Merry Christmas and off to the Village

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

I was blessed with three different Christmases here. Christmas Eve I went to Atara'a parents house. They had a small gathering of people from church. Their house was decorated for Christmas so it was nice for it to "feel" like Christmas as I sat next the fire and admired the Christmas tree. Doug and Sue were so kind to have me stay over.

The next morning we attended a short out-door Christmas service put on my the Church. It was strange sitting outside in on a semi sunny day singing Christmas carols. I then went the house of Sandra and Jonathan, a South African couple from church. They had a few people over and we had an AMAZING lunch. Jonathan is an incredible cook.

Then I spent the afternoon enjoying a Kenyan Christmas with Nkita and her family and friends. Probably my favorite part of the day. We had so much food! I went to the market with her on the 23rd and we seriously brought so many vegetables and even a live chicken! (She was actually buying it as a gift for a friend, she already had like 10 frozen chickens in the freezer) I named it Alfred. Side note: So once you buy the chicken you have to transport it home so they tie it's legs and put the thing in a plastic bag, so your carry a live chicken just how you would carrying your other groceries. We put in the backseat of the car with some feed and it was content as could be...too bad it didn't know what was coming. Poor Alfred.
I had to hold a six week baby for like an hour on Christmas and I loved that. My Christmas was busy so that was good, I didn't have much time to think about home although i still did. I was really lucky and blessed with a wonderful Christmas.

I'm catching a ride to Kisumu tomorrow to go live in a village for five weeks. Pretty excited. I leaving earlier than first thought, because I was running into a lot of dead ends with everyone going to their villages it being on leave or it just being Christmas time so many of the people I needed to talk to for my research project are gone and will be gone until Jan. So I decided to copy them and go to the village as well. Instead of sitting around here waiting for people, I'm going to go get settled in the village and start my community life project. Then I'll come back to Nairobi the end of Jan. and have a month to finish everything before home.

I'm still alive

Sorry I know it seems I dropped off the planet. However, I’m assuming that most of you are quite busy partaking in Christmas time crazyness, finishing up school work, or just trying to survive the cold (I heard it was 18 degrees! Is there snow?! I even heard LA has been in the 30‘s yikes!) to really be overly concerned about what is going on here. By the way it’s been mostly sunny here, I’m guessing in the mid 70’s. There’s been some rain but mostly at night. The weirdest thing happened the other day, half of the sky was clear and was poring down rain. The sky was clear except for a little patch of sky.

Things here have been going well. I’ve been doing a lot of different things. I’m still working on my research project. I changed my topic slightly to the reintegration of children from the orphanage system in Kenya. This still includes how older youth are prepared to reintegrate but I’m also looking at adoption, and fostering, and the process of reintegrating young children back into their extended family. It’s really interesting learning about different programs being employed by different children‘s homes. From my understanding, which is still quite limited, the Kenyan government ultimately wants children’s homes to become short-term placements for children in which children are only committed for three years and during those three years permanent placement is found for them. This placement could range from adoption to finding extended family to take the child. Did you know that the majority of children in children’s homes/orphanages in this area have guardians/family outside of the children’s home who they visit several times a year?

Last week I took my younger host brother, Herzon (10 years old) to a movie (yes we saw New Moon!). I already moved out of there but I had to wait for him to be out of school and for a Monday. The movie theaters here have a special on Mondays called Monday Madness where a drink, pop corn, and hot dog are included free with your ticket all for 500 shillings, about $6.50. I ended up taking him and his cousin. Neither of them had been to a real movie theater and before the movie we walked around the “mall” which they had never been in and it was so fun to watch their faces. We even went to Nakumatt (think safeway) and they were amazed by all the food and different varieties. I gave them culture shock.

I decided this week that I need to work harder on Kiswahili. It’s so easy to get away with speaking English, because almost everyone I come in contact with does. I’m just not a language person. I struggled through Spanish in high school and Zulu in South Africa and now Swahili in Kenya. However, language is a really important aspect of culture and I need to honor this culture by learning more of the language. I just really wish I would have taken an intensive language course when I got here. I learn so much better in a structured classroom setting.

Christmas. So I know I’m 21 years old and this is only one Christmas and I will survive, but man I miss my Washington Christmas! Thinking about family and all that is going on there is so hard. Today we had a Christmas service in which all the kids dressed up and performed the Christmas story, it was super cute, but I couldn’t help but think about all the kids I know at home and the Christmas service at our church. I’m still figuring out what to do for Christmas but I think I’m going to spend Christmas eve with Atara’s parents. There is a Christmas day service, then I’m going to the house of a South African couple from church, then spending Christmas afternoon/evening with my Kenyan family. Christmas is celebrated in Kenya, but very minimally. Mostly people just prepare a lot of food and have family over. Which really when you think about it is pretty close to what we do without the excessive decorating and all the hype. It’s so strange to not be completely crazed and busy running around, buying gifts and wrapping presents.

I’m off to the village next month. In about three weeks! Yikes. I have a lot to finish up here school work wise but I’m excited for a change.