Habari za maisha? (How is life)

Maisha ni nzuri - life is good.

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of mundane activity and building foundations for the coming months and years.

Our focus has been on Swahili -  lessons are an hour a day and we spend much more time studying. Though Swahili is a relatively straightforward language to learn, it has not been simple.  Many words sound like Spanish or Mandarin, and verbs in particular start to sound so similar.  Kupika means to cook and kupiga means to hit.  Kusema: to say, kusoma: to read.  Kuelewa: to know, kuolewa: to be married, kulewa: to be drunk. Then we have crazy long verbs like kusheherekea: to celebrate, and kutengeneza: to build.  And, nouns like maziwa: milk, and maisha: life.  How is your life and how is your milk are two very different questions!  

I have started my first two hospital projects - related to my background but a bit of new territory. First, I am making a short promo film for the newest  building project.  Kijabe Hospital is in a transition from being a busy mission hospital to expanding its role as a training center.  The medical officer and clinical officer training programs, surgical residencies and nursing/nurse anesthetist programs are the first of many more to come.  Arianna and her boss/mentor/friend Mardi have dreams for an pediatric acute care residency program, as do many other parts of the hospital.

I am talking to doctors who are excited about this part of their job, and others who have been through the training programs and are now instrumental in the life of the hospital and medicine in Kenya. Teaching will be the truest legacy of our time in Kijabe, and it is fun to see glimpses of how it is being done and  realize the efforts of doctors here will bring hope and healing throughout east Africa.  Pray that learning to edit video would not be too difficult!!

The second project is compiling and organizing a historical scrapbook as we approach the 100th anniversary of the hospital next spring.  This may turn out to be a colossal undertaking, but I hope it will be immensely rewarding to hear and retell the stories of the doctors and nurses who have gone before us.  

In between the big goals are the myriad of activities that make up daily life - trips up and down the hill to RVA, hardware store runs as we finish a table and benches.  Groceries at the duka, bike rides and runs, conversations with friends and strangers along the road, hosting dinner for the Pediatric department, a trip to the swimming pool with new friends, learning to start a fire with a truckload of green wood, and making Halloween (or Carnival as we call it here) costumes without the aid of Michael's or any other store.

Life is busy, but becoming normal.  And, for me, Kijabe is beginning to feel like home instead of a dream.

-David

 Madeline is a killer whale and Annabelle is wonder-woman.

 Madeline and her homemade bow-and-arrow

 Roadside sunset jumping picture

the unfamiliar

So, moving is hard. And weird. And awesome. And ridiculous.

I'm sitting upstairs while David and a friend are off taking night pictures at the airstrip in the wind in the middle of the night. Everything is quiet except for the steady howling enveloping our house, and weariness has settled in my limbs.

It has been a long day - one of those days where the world comes crashing down on you a bit - not with any particular reason or big crisis. Just in lots of little moments, where you realize you haven't found your safe place yet - that corner of the couch or cup of coffee or favorite bench where everything can sort out and make sense again.

Tomorrow marks one month since the van pulled into our house in Kijabe.

I've learned to make cookies that taste like home and coffee in a french press with unrefined sugar and cream. We've found ice cream and a cow to get milk. I can say "i'm excellent" and "i was tired" and "i will brush my teeth" in Swahili. David knows the short cuts like someone who has been here for much longer and can drive on the opposite side of the road over potholes with ease. He spent the day laughing with friends and building a table without a power saw, and then we made ham and cheese quesadillas for dinner. The curtains are hung and the canvases are stretched.  We have couches  (perfect for children bouncing), mattresses with familiar bedding, and a garden ready to plant.  The girls climb under their mosquito nets at night like they have been doing it all their lives and sprint the climb to school that still makes us lose our breath. We have welcomed people into our lives that we knew only in theory and by blog four short weeks ago, and they have welcomed us with unbelievable openness and love. We have a home, and it is wonderful.

I know this should be enough, yet it seems like these too small victories do not justify the exhaustion in my heart. Life has barely begun here, and I have yet to add the whirlwind that is the hospital to the already fragile days.

No wonder toddlers (and my youngest, daily) dissolve into temper tantrums - when every step and room and food and person is an all-consuming discovery.  When the familiar seems to change with new knowledge and the unfamiliar adds elements of un-understandable confusion that the mind can only process so fast.

Words exist for this, and  books and blogs and articles have been written about it, and I know this is expected and so verynormal. But, that does not ease the day to day - the raw guarded resolve that each morning requires.

So today, I am tired. Grateful for friends who saw subtle panic in my face and met me in the uncertainty with coffee and banana bread. Still amazed at the power of the wind and the laughter of my children as they play in the tree house outside in the afternoon light.  And still certain that this is exactly where we are supposed to be.

But overwhelmed nonetheless, and taking unsure steps, one in front of the other. Tying life in one home to life in a new home, trying to treat relationships with tender care, weaving together small discoveries into big ones, tempering the ridiculous with the wonderful, and the noise with quiet whispers.

"We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You." 2 Chronicles 20

Heroes Day

Today was a national holiday, known as Heroes Day (Mashujaa) in Kenya.  

Rift Valley Academy celebrated Multicultural Day. . .which is quite real as the students come from a 20+ cultures and nations around the globe.  It is also a day to speak to the identity of the students as third culture kids - a.k.a. who have a passport "home", but spent most of their lives living in another place.  Many of the RVA students are technically 4th culture kids.  Imagine that you are ethnically Korean, but lived your entire life in Sudan, and now attend boarding school in Kenya. . .that's kind of the idea.  

