I love Kenya! It’s so fun to listen to the sounds that make up our lives here. We have the swish of tires on gravel as the neighbor’s cars and trucks pull in. The impatient honking, and the clink of chain on the gate as the guard opens the gate. This goes on dozens of times a day… not the honking, the guard is usually pretty quick.
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The other neighbors have an elegant rooster with a broken time piece. He crows all day long. He seems to take delight in wandering on to our property to crow during sacrament meeting. Then we hear the scrush of raking leaves… but it’s the hen with her chicks scratching in our yard. I don’t mind. It cuts down on the weeds and the bugs. The chickens cackle and cluck and wander but are good about returning to their home at dusk.
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At night we hear the squeek, not of mice, but of bats as they find their meals. And we hear the scrunch of feet on gravel as our guard makes his rounds. Occasionally we hear the melody of his cell phone going off and his conversation in Swahili or “mother tongue” and we figure if we can hear him that easily, we’d better whisper.
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We learned at the beginning of our mission to listen for water: the sound of water running up stairs when someone left the tap open and city water started on again. Or of a toilet flushing continuously. Or the tap outside suddenly starting up again. Since we moved here, the water bill has dropped a great deal. We listen for the trickle of water echoing in the water tank that lets us know city water is on again. And I sometimes start in alarm when I hear the gush of water from our sink to the sewer… thinking water is running someplace where it should not. We also have the joy of the tap-tap or rattle-rattle of the rain on our tin roof. It’s only not quite so much a joy when laundry is still on the line.
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We’ve spoken of the AKK-AKK of the hamerkop or the heron. But we have the caw of pied crows, and the chirp of mouse birds that have long tails and hang from branches and lines instead of perching. We have whistles, songs, clicks, and trills of black and red birds and gray ones, and little yellow ones—most of whom refuse to come and perch close by so we can photo and identify them.
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We continue to be serenaded by the dogs in the yard behind us. They bark at dusk and a variety of other times. They howl at full moons and part moons and no moons at all. And I am sure the Lord has given me charity and I seldom think of poison. Very seldom. Almost never.
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From the street we sometimes hear the rumble of a truck and the took-took sound of the 2 cycled “tuk-tuks.” As I was trying to describe their sound, I realized where their name came from. These are 3 wheeled diesel powered golf-cart kinds of taxies that the missionaries use all the time. Close up, they are quiet loud. We hear the rumble of piki-pikis (motorcycle taxis), an occasional airplane, and the usual afternoon sounds of impending storms.
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Most days we hear the rustle of breeze through the draperies. We love the breeze! It cools things and makes the heat bearable. Sometimes the wind picks up and blows papers everywhere. Then we hear the SLAM! of doors blowing shut upstairs. Most have a block that fits in the door jam to keep the doors open even in the wind. When the wind picks up, we look for stormy weather. Some of our storms are spectacular. The mid afternoon begins with discrete, occasional rumblings. The sun is shining, but looking north you see a black line of clouds. After a time, the clouds become slate gray and the rumbling picks up. At times I may hear nearly constant booms, crashes, rumblings, and the shouts of an angry sky. Sometimes it turns into rain. Sometimes it recedes to grumbles and moves on. Sometimes you see a great flash and an amazing KA_BOOM and feel the house shake!
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I think our senses have become more attuned to sounds since we’ve arrived. We love the connection to the world that comes through our open windows. Kenya is a great place to be!
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