Another Living-In-Shirati Moment

This Living-In-Shirati moment was apparently brought to you by the African equivalent of Mad Dog 20-20.

I don't know if you can quite make it out, but this is the fence separating our backyard from the road, and those are the legs of a man lying on his back in the grass.  This man, who was utterly drunk at 2:30pm, came stumbling through our backyard calling "hodi!" (which is like "Anyone home?") and Fred went outside to see what he wanted.  Fortunately Fred was home on his lunch break to deal with this guy.  The man had a bag of small fish, like sardines, and a tomato which people had given him and which he was hoping to cook for dinner, but he was in need of a little bit of cooking oil.  (Possibly he intended to take part of our fence home to use as fuel for his cooking fire...it's happened before on a number of occasions.)  Fred told the guy we didn't have any cooking oil--the kind of obvious lie that you can only tell to a drunk person--and told him to be on his way.  A few minutes later I watched him struggling to climb back over the fence to the road, but apparently the effort was too much for him, because twenty minutes after that I saw him passed out on the other side of the fence.  Ah, Shirati.

Random Observations From Two Months’ Leave

Over the past two months that I’ve been taking maternity leave, I’ve not been updating this blog (aside from the birth story) and as a result I have so many random, disconnected thoughts from life to share with you. 

Family Items:
      - Since Inno and I can now communicate almost fluently, he asks questions all day long, especially when we watch TV. “Are there black people in America?” “Is that a policeman?” “Do men shave their heads in America?” “Are there yellow people in America?” (He isn’t being racist about Asian people…we were watching The Simpsons.) His most common question is “What is that?” and the answer is usually some kind of animal, since he loves nature shows. How do you explain, in super simple English, how a seal is different from a krill from a whale? I just said they’re all kinds of fish.
      - I’m a little nervous that his perception of America is developing based on COPS. He loves it, and once he understood that I'm from Portland, which appears occasionally, he started asking me every new scene “Is this your Sindo?” (Sindo is his hometown, so I had explained that Portland is my Sindo.) He also, jokingly, asks if the people are my friends or parents. We have not seen anyone I know (yet), but seeing them bust pot dealers on the Waterfront or Burnside is almost like seeing friends.
      - Four paragraphs and I haven’t mentioned the baby yet?! This must be amended immediately! For the purposes of the blog, I’ll call the baby Sam, although we call him Wesley at home. We’re adjusting to each other quite well, and my frustrated cries of “I don’t know what you want, baby!” are becoming fewer and fewer. Inno and I call him Baby Penguin, since he’s black and white and little, and the Planet Earth episode we saw this week was about penguins.
      - Sam is what some child experts call “high needs.” (Not special needs.) Basically, he insists on being held almost always. Even if he’s not eating, he likes comfort feeding or sucking on fingers, mine or his, but he is not a fan of pacifiers. He’s started smiling socially (not because of gas) much more and scowling much less. For the first few weeks he only scowled and looked like a cute little old man, but he’s pretty sunny nowadays.
      - We don’t have house help, so a lot of work falls on Fred. He’s been a trooper: getting up early to wash clothes and diapers, going to work, checking in with us a couple of times during the day, going to the market, washing dishes, cooking dinner, helping Inno bathe, etc. He’s a super husband and father.

Shirati Items:
      - I feel odd about the amount of stuff I see our neighbor’s grandkids salvage out of our garbage pit. Should I be finding additional uses for plastic bread bags? Do those rotten vegetables have a little more life in them? They’re not so poor that they need to eat out the trash, but these are the same kids who poop in the grassy area between their house and ours, even though they have a toilet.
      - We have all this grass around our house (used as toilet paper for the neighbor kids) which we pay to have cut for us. There are a few people with cows who like to bring them here to graze. We don’t like this, since we’re trying to keep strangers away from our windows and piles of cow manure off our yard. For some reason, though, these same people keep coming back to tie their cows around our house when they know Fred is traveling. If they asked, it might be okay, but they know we don’t want their cows and they keep coming back! I could write a whole post about how this is an example of the tension of cross-cultural living, but for now just let me say it’s infuriating.
     - We have new friends! After a whole year, we’re finally getting to know the American doctor and her Luo husband who live about 200 yards away from us. They have kids almost our age, so it’s like hanging out with parents, which is a very welcome stand-in for family right now when we feel particularly far away.

