Term One: A Summation

It's a Greek tradition to place a small coin in the loaf of Tsourekia (Easter bread), and the person who bites into that coin is said to receive good luck for the rest of the year.

Term One in Korr, Kenya has been like finding money in your bread. I'm a girl who loves her bread products (Don't laugh too hard Chelsea! I know you're thinking about me and my loaf of garlic bread...), so I'm totally content with a nice piece, or 7... That's normal life for me though: eating and loving my bread, maybe with some honey or blackberry jam spread on it occasionally to sweeten the deal even further.

But, there's the odd time when I find a coin hidden within the doughy goodness, and then my world is brighter that I even knew to hope for.

That's how the first part of my experience in Korr has been. I was expecting to find great people here; I totally love every single one of them. I was expecting to have adventures; I've got stories for my grand-kids. I was expecting to learn a lot; I've had lessons that have changed me permanently. I was expecting to become attached; I really don't know how I'll ever leave.

I was expecting my whole time here as a missionary to be enlightening; it's rocked my world.

Yeesso Usu A Soodine ("Jesus is Risen")

The ladies aren't wearing pastels and floral prints, the men aren't humoring their ladies with matching pastel and floral print ties, the kids aren't gorging themselves on chocolate eggs and Peeps, the cousins and I aren't crawling around blind-folded on our back lawn in an "advanced" version of the Easter Egg Hunt.. .But it's been another beautiful Easter all the same. Just against a different backdrop.

But if there's one tradition I'm not willing to give up, no matter the country, it's Tsourekia. Greek Easter Bread is a staple at the Sunday brunch at home, so I woke up early to bake it for my family here. We dyed the eggs yesterday, so all I had to do was hide the 10 shilling coin in the middle of the loaf and let that baby rise! It was a hit, if I do say so myself, and even little Khoboso from next door wanted a second piece.

Church today was not as action packed as the Christmas service, a couple of choirs and Communion, but in no way did we miss out on a fabulous sermon. However, that sermon didn't come from church, rather the life and testimony of one of my Form 2 students.

John (Baicha - his Rendille name) Amiyo is an awesome young man. He studies hard, doesn't complain about having to sit in the closet of the classroom (don't worry, he still has a desk), and is just generally an extremely loving and honorable young man. He loves knowledge, his classmates, his family, God, serving others... His honor is impeccable as seen in his respect for us teachers, how he approaches his relationships with people, his faith, and how he cares for his family.

What is particularly striking about this young man is how much of a modern-day Job he is. Job, in the Bible, is a man who is attacked with every painful thing humans could have to suffer. His whole family dies, he loses his wealth, he feels abandoned, he becomes physically ill, he's told to reject everything he has ever held as truth...

Like Job, John lost much of his family within a week of each other. First his father died of cholera on the 5th of June, 2009. His mother died that following Sunday of the same disease and his niece just days later. Not only this but his sister and her daughter caught cerebral malaria around the same time and are now mentally handicapped, although still alive. When John received word of these deaths he was understandably heartbroken not only because of the tragedy but also because of his absence at the time of their passing. He returned home immediately to find his living relatives scattered and severely mourning as well as many of their animals (goats, sheep, and camels) dead. It was suggested that he return to school after a few weeks, and he did; only to return in the middle of exams, which, for a Kenyan secondary school student is considered to be the most important time of one's life, quite literally.

And so, John had little to nothing; a desperately missed family, an education he couldn't focus on, no animals for income, and a sick sister and niece he had to care for as the one of the eldest sons. It is written that Job cursed the day he was born, and John did as well. He wondered how he could go on especially without a father to make proud. How was anything in his life worth the pain of feeling alone and homesick for a time when you had a home?

Job rejected even the society of his best friends for 7 days and nights, and so too did John leave his Marsabit school in the middle of the night and return to Korr to be near the last remaining bit of familiarity and comfort in his life. What to do next was not particularly one of his thoughts, however, he was encouraged to join Tirrim Secondary School at the beginning of the September term, at which point he was assigned to his desk in the closet.

