I visited…
click on the photo to see the photos and read the whole post
the view from here, purely
July 26, 2011
I’m really having a hard time finding the words to share with you about how today was. There was another motorcycle accident we saw (not as bad). I spoke to the women of Ola Nagele. It’s fun to see my dad grow so passionate about the method Global Hope uses to work with villages. I ate goat. My kidneys have not been acting up a bit. And emotionally I am good but for some reason cannot put pen to paper very well tonight. So I’ll leave you with a few photos. My view from here. And just whatever few words do happen to come out.
Pure beauty.
About to be served tea in Bules Dima. The one man there who spoke English told me it was made from goat’s milk and relayed a fact I already knew to be true: The villagers drink not only milk from goats but also their blood. “It makes me very strong. When I drink it, I don’t need to eat for three days.” I doubt I would eat for three days either, though for entirely different reasons.
Pure joy.
An oven. Do not ask me how they get away with it being made out of wood.
Pure innocence.
This one is self explanatory, no?
Pure hope.
Abdi, one of the (young!) GHNI workers in Isiolo. He works closely with Ola Nagele (which is where he’s standing in this photograph from today) and keeps up that village’s blog.
Pure sweetness.
Worry not, she’s just sleeping.
Pure connection.
I’m addicted to babywearing photographs. This woman told me she was the “grand” to this baby. I had already assumed so! What a great grandma! My mom has never worn one of my babies on her back, that’s for sure.
Pure shyness.
This is the tank that love built. Those of you who sponsor Ola Nagele need to know that you made this water tank in Ola Nagele possible. For just 2 Schillings a jug (just a penny or so), “our” villagers have clean water now.
Pure family.
Told you I was addicted to them. Did you think I was kidding?
Pure freshness.
Pure goat.
a rich stew
July 26, 2011
Talk about the opposite of “adding more water to the soup.”
Rather than being a savory but dilute mixture of events that go down easily and can be stretched further and further, the last than 24 hours we’ve been in Isiolo, Kenya have been a full, rich stew. Full and rich like our team, including new friends from Hong Kong, Latin America, the United States and Russia:
In all seriousness, one could probably write a 324 page book using just the happenings and emotions of the past day for content. I’ll spare you that, though. You’re welcome. I have just got to pull some of the highlights out of the density that has been my time in Africa so far, though, or I fear I will burst. I almost did burst last night, if I may offer entirely Too Much Information, when my tummy moaned with the early pains of Montezuma’s Revenge. Which no doubt is not commonly referred to as Montezuma’s Revenge on this continent, but you catch my drift. I’m better today though, thanks for asking.
Words cannot explain the emotional torment our team individually and corporately endured when we saw a man, killed when hit by a motorcycle while riding his bicycle, on the road to Isiolo yesterday. It seems trite to even talk about our pain when he died right in front of us, so I won’t. Needless to say, it was silent in the car as we pulled away, and I found myself praying over and over for his family, whoever it is he left behind.
We’re staying at a very modest compound in Isiolo, my dad in room number 7 next to my spartan room number 6. The mirror is a shined piece of metal soldered to the wall, a firm piece of foam a mattress and a blue mosquito net intended to help keep Malaria infested bugs off of sleepers hanging from the ceiling. And at that, the most rustic for lack of a better word structure I’ve ever slept in, room number 6 would be tantamount to a palace for the people of Bules Dima who we visited in the rain last night.
One of the four villages Global Hope currently works with in this area, Bules Dima is made up of beautiful, colorfully dressed, Muslim people from the Borana tribe.
There were two women who danced for, sang to and greeted us yesterday I knew from this past winter. They knew it, and so did I, although it wasn’t like we could affirm our recognition of each other with words. The rest of the faces were new and, wonderfully, so were the many round homes in the village. Having been violently run off their land by a neighboring tribe, Bules Dima has resettled a bit further in.
Finally, they are making the new area their own with the round homes popping up everywhere, near especially to a river bed that flows after a rain. The villagers have plans for a school on their land, the first they will have ever had, in what is a promising step towards taking charge of the future of their children. The thankfulness they feel for Global Hope’s support and love is palpable.
