Week Five!

Jambo Marafiki (Translation: Hello friends)

We have officially completed our (Janie, Janessa, and Alyssa’s) 5^th week and Ashley’s 3^rd week! We have had a great week, filled with building relationships and quality time with people. One old hymn that I used to sing growing up has come to my mind throughout this week: Count Your Blessings. The line that keeps invading my thoughts goes like this, “Count your blessings; name them one by one. Count your blessings; see what God has done.” I told the other girls about this and so we decided to tell you about our week by obeying this hymn and “counting our blessings.”

Blessing One: July 4^th Burgers: We decided that we would celebrate America’s Independence Day big time here in Kenya. We invited the clinic staff over for a wonderful lunch of burgers (our first time eating beef since being in Kenya!), fries, and lemonade! We threw some guacamole in there as well, because, I’ll be real honest, we four missionary girls can make some killer guac. We sang the National Anthem for our dear Kenyan friends, which they loved. Fred even tried to learn the first few stanzas in honor of this American Holiday. It was such a cool experience to share part of our culture with them!

Blessing Two: Jiko: There are a few things that can elicit girly screams of terror from our four mouths: spiders, snakes and lizards (we saw our first African snake this week at the clinic), lack of coffee or chocolate, and RUNNING OUT OF GAS FOR OUR GAS POWERED STOVE. The final item on the list occurred on Friday night, right in the middle of cooking a lovely meal of potatoes, green beans, and fish. The thought of having to instead eat yet another peanut butter sandwich was enough to drive us bonkers, so Janessa and I ran over to Derek’s house (our next door neighbor). Thankfully, he had an extra Jiko (essentially a campfire in a pot) which he let us borrow. We got to have the real African cooking experience, along with being able to eat our coveted meal of fish and chips.

Blessing Three: New friends and S’mores: We have been able to get to know James and Tara, two Americans that are here for a while working with a non-profit and the Kenyan Red Cross. It has been great to hear their stories, as well as discuss health care here in Kenya. They also brought us one of the best gifts anyone could have ever given us: marshmallows! We were able to construct a makeshift s’more using Kenyan things we had lying around the house. If anyone there in the motherland wants the recipe, it includes: tea biscuits (NOT the round, easily breaking ones, but the rectangular, thick ones that have the word NICE on the top), 8 chocolate chips (the number is important here, as we have to be a bit stingy with the number that we use, in order to last us the rest of the trip), and a marshmallow (we have a mixed bag of regular and strawberry flavored; regular is my personal favorite). This tiny joy of roasting marshmallows over our little borrowed jiko was enough to bring squeals of laughter, and definitely deserves to be put on the blessing list. It’s the small things that count, right?!

Blessing Four: Frederick and African Hair: Our dear friend and lab technician at the clinic, Fred, took us into town on Saturday for our first experience with a Kenyan hair salon. We entered Pinkie’s Hairstyles at 10 AM and left with braided heads at 2 PM. What a fun experience! While I wasn’t too enthusiastic about the pain, I loved being with these beautiful Kenyan women and joking about the differences between sturdy African hair and “wazungu nuele” (translation: white people hair). I count it such a blessing to be given this opportunity to totally be immersed in their extraordinary culture, even down to the hair on my head!

Blessing Five: Kenyan Adventures: I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for these fantastic three girls that I get to live with this summer! I often times wish that I had a secret video camera taped to my shirt so that I could capture every moment. There is an incredible amount of laughter that goes on here. This week we discovered the joy of making a tent using sheets and a mosquito net, lugging a thermos of hot chai and a HUGE bowl of popcorn upstairs, and reading to each other. We got to have adventures outside of our little Shalom house as well this week. We visited Orpha’s shamba (garden) and played in the stalks of corn. On Saturday, after getting our hair done, we went with Fred to a nearby boarding school where his younger brother lives. While Fred met with a teacher to check up on his brother’s performance, we played games with the kids. It is these moments of laughter and joy that make me realize that it will be incredibly hard to leave this place in three weeks.

Well, dearest friends and family, we love you all so much and are praying for you daily. We miss all of you immensely and can’t wait to see you all very soon! Thank you once again for your prayers and emails of encouragement. They are so very much appreciated!

Love to all,

Janie and the Siyiapei Girls

PS: Special shout-out to all the family birthdays this week: Hunter, Mama Rhodes, and Aaron! Happy Birthday!