And this is where the sermon comes in. Throughout this entire story, which I heard sitting in our living room this afternoon, not once did John blame God. He didn't once say this was all unfair, unreasonable, or proof that the pain in the world disproves the existence of a good God. The phrase he kept repeating was, "God has a plan." While Job had questions and desperately mourned his losses, he never blamed God, but rather defended His holiness, omnipotence, and justice. So too has John wept upon being shoved to the ground and having gravel rubbed in his mouth, and yet he unfailingly recognizes it as part of the greater - and good - picture of his life. "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?" is question he cannot and will not answer, as he knows he could never judge the the ultimate Judge of good and evil.

An unswerving faith like John's and Job's doesn't go unrecognized. Job was returned to health and prosperity to twice the level he had been before, and John seems to be healing as well. He's now thriving at Tirrim Secondary, he loves football, writes extra compositions to practice, takes hilarious "warrior" photos, he's going out to watch his animals this holiday, and clearly he is going strong in his faith. Young Mr. Amiyo's sermon today was better than any Easter message I've heard before: death, pain, and incomprehensibility are factors in human life, but the glory after all that, if your eyes are fixed in the right direction, is well worth it

Lately...

Lately, I've been busy. Writing (and rewriting) English exams for my students, proctoring exams, marking 128 exams in 6 days (it's harder than you think when 64 of those exams are compositions in a language that only resembles English), making my "irtiyyo" with my Momma and Ingo, traveling out to a nearby town to visit some other missionary friends, remembering that even if you're an expat you still have to pay taxes (thank goodness for extensions)...

Besides the drama of an American's taxes in Kenya, here's some details on the activities of the past few weeks!

Ngurinit (in-gur-in-it) is a town out by the mountains, about 45 kilometers from Korr, and a 1 1/2 hour drive on dry roads. It's absolutely stunning out there because it's in the rain shadow of the mountains, so they get all the "robeya" (green/foliage). Our trip began when we were picked up by the Knowles family in their truck, and after a chapati burrito lunch, loaded into the pick-up bed, and rode off into an ominous looking cloud.
We didn't have a chance against this MASSIVE rain storm, and as it rolled in and we were pelted with rain whose sting was worsened by the speed at which we were driving. There was an old army tarp sitting in the bed of the truck with us, so we 12 passengers in the back pulled it out, threw it over ourselves and held on. What was not considered before unfolding said tarp, was the fact that it had been sitting in the bed of that truck for a while gathering an innumerable amount of African dirt. And so, we remained wet, and became muddy. (This gem of a picture below is of Jamie under the tarp, rain dripping down her shirt and pants, wearing sunglasses to keep the water out of her eyes.) Upon our soggy arrival to Ngurnit, Temple Knowles (the man's name, not a place of worship) took us all out to begin a "45 minute hike." We were already wet and dirty, so why worry about a walk up a reasonable looking hill. Oh no. I had a blast, believe me, but this (look below) rolled in about 30 minutes in, and we were only half way up. We spent a good hour and a half in a leopard/baboon cave, evidenced by the variety of dung laying around, before being able to move on. Despite the chill, and volatile safety of the locale, we had a fabulous discussion about Christ returning, the end of the World, and the natural disasters that would ensue, topics, I believe, which were brought on by the magnitude of our situation and view.
"Between a rock and a hard place" is a colloquialism I've never known in such literal terms before this hike. The "rock" I'm referring to is the mountain we were currently hiking, one of the many abrupt outcroppings of mountains in this part of the northern desert. (It's quite interesting to look out over the horizon for miles with your line of sight interrupted only by a mountain without a range.) The hard place is a sheer cliff with only clouds visible below. This is where we moved on to from our cave and did some rock climbing that should have been assisted by a carabiner, ropes, and a helmet. I'm a self-diagnosed clinical acrophobe, so having my finger tips holding my whole body from going over the edge of a steep cliff was unnerving. Eventually, however, we made it to the top and back down for a pizza dinner: 4 hours later. The next day we took a small walk, this one really was only that, up to the "bathtubs." The granite in the luggah there has been so worn down by flood waters, that now it's quite comfortable to use as a waterslide and natural-made pools. We spent a good few hours relaxing in the only "bathtub" for hundreds of miles, and after that refreshment made our way back home from Ngurinit on the ATVs, arriving in Korr, again, wet from our sweat and brown from the dirt.
Recently we've also been working really hard on our traditional beaded necklaces with our various Mommas and Ingos and lady students. I beaded a lot when I was younger. For examples of my early work ask Mom to show you the jewelery collection I made her. I even still have my old baking soda tin full of beads. But making "irtiyyo" (ear -tea -yo/ in the plural form) is a real art. You have to buy hundreds of beads, thread them on to fairly sturdy wire, and be sure not to upset the delicate internal balance of Rendille fashion. There are colors you may and may not use, or at least not use together. "Babar tiya" (my mother) said that she didn't like my light blue and orange combination so I had to change it to orange and black because that is "weyti hahhaagganahe" (very good/beautiful), although it's a little too "Halloweeny" for my taste. It's funny how particular the Rendille can be about their colors. It took us a good three days of seeking out local wisdom on the subject to determine that dark blue was in fact an ok color for women to wear. Interestingly, it was the men who had a strong opinion of the negative connotations of dark blue beads even though they're not the ones wearing them. According to the teachers at school it's the color of death, although how a culture of strictly dark-skinned people knows that sometimes bodies turn blue when they die is beyond me. And Abaya, well all he said was, "Uh-oh. Madaakkino! Mele mele mele." (Uh oh! Good grief! No, no, no.) However, upon talking to the Rendille mommas and sneaking pokes at the irtiyyo of women around town, we discovered that dark blue is in fact perfectly decent. Good thing too, because it's my favorite! There's hours of work to be done on our necklaces still. This is a piece of jewelry that is traditionally developed over years and years for Rendille women. You begin wearing beads when you're young, but irityyo don't reach their full volume until into a woman's 20s. By this point a woman's collection of beads has been enhanced by receiving them from male admirers, getting money to buy them, or being given them by your father upon marriage. We white ladies are skipping over quite a few life stages to get our irtiyyo finished, but I want to be able to wear mine to our dances at school. That's the whole point of these things anyway; to make them bounce around your neck as you dance with the purpose of attracting the warriors.