P.S. Update from yesterday: One of the cow owners came to tie his cows in the grassy no-man's-land/toilet, and dug through our garbage pit until he found some bread I'd tossed because it was a bit moldy.  Apparently it wasn't too moldy for him to eat on the spot.  Ew.

The Birth Story (the long version)

Over the past several years, I have become increasingly interested in natural birth, and, being from Oregon, I have a number of friends who either did or tried for a natural birth process.  I’d been pretty well convinced that natural birth (someday) was for me when I moved to Africa and got to see and hear about the conditions that a laboring woman experiences in the hospitals of East Africa.  After some consideration, we decided to give birth in a hospital, but to go up to Kenya to do it, since the private hospitals in the Nairobi area have pretty good reputations.

You may have been wondering why we would travel 12 hours away for delivery when there’s a hospital and nursing school literally in our back yard.  Aside from our nervousness about the conditions at this hospital, it quickly became apparent that I couldn’t even go to the hospital to weigh myself without an audience of several nursing students.  Add that to the fact that the nursing students are required to observe a certain number of births and there aren’t enough that take place at Shirati Hospital for all the students to get their numbers in, so whenever a birth happens, a huge number of students are in the room watching (and that’s just for some random woman from the village, not mentioning the additional draw of the white woman who lives on the other side of the fence).

So, we did our research and settled on Kijabe Hospital, which is about one hour outside of Nairobi.  A number of people we consulted recommended it, but a major selling point was the inexpensive, but nice, guest house 100 yards from the hospital.  From the beginning, we felt like God was really blessing our plans.  We got a ride up to Nairobi from some American doctors, including an OB/GYN, making what would have been a difficult trip immensely easier (and giving my family much peace of mind).  We got a chance to visit with the American midwife I’d met in Newberg right before we came back last year, Amanda Daggett.  She can’t actually deliver babies in Kenya yet, but she gave us some books and DVDs to prep ourselves with, and we made arrangements for her to come out when labor started to coach me.  (Not to spoil the ending, but even though she couldn't make it to the actual birth, her counsel and encouragement were so important.  She was totally my hero, and her advice prepped me really well for labor.)

When we got to Kijabe guest house, we almost didn’t get a room.  Thank God that there was a no-show, and we settled into what would be our home until the baby came.  We visited the hospital again and got a tour of the maternity ward.  Unfortunately, we were disappointed to learn that the two private rooms in the maternity ward (a major draw for us) were being renovated.  There were some other options, but we couldn’t be assured a private room, especially not knowing exactly when the baby would come.  So that you know the contrast, the general maternity ward is about thirty metal cots with a small nightstand next to the bed, curtains for walls, and a shared bathroom at the end of a drafty hallway.  One can hear every noise from every “room” and the lights stay on continuously.  Appealing, no?
My due date of 14 February came and went without a baby.  I fully expected to be late, but as days passed, I grew very tired of being pregnant.  Finally, I started feeling contractions on the afternoon of the 17^th.  They weren’t very painful, just intense and regular.  We called Amanda and she headed our way.  The contractions continued through the night, and in the morning we decided it was time to go to the hospital.  Upon examination in the hospital, however, it was discovered that I was barely dilated.  Soon after that, contractions stopped, so we went back to the guest house to wait again and eventually Amanda headed back to her kids as we resigned ourselves to the fact that it had been a very disappointing false alarm.

I will condense the next week into these two words: waiting and walking.  At this point, let me pause the story to say a few words about due dates and “post-term” babies (aka get on my soap box).  First of all, due dates are calculated based on 40 weeks of pregnancy, but most women carry past that due date, especially with the first-born.  Second, I have to wonder how billions of women for thousands of years have delivered perfectly safely without having any idea of their “due date” or the potential harm they were doing to their babies by going past that date (of which they have no knowledge).  However, in modern medicine, many hospitals and doctors will not allow their patients to carry a pregnancy past somewhere between 41 and 42 weeks.  In fact, the European doctor who discharged me after the contractions stopped told us to return at 41-1/2 weeks for induction.  Induction is usually an IV drip of the synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin, which starts contractions.  However, if the woman’s body (I’ll skip the anatomical jargon here) is not prepared to deliver, the contractions create a situation something like trying to pound a watermelon through a keyhole.  It can be extremely painful, and often leads to women opting for an epidural, which then makes it difficult to push, since she can’t feel the contractions.  She has to be hooked up to a monitor that tells the doctor when to tell the woman to push.  If that doesn’t work after some time, they become concerned that the baby is distressed (no doubt, after such a forcible eviction), and many times turn to Caesarean section to quickly deliver the baby.  Because of the pain medication and consequent major surgery, both the mom and the baby are woozy and may have trouble connecting during those first moments of life.  All of this is what I did not want for myself and our baby.

