Two Weeks To Go!

The countdown is officially on. In two weeks today, we will be flying high on our way to Canada. 

I was the hostess with the mostess this past weekend. We decided to do a couple big goodbye get togethers with our fav people. Saturday, all my ladies came to my place for the whole day. They taught me to cook the real biryani swahili style. Most of my girls are true swahili people and make the raddest food around. I observed every step of the process with the hopes that I can make it for Kelvin on those days he is getting a bit homesick. The ladies had way too much fun trying manoeuvre all my 'american' kitchen items like the garlic press and stove. The whole day was a complete blast. These girls are some of the coolest people I know. 

A lot of chopping of vegetables. I loved that the recipe was made up of fresh everything - except for the gallons of cooking oil. 

One of the girls says to me, "Let me go stand outside on the balcony so I can know what it feels like to be one of those people who stand on balconies". Sometimes I forget how poor their community really is.

Blending the spices.

We actually deep fried the onions and potatoes before we added them to the stew. We used an absurd amount of oil. I think I will have to modify that when I cook it myself.

This was me the whole time: taking notes and hovering over people as they cooked.

Food was finally done and we all sat down to eat. My muslim girls just spread the food out on a cookie sheet and at it with their hands. 

I invited some of my friends to come and chat with the girls a little bit about their future plans. Its nice to know that my ladies will have other women to help guide them even when I am gone. They of course loved Ndela, who is a famous musician and a make up artist. Ndela gave them some good make up tips.

The day was such a blast. We ate, laughed, DANCED, and just enjoyed one another. I am going to miss these girls WAY too much. 

Then Sunday came along and we invited all our best friends from church over for the afternoon.

The men took over the living room and talked politics for four hours straight. No joke.

 

Meanwhile, us ladies took over the guest bedroom and giggled our way through the afternoon. 

I have such beautiful friends.

 The men took a small break from politics talk to summon the women to make tea. Ah, yes, we are still in Africa.

A good little african wife I am serving tea to all the men!

It was Kelvin's birthday the next day so we decided to celebrate with everyone around.

The night ended with a couple of speeches from us where I turned into a teary mess at the thought of not seeing my dearest friends for a long time. So many of them of getting married this year or starting off their careers or planning for children. Makes me sad thinking we are going to miss all of it. Afterwards, Kelvin and I knelt in the middle of the room and all our friends gathered around us in prayer. It was such a beautiful moment to listen to our beloved friends bless us as we start this new chapter in our lives. 

Counting Down the Days

Can you believe we only have 3 more weeks in Mombasa? Crazy right!?

We are kicking into high gear trying to get everything figured out and dealt with before we leave. Its not an easy process. We will be SO ready to get to Canada once these few weeks are over. Kelvin and I often look at each other and just wish that we could leave tomorrow and not have to deal with selling our stuff, looking after the business and the project, and saying our goodbyes. As each day passes, our hearts are more and more excited to start a life in Canada.

We are also just trying to ENJOY kenya while we can. I was in nairobi this past week. We had some troubles on the bus and what was suppose to be a 7 hour ride took 11 hours. The plus side was that I got to drive through the african plains as the sun was rising and it was completely majestic. Africa is truly majestic. 

Last weekend we decided to check out Haller Park. I can actually see Haller Park from my kitchen but I have never been in it. I was surprised as to how many beautiful animals and wildlife are in my back yard!

 Giraffes will always be so gracefully goofy. 

 These monkeys (and their reproductive organs) always crack me up. Yes, his testicles are bright blue and his 'manhood' is bright red. Maybe it makes it easier for the woman to spot it?

Baby monkey!

I think someone was trying to hide.

 But this someone liked being in the middle of the road.

 Not sure what this animal is called.

They have a few hippos in the park too. Unfortunately, they weren't hungry enough to get out of the water and come eat their food. I was so looking forward to seeing their big bodies as I have only ever seen them in water. Its hard to believe they are the most dangerous creatures in Africa.

