What is the vilest insult a ten-year-old boy can hurl at another ten-year-old boy? If you say `Hey, you stink’ there is usually agreement and the opportunity to talk about the favorite subject, which is gas. Recently, one of our guys had a birthday. In our house on birthdays, we like to go around and state what we like about that person. One guy said `I like that he is handsome to girls.’ With great fury, the accused said `I...
Continue ReadingWe went to Kitale this weekend and I learned more about Kenya. Some of it was new information and some of it was finally realizing that what I saw was what Kenya really is.
The trip to Kitale took us through some beautiful countryside. There has been a lot more rain up north and things were green and lush. We traveled through the Rift Valley for a while and then onto the western side, almost to the border of Uganda. We...
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...
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 ...
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...
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,...
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....
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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