Kenyanzed

Highlights / Lowlights from this past week,
-I got Malaria
-Tom Left for home
-We went to Nairobi, Kenya to renew our visas
-We found out for sure when our last day with the kids is (Dec. 6th, thanks government)
-God is Good

11-12-10
Have some breakfast and type my blog. Try to get a picture of one of the kids, Morris (who never lets me take pictures of him), but the kids sell me out. Do some reading before lunch and after lunch we head into Bweyale with Mike. After getting our things we head back in and get stuck on the road when a huge Road grater tractor is stalled blocking the entire road. After waiting for about an hour and wondering if we need to go back in and get a hotel for the night the thing gets started and we head home. Help the kids out and prep time. Prep time is where the kids go to do some late night studying. It usually runs about 7:30 – 9:00pm. Most kids are there by 8:00pm though. After prep we hit the sheets.

11-13-10
After breakfast I do some shaving and the kids love seeing me with all my shaving cream on. So I then realize that I have almost 2 full cans of cream and 1 month to go, I grab a can of shaving cream, a camera and a mischievous smile and head up to the houses. After a little more than an hour and a whole can of shaving cream, I head to the office, armed with some good pictures for the slideshow tonight. Finish the slideshow and play some cards before setting up for filming the kids dancing. The rain comes so we postpone for tomorrow. Kids still dance just not in the uniforms. Its fun and we grab some food before watching Monsters Inc. I don’t feel well and sleep through the movie but luckily my buddy Tom helps do the tear down so I just go back to sleep.

11-14-10
Brynn and I do some film work in church this morning that goes very well. After church we setup to record the kids dancing again. Bright sunny day. Recording goes pretty well there too. I have a lot of fun just juggling logistics of stuff like that so that part was really fun for me. (Trying to figure my sound around 3 cameras) Play some soccer with the kids after dancing and then head to lunch. Hang out with the kids in the church building and do some “break dance” video of them to Michael Jackson and whatever else is on our iPods that they would know. Grab some food then head out to prep time.

11-15-10
Tom’s last day. We teach both sections of English today because of leaving for Kampala/ Kenya tomorrow which is really great. After lunch we do a quick video segment for a church called Bent Tree and grab some last few pictures to send with Tom. We hang out with the kids and then I skip prep time because Rose has come with a load of beads to send with Tom, so we help her sort those before bed. Im starting to feel a little feverish before bed.

11-16-10
Well morning world, I have Malaria and I’m going to Kenya today. I get some of the pills to take. There are 6 doses twice a day, four pills a time. We jump on a bus to Kampala in the morning and make it there around 2pm. Do some light eating and shopping before heading out to the bus. We say a tearful goodbye and watch as the person we have come to know as family heads for the taxi to take him to the airport. I wonder what’s going through his head right now? We get on the bus and head to Nairobi. Story behind this is that our Ugandan Visa only was good for 90 days and to renew in country to tricky, but not if you leave and then come back. So we are going to spend 3 days in Nairobi. The bus ride is 11 hours of horrible malaria sickness. Probably my worst travel experience so far in my life. The only thing good about the trip was as Brynn would say, “the most great.” At the border, I’m a zombie of sickness, and the girls are trying to figure out the papers to fill out and the woman in front of us in line turns around and says, “do you guys need help?” Her name is Nora, she is a Kenyan Native, that travels to Kampala and Finland often to help out churches. Nora had missed her first bus, so she was not even supposed to be on our bus but, (thank you God) she was. Our bus company was going to leave us at the border because the Visas were taking so long but she made them wait for us. If that is not a TIA moment, I don’t know what is. We make it to Nairobi and she helps us get on our Hotel’s shuttle and makes sure the diver is good and leaves us with, “call if you need anything.” God was just beginning to shower us with his gifts.

