What's the point?

What IS the point?  For some the point may be to achieve great things, to do well and be recognised for it.  For some it’s about relationships, finding love or having the most facebook friends.  The question is what’s the point for you?  What makes you keep going everyday?  Why do you do what you do, say what you say, go where you go?  Why, in short, do you live?

I don’t know the answers, sometimes I feel like I should, like everyone expects me to.  Surely the ‘good Christian girl’ knows exactly what the point is?  Surely she’s got everything figured out; what to do with her life, what matters and what doesn’t.  Surely?

I don’t know the answers; I fumble in the darkness, just like everybody else.  I walk as though blind.  Towards, who knows what, with arms outstretched for fear of falling.  Sometimes a light appears just in time to show me that the next step could have been fatal.  And then for a while I know where I am and where I’m going.  I know what the point is.  But it’s not so easy once the light has gone, and, once more, I am walking blind.  Once again I doubt and fear and wonder ‘Where am I going?  Maybe if I just stand still everything will be OK.’  But you can’t stand still in life; you can’t just stay where you’re comfortable.  All I know is that while I may not know what the point of my life is, there is someone else who does.  And that same person knows the point of your life too.  All you have to do is open your eyes, so that when that little flash of light comes, you can see it, and it can guide you.

Maasai Land

So the other day Becca gets talking to this RVA guard, Samuel.  It turns out he's Maasai, and he's quite willing to take us to visit his village.  Which is cool.

So yesterday morning, 8am Africa time (aka about 8.30) this taxi turns up and we are whisked off to Maasai land.  We drive to a village just at the foot of Mount Suswa and then walk an hour or so up the mountain to a set of caves.  All the Maasai are very proud of these caves, justifiably, and we are assured that they are definitely worth visiting.  Inside it's pitch dark, the only light comes from handheld torches, we are being guided by Samuel and another Maasai man called Daniel who seem to know exactly where to stand are where not to.  Something you need to know about these caves, the floor isn't flat, just reaching the other side involves a lot of rock climbing.  Now, when you're a 6 foot Maasai man in trousers, this doesn't pose too much of a problem.  When you're me, in a skirt.  Well, you can imagine.

In one of the caves we can hear bats all around us, but it's pitch dark so we can't see them at all.  I mention that I wish I could see them, and a torch is pointed up at the ceiling.  Immediately above my head are about 50 bats, all squeaking indignantly at us.  So cool!!!

What you can't tell from this picture,
is that other than the flash of the camera,
we are sitting in complete darkness

By the time we climb back out of the caves and walk the hour back to the village it's lunchtime.  Samuel invites us to come to his house and assures us that there will be plenty of food.  There is.  We are fed vast quantities of very good food by Samuel's wife and his new sister-in-law, Joyce.  Joyce looks about 16, although Samuel assures us she's 18 or so.  She has just recently married Samuel's brother, who's in his 40s and been welcomed into their family.  According to Maasai tradition a girl as young as 9 or 10 can be 'booked' to marry a man who could easily already be in his 30s.  And so, as I had been warned would happen, before we leave, Samuel asks if he can 'book' me for one of his friends.  I believe his exact words were something like 'You go finish school (I told him I was going to uni next year), come back to Kenya, I find you a nice Maasai.'  I didn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes.  Even Samuel laughed, although his amusement seemed to come more from the idea of a Maasai marrying a Mzungu (white person).

Samuel's wife is sitting down in full Maasai clothing.
Joyce is standing next to her in the white shirt.

Kijabe - part 2

Every afternoon from Monday to Thursday last week Becca and I went into the local primary school to read with some children who had been identified as weak readers.  We spent an hour and a half each day reading to them and listening to them read.  The students were four 6th graders (year 7 for you English people), Emanuel, Eliud, Sarah and Salome.  We had great fun reading with them as they were lovely, well behaved kids who were eager to learn and improve.  English is only their 3rd language so the fact that they can read it at all impressed me, even before I listened to them and realising that they really weren't that bad.

Sarah, Salome, Emanuel, Eluid

The last 2 Monday mornings we have gone into AIC CURE to volunteer for a few hours.  CURE is a disabled children's hospital so all the children we came into contact with had either just undergone surgery or were waiting to have it.  The most common problems seemed to be bow legs or frozen knees.  The amazing thing was, inspite of all their problems, inspite of many of them having severe difficulties moving around, these children are happier than most healthy Western children.  They are not afraid of being in hospital, they are ready to play and laugh.  Last week we discovered that the most popular toy is a balloon, unfortunately the one they were playing with was the last one.  So this week when we went in, we took them a whole new packet.  Seeing the joy in these children's eyes has really taught me a lot.  You don't need lots of toys and games and the newest bestest modcons.  We in the West often forget that fact.   All you need is friends and a game will evolve, all on its own.

Sharon plays with the original balloon

The other eternal toy - bubblewrap

The system at CURE is usually that the children all arrive on a Sunday and are operated on and sent home over the course of the week.  Only one child was there both days we went in.  Bryan (in the wheelchair above) had to have his feet amputated and prosthetic feet fitted instead, this meant that his treatment took longer than most children and he was still there when we went in again this morning.  Even confined to a wheelchair he's one you have to watch.  He shoots around all over the place, chasing balloons and balls and knocking people down in the process.  He speaks no English at all which presented a little bit of a challenge for Becca and I, although he does at least speak Swahili, which is more than some of the others do.  My heart went out to such a happy, mischievous little boy, confined to a chair by circumstances beyond anyone's control. 

