday. hogtied the sheep, did the deed, let it drained and then got to work. work was going fine until the power went out. waited 30 min, came back on. as i am butchering it as carefully as possible, i was told it's not the kenyan way. the gardners came in and wrecked havoc on the body. organs were popped, the hide was in bad shape, a very gory scene that could of been avoided. but the meat is fine which is the most important thing i guess. i have a ziploc full of offal that is mine which will make a very nice easter meal plus a leg which i can never argue with. the kids will be able to eat sheep stew four times this weekend. my housemates bought a lot of things for the stew and chapati mix. we are so happy to be able to give to these kids as much as we are. when the kids thank you, it makes all the hard work that went into making it happen worth it.

good friday-sheep starts cooking today, and i get to cook too. i love cooking, so doing this will be fun. liver and onions are on the menu tomorrow, heart for lunch today, fried meat tonight. but whats even better is the fact that i am giving the good friday message today. like i said, holy week is my favorite. it's the one time of year where i dig into traditions of the church. i made a deal with my roommate that he can do the easter message if i get good friday. last year at olu i was blessed to be able to give the easter message which is still the high water mark of my life. easter here just fyi, is celebrated on Monday, not Sunday. don't ask why, we tried to find out and got very strange answers. but whatever.

i hope all of you have an very awesome easter weekend and are able to meditate on the true meaning of easter. i miss home right now cause i would love to eat ham and go to the cornerstone easter egg hunt, but this is where God put me, so im staying.

love you all.

Food and revalations

Hey everyone, heres blog post number 14.

the last week has been busy. I headed into Nairobi twice, bought a sheep, and learned to cook new foods. i noticed that i have not really talked about the food here as much as i should. so i will list out the foods that i have eaten, cooked, and learned to love.

-Chapati. i call them African tortillas, but in reality they are much better. it's very simple to make, mix flour and water till a dough is made, add oil, make them flat, and throw them in the pan till they brown on both sides. you can eat them with anything, but stew is the best to have with it. once and a while, we will get 3 left over chapatis and we consider it a major blessing if we do. i bought 3 massive ones in Nairobi on friday before i left. they are about the size of med. pizzas. they are an awesome food to eat.

-Samosas. before i came, i did not know much about samosas, other then the fact that they were real. when i got into kenya, it was like a rumor that samosas existed. i looked all over, but never found them. until saturday. my housemate and i took a trip down to one of the teachers houses, and she spent the day teaching us how to make samosas. it took a while, but were very well worth it. a samosa is ground beef that has been cooked with spices and then put into a dough pocket, and then fried. you can eat them with your hands as you walk. they are one of the best foods i have had here.

-Githeri. this one has grown a bit on me. its maize and beans, boiled together and then served. we have it everyday for lunch, and when i mean everyday, i mean everyday. other then the few rocks that find their way into the food, it's a fine dish to eat. once and a while, we will add an onion or tomato into it, or in my case, a beef stock cube. i don't know if i will miss it when i get back.

-Ugali. i am still trying to find a way to enjoy Ugali. i have tried a lot of things, but the only way is to just eat it. what you do is take maize, ground it down into a flour, and then add water. it's a heavy block of maize.

-Stew/rice. this is something that we love to make cause A) it's easy and B) it's cheap. you can put whatever you want into a stew, we put: goat, onions, garlic, tomatos, ginger, cilantro, beef stock cubes, and potatoes into it. put it over rice and it's heaven.

-Mandazies. this is considered an awesome treat here. it's fried dough. who can't love that? they are served with tea most of the time and bought in packs of 6-12. they are a nice snack and very cheap to buy.

those are the basic foods that I get my hands on here.

now for the other part of Kenya. The part that does not eat.

I can't walk down the road here with out seeing a child, i say "Jambo" they reply "give me food". I have had this happen so many times. after a while, it starts to hit you harder. I burned through a book last week called "under the overpass". the Author takes a few months of his life to see what it is like to live the homeless life. in it he describes the way that todays Christians in several cities ask him to leave, or walk right past him. but he also describes the way that several Christians in several cities dropped everything to help him. i then started to think of my own position right now, coming all the way across the world to do Gods will, but yet i am the person who walks by the homeless in Nairobi, who all they want it something to eat.

