Pictures

Well, I'm sitting in the hospital compound enjoying the luxury of wireless internet. Had a big meeting here at the office of the District Medical Officer, talking about Home-based care needs for the entire Serengeti District. Hopefully we can work together to provide some care to areas that aren't receiving anything.

We have had a long 2 1/2 month stint in Mugumu with just a couple weekends at the nearest town/cities - Musoma and Mwanza. Tomorrow we are driving up to Nairobi for dr's appointments and to pick up some computers. We should get there in about 10 hours if we aren't delayed at the border and have no problems on the road. Now that the situation in Kenya is settling down we feel it should be fine to pass through some areas where there had been conflict. We are ready for a bit of a break and to see family. After Nairobi we will go to Arusha, then the TZ coast for MCC retreat. We are really looking forward to it. As we settle into life and work, we get busier and busier and we need some time to deflate.

These pictures didn't make it last time so I thought I'd try again, if anyone has advice on how to post pictures quickly PLEASE feel free to enlighten me! I'm really hoping to give a more detailed account of our day-to-day life here, probably in Nairobi where internet is fast and where babysitters are abundant!

Here are the pics...

Five months pregnant (last month), making bagels, this is our kitchen:













And a fish dinner that started with this :




And turned out like this:







It was pretty good!

Sunday, March 2^nd.

 

Tonight Kurt and I are up later than normal.  Actually much later.  It is 11:00 pm and we are each going strong on laptops, communicating with the outside world that is somewhere out there.  Usually I’m half asleep by 9:00 and drag myself to brush my teeth and stretch out in bed while Kurt unfurls our mosquito net and tucks it in.  So, this is late.  There usually isn’t much to do around here after dark.  Although, some aspects of Mugumu come to life at night.  We have some good friends, Eli and Linda Knapp, who have spent time in Serengeti and Mugumu, now living in the States (woohoooo, you guys are BLOGWORTHY!!!  Eli loves to tease about that – little do they know the plans I have for them).  Anyways, before we arrived in Mugumu, we had asked them to describe it.  One of the things they mentioned was that they would often ponder as they laid in bed at night, “Why do all the dogs in Mugumu choose to bark at the same time?”  And now, I join them in their ponderings.  It’s the Mugumu nightlife…stray dogs barking and howling together.  I also hear frogs, crickets, and doves.  You know how things seem quiet until you listen and realize that there are noises everywhere?  It’s the same when I sit on the grass outside…if I look closely, the grass is moving.  Teeming with ants, termites, little harmless insects busy with their day’s work. 

 

So, confessions.  Blogs are overwhelming.  There are so many details to choose from to spill forth onto your computer screens!  We are glad you’re taking some time to read up on our lives.  There is much to share…about life, work, raising a child here, pregnancy.  Yes, our late but big and getting bigger news…I’m five months pregnant.  Here’s the proof:

 

 

 

This was just less than a month ago, but the only “pregnant” picture on our computer thus far.  And behind me you’ll see a bit of our kitchen.  I made bagels for the first time, they turned out nicely, especially when I used yogurt to make cream cheese, I felt like I was back in Seattle eating a Noah’s bagel. 

 

 

So, for some lucky people, pregnancy is blissful, romantic, full of wonder and excitement.  For me, I feel like I turn into a wretch.  I could barely get food down, for it only to come up again.  All the time.  And all this while we were settling into a new country, a new town, working new jobs, with new people.  Believe me, we gave our head a shake at the timing as well.  But anyways, the worst is over, I’m healthy again, and coming out of the “dark hole” of the first trimester and seeing some sunshine again.  We’re happy for this gift, happy that Ben will have a sibling soon (we’re due in June).  I’ll be going up to Nairobi for the delivery, since my parents are there, and it’s not too far of a drive.  So…that’s our big news.

 

Someday I will post about my work, driving over goat paths to reach villages where our clients live.  And about living here, of snakes and malaria, of friendships, of culture shock.  We’ve figured out a way we can email our posts, which hopefully will save a lot of time and work in “blogging,” so maybe we can be a bit better about it. 

 

But for now, here is what I cooked for dinner a couple of weeks ago.

 

It started with this:

 

 

And ended like this:

 

 

Here’s something I couldn’t have eaten a couple months ago!  Fish with Mango, from Extending the Table for all you Mennos.  Fish caught from Lake Victoria, shuttled 4 hours here by bus, sold in an open market.  Mangoes and tomatoes and onions and salt.  And that’s it!  100 mile diet!

 

 

 

Ben's latest

I certainly don't mean to take over this blog but anyway...

The other day I was lying on my back on the bed and Ben was lying on my shins. I was bouncing him
and tossing him with enough force to justify a call from family services; he wasn't saying much
except "More" every time he fell off. But then all of a sudden we hear him say in this very calm
and normal voice, "Thank you daddy, thank you." And then a few seconds later the same thing, "Thank
you daddy, Thank you." Anyway, Carla and I found it very funny.

We were playing with his tee-ball set one afternoon and he was hitting it OK when he picked up the
tee and put it on the steps. He then ordered me to throw the ball to him and promptly whacked it
right back to me quite well about 4 times in a row. I was very proud.

The Turtle

So the other day Ben and I (Kurtis) were playing outside; I think Ben was climbing trees and I was
feeding ant-lions. (Look em up on wiki!) Ben suddenly called out, "Look daddy, turtle!" and sure
enough a very nice sized turtle was wandering past the climbing tree. So I picked it up and took it
to show Carla. Our neighbour was walking by and mentioned that she thought it belonged to some kids
so after we showed Mommy, I left Ben to "fyaka" (cut the grass) and I went to the closest house to
see if I could return the turtle.
I found a mama cooking supper and we went through the greetings and then in my very broken
Swahili I explained that I found this turtle and I thought it belonged to some children and I wanted
to return it. That took a couple of tries and then I figured out that this turtle probably didn't
belong to her kids. Then it took a couple of tries from her for me to realize that she was asking
me to pay her something. That just about did it for me as I had already received a much higher than
usual number of requests in town that day. So I got a bit terse and I'm sure everyone understood
that there was no way I was going to pay for the privilege of returning the turtle. In the end we
did the polite good-byes and I ended up leaving the turtle there.
Then when I got back to our yard Ben was completely gone and it took about a minute before we saw
our gardener (who just happened to be going by on the weekend) bringing him back from the road. He
had been running full tilt probably looking for me.
So in about 90 seconds I managed to wreck the day for a number of people. The kids no longer had
their turtle, I was mad about automatically being asked for something because of my skin tone and
that I had blown my first meeting with this neighbour, the neighbour was probably annoyed that she
didn't get anything (except maybe turtle soup) and that I had been so rude, Carla was not too
pleased that I had left Ben and the turtle was most likely disappointed at becoming dinner that night.
..
A couple of addendums...
- That week we had just come back from a trip and found a great deal of water had been removed from
one of our tanks with a path leading from the tank towards this neighbours house though of course we
will never know for sure who took it. So that might have been on the back of my mind and why I
didn't have much patience.
- A few weeks later Ben and I were playing with his tricycle and some kids couldn't resist coming by
to watch. So we played together a bit and somehow the turtle came up. I mentioned that I had
returned it to that house and they took off right away to go find it so hopefully they did get it back.