ITS A BOY!!! (Again)

Kijabe hospital is the best hospital in Eastern Africa and, as such, is a magnet for missionaries in need of medical care.  For the last 2 weeks the apartment next to the Andersens' has been inhabited by the Faris', Natalie, Daniel and their 2 year old son Samuel.  The Faris' live and work in Southern Sudan and came to Kijabe to have their second child.

Samuel

William Paul Faris was born at around 9.30pm on the 14th September.  For the 3 nights that mother and baby were kept in the hospital Becca and I took it in turns to sleep in their apartment each night to babysit Samuel.  Today (17th) they were released and so the family is whole for the first time.

Liam and Natalie at home for the first time

As you can probably tell, a large proportion of the last 12 days of my life has been completely focused on babies, but cute as they are, they aren't actually why I'm here.  We have achieved other things I promise!  We are looking to head up to Kalacha around the end of next week.  I'm not promising anything, but I will do my best to write again before we leave, filling you in on what else we've been doing.

ITS A BOY!!!

Yes, you read correctly, Ezra Thomas Andersen was born at about 6.30pm on Monday 6th September.  That means that we have 2 more weeks in Kijabe and then we will be heading up north to Kalacha.

I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce the Andersens to you all.  Firstly there's Eddie and Rachel, who I have completely failed to get any decent pictures of yet.

Then the kids, Uriah is 8, he's animal mad and all boy, he hates to be inside or be still and is full of strange trivia about the various birds he has trapped and studied (and then let go again).

How annoying would it be if I jumped infront of the camera every time you try take a picture?

Then Ja-el, Ja-el is the only child I've ever met who is capable of getting dirty whilst sitting still.  She loves to run and climb and play but is equally happy curled up in a corner on her own with a book.

NB - Acacia took this, unaided.

Acacia is the little princess.  She loves anything arty and has discovered a love of photography, I think she's taken almost as many of my pictures as I have.  She's Ezra's 'Mama Cita' (little Mama), but don't say it to her face, you won't half get glared at.

Mama Cita

Miriam is a force of nature to put it mildly.  At 4 she wants to keep up with everything the others do and hates to be left behind.  She's the one with a fiercely independent streak who is likely to be quite offended by an offer of help.

Don't ask Miriam to smile for the camera, you get this face.

Then Silas, Silas is the mechanic.  He wants to know how everything works, to take it apart and put it back together again.  He's permenantly happy and smiling, he will sit in the midst of complete chaos, smile innocently at you and request a story.

Butter wouldn't melt...

And then Ezra, I have distinctly less to say about Ezra, at 2 days old he's mostly just plain cute.

If I keep pretending to be asleep then maybe everyone will leave me alone.
NB - Acacia took this one too.

Hell's Gate

Is a national park, incase you were wondering, no I didn't literally go to Hell's Gates.  How huge would the irony be?!

Anyway, yesterday we (me, Becca and the Andersens) went to Hell's Gate.  I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow, but there were a few bits that stood out.  The first one being the time we saw a baby giraffe, when I say baby I mean it literally still had its umbilical cord still attached, very very young.  It stopped in the middle of the track ahead of us and stood there just looking at us for a good minute or so before it ran off.

At another point we came across a whole big herd of antelope, don't ask me which type, I really can't remember.  The car spooked them and the whole herd ran across the road ahead and off behind some bushes.  That was really cool, the herd had everything from one big "daddy" antelope down to some tiny baby ones.

The coolest thing about the whole day, or rather, the thing that made the day quite as awesome as it was, was the fact that in an attempt - that worked - to get a better view of what was going on and a better angle to take pictures from, me, Becca and the Andersen's oldest son Uriah, rode on the roof rack.  It sounds crazy, I suppose it was, but it wasn't half fun.  Everytime we went over a bump or turned a sharp corner all 3 of us would bounce around and have to grab the roof rack bars to steady ourselves.  I realise that you can't really tell that we're sitting on a car in this picture, you'll just have to take my word for it.

NB - Yes I'm wearing an RVA shirt, only the coolest people do. :D

The quality of pictures we managed to take and the fun we had doing it came at a price though.  All the bouncing around left us distinctly bruised and sore by the end, and the lack of a roof mixed with the fact it was actually a nice day - one of the first since we came to Kijabe - means that both me and Becca have burnt, admittedly she has burnt more than me, but still.  Did you know it was possible to burn the backs of your hands?  No, me neither.  But I've managed it, 'cos I'm clever like that.

Hell's Gate gets its name from the natural steam jets that shoot up out of the ground at various intervals around it.  They are caused by boiling magma underground, or something like that.  But regardless of how they're caused they look really cool from a distance, not so much close up when you can see all the machinery that's been set up around them to harness their power to turn into electricity.  Although the fact they're even being used for that purpose is quite cool in itself.

You see what I mean?  From a distance - little poofs of white smoke that stream constantly from the ground.  Close up - a factory-like setup of towers and pumps.