It just so happened that the day we were instructed to return for induction was the day before Fred had to fly to an unavoidable work conference in Rwanda for 10 days.  We really struggled and debated with the difficult decision of whether we should induce, knowing that it could escalate into a C-section or that it might take long and Fred would be leaving in the midst of very difficult labor, but if we didn’t induce, Fred could miss the birth entirely, and I would be trying to recover and care for a newborn alone in a motel.  In the end we decided to trust that God had a plan for us and our baby, and that He would fulfill it in perfect timing.  I won’t pretend that this was a remotely easy decision, but we were reassured by the strong fetal heartbeat and continuous activity that our baby was safe and strong and healthy.  So Fred left, and I spent six more days walking and waiting.  On the seventh day Amanda returned to try natural induction, using herbal tinctures to prepare the *ahem* birth canal and castor oil to start the contractions.  These extremely unpleasant concoctions had the effect of…nothing, except another set of soft contractions that faded after several hours.  We concluded that the baby (or I) was determined to wait for his dad, and agreed that we would go for induction at the hospital at 43 weeks, the day that Fred returned.

So it was that on 6^th March Fred returned around noon, after I spent the morning in yet another set of soft, fading contractions, and we took a nap, then went to the hospital.  The European doctor was *not* pleased to see that I was still pregnant at 43 weeks, and began to reprimand me for waiting so long.  I cut her off, saying that I knew what I was doing and that I had made the decision to wait in spite of the small chance I could be “causing harm” to the baby.  I knew, in all my burgeoning maternal instincts, that I had made the right choice in waiting, so her annoyance didn’t bother me.  She prescribed the induction drugs with a little huff, and we were pleasantly surprised to be admitted as one of the very first patients in the newly remodeled private rooms!  The baby had waited long enough for us to get a room with a hospital bed, a private bathroom with shower, a couch long enough even for Fred to sleep on, and a television on which to watch the Arsenal match that night.

We settled in happily to wait for the drugs and the match and the baby (in roughly that order).  Hours passed, however, with no one appearing to administer the drugs.  At 10pm Fred went in search of someone to help us, and after several frustrating conversations, was informed that they wouldn’t be administering them until morning because there were so many women already in labor that the labor room was full.  (The labor room is a room with 12 beds where they take women to be monitored when they go into active labor.  Additionally, there is the delivery room with two delivery beds where they do all exams and deliveries.)  We were pretty outraged that they had admitted us for the whole night (which we’d have to pay for) when we could have been told to just come back in the morning.  Fred demanded to see a doctor and be discharged and refunded any bills they said we had incurred.   While we were waiting for the doctor, watching Arsenal beat AC Milan 3-0, I suddenly had a strong contraction.  I went to the bathroom to discover that I had some blood showing (a good thing).  Around midnight a doctor arrived, we explained our frustration and complaint, then I said “But the situation has changed now.  I think I just started labor for real.”  He said they would monitor me, and we tried to get some sleep between contractions.

Over the next several hours, I had painful contractions in increasing intervals, and was found to be dilating, but slowly.  At 7:30am a bed in the labor room opened up, so they moved me to the labor room, broke my amniotic fluid, and taped a fetal heart monitor and a contraction monitor to my stomach, essentially leashing me to the bed.  Before the contractions had been bearable because I could move around, walk, squat, or get on my hands and knees to ease the pain.  Once I was in bed, though, I couldn’t even turn from one side to the other.  A student nurse named Glory was assigned to me, to rub my back, urge me to breathe, and give me water, juice and some food in between contractions.  She had Fred running to the shops for “More juice!  More water!  Food!” to keep my strength up.  Meanwhile, with each contraction, she would massage my lower back like she was kneading dough.  It was the only pain alleviation I had, and it felt…maybe not wonderful, but it definitely helped.

