Turkey and dressing (and monkeys!)

Hello everyone,
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And yes, for those of you who asked, you can buy turkey in Kenya. Thanksgiving Day itself was rather interesting. First of all, it was not a holiday here and was a regular day of work. Fortunately for me it and the rest of the week were already scheduled off, so I did not have to work Thanksgiving. Sarah unfortunately was sick and rested most of the day. Maggie and I hung out around the house and starting constructing our artificial tree some friends gave us. We did have a visitor join us. His name is Sat (pronounced like cot, but w/ an S). He is a pediatric resident from Walter Reed in Washington, DC. He is spending some time at Kericho and we met him at the HIV meeting there a few weeks ago. We are glad he was able to come and join us. Around lunch time when everyone was napping I was able to pull up the rest of our sweet potatoes from the garden. They were a popular item the last couple of days as everyone was wanting them to cook with. That evening we had a compound wide Thanksgiving dinner which everyone contributed to. All of the traditional food was there, with the inclusion of a great seaweed salad from our Japanese nurse friend Anna. Maggie was a little impatient seeing the food, but having to wait to eat (our table ate last because we came in last in a Thanksgiving trivia game, but that’s another story). After dinner there was singing, a movie for kids, and a football game shown in the auditorium. (The kids movie was our copy of Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving, which we also shown to the locals at Wed AM devotionals to teach them what Thanksgiving is about). We didn’t stay for this as it was getting late. When we got home our neighbor, Ms. Barb, hung out with us and we finally got her a copy of our photos from the nursing school graduation.
Friday morning fortunately Sarah woke feeling much better, so we quickly backed for a weekend trip to Nakuru. This is about a 3 hour drive from us and home of the World Gospel Mission headquarters. We were invited to go there with our friend’s, the Robert’s family. I was happy Sarah was able to see the beautiful teafields along the way. About half way we stopped and had lunch at a little cottage-style hotel called “Ray’s Place”. We ate a picnic lunch on their back porch. It was a beautiful area and quiet little hotel. We then got back on the road. As we entered Nakuru we stopped at the Africa Gospel Church’s Baby Center. This is a baby orphanage and first of it’s kind. It was created with the intension of promoting adoption, but we learned that adoption is not accepted here. Family is very important here and people feel “why would you want to take someone’s baby away from them and put them in your family”. One of the missionary couples at Tenwek are the first and only family to adopt a baby so far. It will take time to change mindsets. Now the baby’s are getting up to near 2 years in age, so the center is making huge expansions planning on having to house 3 and 4 year olds soon. The facility is very nice and has (1 think) about 30 babies now. I was asked to examine about 5 of them, some sick and some new babies who have not been seen. Maggie enjoyed being around a bunch of kids her age.

After this we met with the couple that are the country directors for World Gospel Mission, the Vanderhoofs. They showed us around town for a little while and the Roberts went to their home and we went to Margie’s, the WGM accountant, home (she had MacGyver on DVD!). We unloaded and then all went to the Vanderhoofs. A game of croquet broke out in their back yard which was a lot of fun. We then ate pizza and had leftover Thanksgiving deserts.
Saturday AM we woke up and after running a few quick errands in town went to the Lake Nakura National Park. This would be the site of our second safari in Kenya. When we arrived at the park, which was at the edge of the city (the second largest in Kenya), we immediately saw monkeys at play. We then drove up to the building where Ben and I went to pay for everyone. From past experience I told the girls when we got out to roll up their windows so a monkey wouldn’t get in. They laughed. While we were inside we heard loud screaming. We ran out and saw a monkey running off with a bag. Apparently a large male monkey jumped up onto the passangers side window. They tried to shoo it away, but it snarled, jumped in and grapped a bag of trail mix. Jenny yelled at it in Swahili, but to no avail. The monkey had what it wanted and ran off. I offered to retrieve the food, but they said that was okay because the monkeys had their hands all in it.

After this exciting start we headed out. Unlike our last safari, on this one you drove yourself and could do what you liked. The main animals here were flamingoes (it was a lake), storks, pelicans, water buffalo, zebras, and rhinos. There were other animals as well.


