Funniest Home Photos

Please watch the small boy running down the center of these three photos. His name is Juma Puma (well, the "Puma" is my nickname for him) and he is awesome at getting himself into trouble. For example...

Running off to join the big boys doing round-offs and cartwheels.

Roundhouse kick to the face.

Wipe-out. Bless his little heart.

Water Witching

I still say this is bologna, but since it can't be scientifically proven and I can't disprove it, I guess I'm stuck.

"Water Witching" or "Dowsing," to be a little less pagan, is the technique of using a "Y" shaped branch or two metal "L" shaped rods to detect underground water sources. There's nothing to say about how it actually works beyond that you're supposed to hold your sticks, wood or metal, in your hands at about chest level. When you walk over an area of land that covers an underground water source, the branch supposedly dips down or the metal rods cross each other to form an "X." That's it. No scientific explanation to speak of.

(My student Joel tries his hand at holding the witching sticks.)

The people I work with guess that somehow an electric current travels from the underground water, through a person's body, and then affects the metal rods, or, perhaps, that the water in the soil somehow attracts the water in a branch to itself. Heaven help anyone who tried this around the Puritans because they would have been hung real fast. This is about as close to real life magic as I've gotten.

I was the biggest scoffer when Jim and Laura Propst said that we were going to use these sticky things to go find a good site for a well. However, to prove their point, we did a couple of practice rounds directly over the site of an already existing well that clearly has water in it, and sure enough our metal rods crossed all over themselves when the person holding them stood above the well. I thought that surely everyone was messing with me until I also tried it and found that without moving my hands or thinking, "magical thoughts" the rods crossed even more adamantly in my hands in my hands than in anyone else's. How ironic.

Then, with my new found interest, we took our sticks out to the bush and walked around for a bit trying to locate the underground water that had somehow eluded professional surveyors. We actually did get a bit of activity a few hundred meters away from where the surveyors tried, and failed, to get a spout of water. If our project ever gets a little more money, perhaps we can try this bewitched site...

(Rendille children trying to figure out what in the world this white man is doing walking around, paying very close attention to two sticks in his hands.)

Springs of Life

Water is hard to find in the Kaisut Desert. Duh. There are "Water Diviners," though, who are, according to Rendille culture, so knowledgeable about the inner workings of their landscape, that they can supposedly identify with great accuracy the location of an underground river or water shed. We "wazungus" (white people) took our chances with a professional surveyor, who proved his worth! We've now got gushing bore holes just outside our home gate, one at the proposed site of the new secondary school (so now we have the water, but no buildings or funding...), and another at the proposed site of a Rendille hospital! (Again, now there's water for the hospital but no buildings or funding - a divine puzzle it seems.) Come to me all you who are thirsty! Ready, go!

Christmas in May

Momma Westwood went to town this year for "Christmas in May!" My fellow missionary's daughter came out for a visit with her new fiance (they actually got engaged underneath the most beautiful Korr sunset I've ever seen - the Lord knew what was up) and it was the perfect opportunity to get a package from California to Kenya safely. (One of my girlfriends once received a box in the post, and on the inside every single bag of candy had been opened and clearly sampled... Tacky) I got a replacement computer for my old Dell which a Nairobi repairman described as having "components burned past recognition." I've also just opened a new box of much needed vitamin supplements. As mentioned before, my student, Catherine, has recently had a baby boy who received a blanket with his name stitched into it. Somo Chawle, my adopted Rendille brother, received a really awesome adjustable book bag sewed from some classic soccer fabric. Here he is smelling it, or something, and looking quite excited to have the coolest book bag in school! Thanks Mom!

Catherine and Gideon

(Gideon with his new teddy bear. He'd rather be eating it than anything else!)

You may remember me telling about one of my students getting pregnant last year, and as a result, traveling home to give birth. Well, Catherine is now the ever-patient, healthy, and happy mother of a baby boy; Gideon! I don't know his weight, but he is HUGE! Especially by Rendille standards. He's brown (not very dark skinned), fussy, but getting less so, has soft hair (as many Rendille do), and we share the birthday of January 30th! I've been out a couple of times now to visit Catherine and the baby, so I've got plenty of photos for you to "ooo" and "awww" over!

Gidi (his nickname) and Auntie Claire!

Mommy is comfy!

Napping with the embroidered blanket Momma Westwood made for him.

Dancing with Auntie Emily (another Tirrim Secondary School student)

Grandma!!!!!

Big Adventure in the City

Just some photos of the kids' time in Nairobi before the headed off to their Kenyan Students Christian Fellowship conference!