Finally, after the machines taped to my stomach measured three “strong” contractions and a still stable fetal heart rate, Glory convinced the doctor to let me get up and walk around to help the baby settle lower and also to help with the pain.  Our private room was at the other end of the hallway from the labor room, so we set a certain pace that got me to my room for a contraction, then to the labor room for the next one, and so on.  I was getting a lot of stares, especially from the guests of the other women in labor and especially when I didn’t quite make it to one room or the other and had to squat and groan in the hallway until the contraction passed.  Very ladylike, as you can imagine.

At something like 11am I was determined to be 8cm dilated, meaning roughly two more hours of labor if the baby kept descending.  We returned to walking, but by 12:15pm or so, I was “feeling pushy” as they say, and the contractions were so close together that I wouldn’t even try walking the hallway.  I parked myself in a little alcove outside the delivery room, determined to stay there until the baby came.  There was a kind of railing all along the wall, so during a contraction I would squat, balancing against the railing, then I’d drink some water, stand up and simulate walking.  The hospital midwives were thoroughly interested in my progress.  After all, they’d be waiting for this delivery for more than three weeks also, since the first time we stopped by.  They complimented Fred on my agility (in squatting!) and that I wasn't a screamer.  Eventually, in spite of the nervous commands from the student nurse not to push, I started pushing with each contraction.  Both the delivery beds were full, and she was terrified she’d have to catch the baby in the dirty hallway alcove.

About this time, a bed opened up in delivery and I pulled the railing in the alcove clean off the wall (unrelated incidences, except that they happened approximately the same time).  I scooted across to the delivery room doorway for my next contraction, and then Glory asked if I could walk to the bed.  Absolutely I could!  I hustled in there and up onto the delivery bed ready to push that baby right out…except…by this time I’d been in labor nearly 13 hours, and I was exhausted.  I probably could have done it faster squatting in the hallway, but hospitals like their elevated, specially designed delivery beds, so I lay there pushing without the benefit of gravity for ten minutes.  As a contraction would come, they’d tell me “pushpushpushpush” and “don’t breathe, just push!”  After the contraction, Glory would literally pour juice down my throat for an energy boost.  Fred stood by my head, stroking my hair and pouring juice.

Finally, as I was losing confidence and strength in equal proportions, and fearing that they would give me an episiotomy soon to just cut the baby out, I snuck my hand down and touched the top of the baby’s head, which I was surprised to discover was covered with long, thick hair.  The midwife pushed my hand away, but I had what I needed.  The next contraction came, and I pushpushpushpushed the baby right out.  They put him on my stomach while clamping the umbilical cord, and I could touch his slimy, meconium-covered back all I wanted.  He started screaming right away, and didn’t stop as I delivered the placenta, got a couple of stitches, returned to the labor room for recovery and still I could hear him.  Eventually they brought him to me to nurse, and that settled him down.

I was pretty weak and my blood pressure was low, so they didn’t want to release me to go back to my room at first, but Fred advocated that I could get my IV fluids and rest better away from the strangers who kept popping their heads around the curtains to see our little guy.  We returned to our room, Fred helped me shower, and we got as much rest as we could with frequent nurses checking on the baby and I and a laboring woman in the hallway literally screaming like an extra in a horror movie every time she had a contraction (very unusual for African women, who tend to belong to the "silence is strength" school of labor).

We were discharged the next day, spent one last night in the guest house, of which I was thoroughly tired, then we went to Nairobi.  Fred treated me to a "babymoon" at a beautiful hotel that served actual brewed coffee and...wait for it...chocolate croissants.  We pressed on home to Shirati on Saturday, which was a long and brutal and hot ride, but we all made it in one piece.  So happy to be home and resting and getting to know our beautiful little man.


Samuel Wesley Otieno, six days old

The Birth Story (the short version)

This is the short version of our baby adventure.  If you're interested in the long version, check back later today or tomorrow, when I'll have edited the five page Word document I just wrote into something more manageable and more generally interesting.

So here's the version I dedicate to Mike P and Josh C, whose attention spans would never, ever make it through what I plan to post tomorrow, although all the mamas and grandmamas out there who have been following every FB status update will appreciate the rich detail of tomorrow's version.

