I am not giving up!

Ah! Last week I had a long post written and then the internet crashed!! Its very frustrating because I dont get on that often and then the last three times I have either the internet goes out or the power. I'll try to remember all I wrote...

I decided I am not giving up on the orphanage. Even though half of me cant put up with the abuse and unloving nature of it the other half of me is pulling for the kids. Of course the side with the kids won. The kids put up with the abuse for way too long so I owe it to them to be a bright spot in their day for a least a few weeks. It it just frustrating to me because instead of asking a child to stand up they smack them on the head and pull them up, makes me think of Peter Cotton Tail. I had to stop myself from yelling at one of the ladies the other day because she pinched this child until he cried for to me looked like no reason at all!! I am trying to find when it is my place to say something and when I can try to jump into the situation before the women and etc. etc.

I am starting to get down the children's names but its hard with the accent when they say them and then not being able to ask anyone. It took the older kindergarten boys a few days to come around but they like me just fine now. One of the older boys named God Blessed, who is nicknamed Goddy, has become my buddy. We sat outside one day and sang songs, counted, went over body parts, all in both English and Kiswahili so it was neat to teach each other that way. I taught them a song in Kiswahili (Moto Yesu which is Baby Jesus) and they sing it to me all the time now. Goddy has also helped me learn a few names but he was a lisp so its another difficult factor in there!

I stay with the same group of about 16 kids (age 2-5) and during play time there are about 30 kids I am with along with 2 or 3 of the ladies. The schedule goes like this... morning play time, milk at 10, playtime again, lunch around 11, nap time little kids, kindergarten lunch time when they come back from school at 12ish, nap time for them, milk at 2, play time, bath time at 4, then dinner. All playtime is outside and there are swings (a favorite), slides (not a favorite at all), a big climbing thing (older kids territory), and a merry-go-round thing (also a fav). It is nice to be outside but they dont bring any toys out for the children so it is always playing with sticks and dirt. I am constantly on the look out for children eating dirt and licking things. Ah a few of them always eat dirt and suck on sticks!!

My group of 16 is mostly boys with a few young girls. There were two girls that I use to always be with but this week they are in the group with all the other girls so I dont see them as much which is sad. Usta was my one that always had a runny nose so we had a sign I would give her when it got bad then she would use her shirt and wipe it. The other was Rachel was scared of me at first but then came around and always wanted to hold my hand.

I dont think I will have many pictures from Upendo Childrens Home as opposed to Happy Life. I asked the head sister last week if it was alright for me to take pictures as I am the only volunteer I wanted to check protocall first. She said if I asked permission. In the most sincere and nonsarcastic voice I could use I said "you want me to ask the children to take their picture?" She replied by asking why I wanted pictures which I simply said "ya know to show friends at home who Musa is, etc." She said "oh well then thats okay just make sure their noses are clean." (All the children have runny noses and they never get wiped!!) Ahh this lady drives me crazy!! haha.

A few Tanz things...
-There doesnt seem to be a starvation problem in this part of Tanz as some of these are fat babies!! haha. Also some larger people around town. I am just not use to seeing that after everyone in Kenya was thin.
-I have gotten to see Mt. Kilimanjaro once when the clouds subsided and it was beautiful.
-There is a large Muslim population here and a mosque right behind our house so when Ramadan was going on (just ended Sunday) there was prayer chanting multiple times a day and lasted a while at night. I got use to it and kinda miss it now! haha.
-They have glass bottle Pepsi here!! Havent gotten to have it yet but have seen ads for it. Their sodas are also 350ml instead of 300ml- yay!

Moshi, Tanzania

I have made it Moshi just fine! The internet here is not as easy to get to so may only be able to access it once or twice a week. The bus ride from Nairboi was amazing and interesting. The roads, if you wanna call them that, were mostly dirt and incredibly bumpy!! I made sure I booked a window seat and stayed awake the whole time. I saw a few zebra and gazelle off in the distance as well as many Masaai. They were the most interesting part of the trip but I had trouble getting picutres of them because they always seemed to be on the other side of the road! We would be driving along and there was nothing for miles and the all of a sudden a few Masaai would being walking from nowhere to nowhere. Also after areas of nothing you would see a small village of their huts, ah it was just fascinating.