11-17-10
We arrive at Heart Lodge, our hotel at around 6am, the place is super nice and I fall asleep almost instantly on my bed. After sleeping on and off for most of the day until around 4pm I can finally feel the Malaria starting to slow down. I just have a fever left that I can’t get to break. The girls get back around 4pm from doing some touring in the city and feeding giraffes. I stay in their room and hang out a little bit before heading back to my room to give the girls some time alone before we head for dinner. It is crazy good, Carrots, Salisbury steak, fruit and a fruit pie desert. After dinner we chill a bit before heading to bed.

11-18-10
We wake up in the morning and meet some of the other hotel guests, Don and Pat. They are a 60s+ married couple from Denver that comes to Kenya about twice a year for 7 weeks each time. Don is a part of Rotary Club and they have been installing libraries and working with a few other programs in Kenya. They have one meeting to go to today at 1:00pm and they normally have a driver that they hire named Paul. But instead of that, they give us their driver and take a taxi to their meeting. Then tonight Don has one more Rotary meeting so we will pick him up for that. Paul take us to a huge slum in Nairobi called Kibera, where they have a program that they work with there called WEEP. Women’s Empowerment and Equality Program; WEEP. The woman we met there who is the director is named Gladys and she tells us that they have 15 women in the program that are all HIV+. They have them come to their center, which is in the slum, and they teach them to sew and make beads and do other craft type things and then they sell them to help them gain income. They also have a spot for the women’s kids to stay during the day if they are younger. It was a very cool to see all these women that are at the very bottom of the social totem pole, smiling and making a living and looking healthy. We heard Evelyn’s, one of the women, story about being HIV+. Once it is known that you are HIV+, you are shunned from your community like a leper. Nobody will touch anything that you have touched or buy anything and they are even nervous to go near your kids. So this center was doing a lot for them because it was changing the whole slum’s idea of what it means to be HIV+. Very cool to see. After we leave WEEP, we go and get some food and then do a “Safari Walk.” Meet an intern named Simon (spelled Symo) who shows us around and points out a bunch of different animals that we would have never seen without him. After the walk we head back to the Hotel to pickup Don for his meeting. While we wait for Don to finish his meeting Paul takes us to an Italian restaurant called Terattora. Nobody is mad about that. Go back to the hotel after eating and picking up Don for bed.

11-19-10
We again ride with Pat and Don to a meeting that they have at 10:30 and then Paul takes us to a supermarket to get food for sandwiches for traveling home tonight. The mall that the supermarket is in is unbelievably nice and it feels like we are in Eden Prairie Center back home. Eventually we go to a park and have a picnic and they go to another market in town. This market is nuts because literally every person talks to you and asks you to come in and just look, “don’t buy just look.” Crazy bartering experience. Eventually it is time to go to our bus station. The ride back is much nicer than the ride there except that we are in the back of the bus this time, think elementary school type huge bumps. But we do get some sleep and we get into Kampala around 8:00am where our friend Shammah picks us up.

11-20-10
Shammah takes us back to “Good African Coffee” where we have some light breakfast before heading over to her church for a bit just to see it. Her church has a couple of programs going today and one of them is that all the compassion kids from the area are there writing letters to their sponsors. After that we head to the bus station and head for home. We finally get back to the land around 4pm and we see the staff and the kids and everyone is happy to see us. It is Saturday so we spend the rest of the day hanging out with the kids. I end up sleeping over at Mercy, one of the kid’s houses, and actually sleep really well.

So this is a really long one but Kenya was very cool. If anyone ever wants to go there call me. I know a few people there and some really cool spots to see ☺ So now that I have gotten Malaria, I think I have officially been to Africa. The big change for the upcoming month is that the government is forcing the kids to go back to the camps on their break that is coming up. So that means that for the last 2 weeks the kids will not be at the land so we are trying to figure out what we will be doing for the last few weeks because Rose did not think it was a good idea to go to Gulu and try to see them each day. So pray for wisdom for us for what to do and how to handle it especially emotionally when the kids leave the land. Thank for reading!!!

-Collin