You're invited to A Virtual Trip to visit me in Mbita!

Life here is hard and exhausting, as well as meaningful, gratifying and a special, very unique experience!
My typical school day starts at 5:45, ideally doing some sit-ups as soon as I get up (otherwise I don't do them!), having breakfast, praying and reading scripture on my front porch before leaving for school at 7 AM.  For the past few weeks, I have been trying to not bring work home, which has made evenings and weekends much more restful and renewing; but that also means staying at school until my work is done, as well as being very disciplined to work during the cracks between classes. I am now generally getting home between 5 and 6 PM. One thing that was nice about getting home earlier was that my shower water was warmed by the sun; it's often cooled off later in the day.  The 'rainy' season hasn't been so hot, but when I do arrive home all sweaty, I undress in the shower... and wash my clothes right then and there as I take them off!  Fortunately, I have concrete floors in my house, which are not damaged by some water dripping on them.  I've strung a back-packers' clothes line across one end of my bedroom (I happened to buy it when I was at L L Bean a few years ago.)  Nancy and Don Richards, who started SEEK (Suba Environmental Education for Kenya) and CGA (Christ's Gift Academy), and a delightful young Dutchman named Bob, and I usually eat dinner together at the SEEK dining hall. Back in my house after dinner, I often read (Thanks to my children for giving me a Kindle for Christmas, I'm able to buy an e-book online, download it to my computer, and then transfer it to my Kindle!!!) or watch a DVD movie.  I savor the few DVD's I have, as to not 'use them up' too soon! It's great to have the time to watch the 'bonus' features...  how the movie was made, behind the scenes, etc.  Having recently read Let's Roll, and then seen the movie "United 93", now I'm watching the video clips of the bios of each United 93 passenger, reported by their families.  Then I head to bed around 9:30, and continue my "Reading through the Bible" before falling asleep. I started at Genesis 1 in February, and am now in the book of II Kings.

Just as when I was teaching in Oak Park, weekends fly by!  Most Saturdays I walk the hour into town to do various errands... buy fruits & vegetables, hot chocolate mix, and/or airtime minutes for my phone and internet services.  I have yet to get started early enough to avoid the heat of the day... I can't seem to tear myself away from an hour or 2 of peaceful, beautiful Saturday morning on my front porch, enjoying the birds, sometimes the naughty monkeys who think they can get some good food from the gardens, and on very special occasions, seeing a shy dik dik (tiny relative of a gazelle).

On one of my excursions into town, I  was glad I happened to have my camera with me when I saw this little, impromptu parade. 


My late start to head into town means I walk home (more uphill than down) in the heat of the equatorial sun, so I usually arrive home too exhausted, hot and hungry to do anything productive for quite a while! After a shower, then lunch, I lie on my bed listening to music Dot or I loaded onto my computer  Special events are movie nights at SEEK, or weddings or funerals, which are all-day affairs!
To go to church on Sunday, I leave home at  9:30, and get back home at around 2:15. Usually I end up leaving the service before it's done, driven home by hunger pangs.  The day quickly passes as I make and then take some food for that evening's meal, worship and fellowship time that we Mzungus (white people) have at the Pierce's home.  Guacamole is one of the foods I enjoy making (actually, eating!) here, using the fresh, wonderful local ingredients; I will certainly miss that treat when I return to Chicago!  I also really enjoy fruit salad, when I can simultaneously get ripe pineapple, bananas, mango and papaya!  The only problem with food preparation here at the equator is that with no refrigeration whatever I make needs to be eaten within 24 hours.  Two solutions: eating guacamole, or various other dinner-time dishes, for breakfast, or making the food for a community meal!
Even back in the US I found cooking and cleaning on the weekends to be a nice break from the intensity of teaching during the week. Baking here, though, is a lot more involved...  planning ahead to borrow measuring spoons and cups, and cookie sheets, cutting chocolate bars into 'chips', mixing everything by hand, and then hiking up and down, over a bridge, then up and down again, to Nancy & Don's house, to use their oven.
There are several other weekend domestic activities that transport me back over 100 years, to pioneer days in the US.  I've designed and hand-sewn a skirt!  I was prompted to do because I wanted a skirt as cool as possible, while also fitting the modesty standards of this culture; in addition I wanted a deep pocket in my clothes, so I could carry chalk with me when I got to the different classrooms where I teach!  [Bringing chalk to each classroom each day is essential: the 'resourceful' CGA students, who have essentially no personal possessions, and certainly no art materials, will snatch up any chalk left by the board, and use it for their own artwork between class periods!]

And here's a photo of me using a charcoal-heated iron to iron my clothes!!

I love my chaco sandals...  comfortable, good arch support, great grip on the rocks and hillsides, easy to wash the mud off!  And..I think I'll be wearing my chaco tan for quite a while....

                        Enjoying the SEEK beach, the waves & the view! (Note the Palm tree)

I kind of have a cat, or 2 or 3...   The mother cat was left in the neighborhood when her owner moved away last year. She got pregnant, hung around SEEK, gave birth somewhere in the wild, then started showing up. 

I took this photo by leaning out my living room window...  the cats were just below!  