What I didn't want:

• C-section, because why have major surgery if it can be avoided?
• Induction, because it so often leads to escalating pain and medical intervention
• Pain meds, not trying to be a hero, but I wanted to be fully alert when our son entered the world

What I did want:

• A healthy baby, period
• God's timing for the baby to come, no matter how excrutiating the wait (and it was!)
• Peace in the journey, without feeling pressured to make decisions for myself or the baby that we weren't at peace about

We traveled up to Kijabe Hospital (about an hour from Nairobi) on 11th February, with a due date of 14th February on the calendar.  That day came and went with no baby, then starting on the 17th I had mild contractions for about 14 hours, so we went to the hospital, only to have the contractions stop and we went back to the guest house where we were staying.  A few more times I had those mild contractions, but they never went anywhere.  By the 24th we were under pressure from a European OB/GYN at the hospital to induce, because the baby was "post-term" and "potentially at risk of complications."  Additionally, Fred had to leave for a conference in Rwanda the next day, so there was a possibility that if we induced, he could be there for the birth, or we could induce and it could take ages still, and he might have to leave in the middle of labor.  We decided to just keep waiting for God's timing and plan.  On the 2nd of March my American midwife friend brought some herbal supplements meant to naturally encourage labor, but they didn't work.  (Probably because, subconsciously, I was refusing to have the baby without Fred there.)  Fred arrived back on the date we had agreed to go to the hospital for medical induction.  I was three weeks "overdue" and that same doctor was pretty upset with me, although I think the African midwives weren't too fussed over it.  As we waited for them to administer the induction drugs, labor started naturally, and 13 hours later, we had a baby!  It was pretty close to everything we'd hoped for: natural timing, natural delivery, no drugs, as much peace as can be expected given the pain, and a beautiful, healthy baby boy!

Samuel Wesley Otieno, five days old

(If you want sarcastic comments and funny anecdotes from the experience, you'll have to invest in the mega post coming later.)

No, that is not a pumpkin under my shirt

It's a baby the size of a pumpkin.  I'm 38 weeks pregnant, and feeling every inch of my 43-inch belly.  Today is my last day of work before I start maternity leave tomorrow, so I'm just finishing up all my Lahash projects, replying to emails and talking to my grandma on the phone.

Our plan for the next few weeks:
Fred has been traveling for work for the past week and is still on the road.  I'm helping him with a grant writing proposal that we're both excited about.  He'll get back mid-day on Thursday (hopefully) and the proposal for a district-wide, community-driven program to care for vulnerable children is due on Friday.  After that gets submitted, I think we'll want to just sit and look at each other for a day or two!  Fred will be wrapping up his work projects and I'll be working on a few more sewing projects, then we'll pack up our baby clothes and get ready to head up to Kenya.

The trip north for the birth will hopefully be far less dramatic than our last trip, but will still take all day.  We'll probably hang out in Nairobi for a day or two, meeting with our American midwife and do some last minute baby shopping.  Then we'll catch the public transport out to Kijabe, about an hour from Nairobi and check into the guest house.  We'll have another appointment with the maternity staff and go over protocol for when I actually go into labor.  We'll be about 100 yards from the hospital reading and watching movies on a laptop waiting for the baby!  I'll probably be doing Facebook status updates, and once the baby arrives, we'll be sure to announce it here.

Please pray for us as we're getting close to meeting our little one.  Pray for our safety as we travel and health for me and for the baby.  I might even go out on a limb and ask you to pray for comfort...not luxury, just comfort.  The uncomfortable buses and having to pee when there's no bathroom and sharing a hotel room with cockroaches or rats make for good blog posts, but I'd much prefer to not have any of those stories at this particular juncture.  (In Fred's defense, the number of hotel rooms I've shared with cockroaches has reduced drastically since getting married.  He takes good care of me.)

Anyway, thanks for following the blog, listening to my crazy stories and praying for us.  Let the Baby Watch officially begin!

A long post about a long day

Last week Fred and I went up to Nairobi for a pre-natal appointment at the hospital we’d chosen for the birth. It was kind of a dry run for next month (the baby is only a few weeks away!), and, naturally, almost nothing went to plan. After five years of using public transit here, I’ve experienced a lot in the way of inconvenience and discomfort, but this trip to Nairobi was probably top three in my list of difficult travel experiences.
 
