On the edge of our property is a big, beautiful, ancient tree. Such a tree is rather rare in these parts. I don't know how it escaped all these decades without becoming firewood or building timber, but by now it is something of a landmark. The village elders like to hold their meetings in the shade of its ample branches. It is also the kind of tree which just cries out for children to come play in its living arms. The huge trunk is made easily accessible by the termite hill at its base, and its great, fat branches stretch nearly parallel to the ground. Having climbed many-a-tree in my younger days, I've often wished I were still small enough to shimmie around in the canopy with the kids. Although we often warned the kids not to climb on the tree, it was a sort of half hearted and insincere warning, as if we all knew that the tree was irresistable. But still, we had to be responsible adult fun-spoilers. As an experienced tree-climber, I also recognized that this was not a tree which was easy to fall out of. It would take some seriously stupid and reckless horseplay... but of course, thats what children do best. Especially boys.
I have still yet to hear exactly HOW my 9 year old son Alex came to fall out of the tree. All the boys will tell me is that they were "playing a game" and Alex "lost his balance." The vagueness of their explaination assures me that they know very well that what they were doing was potentially dangerous, and that Mama would not approve. However it came to be, it gave me quite a scare when my older son came running and panting to announce that "Alex fell out of the tree, and he's hurt bad!" Every mother knows how your heart stops at such an abrupt announcement!
I ran immediately out to the tree and found Alex laying in the grass crying. I felt immediate relief that at least he WAS crying. Mothers can also understand that there are two kinds of crying. There is the real, sincere I'm hurt badly! cry. And then there is the for-show, all noise and no substance cry. In this case, it was the latter, but I still took great care to check over his head and neck and spine and every limb of his body for broken bones. In fact, everything considered, he was remarkably unharmed, with only a scratched shin to show as visible proof of his fall. He did, however complain of a sore wrist and a sore hip.
The problem with Alex is that it is often very difficult to tell when he is really injured, as his reactions are rarely appropriate to the severity of his condition. He can be hurt badly, and not even whimper, or he can stub a toe and convince you that he is in immediate need of a double amputation. He loves attention, and he's forever in search of a way to shirk his chores. So, I wasn't sure what to do when, upon walking, he began to fret that his hip was "paining" and he refused to walk. There was once a client of mine who fell and broke her hip, and she had absolutely no pain until she tried to walk on the affected leg. I began to worry that maybe Alex had broken his hip, despite the fact that he had full range of motion when not attempting to walk. My husband was not home, and I wasn't able to reach him on his cell phone, so we decided to sit and wait until I could consult him.
Dale, my 11 year old son, loves his brother very much, and immediately became Alex's "right hand man", offering to carry him out to the bathroom, and fetching him his every whim. Alex enjoyed this entirely too much. When he saw that I had a piece of candy in my pocket, Alex immediately requested the candy. I said jokingly, "But you're hurt, you can't eat candy." To which he replied, in all seriousness, "My stomach is not hurt." He played a very spirited game of monopoly, and forgot all about his injuries, until he again tried to stand and walk.
When my husband arrived home, we agreed that it was best to be safe and take him to a hospital to be checked out. Transportation is a problem, as the tuktuk is still not running properly. I have a terrible phobia of motorcycles, but in this case I had to swallow my fear for the sake of my son. I did however insist on using a safer route, rather than the one which leads directly to our home. Getting to the alternate route requires walking about 1/2 a mile, and crossing a tiny footbridge over the river. (God bless my loving husband, who carried Alex that whole distance on his back!)
The government hospital in Butere is (in my arrogant American opinion) dirty and inadequate, so we took Alex to a private hospital in Mumias which is run by the Catholic church. The doctor's initial assessment agreed with mine - he doubted there could be any fracture considering that Alex had no pain and a full range of motion (as long as he was not standing on the leg), but just to be certain, he ordered an x-ray of his hip of his wrist. Alex was quite pleased with the whole procedure, and announced to me that "next time" he would fall on a different side of his body, so he could see those bones also! (In Kenya, you get to keep your x-rays after the doctor has examined them, so Alex got lots of opportunity to study his bones.) The happy news is that all the x-rays were perfect, and the doctor concluded that the only thing preventing Alex from walking was soft-tissue pain. An hour or so later, dressed up in a sling for his wrist, and with an injection of painkillers shot in his backside, Alex was cheerfully walking on his own two feet into a restaurant for lunch. I was a little less cheerful after paying the bill, but still praising God for his divine protection. Without God, this story could have been a tragic one.
At the restaurant, Ishmael asked Alex if he would ever climb the tree again. Alex promised that he would NOT... however I have a feeling that when the bumps and bruises are all healed and forgotten, that promise will soon be drowned out by the siren's call of a living playground cloaked in lush green leaves.