I made it my goal friday to at least try to tackle the issue. Instead of buying a piki piki ride up to junction to get a matatu, i used the 50 schillings to buy a pack of mandazies. so far so good, i also packed along with me tracts from FMP. not a bad touch. i was excited to make it into the city and help a little. they first man i see is holding to canes holding a cup asking for money. knowing that some will use money to buy booze or drugs, food is a much better option. i hand him the mandazi and the tract, told him God bless and moved to where i was going. as i continue to walk, a man starts to talk to me, this is normal for Nairobi, and i know what he is looking for. he talks about the struggle in the country he comes from, and then pops the question that most christians will have to face, "can you buy me rice?". this is the hardest thing to do. of course you want to buy him the rice, but you know if you buy him a bag, why not everyone else? I told him my problem with it, but handed him the mandazis, the whole bag that i thought would be shared with his family that he talked so much about. he then got mad, cause i would not buy him tea to go with it. i handed him a tract and walked away trying to figure out what just happend.

I have always been told by veterans of missions work never to buy anyone on the street anything, cause it will start a chain reaction that can't be stopped. it's like if you buy a mouse a cookie, they will want a glass of milk. those who know poverty, look at Americans as open bank accounts who drop money to the poor and sick. ministry takes a turn here, you want to love them all you can, but the money in your bank account can't handle some of it. you can't feed them all. When Jesus sees the huge group of people, and he wants to feed them, but only has a few fish and a few things of bread, he multiplys them, giving enough for everyone. I wish that could happen all the time, everywhere.

it's emotionally tough to have to say no, and you feel like a bad christian when you have to walk away. but it's the situation that you have to look at, and what will happen when you give in and buy the bag of rice. give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. they will always expect something from Americans who are here for missions, cause they know are hearts are soft, and our pockets are deep(sometimes). it's a harsh reality, that many can't fathom or conform to. i hear stories of missions groups that will toss money out of cars to the poor, or will start pumping money into the churches that have little. i sound like a horrible person for saying this, but it's the only way that ministry can really operate here. if i had millions, i would spend it on Kenya, but i don't and neither do most that come here for the same purpose. we can't fix the nation with money, but we can with God.

thats all i have to say about that.

March maddness and de-hairing

Um wow, crazy last few days, and by crazy i mean fun. i will avoid long chunks of writing and go for bullet points.

-my housemates and i were not able to do a march maddness bracket this year, but we all picked 1 team that would go all the way. i picked Uconn, my roommate picked KU and my last housemate never got around to picking one. well as we checked the bracket, we saw that KU and UCONN were doing really well. last week we found out they would play each other. we made a deal that whoever goes all the way and wins has to buy the other lunch in Nairobi. the original bet was a pineapple, but we upped the anty. so i checked today, and UCONN beat KU 56-55. now they have to beat butler and it will be mine.

-as a end of term gift to my favorite class, standard 5, i allowed them to shave my head. since my beard has grown out, most of the kids have said to shave both my head and face. i refused. but my roommate let his best class shave his, so i got mine done too. the standard 5 kids have never shaved a head before mine, so i have a few cuts on my head. but no worries. they thought it was a great time. pics on FB it you want to see. i am bald now, but have a beard. i look like jeff bridges in iron man.

-schools out. end of term was friday, so now a lot of the kids went back to families or guardians for the month of april . no school for a whole month is very nice. i feel like it's my own summer break or something. but this is my spring break, which i can like. we are planning trips to Nairobi and i have missions press buisness which will boom during that time.

-today is my half way mark. in 2 months i will be on a plane coming home. weird to think. we are supposed to have 3 new housemates from colorado coming in may, which that will be fun too.

-i am pretty sure i sprained my big toe. and i have a huge scar now from helping move heavy bags of building equipment.

well that is all i can think of right now. i will find something cool to write about this week.

score one for dixie.