 And then it was time to feed the crocodiles. This was the big kahuna.

 For show, they like to tease the little guys and make them all jump for the meat.

These things were just wandering around in the open. They kind of look like something you might find in the mountains near my hometown.

 The greenery was so gorgeous and luscious.

 This tree was so bizarre with its neat roots system.

I used to dream of living in a place with palm trees. Now I have them right outside my window. 

We are trading in the tropics for the snow....

Mini Update

Sorry for the silence this past week and a half. I guess there is just not too much excitement going on around here to blog about.

My days have been filled with lots of cleaning and organizing of our new apartment. We are getting our first visitors come this week and next. I am trying to keep up with all the dust that flies in. The down side of the beautiful breezes that flow through the house is that they bring in lots and lots of dust. However, I will chose dust over a hot and stuffy house any day especially considering how hot Mombasa is getting now. I take two cold showers a day just to cool down my overheated body and rid my skin of all the sweat.

Kelvin is currently directing a week long youth camp for our church. I opted to stay home for a few days and get some work done. I will head out there on Wednesday morning for the last 3 days of the camp. I am looking forward to connecting with the youth as we have just joined this church and are still making friends.

I had my last ladies meeting for the year on Saturday. We started planning and brainstorming for next year. I want to change the structure of our meetings and try some new things. They also have some ideas that they would like to do next year like volunteer in the community and start a small income generating project so that they can earn a little bit of pocket money. I am really looking forward to spending another year with these lovely ladies.

Well, it's time for me to mop my floors and wash some clothes. See you next week!

Four Years

November 8, 2008. 

That is the day I first stepped into Mombasa four years ago. It was also the beginning of possibly the hardest 6 months of my life. 

We were placed in a mansion that was meant for a large Indian family. There were 8 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a humongous living room, and hallways that you could do endless cartwheels in. And we were only two girls. The house had some pretty major quirks: no water, no airflow, lots of dirt and gecko poop, a tiny kitchen, a noisy neighbourhood, and a few guards with their own personal issues. It was not an easy place to manage. 

I started off pretty excited about what was planned for us but my zeal quickly faded. It just wasn't what I felt called to do but I did it because we were told it was necessary, a spot needed to be filled and we got lots of praise for our courage to be there. Meanwhile, I was fading. We lived in a difficult neighbourhood and got constantly heckled by the men even though we tried as hard as we could to cover our bodies and act respectfully. It didn't matter; our skin colour was enough to make them go crazy. We had little preparation and support for what our work really entailed. No one guided us. We pretty much had to figure it out on our own. It was a huge learning experience and a massive point of growth in my life. But it wasn't easy. 

I eventually fell into depression and needed to get out. I went for counselling, my dad came over to visit, and they moved me to Word of Life. 

That's when things changed. I met Kelvin. I felt alive again in a position I felt I was good at. I was cool, literally, from the sea breezes that flowed through the Word of Life compound. It was a life changing few weeks to say the least. 

I swore I would never come back to Mombasa. Never ever ever! 

But alas, four years later, this city has captured my heart and offered me a wonderful life, an awesome community, and a pretty rad husband. 

I dug up some old pics of my first stint in Mombasa in 2008. 

We hosted a huge Christmas party at our house. To this day it is one of my favourite Christmas'. We had such a blend of cultures and religions there. We ate, played games, and hung out. We talked about the meaning of Christmas and love was shared. Such a memorable moment!

Our house came equipped with this inflatable boat that we had too much fun in. I remember rocking it back and forth singing "Rock the boat, don't tip the boat over..."

I worked in a youth library and we did a lot of youth events. We had a retreat for valentines day and we did some skits. I think this guy was proposing to me during our skit. 

This was new years. Yes, we laid in the driveway in the middle of the night. It was hot.

I spent most of my time trying to make friends. Some of these girls I still see today.