Moshi is a very different place than Nairboi and Tanzania is very different than Kenya. There is a lot of vegitation and everything is green and there is not a ton of dust and dirt. This is mainly because of Mt. Kilimanjaro as Moshi is at the base of it. Due to this there are also a lot more mazungu here. You will also see Masaai walking around town in their traditional dress whcih is always neat. The town is not a big city like Nairboi. It has that "small town" feel to it and is very quant and cute! There are tons of tailors on the sidewalks with their peddle Singers and chatting away. People here speak Kiswahili with very few knowing fluent English but some speak bits of it. There are not tribal issues here as there are in Kenya. It is a lot safer and I feel prefectly comfortable walking by myself as I did not feel that much in Nairboi. Instead of matatus they have "dala-dalas." They aren't "pimped out" as much as matatus and rarely have music and would never dream of TVs. They don't have rules about how many people can be in them and yesterday I was in one that seated 15 comfortably and had 25 instead. I have had to stand once already haha.

The house we live in is very nice. I have a shower!! It is cold but hey its a step up. It does take about a half hour to walk from the main road to the house though. There are still power shortages and they dont happen on a schedule so last night it went off at 7:30pm and was still off when I went to bed around 11. It is odd to have it go off at night because during the day I dont seem to notice it as there is plenty of sunlight but at night its reading by a kerosine lamp! There is always power though when the president is around. His Moshi house is on the same street as us (it stops being paved right after his land haha). The second day I was here I actually saw him drive by in his convoy of cars. It was quite interesting as no one waved or cheered or did anything as they would in America. The host dad is orginially from Kenya and he as well did not understand the reservations of people around us so he waved and the president waved back at us.

I found myself a bit taken back at the orphanage and these babies are blump and very well feed! Hunger does not seem to be as big of an issue here as Kenya. The orphanage I am at is interesting. No one speaks fluent English so I go the whole day without talking to anyone (can you imagine that?!) which gets very lonely. I try to do what I can to help out but no one seems to give me much direction or want to include me. I'm not sure what to think yet and am going to give it another week. They have a school that the older kids go to and I am hoping to try that out next week and see if that is any better. Their ideas on raising children are a bit different and hard for me to get use to as well. The head sister (it is run by Catholic nuns) told me not to hold the children as it was not good for them and they would then long to be held all the time and get jealous of each other. As I understand her view I also think that children need to feel loved and I they should all be held for periods of time to feel that. It is just very different from the last place I was at as they were all about giving the children as much love as possible and here it is more of just teaching the children to survive on their own. The other thing I have trouble with is the way their potty train. They take the small children out of diapers and directly into only using small toilets they put on the floor but often when it is not potty time they just wet themselves. They have no transition period and expect them to go straight from one to the other. Ah I am sorry I am babbling now but its hard when I have so much to say and no one to listen!! haha. I pray things will get better and that I will find some clamness in all of this.

Jennifer enda

In Kiswahili “enda” means “go” so the term “Jennifer enda” is what was said with the kids today as I said bye to them. On Friday one of the moms told the children that I was leaving and I definitely shed some tears even though I didn’t know exactly what was being said. Today I went back to the orphanage to hang out with the kids one last time and say good-bye. Fred (age 4) asked me where I was going and I told him Tanzania. He asked where it was and I told him right below Kenya but one of the other volunteers would show him a map and point it out in class tomorrow. Later he asked me again where I was going and I told him Tanzania. This time he said he wanted to go to Tanzania.

It is certainly hard to say good-bye to Kenya after living here for three months. I have seen changes in the children. Mark (age 4) would never warm up to anyone, would never listen to the volunteers, etc. and now he is wanting to be held by us and giving us kisses. I often go into the children’s bedrooms and give them kisses before naptime. Anne (age 4) is a little slow and has some learning disabilities; she used to not understand the concept of kissing my cheek and would just touch cheeks. This week she gave me a real kiss and made a “muah” noise! It was so exciting.

I have grown incredibly attached to these children and will constantly be Emailing people at the home for updates on them and praying that they all find loving homes. Baby Jennifer has even grown so attached to me in the six weeks she has been there it’s so hard to let her go and everyone is interested to see how she will start to act without me around. As it is with me there she will cry if she sees me, and I am not with her. She will fuss if someone else tries to feed her while I am feeding another baby. Other people will try to hold her and she continues her cries. When I pick her up she immediately stops wailing and puts her head on my shoulder. I wish I could explain to you what it feels like but I think only those of you with children may be able to understand.

I have grown attached to this country and certainly feel as if I was living here and not just visiting for a short period. I have seen changes with people aside from the orphanage too. We took a new volunteer to the market yesterday, and I spent about an hour just standing with some guys that we have seen every time we go and chatted it up with them like we were old friends. On my way to work each day I always passed this group of seven or eight children playing and they used to simply yell “mazungu, mazungu” at me. Our interactions have developed and now they run up to me to exchange greetings and shake my hand before going about our seperate ways.

