Once again, I am sitting on my parents front porch, watching Kevin and Noah play soccer and looking forward to tea at the guesthouse. You never know who you are going to meet and enjoy talking to. Already I have had an opportunity to talk with one Kenyan woman who starts up programs in Kisumu for women with HIV and AIDS. She is passionate about how education can change the rate of infection and the stigma related to this disease. We also talked with another man who is an agronomist who's passion it is to provide irrigation to the farmlands of Kenya through the sand dams. The people we meet have a passion for Kenya and the Kenyan people and they seem to find a place of rest here.
My parents live in Westlands which is a multi-ethnic, middle class part of Nairobi. There are times when Kevin, the kids and I walk the streets here that we feel like an obvious minority. This is a very new feeling for the kids and they have yet to become comfortable with it. This morning though, we visited a huge Christmas Craft Market where we were definitely not the minority. This market was just outside of Nairobi and was geared towards foreigners. I had no idea there were so many 'mzungus' in the city! While it was more comfortable for me because there was no hawkers vying for our business and no bartering, it was a part Nairobi culture we weren't familiar with... more Western than African. Even most of the vendors were ex pats. Anyways... the truly African part of our morning was the mud. It has been raining a lot in Nairobi these last few months and this has turned the normally dry soil into red, sticky, mud that stains. This market was at the race track and the conditions were really unbelievable.
Smart people were wearing gum boots... we were in flip flops. As we were entering, we saw big dump trucks filled with rocks that they dumped on the mud which created a cleaner yet slower path. At one point, Anna fell hands first into the mud and we all spent a good part of the morning avoiding sink holes and trying not to slip. In the end we came to grips with the fact we would all get pretty dirty and walked on.




Tomorrow, there is a Mennonite hymn sing here at the guest house. I love these mornings, listening to all those harmonized voices. I have asked my parents to teach me to harmonize while I am here (I am Mennonite after all...). So far they have just laughed :)