Vacations in Africa

October 12, 1999 by Steve Peifer

It rained last week.
In Dallas, when it would rain, I would think `All the morons are going to take their stupid pills and try to outrun the raindrops and cause a million accidents and I’ll get home later.’
The drought isn’t over, but I saw people walking around with tears in their eyes. Tears of joy. Adults were walking around just to feel the water on their face. What an amazing feeling: to be grateful for rain.
We had our midterm break...

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How do you dismantle a meat loaf?

October 3, 1999 by Steve Peifer

Email was down for the entire nation of Kenya this last 7 days. Kenya has only one satellite that handles all its email, and when it goes down, there is no plan B. When email goes down for an extended period, I start to imagine all sorts of wonderful news items I will receive:
CUBS WIN WORLD SERIES
DOW HITS 30000
CURE FOR CANCER FOUNDInstead, what I received was a message from my good friend who is renting out ...

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From Nancy

by Steve Peifer

We are settling into our school routine and I am beginning to know what to expect from each day, but there are still so many “little things” that take me by surprise. I guess when you’ve grown up in the safety and comfort of middle class America in a stable, loving family that is just going to happen over here.
Grace, who works for us, was sick with a bad cold last week. She worked in spite of it, but I...

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What tribe are you from?

September 26, 1999 by Steve Peifer

We hadn’t planned on writing weekly letters, but there always seems to be so much to mention. If you are sick of getting these, please let us know, and I will be glad to remove you from the list.
I’ve been having problems sleeping for several years now, almost to the day we found out bad news in the pregnancy. Moving to Africa made it worst; I would go to sleep at the normal time, and wake up two hours later,...

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Nothing Can Prepare You For This

September 19, 1999 by Steve Peifer

This needs to be put into perspective. Almost all buildings in Africa are made of cement or tin due to the termite issue. In our cement dorm, sound carries in an amazing way. We have 9 10-year-old boys.
And they all got their band instruments this week: 5 trumpets, 2 saxophones, 1 trombone, and one flute. And they all like to practice, because they are all enthusiastic beginners. I have dreams about how many ways Hot Cross Buns can sound flat....

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Firsts

by Steve Peifer

We’ve been here about 7 weeks, but this week contained an amazing number of firsts:

We officially got a dog (for the year). Her name is Jesse, she’s mostly black lab, and she is pretty sweet, but not terribly well trained. She belongs to a family who is on furlough (i.e. back in the states for a year), and will return to them when we leave in July. She has actually been ours since the first ...

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Hello again!

September 14, 1999 by Steve Peifer

Trust this finds all of you doing well. We heard of one dear friend whose father died this week, and it is hard to be so far away but knowing we are in God’s will, we continue on in peace. We have hit more transitional bumps as we get used to the responsibility of 9 more boys (we lost one to the 6th grade dorm-just too smart for us!). Much of my stress centers around the fact that every single...

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Staff Hunt!

by Steve Peifer

Matthew turned 8 on Monday! The first member of the Peifer family to celebrate a birthday in Africa! We would like to thank the dozens of friends, some of which we have never met, who sent cards and stickers to him. Nan and I will never forget it, and Matthew reveled in it. Five nationalities were represented at his party, and whites were definitely outnumbered, and that is such a wonderful feeling to see your sons have friends that are...

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