Back Home - well...almost

Yes, Regardless of the lack of blog updates, I really am back in America. Me and Melissa have been hanging out in New York since Saturday afternoon – although Saturday was mainly spent freezing and wandering around like a sleep deprived zombie. Lol!

We decided to try the “wander around Times Square and watch a Broadway show” method for getting over culture shock. Not something I would normally recommend, but, it seems to have worked well enough. :) Have to admit, though, I’ll be glad to spend a few days in the Tri-cities, where there aren’t quite so many flashing lights and mass amounts of people. Quiet and boring will be nice for a while. Well, quiet and boring, minus the running around like a chicken with its head cut off…

Sorry. If the blog posts have been a little scarce lately, it is because we have been running around, trying to fit in a billion different things before we leave town (tomorrow morning!). That, and the crickets have resorted to stealing documents as part of our ongoing war.

Okay. Maybe the part about the crickets isn't true, but Ashley seriously did count eighty just in our prayer room this morning. If this were a war, I think we might be losing, although, so far, hundreds of them have died, and none of us -- that I know of.

Trying to say goodbye to all our friends has taken up a lot of time, and involved quite a few dinners, lunches, and cups of chai or uji. Not that I am complaining about free food! Lol. (Well, maybe the uji...still not a huge fan of drinking scalding hot porridge.)

At this point, we are finally done with G-town goodbyes -- I think -- and fully into unpacking from our quick trip to Dadaab, repacking for Nairobi, and gutting our house so that we can leave it empty by tonight. So far, so good.

The trip to Dadaab town and Ifo camp (one of the three refugee camps that make up the "Dadaab regugee camp") was an interesting addition to our final week, a welcome break from packing and cleaning, and a learning experience for all of us.

The camps were nothing like what you might think of as a refugee camp, and nothing like what you hear about the refugee and IDP camps in the Darfur region of Sudan. Instead, they looked very much like the town across the river from us here, just a little more crowded together. There was a nice hospital and, what looked from the outside, like very nice primary and secondary schools.

Basically, they were three towns, towns with LOTS of NGOs and some facilities that other communities around here would love to have. (The three camps combined have about the same number of people as the Tri-cities.)

While we were there, we planted some trees in a community center in Dadaab town, took a driving tour of Ifo camp, ate way too much Ethiopian food -- which was a more than welcome change in flavors -- and found a huge wind scorpion that Ashley had battled with in the middle of the night.

We got back yesterday afternoon, visited with our neighbors yesterday evening, and, this morning, I have officially reduced sixteen months of my life to the following:

Yep. That bag even weighs less than fifty pounds, and has room for souvenirs. Epic skills.

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The Ultimate in Re-gifting

As Rebecca and I were searching for a gift to bring with us as we said goodbye to a friend -- who just so happens to be named Jessica -- we found some wrapping paper to use (on the table of ever expanding stuff), and... it just so happened to be conveniently pre-labeled.


Score one for not having to write a note on the gift. Recognize the handwriting, Mom?

Of course, getting to church to drop off the gift was a little bit of an adventure in itself.


Those shiny, dark patches across the width of the road are actually large pools of water, left over from all of our recent rain -- plus a little mud and animal poo -- and, they literally stretch all the way across the road in several spots.

Which means... ducking and squeezing through bushes and against walls... kind of like the trails (or "trails" as my mom would argue) that we used to find and follow when we went exploring when camping. I always knew those ducking and clambering skills would come in useful for something! Lol.

(Rebecca getting ready to duck into a hole)

We finally bit the bullet and started "packing" our stuff -- which looks more like every cupboard and shelf in our house has vomited its contents onto various portions of the floor / other flat surfaces.


Somehow, in the next eight and a half days, we will make it all fit into nice neat suitcases, ready to leave for Nairobi on the 16th and the States on the 23rd. It just won't be today. :)

This table migrated to the front room and has become the collection point for "there is no way this is all fitting in my suitcase; it should just stay here in Kenya" types of items that -- hopefully -- we will be able to pawn off on the new team...err...find good homes for.

And, although these two liveboxes may look like they're playing nicely, only one of them is actually working, the other one is just there for looks -- and as a reminder of all of the many hours that have gone into trying to maintain a wireless internet connection for the last fifteen months. Lol. (Just pretend that you can't see the dust on the floor behind them...)


For now, we've transitioned from packing to visiting friends for final goodbyes, at least for a few hours. I'm sure there will be more packing in between visits this afternoon.