Your Hands and Feet Are Mangos...

So many things! Apologies for not updating, the time has come for some news from the East. Our schedule has changed greatly: All of this week we are working in Muthiga, a very rural, beautiful slum far outside of the city. The morning hours have been spent digging holes, plowing, and weed-pulling on a spot of property that the church in Muthiga owns. They are planning on putting a school up, which will be a wonderful asset to the children of Muthiga, being that the closest school is a 2km walk, and so most children do not attend. We rest in the shade of a mango tree that sits in the middle of the lot, and often find chameleons crawling its low branches. In the afternoons, we have bible club in the slum, much a like a vacation bible school meeting. This has proved to be by far the most tiring work: the kids have decided that much like a jungle-gym that has legs, we are to be climbed are wrestled until we are face first on the ground. But it’s rewarding, the children love attention, and though we can barely communicate and must have a translator, we enjoy it as well.
We had a visit from a new friend recently: A monkey found its way to our avocado tree, and has been spotted pulling the fruit and eating it. We set out some fruit, and hope that we’ll see it again.
Well, off to Muthiga.

Marinatin'

All has become so second nature so quickly. The slow pace of the country has marinated in to the team, and we are enjoying long mornings, slow nights, and lots of hot chai with the locals. In the Kibera school I have been assisting a teacher with her third grade class, teaching English and maths. Last Wednesday around 10:30, the class bell rung, and I, as I am naturally inclined, hopped up and was immediately ready to venture off to my classroom to help students with additions (4 digits). However, my Teacher had noticed that I had only finished half a cup of tea, and told me that if I am to be Kenyan, I need to finish at least two cups before I could go to class. We had a good laugh about it, yet she still insisted that I sit and enjoy the hot drink while she sent the students in one by one for me to look over their work. We were told at Pre-Field training that in the mere two months we have in Kenya, we will only barely begin to break the surface into understanding the Kenyan way of life. How true. But all is still so exciting! We have begun work on developing a plot of land that the church has purchased out in the Ngong hills: 20 acres of green grassland that needs to be fenced in by Thursday! We have so far only dug holes—dozens and dozens of holes—for the fence posts to be set in. How fun could that be? Fun. Uberfun. Like digging holes on the set of the Lion King. And Pastor Makuku’s plans for the land only make us want to work faster: A new girls home for orphaned children, a retreat house for the children of Kibera, gardens to feed the hundreds of expected children that will come to worship and learn about the lord, a new guest house for interns like myself, and many more. Pastor knows so much about the people of Kenya, and has a remarkably heavy heart for them. I look forward to working close by him and his team for the next few weeks, watching the unusual ways the Kenyans worship my same God, listening to them pray in their native languages about thins I have never considered, and of course, marinating in slow pace of Kenya time. We have a familiar saying about Pastor, “A Pastor is never late, nor is he early…he arrives precisely when he means to.”

Kwaheri