Wow. It has been quite an adventure in my mind since I have arrived. I had the initial homesickness, the prolonged homesickness, and boring registration all the while telling myself this is going to be an amazing and fun experience. The past couple of weeks I couldn’t actually believe myself. I won’t go into all of the sad details but I would spend tons of time online talking with people from home, going to bed early, waking up late, not doing much of anything. There isn’t much to do around campus so I felt like I might as well do something I will sort of enjoy.
Doing that something isn’t what I came here for though. I can browse the internet, talk to my friends, and sleep at home. I came here to meet new people, experience new things and most importantly learn something new. I told myself this was just the first weeks and because it is school it really can’t be anything but boring. But really, everything is what you make it right? I just couldn’t seem to make those days NOT boring. This weekend finally changed that.
I went into Nairobi Saturday morning. Monica, Alyssa*, and I shopped at a couple malls, and ate out until about 8 o’clock in the evening. We also got to go to a small market where almost everything was handmade and beautiful! I will be going again so if there is anything you want let me know! Having a full day felt really good and helped the boredom. We all, Laura included, stayed the night at Jan’s. She is a missionary type worker who works for Daystar US and is working a few years here. It was so nice of her to let us stay in her home because she had to know we would eat something and sure enough we drank her pop, cocoa, and tea and ate her bread and eggs! Over there we watched the movie Return to Me and then I went to sleep!
We had to get up early because we were going to visit a church just outside of Nairobi. This was the Nairobi Pentecostal Church in the city Karen. To be honest, I didn’t really like it. Everyone was welcoming and the singing was great but the preaching was just…we’ll leave it at that. This easily could have been the topic of the sermon, divorce, and why it is not good at all. It is really hard to listen to 45 minutes of how marriage should work and why not to divorce when it is such a common thing in the culture I grew up in. The service was basically opening songs, greetings, announcements, offering, and sermon – with a few prayers thrown in. I really missed the structure of my service at home with all of the different pieces and songs throughout. Anyways, it was a good thing to experience.
After the service the welcoming committee invited all visitors for tea, the four of us were the only ones who stayed because they talked us into it! I don’t like tea, the kind they drink here, but they had drinking chocolate so I tried that. I didn’t like that either but I had to be polite so I drank it. They also had some sort of pastry…it tasted like deep fried dough or something. It wasn’t anything to brag about!
When we all finished we headed over to the Bomas of Kenya. This is a place where they have models of the different, or many of the different, tribal villages set up. It was really cool to see this, the different sizes of huts for first wives, second, and third and the way they tribes built them differently. I was amazed at how small many of them were and there is no electricity, not many windows, not much for warmth, and a bed of sticks. I cannot believe some people still live like this!
We had lunch there and boy was that fun! Everything we wanted they were out of and we had no idea how anything was made or what was in it and if we would like it! Eventually we picked something and I hate seasoned/marinated/dressed chicken which was really a big step for me! During lunch I saw a monkey! It was far out in the woods and I couldn’t see the whole thing but I did see one! We also saw three warthogs! Boy are those things ugly, they were just walking around near tables and eating the grass.
After lunch they had traditional African dances. We could only stay for a little while because the bus to come back to campus left at 5. The dances I did see were all amazing and it took a lot of talent for them to be performed. I cannot imagine doing such dances and being able to move in those ways for so long!
Anyhow, my mindset is a little bit more in the right direction now. There is still a lot going on up there in my head but hopefully I will sort it all out soon.
*Alyssa is from Washington and arrived a week ago, she will be a student here for a few years and get her degree from here.