This is The Crazy TukTuk.
Have you ever seen the movie, "The God's Must be Crazy"? Remember the Land Rover from that movie which they called "The Anti-Christ"? Yeah, our tuktuk is a little like that Land Rover. It has a personality all its own. It doesn't like the cold, and despite all of Ishmael's best efforts to rectify the ignition system, it still has to be push-started first thing in the morning. I thank God that aside from being an awesome driver, Ishmael also has mad skills as a mechanic, because The Crazy Tuktuk has required (and continues to require!) a lot of tinkering under the hood. (Actually, the engine is under the boot!) As I type this, he's out there re-assembling the gear box.
Prior to coming to Kenya in 2011, I had never heard of a "tuktuk". A tuktuk is a 3-wheeled vehicle. It has a seat for the driver in front, a bench seat for three passengers in the rear, and a surprisingly spacious trunk. It runs on a small, but powerful diesel engine, and has a top speed of about 35 mph. (The name, I'm pretty sure, comes from the cadence of the engine, which sounds exactly like that: tuku-tuku-tuku) The steering and control mechanisms are a little like a motorcycle, with handle-bar type steering, the accelerator in your right hand, the clutch and gear shift in your left, and a brake on the floor. Here in Kenya it is popularly used as a taxi vehicle, especially on the coast and some of the bigger interior cities. Although technically its a "3 passenger" service vehicle, it often carries as many as 9 people (more if you pile on babies and small children.) You can seat a person on either side of the driver, four on the rear bench, and two people can sit in the boot. It is also versatile for carrying all kinds of cargo. Our tuktuk has carried lumber, bricks, sacks of maize, potatoes, furniture, and even goats. In general, if you could carry it in a pick-up truck, you can carry it on the tuktuk.
Here in our rural area, bad roads are a particular problem. After a rain (and we have frequent, heavy rains) the clay-dirt roads become slick and dangerous. Trust me that ice and snow have nothing on wet clay! They also become badly rutted and washed out, and if the sugar-cane tractors start passing, they stir up the mud until it is two feet deep. Most of the time the roads are impassible for ordinary cars (that is, if you want to keep your undercarriage intact!) so the main means of transportation into these rural areas is the motorcycle or the bicycle. If the roads are muddy, motorcycles become an unsafe option, and most drivers flat out refuse to take passengers to the interior. The tuktuk, with its 3-wheel base, is more manueverable than a car, has a higher clearance, is more stable than a motorcycle, and is able to pass, even during the rains. (And its light enough so that if it does become stuck, its fairly easy work to push it back out!)
My husband is a driver. He likes to remind me that he is NOT a farmer (although we are doing a lot of farming.) He was born to drive, he loves to drive, and driving remains his ambition in life. He told me that if I gave him an office and a computer to work on, he'd sit down and ask, "Now where is the steering wheel?" I love that he knows exactly what he wants to do, and I envy him that! Dealing with vehicles is his business, and right now he is operating The Crazy Tuktuk.
But, operating a business in his home town has proved to be something of a frustration. Nearly everyone in this village is some kind of a relative, no matter how distant. Therefore neighbours often refuse to pay the full fare (or to pay at all) saying, "But I'm your auntie!" (Or uncle, or grandmother, or cousin, or whatever!) Everyone believes that their relational status entitles them to a free ride. Aside from relatives, people are not familiar with tuktuks, and are rather ignorant to the fact that it is a motor vehicle which requires fuel and maintenance to run. They want to pay the same amount of fare which they pay for a BICYCLE taxi (which incidentally isn't enough to cover the cost of fuel.) The struggle to find paying customers is further aggravated by the damage, wear and tear from the bad roads. We tried our best, but now it seems the best option is to relocate the tuktuk business into a bigger town, complete with paved roads, educated citizens, and established routes. As soon as he finishes this latest round of repairs, Ishmael intends to take the tuktuk to Kakamega and start work there. Please keep us in prayer, that the vehicle will run, and also that the business will be successful in it's new location.
As I type this latest blog, the rain is pounding on the metal roof of my house. I am sitting on my couch surrounded by kids. There is a little girl on my left, a little boy snuggling on the right, and Dale is on the end, still plugging away at his math assignment for the day. The little girl is singing to herself, but the deafening noise of the rain on the iron sheets is drowning out everything. I am incredibly happy just to be here in Kenya, after I nearly got stranded in Uganda with immigration complications.
