Introductions: Part Two

Laura is probably the one on the team most like me (Yes, Dad, she's a tight wad who hates shopping too :-P). We blame it on the fact that our mothers could be long lost twins... except that her mom grills her with a million questions to get all of the information she wants, and my mom just stalks all of my teammates online. Lol.

She is fairly positive that she wants to work in a Muslim context in North Africa for a good solid chunk of her life, so being able to come here on internship was a really cool opportunity for her. She is the one who makes all of our video blog entries, and she's about to start teaching computer classes to the teachers at Life Frontier School, so we make good use of her technical prowess, and her photography skills. She can draw a crowd with her camera quicker than the rest of us could even think to notice that there are that many kids in the area, and they love making goofy faces and posing for her. Probably one of the biggest areas where we differ, is that she is infinitely more patient and deliberate than I am, and she's been putting that to good use building relationships with a few of the older girls at Life and discipling them in their walks towards the Lord.

Rebecca is our resident artist and the one who designed all of the rooms that we painted at the school. We tease her about being "old" -- all of 26 years -- and about the fact that she's from a farm in Nebraska, but I don't think that any of us could imagine internship without her here.

Her and Ashley have this amazing skill of turning every conversation back to "...at the nursing home..." or "...at the assisted living..." that I really enjoy, because it gives me a chance to learn medical stuff besides that first aid and wilderness medicine that I've studied before. Yep. I'm a nerd like that. (Ashley told me last night that she brought a few medical handbooks back from the States, knowing that I would get excited and want to read them. Lol. )

Like the rest of us, she is also nice and stubborn, but she has put that stubborn to very good use in learning Swahili. Our neighbors love her for it, and they are always giving her new words and testing her ever expanding vocabulary. She keeps us on our toes by turning everything back to the need for prayer, and by asking Bible questions that force us to pull out the mental concordances and try to find the words for things that we may not have tried to verbalize in years. "What does so and so mean when they say....?" "What does in mean in such and such a book when in says ...?" etc.

Me and my smurf nose, I hope you don't need an introduction to, so, I think that you have officially met all of the girls. The boys will likely be over tonight, since we have the internet router at our house, but, for now, let's go to town and let you see what you can see.

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Day Three: Introductions -- Part One

Good morning. I hope you slept well and didn’t get too tangled in your mosquito net trying to get out of bed this morning.

Normal days around here move at a pretty relaxed pace, so I’ll let you take some time to get to know everyone.

Ashley is our resident southerner. She’d describe herself to you as a “homeschooled, Southern Baptist, Calvinist.” We joke that I was homeschooled, Esther was homeschooled for a few years, but Ashley, Ashley was HOMESCHOOLED. She’s okay with that, though. :P She may look like a sweet little, Southern Baptist, homeschooler, but she can be tough as steel and just about as stubborn (which is a good thing in a team of strong willed, passionate people).

At the same time, she has probably grown and changed the most out of all of us since being here. She still likes old movies – her idea of a good movie is one that has never been produced in color – and can talk your ear off about the Civil War if you let her get started in on that one, not that she’s passionate about the subject or anything. But, she now responds to the Somali version of her name (“Asha! Asha! How are you?”), plays constantly with the babies she didn’t know what to do with at the beginning of internship, works in our neighbor’s duka, and all of the people whom she has built relationships with since being here love her.

Esther is also from the South, but she’s from Texas, so, not only is she still proud of the Confederate flag, but she is also proud to be from the only state that can legally A) fly its flag higher than the US flag when they are displayed together and B) secede from the US and become its own country whenever it wants.

She’s our resident adventure queen, always looking towards the future and trying to convince the rest of us to do something “adventurous.” If Esther looks up suddenly and says, “I have an idea!” beware, something you would never think of is about to come out of her mouth (ie. Wanting to put on a bui bui, get in a taxi, and try to drive towards Somalia just to see how far “we” can get). She’s in love with this continent and always thrilled to be doing something “different,” so she’ll enjoy having you around, and will love to milk you for as much wisdom as she can get out of you.

She’s struggled throughout internship with the fact that so much of what we do here is just living life and building relationships in this context, that desire to be doing and seeing new things is just so strong in her that sitting out here where “things” don’t really happen rubs her the wrong way. God has used that to change her though, and she is much more content and willing to be wherever He wants her than she was at the beginning of this adventure – and she definitely has the cleanest Swahili out of all of us!

Melissa is the “baby” out of the team. I’m actually the youngest, but she gets teased about it all the time, for some reason. :P She’s also my fellow Washingtonian, although she comes from the other side of the state. We have fun trying to explain to people here that the weather in her place is more like Nairobi while the weather in my place is more like here, even though we live in the same state.

You’ll probably hear her singing throughout the day, and she has a laugh that carries outside of our house loud and clear. The kids out at Life (and anywhere else she goes) love her and her crazy faces and cool finger tricks. She loves trying out new Swahili phrases (including ones that she finds written in matatus!), and she has grown up a ton since getting here, and there is a wealth of wisdom hiding under all of that goofiness – kind of like another Melissa I know.

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Day Two: Part Two

Sorry. I haven't really forgotten about you. We're almost at the end of that paint project that you came to help with, and it's more or less taken over my life for the last month or so.


Thanks for coming out today, though. Having the extra set of hands to help paint was really nice. Bekah is very much a questions person, so I'm sure that she knows all sorts of things about you after half a day of working together. If it weren't for the fact that she has a one year old and a two year old at home who can only be entertained by someone not-mom for so many hours at a time, she would have stayed all day to help us. In this case, the crazy interns aren't the only ones who like having a big project to work on.

I think that her and Jason are almost more determined to get this thing finished before the teachers come back next Tuesday than even any of us are -- which is saying something, because there is a lot of stubborn and determined on our team. Lol.

Annelise (the daughter of some South African missionaries who have been here working with the school for quite a few years) also came out and helped us. She's a good worker -- when she isn't totally bored from spending all day staring at the same dark blue paint -- and she likes coming out to paint. When you're nine years old, any excuse to play around with thick gooey substances is a good way to spend a day. Lol. (We even managed to get most of the paint off of her face / the rest of her before sending her back to her parents... :D)


You weren't quite as lucky in the matatu department on the way back to the house, so, welcome to the land where seats wobble, sliding doors don't quite close all the way, and it isn't anything abnormal to get a glimpse of the road through tiny holes in the floor. :)

They may look a little sketch on the inside -- something about the neon orange dashboard combined with the pale pink interior and the old school velvet paisely seat covers is just a little...special -- but the drivers know what they're doing. If you ever took the time to glance out the window as we went, you probably noticed that they have an amazing ability to dodge goats, donkeys, pedestrians, potholes, etc without slowing down significantly. :P Think of it as a twenty shilling kiddy roller coaster.


Now that we're back at the Witt's house, we're going to eat dinner and just hang around for the evening. Tomorrow morning we'll go to town and you'll get your first real glimpse of town proper.

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