Aren't they darling!!!  But the babies were totally feral at the time this photo was taken.  A side-mission for me has been to domesticate these darling kitties, as far as my energy and food supply allow. Unfortunately, before I could get very far, the middle kitty must have been a tasty dinner for an eagle or snake.  The other 2 are now gangly 'teenagers'.  I've now managed to name them. The mother is Maia, Greek for 'good mother', I believe, which indeed she is. The one in the front is Liam, named after my grandson...  both of them were reluctant to give up nursing. The one with a 'patch' over one eye is Asy, short for 'asymmetrical'. He is still quite a 'scaredy cat', still feral, but Liam is making steady progress tolerating my presence nearby.




Not for the faint-of-heart, or weak stomached... Maia, the 'Good Mother', catches a garden snake for a family meal on my porch!

You've heard how cats will play with a mouse; here they are playing with the beheaded snake. (I saw the mother eat the head after she killed it.)


Time for lunch, and a break....  more another time, including news about the Touch Typing I began just last Monday, teaching 5 Grade 8 students!  In 5 sessions, these students who had never touched a computer before made great progress...  one girl getting to 13 words/minute with 95% accuracy, using 11 keys!  
Thank you very much for your visit to Mbita today!

A Banner Day (written, then 'lost' last March!)

A Banner Day!!
Whether in the US, rural Kenya, or anywhere else, work is still work, teaching children is still teaching children! There are days when the teacher can see engaged, interested students learning new things, and then there are days when the teacher feels like nothing is getting through to the students' brains. This past Tuesday was one of those wonderful days!  It actually started brutally early...  At 3:40 AM, I got up to be a Skype participant in the women's growth group I've been part of for the past few years.  Whatever the content of the sharing, the connection with these women is special and meaningful.
Arriving at my classroom, there was Belinda, alone in the semi-dark, sweeping the classroom. The previous day we'd run out of time to have the kids sweep and tidy the classroom, so I'd asked that day's cleaing crew to arrive early the next morning to do their jobs. The kids on that crew didn't arrive early, but Belinda did. She's a girl with a bunch of rough edges, and a nonchalant demeanor, but I like her, and have been finding various ways to connect with her.  This gracious act of her service really warmed my heart, and made me thankful to God for this evidence that I was connecting with her!
Later, in science class, the topic of our plant study was the different parts of flowers.  This class of primarily squirmy, active boys (21 of them, plus 6 girls), was less than attentive, and didn't seem to care to know the answer to my question: "what is pollination?"  So I leaned over the podium and in a soft voice said, "It's plant sex".  After that you could have heard a pin drop, as they hung on my every word!!  That impromptu lecture was followed by some really excellent questions!  And then, at the end of the class 2 very bright students started asking me some questions I didn't understand, which ended up with them showing me a big newspaper article they'd brought in on growing plants!!  It was so gratifying to me to see how these students were thinking about what they were doing in class and making connections to things in the newspaper!!!   An hour later, at lunchtime, another student from that class came up to me, and offered to take the bucket of left-over banana peels to our garden to use as compost!!!  I was so happy to see these 2 examples of them connecting our book learning with real life!!!  And now we'll see how these kids do on their all-important Term 1 exams in 2 weeks, which will probably not have anything on it about compost or plant sex!!  [They didn't do as well as I'd hoped...  but then the exams are ridiculously hard in some ways. One of the questions required knowing what an anemometer was...  which I didn't even know!  It measures wind speed. Not only is it not in the Grade 5 science books, but so far, I haven't found it explained or pictured in any of the school's science books, all the way up to Grade 8!]

That day ended with my working with the Grade 8 students in "Math Club", teaching them how to  play Sudoku~~what fun!

A story in pictures: Palm Sunday...posted 2 months later :-(

Palm Sunday 2012

Starting my 1/2 hour motorbike ride up into the hills, to the 

tiny village of Gera, carrying my Bible, sermon notes and 

this palm branch from SEEK's beach. This transport reminded

me of the surfer who solved the parking problem at Waikiki  

by mounting brackets on his bicycle to carry his surfboard.

I love Palm Sunday, almost as much as Easter. And I'd been told that many churches here don't celebrate these 'high holidays". So I was delighted to be invited to preach at a small, remote village church on April 1, which happened to be Palm Sunday; that way I'd be able to guarantee my participation in a Palm Sunday celebration!! I really enjoyed my study of the different Gospel accounts while preparing the sermon. And then it was wonderful to infuse the service at the fledgling Gera Pentecostal Church with Palm Sunday elements.  
We were all a bit water-logged, as it was raining heavily at the beginning of the day, when I gathered this large palm branch from the SEEK beachfront.  Cutting the palms from the branch, everyone got at least 2 palms.  Then with the help of an excellent keyboardist, and a congregation used to singing and dancing, we waved the palms and sang the words from  Matthew chapter 21, verse 9:  "'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!"  

The Gera church meets under this tree; a generator provides

power for the keyboard (at left). Note the huge speaker hung

on the tree! Fortunately the heavy, early morning rain stopped!

 

Even the little kids are participating, while also exploring the surrounding area....

After the service was over, this young boy rode by on this donkey.  The timing was too perfect; I had to ask him to stop so I could take his picture.  Meanwhile I thought: "I sure hope the donkey colt Jesus was sitting on was bigger than this one!!!"