village living

The girls loved to braid our hair

Our mother for the week. We sat in the kitchen with her every morning and evening as she taught us how to make Kenyan food.

little karen

cleaning the beans for dinner

“I kind of feel like we are living a scene from braveheart.” Reika said as we were standing in the middle of a bunch of huts with our hair braided in every which direction (by the orphaned girls), watching a huge fight break out between two women. The women were fighting over their mutual husband. One of the women had just found out that her husband had decided to get a second wife, and they second wife just happened to be the neighbor. Needless to say these women did not get along. Reika and I both had a good laugh when I reminded her that we were def. in Africa and that nothing about the situation that we were witnessing was in anyway normal.

This week we spent our time with in the Kinduwa orphan home. The Director of the Kinduwa orphanage and his family showed us an unlimited amount of hospitality. They gave us their beds to sleep in at night, feed us more food than I could handle, boiled water for us to bathe in, and cleaned our muddy shoes every night. I was even tucked into bed by the director’s 15 year-old niece. She made sure that all the covers were tucked under every inch of my body. It was so sweet.

We spent Easter Sunday with the orphans and the director’s family. It was a beautiful day full of children singing and dancing and the simple preaching in a simple little wooden church. It was so sweet. We went to the children’s service first where all the children danced and sang together. They not only had beautiful voices, but they all know how to dance. I think that they were born with the rhythm in their bones. After eating lunch with the family Reika and I took our usual nap, we found ourselves taking naps after every meal because our stomachs hurt so bad from eating so much food. We tried so hard to finish our plates, but never even seemed to finish half. They amount of food that an average Kenyan eats is more than all my brothers can eat together. I am still trying to figure out how they stay so thin.

After waking up from the nap I found myself feeling rather sick. That feeling increased as the day went on and by nighttime I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to eat dinner. After eating a few bites of dinner I went quickly to bed. I kept telling Reika, “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO……especially if I get sick?” Reika was so sweet. She told me to wake her up if I felt sick so that she could go outside with me. It would not have been so bad if the “outhouse” was not a good few yards down the hill, and it was just a hole in the ground with a wall around it. Not an ideal bathroom for getting sick. I said a long prayer before going to bed that night and then took one of my beloved, lifesaving ambien. Thank the Lord, I slept through the whole night and our driver was returning that next morning to take us back to Tenwek.

Our experience in this village was much more stretching, but it was so good. I was talking to a missionary at Tenwek, and I was saying that experiences like these are always more fun once they are over haha.