This woman standing in the doorway of her home, sliced in the face as a child, has a grown son who was the only person I encountered yesterday who spoke English.
I was actually even amazed that he did. They are quite a hike from town, set back on grazing land for goats and sheep (though the land is nothing as green as you might be imagining when you hear “grazing land”), down many rust red, iron rich dirt paths. It felt a little like being home in Bules Dima.
But nothing, just nothing, like I think it will be in Ola Nagele, the first village you all helped sponsor in February, what I have selfishly come to think of as “our village.” I will go there later afternoon with Habiba, who will drop me off after she gets a conversation going between me and the women’s group there. I’m crazy nervous and crazy excited and will tell you all about it when I’m done!!
I’m here!
July 24, 2011
I am in Nairobi, having arrived safe and sound. I hooked up with my dad and our entire 16 member GHNI team is now a hostel for the night. Tomorrow early morning, it’s off to buy rope to tie everyone’s suitcases to the tops of the jeeps and we’ll be off to Isiolo to hang with some villages! For now…it’s a much needed rest for me. Goodnight!
I’m not normal.
July 15, 2011
I’m not normal. I’m not.
Because, really, what normal mother of five leaves her brood to go to Africa? What normal person exposes their true nature on the World Wide Web day after day? What normal person has kidney stones before she goes to overseas two times in a row and still decides, yup, it’s onward to Africa still? What normal person lives in a trailer with her family for a summer? What normal person asks her husband, “Babe, I really need your feedback about me going to Africa,” only to have him quote Presidents past, encouraging her to still keep her plans to go, with his blessing? What normal person takes such stupid risks!?
But here you have it, for the record: I’m still going to Africa. Next weekend.
Go ahead. Take your best shot. Tell me I’m crazy. Stupid. Nuts. Not normal. And I’ll agree with you.
I’m not normal.
Willingly going to Africa at all, so soon after being hospitalized nonetheless, leaving my family behind, taking this risk…is not normal. Heck, I don’t even want to go! I’ve been trying to find every excuse in the book not to get on that plane. I’ve made pros and cons lists, checked on canceling flights, fear mongered myself into being almost too afraid to go, the whole nine yards.
I was reading my Bible today and I came across James 1:27 which says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress,” and I’ve been fighting Him on it tooth and nail. Surely you don’t mean me, right God? I mean, I just got out of the hospital with a kidney stone. So I get a free pass, right? I have five kids. I just went to Africa earlier this year. I don’t even want to go back. You’ll understand, right God?
But as I’ve wrestled with the decision in recent days, I’ve realized that it isn’t even a decision at all. We already decided, months ago, that I would go to Africa with my dad this summer, while my husband stays home with our children. I don’t need to decide again. I just need to go. Step out. In faith, trusting that God is ahead of me each step of the way. I’m scared. I’m sad. I’m afraid. I want to be comfortable. Secure. Safe.
But as someone on Facebook reminded me today, “There is no safer place than smack dab in the middle of God’s will.”
So, trusting that this is what He wants me to do, I’m going to Africa. Not for any other reason except that He asked me to.
I know, I know: I’m not normal.
gulp
June 27, 2011
I leave for Africa in four weeks.
Gulp.
perspective
April 29, 2011
Our car was at the shop yesterday.
“Oh, Ma’am. You don’t want to wait for it. It’s going to take a few hours at least.”
“It’s our only car, so I really don’t have a choice. I’ll wait. It’s no big deal.” I mean, at least we have a car. There is something about having seen how “the rest of the world” lives that still puts things in perspective for me.
Sometimes. When I feel like thinking about it. Which sometimes I don’t. But I usually try to make myself.
This morning Stellan woke up and had a perfectly round bald patch on the top of his head. Out of the blue.
And I just knew it. He was going bald. Developing that condition where children lose their hair. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew it had to be true. And my very first (and second and third) thoughts were, “It’s no big deal. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
After what Stellan went through? To have him here, alive, healthy? And bald? It just didn’t matter. At all.
