Keeping it Out

While there isn’t anything intrinsically just about living in another country, it is a lot harder to come up with a legitimate response to poverty when poverty is no longer calling your name – sometimes literally – when you walk out your front door every morning.

For whatever reason, it is easier to look down your dusty dirt road and come to the realization that there is someone living within a five minute walk who will go to bed hungry than it is to look down your paved driveway and realize that, if you were to get in your car and drive for ten minutes, you would find the same thing.

In Kenya, where windows have screens and bars but no glass, and closed doors leave a gap a few centimeters from the ground, it’s harder to keep things out and harder to keep things in. But, in America, where our houses seal tightly enough to keep in the AC or the heat, and no one would ever dream of coming to peep in your windows, it becomes easier to pretend that life in our boxes is all that there is. To assume that what happens in our houses, our cars, our schools and offices, is all that there is to reality.

So, we do things that force ourselves to come face to face with reality. We go on missions trips and watch movies. We read books, and sign petitions, and, sometimes, we do crazy things, because we realize that there is more to life than our box.

Uganda

If you are lacking in context for the above, check out Invisible Children and their story.

Three Weeks Stateside

Wow, I can't quite believe that it has already been three weeks - plus a few hours - since I flew out of Nairobi.

Life has been crazy, but good, in an almost completely different type of good than in Kenya (including a computer that decided that it was time for it's life to end, and that it should eat all of my non-backed up pictures and documents from the last three weeks in the process...).

After spending a few days in New York with Melissa, I landed back in the Tri-cities for a week and a half of oh-crud-Jessica-hates-public-speaking moments. Lol. No, it wasn't really as bad as all of that, but the irony of the situation was not lost on most people who have known me since my "holding up the wall" underclassman days of high school.

Okay. Who are we kidding? I still prefer to hold up walls. :P

By the end of my time at home, the elementary, middle school, high school, and college groups at church had heard stories about our town in Kenya, as well as a good chunk of adults who came to the open house. Plus, at last count, at least seven middle or high school guys ended up wearing the "man skirt" or kikoy that I brought back with me...although, I never did convince my dad to try it on. Apparently, you become much too mature for such things after the age of forty. (Love ya, Dad!)

He did help put together a "hut" for the open house presentation, and he even forgave us for never getting any pictures of the finished product. Or any pictures of the night, for that matter, including the pillau and sukuma that my Mom and Mrs. Adams made, or the brave few who actually ate said food with their fingers.

All in all, the presentations were a good thing, even if just for the fact that they gave a chance to reconnect with people that I hadn't seen in sixteen months. (And, it was super funny to watch the faces of kids who I had as kindergarteners in 06-07, as they tried to decide if I really was who they thought I was.)

One of the girls, who had been in my CHECK class, told me after middle school sunday school that, "You haven't changed at all!" Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but, hey, I'll take what I can get. Lol!

Homeschool Resources

CHECK kids and parents,

For those of you interested in additional resources - just in case the end of the school year isn't coming up quickly enough already - I pulled together a few pages that might be useful.

This outline map shows all of Kenya's coastlines, boarders, provinces, and major cities. (The answers can be found here.)

This site has a list of simple vocabulary words - Swahili is phonetic, and pronounced almost like Spanish, so faking it isn't hard to do. If you want more vocabulary and/or a more interactive learning program (or don't trust your invented pronunciations), this site has a free software download that works on a flashcard principle.

The Peace Corps has put together a game that addresses a range of common community challenges (water, malaria, education, etc) that is friendly to most ages, although younger students may need help with reading, as well as a lesson plan that deals with water accessibility in the US, Ghana, and Kenya, and a handbook that addresses cultural understanding (aimed at older students).

Have fun, and let me know if you find anything else online that you think out to be added to the list.

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