So needless to say this weekend was full of goodbyes. I use my taxi driver, Jimmy, one last time. I took one last ride with my favorite boda-boda driver, Joseph. There was a night out with the girls with a Kenyan volunteer from the home, Kaiza and her friends (where we were at a concert and I was interviewed by the news haha). We took a family picture as my host family has called me their “oldest daughter.” There have been many hugs, many kisses, and many times saying “nakupenda” (I love you) with people that will forever remain in my heart.

I want to leave you and my writing about Kenya with a few things I have learned from the past three months:
- one tube of toothpaste lasts exactly twelve weeks
- clean is a relative term
- a child laughing is one of the best sounds in the world
- having seven four-year-olds run at you yelling your name and knocking you
over with hugs is one of the best feelings in the world
- if you go into any situation with no expectations you will be pleasantly surprised
- things are much easier with a little common sense, a sense of humor, and a smile
- carrying toilet paper and hand sanitizer is a good idea no matter where you are
- the only way to drink Coke is in a cold glass bottle
- people in the U.S. (including myself) are incredibly wasteful
- growing up in the U.S. made me very sheltered from world news and knowing
things about other countries

So it is "kwaheri" Kenya for now. Tomorrow morning I will be boarding a bus very early to travel to Tanzania. I am excited to see more of the countries that way. I feel as though I am starting all over again but also that these next three months are going to fly by. I know I am going to have more wonderful experiences, meet more awesome people, and fall in love with many more children.

Have you been counted??

That was the question all over the news this past week. The 5th national Keyan census was going on. It started on Monday night and ran all week. The way they do it here is that they have people called enumerators that come to everyone's homes and asks them the questions. They say it takes about 30 min to be interviewed. Bars and social spots were asked to close Monday night as the exercise began and they hoped to reached 90% of the population that first nigh. They also made Tuesday a public holiday for the same reason. I was really hoping to be home when they came to our house and get to be a part of it and see how it really worked. Well, as of Friday morning they hadn't made it to our house- yea they didn't make 90% by Tuesday at all!! haha. So anyways, I missed it while I was at work on Friday so kinda bummed about that but so interesting to see how they do things differently here.

Last week for dinner we had chicken right off the bones which is a rare occasion at the house. While in the middle of eating I turned to my house mom and asked if it was one of the chickens from the backyard. She said "yes, we killed it this afternoon." I know my family will be proud to hear my response was simply "thought so" and just kept eating without missing a beat! haha. I only share this because we once killed our own chickens when I was little, and I refused to eat them so mom had to use the meat in a soup and not tell me until days later.

On Saturday myself and the two other volunteers took the 12 older children on a field trip to see the Bomas of Kenya which is where they do different tribal dances. We spent friday night making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (no one else had ever had them but me the American! haha) and putting together sack lunches for everyone. Saturday morning We loaded the kids up in the van and set up for a long, fulfilling day! We had our picnic then went to play on the two jungle gyms that they have on site. It was so interesting because all the kids were very timid and did not just run right up to it like we had expected. Turns out they had never been on a large jungle gym like that before. We showed them the ways around and crawled through it all ourselves and that got them going. Some of them were still a little too scared of the slides though! After a lot of play time we went into the auditorium for the show. The kids loved the show and some even did a little dancing in their seat and one feel asleep because we missed afternoon nap! At the end they got one of the kids on stage to dance and then dragged me up there! It was quite comical. All in all it was a wonderful day and so much fun with the kids. I am so glad we were able to put this together for them.

With the babies we have been doing 'baby massages' and they seem to really enjoy it. Some of them get so tense from not moving around that much or getting that much play time that I think its really good for them. Chris is still very sick, and I continue to pray he will get better!! We are expecting 6 new babies this week so I can't wait to see them. For the older kids- we did a lot of painting with them last week. This was fun painting such as one day we lined the play pen with colored paper, put paint all over their feet and let them run across it. Oh what fun that was!! We have also been doing a lot of dancing and I have some really cute videos of that! The rewards chart is working out so well and all of them have improved. One of the ones that has had such good behavior lately, Sammy, is actually being adopted this week! He met his new parents yesterday morning and in the afternoon he kept saying "Sammy mommy and daddy!" Today they started their bonding and he just radiates smiles- its so good!!

Sunday evening Liuba had the three of us over for dinner. It was so sweet of her and her husband and we really enjoyed it. They live in a town not too far from work and in what would be equivalent to out apartment complexes. The homes are so different though because it literally is two rooms and then they share a bathroom with the compound. It was a very good evening and I know Liuba has really enjoyed having us a Happy Life.

It is such a hard week so far knowing that I am leaving the kids on Friday. I hopefully won't shed too many tears but I know I will miss all the babies smiles, hugging and kissing the kids, being literally knocked over by the big kids as they yell my name and run to my when they see me. Ah! Well I am going to enjoy this last week, hang out with some friends over the weekend then be off to Tanzania early Monday morning.