Isiolo is the town that acts as the major transport hub between Northern and Southern Kenya. It's got all the unfortunate social depravity that often comes along with a roadside town (No, I will not be your "angel" you creepy man.), but it also has some nice amenities like toilets that flush and cafes. For some of the students, it was their first time to eat at a restaraunt and I can tell they loved it because spoons weren't even placed down for a photo.

From Isiolo to Nairobi we rode in a "matatu," or taxi-van complete with a television that played cheesy Kenyan music videos. Most of the kids got car sick, though, so watching MTV Kenya wasn't really an option anymore. What a loss.

What trip to Nairobi would be complete without a trip to the Nairobi National Game Park Animals Orphanage! Juevenile lions, buffalo, ostriches, dikdiks, and even a couple crocodiles provided plenty of entertainment for the afternoon! (This is the kids pointing out their favourite young lioness and playing chicken with an unstable looking ostrich. First to get bit, loses.)

One of the Members of Parliament from the north invited our students to come and observe Parliament in session one day, which was quite the fieldtrip! Everyone put on their uniforms and I got funny looks because I wasn't wearing heels, but they kids were very keen at being in the middle of "government" happening. Although no cameras were allowed inside the building, here's the students eating their lunch in the parliament garden and in front of Kenya's coat of arms.

Discrimination: An Education

In Korr, I often feels it's only my burnable skin and a preference for cold sodas and toilet paper that separates me from the rest of the community. I've got a Rendille family that calls me their own and has given me an identity in their clan, I can hold a half-ways decent conversation with friends and even strangers, and people know I'm the English teacher at Tirrim Secondary. However, I've have recently had to question all these "similarities" I've just taken for granted before.

I've just traveled down to Nairobi with seven of my students who have been invited for a Christian conference here this week. We came two days early, and so planned out some "cultural" experiences for the kids, among which were a trip to a shopping mall (they didn't quite know what to do with themselves and were scared of all stores except the bookshop), went to the zoo (they'd seen it all before), and then met up with one of our northern Ministers of Parliament for a viewing session of Parliament.

When greeting the M.P. (who is evidently a pretty good guy by M.P. standards), he asked me, "So how do you see the difference between you and the students?" I must admit I wasn't all too sure what he was saying, and said as much. His reply was, "Well, you know, you have white skin and they are black." I could have said, "Well, Sir, how do you see the difference?" but I decided on a more diplomatic approach and said, "I don't believe we're all that different Sir," and quite honestly until that point I hadn't really even thought of it.

However, being in Nairobi with my kids, we are all totally removed from "our" community. They're quite nervous around all the cars and miss the twice daily chai break, and I don't know anything about Swahili. Just as much as they're out of their element, so am I. The entire framework of our lives, even our views of each other, seems to have been thrown out of whack. To many Kenyans, it's still strange to even see a white person with a black person, let alone a white girl traveling around with a bunch of Kenyan students and teachers and acting like its totally normal. So, all of a sudden, in the students' eyes and mine, I've become the outsider - the "other." This may be the first time the kids have seen me in a position where someone has looked at me sideways and implied, "What are you doing here?" The kids often say that they want to become Americans and several have explicitly said that they wish they were white, but is it such a tempting alternative now that they've seen me on the receiving end of racial prejudice?

It's not even just that I'm white, but that I'm a young woman too. When stopping in a roadside town called Isiolo while on the way to Nairobi, I got a couple hoots and even a really lame, "Hey Angel!" One, the students have hardly seen me interact with men my age. Two, they have NEVER seen me treated with the disrespect an ill-raised, vulgar, and far too over-confident man can impart. There was even a man in downtown Nairobi who thought he was cool enough to come up to my Kenyan coworker and say to her, in front of my students and myself, "You can just give me this nice British lady."

Being white in a predominantly black community is not that great when that black community is not also your community. Alicia used to say, "I just don't like being the central float in the parade," and at this point I utterly agree with her. I hate coming to town, being marched down the middle of a street, and having the citizens find entertainment or a stimulating shock value (I don't know which) in my otherness.

So, now I wonder now about two things. First, am I actually as much a part of the Rendille as I thought I was, or do I just have idealistic beliefs that Jesus and love make the valleys between people turn to flat land? Am I actually letting myself feel more at home than I really am, and are there people who laugh at my familiarity with the Rendille? Do the Rendille themselves do this? Is this a phenomenon of down-country or a reality of Korr I didn't realize, or didn't want to realize?

Secondly, what do my students think now that they've seen me basically assaulted for being white? How do they process their initial beliefs about the total "goodness" of white skin, and what they've observed this past week? Are they disillusioned or disturbed by their teacher being so publicly put upon? Perhaps they are actually clueless of the implications of these things that have been said because of my color.

I haven't got the answers, but I feel a bit disillusioned myself for not even thinking to ask the questions earlier!