I don't want to say too much about the situation with immigration, as it is still something of a work in progress, but the scare in Uganda has significantly altered our future plans. It now appears that it will be necessary to take my two boys back to the USA every six months, and then return to Kenya if I want to keep my family together... at least until the time that Ishmael and I have been married for 3 years. After the 3-year mark Ishmael will be eligible to adopt the boys, making them legitimate dependants, and therefore eligible for dependant passes. (Currently, Kenya does not recognise step-children as dependants.) After the same 3 year period, I should also be eligible to apply for dual citizenship, and I could also apply for passes on the boys behalf.
Its a frustrating and rather heart breaking situation. The expense of flying back and forth to the USA is huge. I am desperately hoping that Ishmael will be granted a tourist visa so that he can travel to the USA with us, and that I will be able to find some seasonal work to help with the financial strain. But while we're away from Kenya, what will happen to our farm and our animals? Will we lose everything we've worked so hard to establish?
This has been a hard lesson for me in "let go and let God". I have to trust that God in heaven knows what He is doing, and how he will work this situation for our ultimate good. There has to be some reason for all this craziness, I just can't see it yet. In the mean time, I am determined to treasure every precious moment I have with my family here, and every amazing gift that life in Kenya has offered me... including these two beautiful African kids who have by now fallen asleep to the sound of the rain, with me as their pillow. (I've included a picture of one of my sleeping companions, obviously taken when he was awake!)
This blog post is a little more personal.
All of my life I have been morbidly obese. I tried everything under the sun to try and cure myself of this "problem". I tried every diet, I calculated "points", counted carbs, and restricted calories. I went vegetarian. I went vegan. I went raw-vegan. I exercised fanatically: walking, hiking, biking, swimming, running, belly dance, yoga, and my personal favorite - karate. I think I was the most physically fit fat person you ever met. How many other 300 pound women do you know who can RUN a 5k? But it was all for nothing. The scale never budged more than 5 lbs in either direction. My diabetes remained dangerously out-of-control, and I suffered terribly with chronic pain, asthma, migraines, depression and anxiety no matter how fiercely I followed my health regiment.
And then I came to Kenya. By the time I set foot on the African continent I had made peace with my body, and I had resolved to just make the best of it and try to be happy in my own skin. No more restrictive diets, no more fanatical exercise programs. At times I felt like a circus freak-show. (I already stick out because I'm white, and then to add extreme obesity made me a real oddity.) But by and by something miraculous started to happen. I can't tell you the when and where and how, because I never set foot on a scale for my entire first trip to Kenya. But I started to notice that my shorts were falling down, and my tank-tops were sagging to the point of indecency. One day I got ready for church and dressed in my ONE very nice skirt-blouse-suit outfit, which has served me faithfully and fit perfectly for about 7 years. But after I pulled on the skirt and reached for the matching blouse - the skirt just slithered back down around my ankles.
The last time I weighed myself (I had to pay 5 shillings to step on a set of scales) I had lost 120 lbs in a year and a half. Without trying. That was of course BEFORE I got pregnant, and I don't know what I weigh now, but I'm assuming its about the same. I don't think I qualify as "morbidly obese" any more. I think I am now merely "over-weight" according to medical standards. However, as this is the weight my body chose for itself, I think its safe to assume this is a normal, healthy weight for me.
SO what's different about Kenya?
Well, the food, for starters.
Almost everything is eaten in its natural, whole-food state. Nothing is processed, and even "processed" food is almost entirely chemical free. Imagine picking up a loaf of bread in the supermarket and reading the ingredients. "wheat flour, water, salt, yeast, sodium bicarbonate." Five ingredients. Have you read the ingredient list on a loaf of bread in the USA lately? Because of the primitive shipping industry in Kenya, its impossible to ship foods long distances and keep them fresh... so what you are buying is usually locally grown, and picked the night before its taken to market - carried there on the back of a bicycle, if not on someone's head. Staple foods are simple, and highly nutritious: Sweet potatoes, yams, bananas (the unsweet kind for cooking, as well as the sweet kind for fresh-eating) mangoes, pineapples, collard greens, cassava, beans, cowpeas, mung beans, rice, corn, Irish potatoes, oranges, cabbages, a variety of indigenous green vegetables, spinach, guavas, avocados, tomatoes and onions.
Meat isn't consumed daily, nor is it consumed in the huge quantities that we enjoy in the USA. Its usually coming from a locally raised grass fed cow, sheep, goat, pig, free range chicken, duck or green-fed rabbit which is slaughtered by a local slaughter house and then sold by the local butcher, or more often, slaughtered and prepared by your own family. Refridgeration is rare, especially in these rural areas where there is no electrical service, therefore food is bought and consumed daily, or else dried and preserved naturally. Smoked/dried fish is another favorite source of protein.
