It’s getting familiar! 11-21-09

Progress has been made this week. I am getting accustomed to driving here and no longer shriek if we have to go onto the shoulder of the road to avoid potholes or oncoming traffic. Indeed, sometimes the shoulder of the road is smoother than the road itself. I am also getting accustomed to passing bicyclist and other traffic with inches to spare.

We continue to deal with the water. We learned that the right faucet is for city water (when it’s running) and the left faucet… normally the hot water faucet… is for the water from the holding tank. It usually runs… but not this morning. We actually have NO hot water. That changed today, however! The electrician came and installed a shower head that heats the water before it comes out. Hurray!!! Hot water! We have been heating all our water with a 1.7 liter electric tea pot. It’s a marvelous invention. It heats water in about 3 minutes. We use it for heating dishwashing water, laundry water, face washing water. And we took several baths with water heated from that little tea pot. Before the water filter system was installed on Thursday, we would sometimes boil our water to drink with it.

I am learning that sometimes good enough is much better than trying for good. We put water in the tub for a bath and it was somewhat rusty looking. So we drained it to add fresh. It was VERY rusty!! And so were the next 8-10 tries. Ultimately we got back to sort of rusty and were pleased with that. It took from Saturday to Thursday to get the kitchen faucet changed so the filtration system could be hooked on. The faucet leaked. It still leaks. But I’m a little hesitant to ask for improvement. I could be without a kitchen faucet at all for a while.

People here are wonderful. Really genuinely helpful and kind. Brother Morrice went looking for a dresser and book shelf for us. The native price is always much lower than the Mazinga (white, foreigner) price so we sent him to look in the market place. He found a great deal for us and we went to pick it up. We met Bro. Morrice at a gas station outside of the market place. He lead us, on his bike, through a maze of stalls. As we drove down the narrow rut, I was afraid we’d drive over the feet of people sitting along the side. People kindly moved bikes, boards, and other things out of the way so we could pass. I thought, no truck has ever been into the bowel of this market… and then I’d see a car or truck parked off to the side and so I took fresh courage that we might indeed get both in and out. We went past the furniture building shops with people planning wood (with no safety guards), mounds of wood shavings, and the bones of upholstered chairs and sofas. Finally we stopped and got our dresser. The book shelf person wasn’t there, so Morrice said he’d deliver it on his bike! And he did.

I wanted to go food shopping at the market, too. So Morrice took us to the woman he shops from. We got carrots, potatoes, bell peppers, garlic, green bananas, sweet potatoes, and two mounds of African Greens. The seller gave us instructions on how to cook them—de-stem the leaves, boil for 10 minutes, fry some onions and tomatoes, then add the cooked greens with some oil. It tasted pretty good—a lot like spinach plus onions and tomatoes. All those vegetables came to 250 Kshillings—a little over $3.

Thursday we drove to Eldoret, about 130 km away. It took 2.5 hours to get there. The roads invite a “leisurely” speed as slow traffic, potholes and “diversions” keep Tom an alert driver. A diversion is when they are repairing the road and so you simply drive around the repair on the shoulder of the road. Also, Kenyans love speed bumps!!! Every little village you come to has maybe 4-6 speed bumps before, during and after the town. Some are double or triple bumps. Maybe 1 in 10 is marked. We are getting better at seeing them BEFORE we go over them.

The drive was lovely! We went up into the Nandi Hills, through sugar plantations and tea plantations. It was green and beautiful. The camera can’t catch the rolling hills with more hills beyond and the crisp white clouds in the sky. The road was winding and every curve brought beautiful vistas. We carried one set of elders up with us, and another back down. We spent the night with the Littlefields in their beautiful 4 bedroom house with its own personal 24 hour guard, gardener, and carwasher. We went for Zone conference on Friday and had missionaries attending from Kisumu, Eldoret, and Kitala—about 28 in all. It was a spiritual feast. We have great people here. We had to leave a little early to get back to Kisumu before dark. [I will try to put in pictures later. at the internet Cafe they are SO slow to load.]

It’s not a good idea to be on the road after dark. Bikes don’t have reflectors, dark people don’t always wear white, cars have bright headlights, and cows, goats, and donkeys graze beside the road and sometimes wander across. In one town even in daylight, a bus was stopped, waiting for an errant goat to decide to get out of the way. We did get home (barely) before dark. Alas, our set of missionaries had left their apartment keys in the Eldoret Missionary’s apartment. So we had company Friday night to Saturday morning. They are good elders. They’ve been very helpful getting us settled. We were glad to help them out.

This morning (Saturday) we had leadership training for the leaders in the Kisumu branch. About 80% of the leaders have been members less than a year. The branch is only 4 months old. But the people are wonderful; spiritual, humble, open to be taught and to learn how they should lead and fulfill their callings. We talked about learning line-upon-line. How the Lord will take you from where you are and help you grow if you have desire, are humble, and obedient. About how we will make mistakes as we learn, but Heavenly Father knew that would happen and gave us repentance so we could change and improve. When we divided, Tom took the presidencies and I took the others and talked about being effective teachers—teaching with the spirit and using Elder Bednar’s counsel to 1. Identify key principles, 2. Call to action, 3. Promise blessings. It was fun to search the scriptures and have the class members find these things.

So life is good. I’ve relearned how to hand wash clothes, but hope to have a washer and dryer early next week. We’ve learned how to use an internet café and while their services are slow, they are much better than nothing. We hope to get a land line and DSL next week. However, in Kenya, everything takes longer. It just does. Get used to it. Today when we shopped, we actually felt competent as we searched the shelves for the customary things. What a joy to discover yeast, raisins, dates, and peanuts. Now if we’d just remembered to buy a can opener. Sigh. Did you know a powerful elder and a screw driver can do amazing things?

Oh! And we got curtains up. I can’t tell you how homey that makes things. No more black windows. We do have effective screens and so have not had much problem at all with mosquitoes. Somehow the measurements translated pretty well, but we ended up with the requisite number of curtains for the windows plus about ½ again as many. Fortunately I had not ordered for the office/guest bedroom and so we have nearly all the curtains we need for that room. I like the fabrics I chose. So things are good.

We think of you, even though we have not written much this past week. I hope to be able to upload this blog and the one written last Sunday. Thanks for your prayers.