My organization partnered me with another girl named Sheena. I am really not sure how I would have survived without her. She was originally from Hong kong but lived in Canada. Naturally, she attracted every person in Mombasa who was also from Hong Kong so I listened to a lot of Cantonese and ate a lot of chinese food during my 9 months in Kenya. 

We used tuk-tuks a lot. It was easier and cooler. I hated walking around town. 

We purposed to enjoy ourselves since we lived in such a beautiful place. Here we had gone to Malindi, just north of Mombasa, for a day of snorkelling. Sheena was such a water baby. I didn't like the salt water and I didn't find the ocean refreshing as usually it was so warm from the heat.

My bedroom. 

The view from the outside of our mansion. I didn't say it was a pretty mansion. 

In the community we lived in, most the streets were like this. It was cramped and crowded but some of the structures were really beautiful. Some were pretty ugly. It is the old city of Mombasa and it is rich with history.

So Happy Four Year Anniversary to me!

Mombasa, I am glad you showed me that you can be an enjoyable city to live in. Thanks for loving me and caring for me over the past four years!

Mombasa's Seasons

Mombasa has three seasons, according to me, and this is how I have classified them:

The warm and dryish season. 
The hot and humid season. 
The painfully hot and soaking in sweat season. 

Currently, we are entering the hot and humid season. The warm and dryish season has ended. It usually lasts about 4ish months during our summer months. This hot and humid season will last till about February where we will enter the painfully hot and soaking in sweat season. Thankfully, that lasts about 2 or three months and then we slowly transition through the hot and humid season and then back to the warm and dryish season.

So what does hot and humid really mean? It means that:

• I still need to heat water for a bucket bath. Its just a tad too chilly to bath in cold water. 
• I sweat when I cook but at least drops of sweat don't end up in the food. 
• I can wear clothes twice before they smell too bad. In the painfully hot season, you can't even wear them for half a day before having to change and wash them. 
• Sometimes, I can wear pants at night and feel comfortable. 
• If the power goes out at night, I won't wake up because the fan turned off. 
• The fan stays on low. At times, we even turn it off. 
• If I walk outside for more than 10 mins, I start sweating profusely. 
• My shoulders often get a nice sweaty rub when I get in squishy matatus and the people next to me have sweaty armpits. 
• At about 4am,  I pull a sheet over me. 
• Half my fridge is full of bottles of cold water. 

One things I do love about all the seasons in Mombasa is that the sun is always shining!!!!! We get very few days of clouds, rain, or overcast. It also makes for some pretty incredible sunsets!!

Ants in my buns

I feel like I have SO much to tell you - you, out there, reading this, whoever you are. This last week and a half has been a flurry of random, overwhelming highs and lows on so many levels. That is how jumbled my mind is about all of it. Let me just tell you a few of the events of the past 10 or so days:

• Two of our phones broke, including the brand new one that Kelvin bought. I had to pull out our old iPhone that doesn't work unless its plugged in. It may sound nice to have an iPhone but its not. This is one screams difficulty. But its what we have until our two other phones get fixed. 
• I discovered one of my girls' sister tried to sell her off to an old man because she needed money. No wonder my girl ran away from home.
• Kelvin and I both have been having tummy issues. We have been taking medicine (including daily injections into our buttocks). The side effects of the medicine are worse than the discomfort we were feeling. We had our last injection today so hopefully tomorrow we will stop limping. Those things are painful! 
• My cat wouldn't let the vet take her stitches out today. The vet said that it is not normal behaviour for a cat to be THAT violent towards other people. He says we spend so much time with her that we are the only ones she trusts. In other words, I baby my cat. 
• Kelvin has challenged our boys to come up with an income generating project for the team. We sat with them today and listened to their brilliant idea to supply cheap satellite TV to people in Kongowea. They have really thought it out and done their homework. We were thoroughly impressed. We admitted that we couldn't have done that good of a job. They are brilliant - they just need the opportunity to use their brilliance. This project will hopefully provide for all the team's needs and more. That would mean that they could be self sustaining and not rely on donations. How awesome would that be? 
• Tomorrow, the photographer who shot our wedding is coming to do a session with a handful of our youth on the basics of photography. I personally can't wait to learn from such an awesome photographer. I hope my youth will show up on time.
• Police have increased in Mombasa these last few days. There is a group in Mombasa who believes that the coast should be a separate state from Kenya and they are causing raucous. They are threatening to disrupt students exams which are going on. So far, all is well just a whole lot more police  carrying around overbearing AK47s. 
• We got news yesterday that Kelvin's twin sisters returned home yesterday from boarding school. Apparently the grade 11 students burnt down the dormitories in protest of something. If the school doesn't find who did it, all the students have to pay 10,000KES ($120) to get back to school. Twins= 20,000KES. We are thankful that they weren't hurt. Unfortunately, in another school, some kids didn't make it out when their dormitories were burnt on monday morning. So sad.
• I have been baffled by the amount of lying that is ingrained in this culture and the people here. It seriously blows my mind how many people blatantly lie about everything and they think nothing of it. I will write a whole post on this soon. 
• Kelvin has been doing the dishes a lot lately. It's been nice. 
• Last night I made some yummy buns to go with our vegetable stew. I wrapped the leftovers in tin foil last night only to wake up and find that an army of ants somehow made their way under the tin foil and into my buns. That was the breaking point. Tears started flowing after that. Yes, I cried because ants took over my buns. 
• I then went and laid in bed to just relax. Meanwhile, Kelvin came and snuggled me. It was just what I needed. I adore him. 

And this is only the beginning of all our shenanigans but I will use some discretion and keep the rest to myself. I can't tell you enough how amazing my husband is. We have walked through all this stuff together and have come out stronger. I am in awe that God has grant me the amazing gift of my husband. 

Catching Up

I think the past 3 weeks of craziness has finally caught up with me. I woke up this morning with a terrible head cold that has forced me to lay on my couch and drink lemongrass tea all day. 

It's also giving me the chance to just catch up on emails, accounts, updates, paper work, etc. 

I travelled to Nairobi on Sunday night to renew my passport. I am so used to travelling with Kelvin that going alone has become a lot more nerve-wracking. Before I met Kelvin, I used to travel all the time by myself and it was no big whoop. But now I get anxious with out him. I also think I am more aware of the dangers of road travel in Kenya. Even as we were going to the bus station on Sunday night we saw a nasty accident between a motorcycle and a semi truck. I am pretty sure the dude on the motorcycle didn't make it. So sad. 

I did make it to Nairobi safely. I went the Canadian Embassy and applied for my passport to be renewed. Every time I step on that compound, I feel like I have been transported back home. Everyone is so kind, there is native art on the walls, our flag is plastered all over the place. They even built it in true Canadian fashion. I noticed that the toilet paper and soap dispensers in the bathrooms are ones from Canada! If only they would open a Tim Hortons there. 

I decided to spend the night at Word of Life where I went to bible school. It was so refreshing seeing old friends and spending time in the peaceful, quiet, cool village setting. I left on a 1pm bus yesterday (which didn't actually leave till 3pm) and arrived home at 10pm. Kelvin met his snotty-nose and overly tired wife at the bus stop, escorted her home, and prepared supper for her. Yes, I love him. 

Anyways, looking forward to getting a bit of rest today, catching up on some 'work', and snuggling with my kitty. 

Here are a few photos from the boys' game on Saturday. They have finally started up their leagues again after Ramadhan and the riots. 