It started at five in the morning on Wednesday, when we woke up to do final packing and get on the road, hoping to reach Nairobi by mid-afternoon. I ate some toast and coffee, and we walked to town to find a car to take us to Tarime. It’s only a three or four minute walk, but immediately we could tell something was wrong. Town, which is usually starting to buzz at 5:30am, was nearly deserted. There were no buses, no cars, no motorbikes. Fred found out that the police had set up a roadblock between Shirati and Tarime and were turning back all public vehicles whose drivers didn’t have a “new” driver’s license (whatever that is). Usually these roadblocks are just a bribe collection point, but the drivers weren’t risking it, so no vehicles were moving until that roadblock had been taken down. Without leaving immediately, we wouldn’t make it to the border in time to catch the 8am buses to Nairobi, so we had no option but to go back home and take a nap. We were both frustrated that our impeccably planned day had already been derailed, and I said a little prayer that God would be in charge of the rest of the day.
 
We tried again at 8am, and this time we had success finding a car going to Tarime, which, if you remember from before, is the Wild West junction where I got chased around by a guy yelling about me being a pregnant white woman. Fortunately this time we didn’t have to wait around at all, and just jumped in a car headed for the border. Passing through immigration was similarly painless. (I cut in front of a bunch of safari tourists who were filling out their forms soooo slowly.)
 
When we reached the Kenyan side of the border, we started looking for a bus to Nairobi. The bus we wanted to take, Transline, was expected at noon, leaving us with about an hour to hang out. Fred parked me in a tea shop, when we found out that there was a Nyamira Express bus leaving shortly, so we bought tickets for that bus, thinking to save ourselves an hour. The bus arrived and it was a piece of trash on wheels, but the ticket guy said there was another bus right behind it, so we should just wait for that one. Sounds good, right? Sigh.
 
We had great seats, front row right behind the driver with loads of leg room and seats that reclined a bit. So nice to be able to put my feet up and have a little extra belly room, and we hit the road. The bus stopped immediately, before we’d even left the border town, to weld something at the back of the bus. Safety first, right? Sigh.
 
We sat baking in the sun waiting for the welding to be finished. Then we hit the road…and stopped again. The Tanzanian police weren’t the only ones stopping public vehicles on the road. The Kenyan police were doing random checks for people smuggling marijuana, and there were probably twelve blocks on the road. Fortunately these stops were pretty quick business…until…. We stopped in the town of Kisii for “twenty minutes,” aka eighty minutes, during which time a parade of vendors entered the bus, and every single one of them had exactly the same merchandise, but each one insisted that I must want the lukewarm soda he was selling. Usually I just put in my headphones and stare out the window and they leave me alone. Not in Kisii. The vendors were hitting me on the shoulder to get my attention until I started being rude back. 
 
Finally the driver and conductor returned and we started out again, having added a bunch of new passengers. It turns out that one of those passengers was being looked for by those Kenyan drug police. Apparently he had a bag full of marijuana under the bus. Of course he did. It took a surprisingly long time for them to send us on our way, considering it took about five minutes for the police to find the drugs and toss the guy in the back of the police truck, probably in part because every other man on the bus took the opportunity to jump off and pee on the side of the road. While we sat there, the noon Transline bus that we were going to save so much time by not waiting for passed us. *Fred shakes fist in frustration.*
 
We would continue stopping to add passengers at every wide spot in the road between there and Nairobi, making what should have been six hours into about ten hours. At one moment, thinking of all the delays we’d been through so far that day, feeling very fat and rather uncomfortable and needing to pee (not on the side of the road, thankyouverymuch), I was a little low. Then we passed the Transline bus, that very one that we had planned on then passed on then got passed by. The bus had run off the road and was tipped sideways into a ditch missing the front axle. It wasn’t a bad accident as these things go, but what a reality check that our best-laid plans are nothing compared to God’s plan for us.
 