As it turned out, when we got home a short while ago and asked my husband about it, he told me that Stellan got a Kinex stuck in his hair right there yesterday. So the hair must have all been pulled out when he unwound it.
Oh. It was odd. I wasn’t all that relieved. Because I hadn’t been all that worked up to begin with. Which is still kind of new for me, I guess. Not letting myself get worked up about our only car being in the shop or about a strange bald patch on the top of our two year old’s head.
I’m thankful to Africa. For helping me (slowly) gain perspective in my life. It’s something that is hard to talk about without feeling like I’m putting down Americans. I am an American, after all.
I’m simply one who has had some of her lack of perspective dealt with severely in the past few years.
And so I share these thoughts, pictures, ramblings with you. For what they are worth. Because no matter who we are, where we are, how old we are or where we live, I’d like to think a little bit of new perspective is always a good thing.
Miichelle and Frankline
March 6, 2011
I’ve been home from Africa for one week today. Two weeks ago, I had the extreme honor of being able to spend an entire day with Miichelle and Frankline, two of the children our family sponsors through Compassion International. Compassion, like Global Hope, is an organization I fully believe in from the ground up, and grow more and more in love with each time I see the amazing work they are doing with people around the world.
People like Miichelle, our family’s first sponsored child.
Miichelle has a younger brother and a new baby sister. Frankline, the other child in Kenya we sponsor, was able to make the long journey from his town to spend the day with us, too. I learned that he has a new baby in his family as well!
I’ve you’ve been reading my blog for a year or more, you probably remember that my husband and I met Miichelle last year for the first time. This was the first time I’d met Frankline, as well as the first time the two children met each other.
As it turned out, they have lots in common. Besides the fact that the same five fair skinned children in the United States know their names, write them letters, love them deeply and save money in personalized piggy banks for them.
Although Miichelle and Frankline are from completely different parts of Kenya, and there are more than 40 tribes in the country, these seven and eight year olds are both from the same tribe…which means they both speak the same language!
Language wasn’t as important as smiles, though, when Miichelle and Frankline both got to talk with our children on my phone that day!
The children both being from towns (Cities and towns are where Compassion works individually with kids, while Global Hope works instead in villages communally with people…the two organizations are super compliments to each other!), and having the opportunity to attend school, they also speak Swahili and a little English.
Frankline was shy, very shy, at first. The sweet, bubbly social worker who made the long journey with him told me she could hardly believe it. Telling me Frankline has more spunk and energy than most boys she knows, she told me that he was literally running the aisles of the bus for hours out of sheer excitement to meet me.
What a humbling feeling! Frankline, who told me he likes to be called Frank (so that’s what we call him now!), warmed up shortly after we took a boat trip together that Friday afternoon.
By the time we were bouncing around at the same park area where my husband and I spent time with Miichelle last year in Nairobi, getting our faces painted, seeing animals and riding rides, Frankline perked up.
A lot. I mean, to the point where his social worker apologized, wondering if he was running me ragged. “Are you kidding me?” I laughed. “I have four boys myself. Frank is making me feel right at home!”
We ate, twice. The kids had just eaten before they met with me, I was told by the lovely folks at the Compassion Nairobi headquarters, a spartan white building with a small curved staircase inside the front door and lots of friendly Compassion staff inside.
Nonetheless, I offered Frankline and Miichelle food anyway. The restaurant we ate at with Miichelle last year was the first time she’d ever eaten in one in her life. Since these children are being helped by Compassion, I know they get meals at school at least. But what’s a little more food among friends, right!? Frankline at his body weight in rice and goat while Miichelle drank a few more Fantas than I imagined she’d have been able to get down.
It was a sight to behold. Our family had gotten the kids some gifts, too. Miichelle and Frankline were excited about those. However, even though what we bring to them as sponsors via gifts and monthly support may seem like the world to Miichelle, Frankline and their families, the truth is, they teach me more by just being themselves than I could ever express.