We grown-ups attended the flag ceremony part of the day, which is like a miniature of the opening ceremony at the Olympics.  Teenagers and Titchies (Elementary-aged) from each country marched a flag to the cheers of the other students and the sound of their nation's anthem.  The traditional dress, the multitude of languages, and celebration of the students was wonderful.  One of my favorite Rich Mullins lines is "I'm home anywhere if you are where I am."  The teachers definitely reinforced this message that we should love our country and homeland, but that our true home is wherever God calls us.    

The day closed with the One World Run - a fundraising 5K through school grounds that ended on the soccer fields through a tunnel of flags from all over the world. I ran and  Madeline and Annabelle walked with their RVA big sisters, while Arianna took pictures.  

The Great Outdoors

This has been a quiet week for us.  The girls were off school on Monday and Tuesday, so we went camping with some new friends.  The Davis's have been in Kijabe for 7 years, and their youngest has quickly become a wonderful friend for Madeline and Annabelle (as they have been to us).  We sight-unseen-yard-sale-purchased a bunch of camping gear, so we were pretty well equipped to spend a weekend outside under the stars.  The kids swam in the river, we grilled some wonderful burgers, roasted marshmallows, played guitar, and relaxed.

When we came to Kijabe a year ago, I realized that if I wanted to have friends I better get in shape.  I spent the year running, biking, and swimming, and even ran a marathon in April.  So this week, extra wheels for the Kijabe "guest-bike" arrived from America and I tagged along on my first ride.  26.2 miles, which was spectacularly beautiful, but certainly the hardest physical activity I have ever undertaken.  We rode through forests and tea fields, burned through descents and I made it home in one piece!

                           

                   

                   

                   

Another outdoor pursuit this week was installing a rain barrel for watering.  We moved into a home with a massive garden.  The 120 litre tank may not even make a dent as far as our water needs go, but it's a start.  The girls used it to make a few shillings cleaning the bike this afternoon!

I also made my first solo drive to Nairobi to pick up some groceries and on the way home stopped to meet up with a visitor from the states who brought a few supplies for Arianna (a Mophie phone charger and Magic Erasers!).  I took a bit of a wrong turn and wound up in the middle of a beautiful tea plantation.

Kenya is spectacularly beautiful, if you know where to look.  The roads are treacherous and full of potholes and police roadblocks. . .everything is perpetually covered by a layer or dust, or this weekend, mud.  There is no adopt-a-highway program to pick up litter from trash-fires.  Buildings are created for function, not aesthetics. . .at least the buildings that are not hidden behind cement fences topped with barbed wire.

But just off the main road, off the beaten path, are places of extreme beauty.  Where children laugh and smile as you ride by on your baicikeli.  Where Kenyans are working the fields, walking the roads, and genuinely happy to see a new face.  Where kids run alongside you and cheer like the tour-de-france as you climb a hill.  Where vistas are spectacular, secret, and each overlook feels like a private discovery.

I know our pictures are not yet showing the whole of Kenya. . .that we are slanting things toward the beautiful and away from the messy.  That will change over time, but right now I need pictures to be a pep-talk and a reminder of what is amazing here.  To be an escape from what I haven't figured out and don't understand.  To be a record that I am learning. . .slowly. . .where to look.

on being still. . .

When I was in college, I had a  collage on my wall by my bed that had only 2 words.

Be still.

A reminder to sit, to listen, to not run in nine directions, simultaneously, with passion. A reminder to take a deep breath every once in awhile. Fifteen years later, stillness has not been my strong suit (and that may be the understatement of the year).  I am like a two year old in a new nursery surrounded by a million things to do and see and determined not to miss a thing.

My first two months in Kenya are officially our time to learn Swahili, which we are doing at a feverish pace. Unofficially, it's a time to get our footing, build new friendships, and make sure our Focus is solid before I enter the potentially all-consuming life that is being a pediatrician at this busy, busy hospital.

Day by day, I become more and more thankful for this time as I begin to sink deep roots in a place I have been for only a fraction of my life. However,  I also ponder deeply, practice my spectacular ability to prepare for as-yet-to-come-to-pass worst case scenarios, and wonder about the new normal.

As a wise friend put it, this 8 weeks is like my maternity leave - complete with the life changing upheaval that a first child brings, but strangely enchanting as I take midnight moments to really see the newness and beauty that has upended our lives.

Perhaps this move to Africa, the stripping to the bare essentials of our life, and the looming impossibility to stands before me will finally stun me into silence.  And I will sit with wonder, and finally, be still.

the Annabelle Shirk adventure (as titled by her)

from Annabelle. . .

Oct 7, 2014

I went hiking. It was fun. We walked our* dog, Emma. We love her so much.

I like school. There is a merry go round on the playground. I am in Kindergarten. I love it so much. There is a swing set on the playground. I love it. I climb bars on the playground. The bars are fun.
It is a big playground . I love school so much.

It is fun to be in school - so much. At school I have read to self, read to someone, work on writing, and word work.

My favorite color is blue.

I lost a tooth.

 belle's first selfie

 resting on the walk up from school

1 less tooth

*Emma is our neighbors' dog, but already much loved by the girls. . .

My day. (by Madeline)

October 7 2014

        Today was really fun ! We did writing first at school. After that we get

to do read-to-self , work on writing , or do word work which is doing

activities with words.

We also went on a hike. It had a great view. We took a few pictures.

IT WAS AMAZING !  Afterwards,  we saw a exploding sunset !

It was an awesome way to end a day!

-Madeline

  

**pictures from Madeline's camera