We also got to see some lions. Around lunch time we drove past a waterfall and got out at a picnic area, which was nothing more than a clearing with rest rooms. We ate cautiously looking for animals. When we were about done Ben yelled “baboons”. After the morning incident, we quickly grabbed up everything with kids screaming. Jenny tried to get her youngest in while still strapped in the stroller. Sarah got Maggie and I got the pecan tassies and jumped in. I then got back out and helped Ben. We were able to keep the baboons at bay long enough to gather everything and get out okay. The park rangers even came up and helped us. All in all it was a fun day and a beautiful park. After this we all went to a hotel in town to swim with the kids. The water was very cold. They also had soft-serve ice cream, which is rare here. It was so good, we even sat in the rain to eat it. We then did some shopping and went with the Vanderhoofs to a restaurant for dinner.
The next AM we went to the Vanderhoofs for breakfast and then they drove us to the top of the Nakuru crater. It was huge and apparently the second largest of its type in the world. After this we headed back. We stopped at a place called Taidy’s on the way back and grabbed a snack (strange being in the middle of a teafield at a restaurant showing soccer on a flat screen TV). We also bought some veggies and fruit along the way. We just had to slow up and the car was swarmed with sellers. Very convenient.

When we arrived back at Tenwek later that afternoon we had more fun in store. We gathered with some of our friends for our own Thanksgiving dinner, but called it a Christmas kickoff as their house was decorated and had Christmas music playing. Many people were away, so after this all the families left on the compound came over for dessert and fellowship. We had a special time of prayer over Ms. Barb as she would be leaving on Monday for furlough. When we got home that night Sarah helped her until way past 11 and again the next morning. She will be missed while she is away.
On Monday we were back to work. I had a frustrating morning as I went to the IT department to work on a new hospital form and ,long story short, an editing session took almost 3 hours. That day we did not finish rounding until around 4. When I got home we had fun, however, as we did our Christmas decorating. We were given a tree earlier and have accumulated some accessories, including ones sent to us in the mail, thanks.
I am seeing more and more people now in clinic who are in with me for follow-up visits. It is so neat to see improvement in many of them. I even had a patient ask me to pray with them before they left before I could even ask.
Still tired from our previous excursion, we loaded back up on Wednesday for a trip into Nairobi. It did not bother Maggie as she began to smile when she was able to get back into her car seat. It was a long, dusty ride. The dust was so bad at times we had to come to complete stops to let it clear. Our driver got lost in Nairobi, after telling us he knew where he was going. I then got a phone call from Tenwek saying the meeting we had come in for the next day had just been cancelled. I was very frustrated at first, but decided to look at it as a chance for our family to relax together. We arrived at the SP office and talked with one of the leaders there. We talked with her about doing Operation Christmas Child. It is new here, but she said she would do what she could to let us help get involved next Spring! We came into the guest house and rested. We then went out to eat with more workers here going back into Sudan. One was a lady we met last time who we got to know and were very glad to see her again. We got talking about Operation Christmas Child and learned that she used to be the financial director for OCC. We sat around and talked and shared stories about OCC. We don’t know why all this happened, but we are excited that this may help to open up new doors for us to have increased involvement with this ministry in the future. Please pray for this!
Thursday was now a free day for us, so we went to the giraffe center. This is a place that was founded in the 1970’s as a haven for a nearly extinct breed of giraffe, the Rothschild (there are 3 varieties, Rothschild, reticulated, and Maasi).

It now serves as an educational center to teach Kenyan school children about conservation and the environment. We had so much fun. You can feed the giraffes and they eat right out of your hand. We then went to part of the Karen Blixen estate for lunch. It was set up and felt like you were in British East Africa in the 1910’s. It was nice and relaxing. (Rumor has it that this was where Teddy Roosevelt stayed to come and hunt in Africa.). We then went into downtown to go looking at a particular store. The downtown area has big buildings and is very crowded.
Okay, that is our journey thus far. December is going to be very busy for us. Please pray for our stamina then and for the prison project coming up near Christmas. We will fill you in on the rest of our journeys soon, but wanted to share this with you for now.