Youth Party at Burka

To Burka for a feast!!! Burka = spring

All morning was spent preparing food... very different preparing food here compared to home!

I tried to help, but I wasn't very good at it...

Guyo and Jarso, the goat butchers.

Parts of a goat that I never thought were edible...
but really once they are cooked they aren't too bad.

Washing out the small intestine. Its amazing really, looks like a water balloon!

Jarso, Duba, Roba and Roba cutting up meat.

Taking a well deserved nap after a long morning of cooking... the goats were wondering what they were doing in their shade!

Our nice little steam would periodically turn to nothing but wet dirt when the herds would come through... we just made sure to get our water from the up stream side.

Ladder golf.

Sitting around the plates of food.

Everyone smile!

Trying to be tall to get some network for his phone.

Waiting for the 'slow' walkers.

Most of the area is dry and barren, but then you sometimes overlook the oasis and it is just beautiful!

Christmas in Kalacha!

The celebrating started Christmas Eve! Our team had a big Christmas dinner pot luck style in the afternoon... with all sorts of yummy foods and Angie even surprised us with some amazing pies! Aunty Joyce, I use to think you were the world's best pie maker... but I think Angie is a big threat to your coveted title!!!

After a nice afternoon and some good food we waited for the sun to go down so that we could have some

FIREWORKS!

Yes I know fireworks are not cultural, and the people had never seen them before but it was a great way to attract people, giving us a chance to share why we celebrate Christmas! Why every year we make such a big deal about Jesus who was born 2008 years ago...

After the fireworks we headed to the church where the fun began! Songs, teaching and then some very entertaining dramas!!! Even though they were in swahili or Gabra I sitll caught most of the meaning and had many laughs! We were there till midnight... we had a big count-down and then a huge cheer for Christmas and some more songs!!!

Christmas morning Barbara and I listened to Christmas music such as 'Let it Snow' and 'I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas'. I nursed my cup of HOT APPLE CIDER (that my wonderful mother sent me) and thought cold thoughts, imagined snow and pictured a Christmas tree...

Off to church at 9 for a nice service of songs and a funny drama. Everyone stayed for Chai after wards, sitting outside in randoms bits of shade.

The afternoon is too hot to do much more than rest (+35Cish). I did managed to join a game of crazy UNO as we waited for the sun to slack off its intensity. Games followed at church; ladder gold, tug-of-war, ultimate Frisbee and volleyball. I enjoyed watching the women win the tug-of-war contest!

Once the sun went down we all came together again to eat! Rice topped with goat, potaotes and onions... yummy! Eating here is a bit different; 6 people share a big plate and you eat with your hands. Lets just say it takes practice!

And just for the fun of it we had more fireworks to end a really great day!

Since I don't really enjoy typing I think I will just post some pics!

Steve, Angie, Ezikiel and their Charlie Brown tree!

Yay for people who can cook!

Our little sister, Jillo, smiling back at us at church!

King Herod and his guards during the drama.

Enjoying the drama!

Chai time for all! No one ever sits in the sun!

Parties and big functions are the only time you ever see guys serving.

Relaxing at Pastor John's house.

Another fun road trip!

This is only part of our trip home... if I took pics at EVERY break down you would get board!

Well I think its flat...

The sunsets are beautiful... but it makes it harder to fix the trucks.

One just kept on quitting on us, and once it got dark we had to give up our original destination and tow it back to Logologo for the night, where a nurse that we knew lived. But she had left for Nairobi that very day, fortunately her house help remembered us and let us into the house and even fed us before we got started the next day!

The middle of nowhere. Beautiful!

A camel path. While they tinker with the trucks, I get to play with my camera.

"It's SO green!"... and if you had seen it before you would agree!

The boys being helpful!

Y - M - ... we didn't have enough for C and A.