Joy in simplicity, a love for life, a thankfulness for things (like the Malaria medicine Miichelle was taking thanks to Compassion as she was struck with the illness the week earlier) that don’t even enter our minds in the States and a purely innocent, hopeful view of the future are just a small handful of what I see in Miichelle and Frankline’s eyes.
Well, that and an apparently universal love for Angry Birds. Plus the ability to learn to navigate an iPhone in under 4.5 seconds flat. I’m telling you, he made me feel right at home.
We love you, Miichelle and Frankline, and are already looking forward to the next time we can see you both!
Are you ready to sponsor a child through Compassion? Look into the eyes of kids who are waiting for help by clicking right here.
Win ten pounds of Ethiopian coffee beans!
March 1, 2011
A bag full of frozen milk was not the only thing I brought home from Africa the other day. Tucked away in my luggage, causing my clothes to have the most rich, aromatic smell imaginable, were bags upon bags of Ethiopian coffee beans.
Grown and harvested in the Harar area of the country, these beans (which turn red when ready to be picked) were roasted, packed and sold in Dire Dawa, the Ethiopian town where our GHNI team stayed last week.
My husband had a cup of black coffee made from the beans yesterday morning and promptly declared it to be the best, most powerful coffee he’d ever had in his entire life. “I’m giddy!” he announced. Personally, I prefer my coffee with lots of milk and sugar. Or, better yet, as whole beans covered in dark chocolate. But that’s just me.
I’ve hidden ten pounds of the sensational dark beans from my husband because those ten pounds are for one of you to win!
Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win ten one pound bags of Harar coffee beans. Click right here to receive GHNI’s email newsletter and be automatically entered a second time!
Enter between now and tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon, Frozen Tundra time. I’ll announce the winner of the beans then and head to the post office to ship them off!
Made In Africa
February 28, 2011
If these bags of breastmilk had labels on their undersides, they might read Made In Africa.
Indeed, this is the milk I was able to pump, freeze and transport back to the Frozen Tundra. None of the process–from finding time, energy and places to pump, to freezing the milk, to finding hotel kitchens and juice stands in airports willing to keep bags of milk in their freezer for a few hours, to working with flight attendants to keep the milk on ice over the Atlantic Ocean–was easy. But few things worth doing are. And this was worth it. When my husband picked me up at the airport yesterday with our MSC, there was one bag of breastmilk in the cooler he had brought along. “Believe it or not, this is the very last bag of milk.”
Yes, the milk I was able to pump for Flurry throughout the first six months of his life was good to the last drop. He finished almost all of it while I was gone. And he took to nursing again like old times as soon as I had him in my arms yesterday. Having him at my breast after more than two weeks of wondering if he’d take me back, should I be able to keep my supply up while I was gone, was a mountaintop experience, to be sure. I would say that feeding him at 3 am this morning was even more emotional than the first time I nursed him ever, fresh from my womb.
I’m guessing the milk that made it all the way home with me yesterday was probably over half of what I pumped in the two+ weeks I was gone. Much of it I pumped–and dumped–in villages or bathrooms. Twice I had the opportunity to offer my milk to African babies. And more times than I can count, the common bond of breastfeeding connected me to women with beautiful dark skin and native tongues different from my own.
In Garmaam on a few occasions, I distanced myself from the rest of my travel companions and joined groups of women sitting under trees, nursing babies and talking.
Even when there wasn’t too much we could talk about, plenty was still communicated. Me with the photograph of my babies and my hand pump, the village women with their infants and toddlers (this little guy was walking around, splashing in the stream in between nursing sessions with his mama), gourd water jugs and giant smiles.
Rarely have I felt such a raw bond with other women. Never had I read many volumes as I glanced into another’s eyes. I can hardly remember a time when I heard such moving stories of motherhood whilst not understanding most of the words spoken. It was rare. And beautiful.
Yes, so much was Made In Africa. These women. Their babies. Our milk. A renewed thankfulness for being able to breastfeed my own baby. And new friendships.