Junk food is here, invading from the West, but its expensive and generally reserved for special occasions like Christmas or Easter. However, some things are sacred, and you better believe I faithfully buy at least one bar of Cadbury chocolate every time we venture into one of the larger towns! My diabetes remains "cured", the only problem now being the occasional "low" but NOT ONCE have I been too high in the last year. Most of my aches and pains and complaints have resolved themselves, or at least make only rare and infrequent appearances, and for that I am thanking God. I live a busy, active life, but I no longer make myself crazy with punishing exercise routines or starvation diets.
Life is good.
According to Abaluhya (Luhya) culture, when a young man wants to venture into adulthood, his parents support him in several ways. Primarily they allow him to build his first (usually temporary) home within the safe confines of the family compound. This small house is built with mud walls and either a straw or iron sheet roof. Later, when he has established himself well in life, his father will give him a portion of the family farm where he can build his permanent home and raise his crops and livestock if he so chooses.
My husband Ishmael and I are also following this tradition. Our three room house (two bedrooms and a sitting room) is made in the traditional mud-style. We have no kitchen, as all of our cooking is done outdoors over a charcoal jiko (or alternatively, over firewood.) Our toilet is a pit-latrine with a curtain for a door, and our shower is a lean-to behind the house, with walls made from banana leaves and no roof at all. Like most of our surrounding neighbors we have no access to electricity (there aren't even lines this way yet) and no running water. We fetch our water from the near-by well. (Many thanks to the beautiful American friends who helped us construct this well. You know who you are and may God bless you so much!) Prior the well, we had to hike 1/2 a mile to a dirty spring to fetch our water. The well water is clean and safe. Water is carried from the source in 20 liter jerrycans ON THE HEAD. (Not by me, obviously! I'd break my poor, American neck!) Right now, I guess you could say that life is something like a perpetual camping trip. We do have a solar-power system which allows me to charge my computer, the cellphones, and gives us lights at night. Thank God for that!
We have already begun farming Ishmael's portion of land, although for now the boundaries are approximate. We have not yet raised the funds needed to have the piece officially surveyed, and then to pay the one-time property tax so that we can get our own title deed to the piece. I am happy to report that my husband has DECLINED to sign another 6 year contract with the sugar company. (Someday I will write a separate blog about the evils of the sugar company and how they are misusing farmers!) He has chosen instead to plant his own crops: maize (corn), beans, sukuma wiki (collards), and tomatoes.
Ishmael and I have an on-going debate over organic vs. chemical farming. I'm pushing for a 100% organic farm. However, organic is almost unheard of here. Quite the opposite, the locals have been indoctrinated to believe that without chemical fertilisers, it is virtually impossible to harvest anything. There is some truth to that. The soil here has been completely depleted by decades and decades of chemically sustained mono-agriculture (namely sugar canes.) On top of that, the soil is acidic, clay heavy, and prone to erosion in the heavy rains. I contend however that the soil can be re-built so that chemical-free farming is possible. Ishmael is still sceptical, and he refuses to gamble on something that is completely foreign and unknown to him. He did however agree to allot me one very small plot to "experiment with."
My plot for my organic experiment is pretty pathetic. It is so barren at this point that even the weeds don't want to grow there. I've got a lot of work ahead of me if I'm ever going to convince anyone that organic is an economically viable option.
In addition to our vegetables, we also want to raise livestock. We have plans for pigs, cows and goats in the works. We had actually invested in a few goats, but recently we were forced to sell them due to a financial emergency. So, currently we have rabbits (4 adults and 6 babies), one duck and one hen. (We were with a bunch of chickens, but sadly, we ATE them faster than they reproduced!) The hen is currently sitting on a nest of fertile eggs (thanks to my mother-in-law's rooster.) The duck is also laying eggs, which should also be fertile thanks to a neighbor's drake... however there has been a great deal of confusion, and I'm not sure we'll actually get any ducklings from this batch. First we had a gender-confused rooster who tried to sit on the duck's eggs. Second, the duck and the hen decided that they both wanted to lay their eggs in the SAME nest. (That wont work, because they have different incubation periods!) The duck is still in the process of laying, while the hen is already sitting. So, every day we are lifting the hen, using a spoon to carefully remove the duck eggs to a separate nest. (never touch a duck's egg with your hand!) Third we had a problem with a puppy who dug a hole into the chicken coop and was stealing eggs. Fourth, rats have also discovered the eggs. But, we're still hoping maybe God will enlarge our flocks, despite it all!
Aside from that we also have two dogs, both of them local mutts. My big dog Josiah, and Ishmael's dog Rosie. Oh, and one crazy and mostly useless calico kitten named Callie.