We had planned to stay at the Mennonite Guest House in Westlands, but by the time we rolled into Nairobi it was about five hours later than our initial plan. We reached the guest house to find out that they weren’t going to let us stay there because the office was closed and we didn’t have reservations. The very nice security guard recommended a nearby guest house, so we walked the quarter-mile to that place at ten o’clock at night, where we were also told they couldn’t help us. As we wandered back to the Mennonite Guest House, Fred started calling our bishop, who gave him the number for the local Mennonite bishop, who said he would call the guest house. By the time we got back, the guard asked if we were “wageni wa kawaida” (common guests), and when he found out we work for the Mennonite church, he invited us in to rest while he sorted something out. I rested on an outside sofa, utterly exhausted, while we waited for the verdict. It was very much our Mary and Joseph moment of “no room at the inn”, but between the bishops and the security guard they found a room for us. (It was not a stable and I did not have the baby that night.) We were so grateful, especially when the security guard found us some peanuts and crisps for dinner.
 
Oh my. After that looooong day (and looooong story), everything else was great. We ate some good food, got to rest a bit in a really peaceful environment, and had a great experience at the hospital we’re planning to go to for the birth. We bought some baby clothes and a diaper bag and I pretty much ate my weight in ice cream one day (which I then regretted). There were a few disappointments, a few setbacks, but the return trip was virtually eventless. Oh, except for the moment when we were disembarking in Migori to see Innocent at school and as soon as I stood up my skirt dropped to my ankles. As I scrambled to pull up my skirt without losing my slip also or dropping my bag, my sandal snapped. Embarrassing for sure, but I only flashed a few people and Fred got my sandal fixed, and it was the last of our adventures for that trip. We reached home in one piece, found some dinner waiting for us (God bless our new, live-in housegirl Jaki!), and got to rest and recover all day Sunday. Now it’s just a hard push through two more weeks of Lahash work before maternity leave starts!

A few photos



First of all, sorry these photos are so dark.  I have a terrible camera with no flash on it.  Turns out taking photos of an African child wearing dark colors in a dark room doesn't turn out so well, but oh well...  Here is Innocent on the morning he left for boarding school in his new uniform with all his things safely tucked away in the trunk and his new mattress.  Whenever we added something to his trunk, whether it was soap or socks, he made sure I had written or sewn his name on it.  Fred delivered him to school on Thursday, and got him all settled in.  His first night alone at school was a bit tough, but when Fred checked back in on Saturday, he was doing much better.  He loves the matron, and has told her so many stories about his family already, including his Auntie from America.  (Innocent never calls me a mzungu, bless him.)

The day before Innocent left we got our Christmas package from my family.  Fred got a Kindle from my parents, I got some foods I've been craving from my grandparents and a beautiful nursing nightgown from my parents (there will be no picture modeling that).  My grandma also crocheted a really cute little baby hat, in white, since we still don't know the gender of the baby.  Innocent was so excited to get a set of construction trucks from my parents, along with a book about "Toad Builds a Road".  He now knows the English words "steam roller", "bulldozer" and "hydraulic lift". 

While Fred was delivering Innocent to school I did a few more little sewing projects for the baby, including these booties.  The tops were made from some trousers of Innocent's that I had hemmed into shorts, and the bottoms are from the same cotton sheets that the baby's bedding is made from.  Our friend Brenda just came over and laughed, saying we were training our baby from early age not to go barefooted.  I got a flannel receiving blanket in the package from America, so I'm debating whether to leave it whole or make diapers or burp rags out of it.

Here I fully intended to put a photo of my huge pregnant belly, but I took the photo on my phone instead of the camera, and I can't get my camera connected to the computer, so it'll have to wait.  Suffice to say that I'm at 35 weeks, 44 inches around, and feeling good.  I'm tired of being pregnant, and I'm for sure ready to have the baby.  We're (God willing) going to have an appointment at the hospital we're planning to deliver at in Nairobi.  Hopefully we'll get a nice, clear ultrasound and find out the gender.  Everything else seems to be progressing just fine.

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me and for the baby.  If you'd like to send a baby gift, there will be a team coming from Portland to Tanzania in mid-March, and there's room for them to carry some things.  Clothes, especially in the 6 months and older range, are appreciated.  Also, cloth diapers and even just flannel cloth that I can use for sewing things as needed would be great.  (Hand-me-downs are awesome...pretty much all quality baby clothes here are second-hand clothes shipped from the States anyway!) 

We love you guys!