Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Introductions: Part Three

Hey, welcome back to the house. Grab some water, because I'm sure that you're thirsty after your walk. The guys are over to use the internet, (We had a wireless router installed in our house, and the entire team helps to pay for the monthly credit.) so you can meet them now.

Warren is our resident expert when it comes to "random" knowledge -- generally, the sorts of information that people, who are into science fiction and fantasy / like to write such things, manage to pick up as they go through life, plus anything I could ever think to ask about music and/or trees -- and is the one on the team most likely to launch into a long explanation of something that he finds fascinating.


Like Ashley and I, he likes to write fiction and is currently working on a fantasy novel. He's enough of a nerd to know who the Yuuzahn Vong are, but he also loves to work with his hands (his fingers don't tan/burn, ever, which is completely random!), and you can generally find him wherever Jason is, working on some sort of a project -- often out at the school. His dream is to come back to Africa, potentially Uganda, and work, so, although he has struggled to balance life outside of internship with life on internship, he is more or less in his element here, especially when he can be involved in discipleship or community development projects.

Heath (far left in the picture) is by far the quieter of the two boys, the youngest in a family where all of the older siblings are female, in comparison to Warren's status as an only child.

He is calmer and more deliberate than most of the rest of us (definitely, the one on the team most completely different than me :P), but he enjoys spending team time -- or guy time -- with the x-box or playing games like Cranium or Settlers of Catan. His family means a lot to him, and a becomes the most animated when he is talking to them on Skype. He wants to work in South Africa, which is a very, very, different sort of place than North Eastern Province, or even Kenya, but he has grown a lot through coming on internship here, and we're glad to have him (the one guy to six girls ratio that would have happened without him...definitely would not have been fun for the guy that had to escort us all to the market...lol.).

Jason and Bekah are our internship directors.

Jason initially reminded me a lot of Chris Grandberry (They must have similar accents or something), but he is really very much like my second sister Kayla, strong willed, almost always confident, says what he's thinking, and always wanting to meet physical needs -- plus a good dose of sarcasm and impatience with ridiculousness in the form of bureaucracy.


He has carted us all over the place in his vehicle -- yes it is possible to fit eleven adults and two children in one vehicle. And, he has taught us all sorts of valuable skills, like slaughtering chickens, lighting a jiko, and, of course, how to use your teeth to pluck a chicken's butt feathers when the pliers are not available.

Bekah is nearly as much of a blog stalker as my mother, and she loves asking questions. Questions are her way of getting information about the world and about people she interacts with. Jason often accuses her -- jokingly -- of being, "too nice" and trusting everything that people say, but she is pretty good as using questions to get to the bottom of things and come out with a picture of the way things really are -- of course, sometimes she uses Jason as resource of getting those answers! :D


She just got a small car and is learning how to drive shift / drive in Kenya, as well as learning to like the two new dogs that just came to live with them. Like Jason, she enjoys being busy, building relationships, and meeting physical needs, and I'm sure we keep them both more than busy as they try to keep track of eight interns.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Welcome to Town

Town center is about an easy ten fifteen minute walk from our house, but keep your eyes open, because you'll probably start to notice different things -- things that I can't tell you to look for, because they don't seem different to me anymore, as soon as we walk out of our compound. Actually, I guess that even the fact that we live in a compound with several other houses is different, huh?


I'd tell you that there isn't a lot to see here, because, in reality, it's just another small town -- think Benton City, but with an actual population. But, because this isn't the sort of small town that either of us grew up in (unless you were really born in Somalia and you just never told me about it), there is a lot that you are going to want to take in.


The smells are a strange mix of just about everything, the slightly spicy smell of cooking food, the sweet scent of fresh fruit warming in the ever present heat, the sour smell of rotting trash, tepid puddles, and...uhhh...how do you say this nicely... animal excrement, the hot dust that Eastern Washingtonians know all too well, and a little rubber and car emissions just to add some excitement to the mix.


Yes, people really are staring at you, and no, they generally aren't doing it to be offensive. You just happen to be the most exciting thing walking down the street at the moment.

REMEMBER: Driving here occurs on the left side of the road, so be sure to look both ways before you cross, or you might end up a little thinner than when you landed in Kenya....


A normal shop, like the bookstore we just passed, has everything on display behind a wooden or glass counter and you just tell the shop keeper what is that you would like -- great way to practice Swahili, unless they decide to take mercy on you and carry out the transaction in English, at which point you'll be hard pressed to get much more Swahili out of them.


You've pictures of the market before, so, after we pick up the last of our things at the supermarket (one of the only shops in town where you wander through aisles picking out your own things, and the best place in the district to get western style things), we'll head in there and pick up some vegetables and rice and we'll be on our way back to the house.

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Brains and Boxes

Nine years ago, I sat on a dark rooftop with an uncertain and frustrated team. Frustrated by the four walls that seemed to be hemming t...