This time we were only an hour out of Kalacha, but we couldn't get the thing to start. We had been successful the last few times it died, but this time it was not just 'mostly dead' but 'all dead'. So we left Steve and Paul with the truck, packed us and some extra gear into the other truck and headed for home. As soon as we got back we unloaded the trailer, the gear, gave Scott some food and sent him back to tow Steve and Paul.
So ended another fun filled trip! I am SO very glad that the two mothers with the newborn babies got to fly home on a plane, that would have been a terrible trip for them!

Back to Kalacha

I have been very bad at keeping my blog updated since we returned from Nairobi. Mainly because we have been kept quite busy.
First off we have to get around to all of our friends and neighbors houses to visit and talk about any news. Also we have to catch up on some of our curriculum work for TIMO (books to read, papers to write) since we didn't do any while on vacation or at the conferences.

But excuses are silly, I just haven't made the time.

It has been so very good to be back. While we were gone it rained, so things were green (comparatively) when we got back. There were even little flowers growing around! But the biggest thing about being back is the question of "What are we doing here?"... we are asking ourselves how can we best serve these people, how does God want to use us to get the Gospel message across. For at least the first 6 months it was our job to just "be", to watch, to learn, to ask, to listen and hopefully to start to understand the Gabra people... what they treasure, what they fear, what drives them. Not that 6 months is anywhere near long enough to understand, but at least it helps us avoid obvious blunders and gives us some hints as to the best way to proceed.

One of the challenges that Barbara and I face is that we are single girls. Its hard to understand from a western point of view, but to put it simply we have no influence to teach or work with anyone but kids and youth since we are viewed as 'girls' - mere children. But then more than half of Africa is children and if you train up a child in the way he should go he will not depart from it. So your prayers would be appreciated as we seek to know where God wants us.

Outside Shamba

The new location for our Shamba!

The first bean to be put out in the elements; HOT sun, fierce wind and the goats! To protect him we had to make a fence.

Our little sister, Sabdio Dico (My name is Sabdio so she is little Sabdio), helping us dig the holes for the fence poles.

Duba has been so helpful, he went to get the poles (1/2hr to an hours walk away) and then he and some friends came to make the fence for us (since we don't really know how).

Myself, Jarso and Duba digging into the VERY rocky soil... will anything grow???

Here is the sad end of bean #1... after our nice fence was made, complete with gate we went in for chai. Funny thing about gates though, they work best when closed. So bean #1 was a victim of some baby goats.

We are mourning bean #1, but there are a few more that we can try to transplant outside. It is now bean #2's turn to face the test of living in Kalahca!

We are planting various seeds to see what will grow. We also have some dirt from the mountains that is more fertile (our inside shamba is all mountain dirt) to see if mixing it works better. Lets just say that farming in a desert is not an easy thing. But we will try!

Sufria Shamba

This is our first attempts at a 'shamba' (farm/garden)... We planted the bean and flower seeds that Barbara's awesome friend sent. The flowers decided that Kalacha was not a nice place to live and never grew, but the beans grew!

The only problem is that they are vine beans, and our little 'sufria' (cooking pot) is not a great place for them to mature. So we decided to make an outside shamba.

Its SOOO nice to have green in our house!

Mombasa - Vacation time at the coast.

Vacation time for our team.  We headed to the coast (to make up for the lack of water and vegetation in the desert!). I went with Scott, Susie, their boys and Barbara, and we all had a very good time there. 

Nicely burnt to a crisp!

"Building the Kingdom."  You never go on vacation from being a witness where ever you are.

World's cutest child.

The hunters following the tide out.

Hunting for squid and shells.

Our guide showing Kyle the different fishes.

We took a boat out to our very own island.  We had it all to our selves because we packed a lunch and stayed the whole afternoon to do as many hours of snorkeling as we could, meanwhile the rest of the tourists went back to the fancy sea food restaurant.   

We enjoyed the snorkeling, and saw SO many neat things! God is awesome!

Fearless

Fisherman in a carved out canoe and a tattered sail.