We also went over to Ingo Mary's last weekend in order for her to have a slightly premature going-away party for Jamie. We drank camel's milk with her and her family, she presented Jamie with beads, and painted henna on our feet. Unfortunately, mine looked like mustard yellow Christmas tree, but the gift was precious nonetheless.
This is Sukto Tiya (My Sukto). She's the neighbor and best friend of Priscilla, Ingo's daughter. They're such cutie patooties. Everyday on our way to and from school (and sometimes to and from all over again) they are there to great us, give hugs, and blow kisses.

Lately we've introduced the "jump shot" to our students. That's Gabe on the left and Jonathan on the right. I could wax poetic about these two boys. They're awesome. If you would like to sponsor Jonathan to go to Seminary, let's talk. If you feel called to send Gabe to get engineering training, let's talk.


Remember the post about my birthday? With the dancing and Game Night at school... Well Miss Jammey-Pants got one too! However, her 24th birthday party/ Game Night even included a "Coke-Off" between herself and Samuel Mondi. I guess against others, she might have stood a chance, but against Samuel... She failed. Mondi: 7 seconds to finish. Jamie: around 15 seconds but then we became too preoccupied cheering for Mondi to continue her count.


A "Bubblegum-Off" followed that. Ten pieces of gum: Who can blow the first bubble? Abdulahi definitely trounced poor Alicia, but she gave it a good effort.



This game night also included the introduction of Limbo to our African kids, and they LOVED it! I wish I had been able to remember the song that goes along with this game, but there was so much yelling and cheering that a song might have only added to the decibel level in the cafeteria. We went about 7 or 8 rounds, until the stick was at my mid-thigh (I was the Limbo stick holder), and at that point, everyone was eliminated except precious Jeremiah who is only 4 ft. something. "I won Madame, I won!" Of course you did sweetheart!



After Limbo, dancing ensued, and with it a great amount of excitement and sweat. This dance party didn't disappoint either as we ladies learned a few more "moves" (this time how to bend your knees, give a little bounce, and then bob your chin back at your dance partner), and the boys became so exstatic they started doing high jumps in the center of the room. I didn't know this while watching it happen, but evidently, when the warriors become really happy and are having a lot of fun, they will form a circle and take turns in the middle jumping as high as they can. From a western perspective it's hilarious to watch, but I'm inclined to believe that we need more overt shows of happiness like this back home.

People sing, cry, laugh, and clap for joy. Lately, I've thought, why not add high jumps to the list?


(Above is Job patting my head, a sign of encouragement for ladies who are either dancing well or look tired. I was probably the latter.)