Remember Kadenge? We were kind of disappointed in him since he returned back to Mombasa. He has sort of been avoiding us and the team. Usually the boys avoid us when they are doing something they know will disappoint us. We figured he had fallen back into his old habits of drugs and shady company. But to our delight, we found out that he was actually working hard to start his own chicken business! He discovered his family had a plot near by so he has been working hard on preparing it to start up his business. He has even been getting some of the boys involved to train them and help them out financially! Amazing! He came to us and asked if we could help him build a small structure for a caretaker on the property. We offered to help only if he promises to donate monthly to the team once his business starts! Amazing what God has done in Kadenge's life. 

 Some of the boys who didn't make the first team for the game. They still came out to watch. They also cleaned up pretty well if I do say so myself.

 Andrea and Kelvin. We have worked hard with this boy. We are praying for him and the decisions he makes in his life. He is a really good kid and is very devoted to the team. 

Noah has also just passed his Clearing and Forwarding course that we sponsored him to go to. He did really really well! We are praying that he can find an internship soon so he can graduate. 

See number 11? Yah, thats my husband. I could go on and on about how amazing he is. But I will do that another day. 

He truly directs my steps...

I am in constant awe of how God has protected me in this country.

Stuff happens all around me all the time - car accidents, robberies, bombs, etc- and yet I have never been in the midst of any of it. And it's not like it can't happen to me, because it can (I saw a nasty matatu accident the other day just down the road from me. I could have definitely been in there), but God just directs my every step.

Yesterday, I understood this more thane ever.

Mombasa is in a bit of chaos in the moment. Not sure I want to go into detail about all of it over the internet but you can watch this and see a little glimpse of what is happening.

Kelvin and I left home unusually early yesterday morning. We realized we had lots of things to get done and decide to get our butts in gear and get out of the house early. Had we waited like we usually do, we would have gone right through the shooting that started all this chaos. Coincidence? I don't think so.

We also both had plans to go to town yesterday but I decided to go shopping in the other direction first. Had I gone to town, I would have been trapped there for hours. There was pretty intense rioting and no public transport going in or out of town.

After we were done shopping, we had a hard time getting a matatu back to Kongowea (which is on the way to town) as there was a mass exodus out of the city and no one wanted to go towards the city. We finally found one. We kept hearing rumours that the riots were moving in the direction we were going. Not sure if that was true. Thankfully we managed to get to our stop before anything came (although I am still not sure it did come that far. I think it was just rumours). Kongowea was quite calm and a good place to be.

We stayed there till evening. I had to meet my girls and Kelvin was working. It was quite nice. By the time we left, most things had calmed and we came home with no problems.

Its now 11am and people are saying it has started again. I am still waiting to hear if I should venture to Kongowea or not. I was supposed to start our girls camp today and was so excited for it. However, it might be wisdom to stay home. In the meantime, keep praying.

Let me just say that it seems like the rioters are not targeting people. Only one person has died. They are targeting buildings, shops, cars, and churches. For the most part, I think we are safe - for now at least.

Double Date

The fun thing about all our friends getting married is that we now have lots of young couples to hang out with! 

When Steve got to Mombasa, the first thing he said to us was, "Ok guys, this is important. We NEED to figure out when the new batman comes on at the theatre!" The town they live in doesn't have a theatre so he has been anxiously waiting to get to Mombasa to see the movie. 

So yesterday, the four of us went to see the newest Batman movie. Honestly, I wasn't really in to seeing it. However, by the end, I was enthralled! I now can't wait for the next one! I actually sent Kelvin to town today to go find me the first two movies so I can catch up! 

After the movie, we went to do one game of bowling since it is in the same complex. It was Virginia's first time ever and Kelvin had only gone a couple of times in his life. I took it upon myself to teach them how it is done, show them the ropes, etc. 

I came dead last. And it wasn't a close game. 

Nonetheless it was fun!

Steve is really sweet. He is so excited to show Virginia all these news things. They are totally smitten with each other. Ah, newlywed love!

Kelvin is a left. His first few balls really had a bad angle but then he got the hang of it and, well, kicked my butt. 

Yay for a fun double date!