Tears on Christmas Day

This was our third Christmas in Africa as a family.  The first year it was just me and Fred and a 7-month baby bump.  We had no gifts for each other, no special dinner, Fred was traveling and just reached home on Christmas morning.  God blessed us by opening a hotel in our town that day, so we had a nice dinner out.

Two years ago we took the boys (and an 8-month baby bump) to the beach in Mwanza.  We had a great time playing at the beach on Christmas and Boxing Day, and ate hotel food for Christmas dinner.

This year we had planned to go back to Mwanza to play on the beach and in a swimming pool, but Fred and I have been traveling so much lately that staying in yet another ubiquitous hotel room didn't sound all that appealing, so we decided to save money and stay home.  Then God moved us to spend that money on food for some of the families we've been interacting with this past year.  We bought 50 kilos of rice, 25 kilos of sugar, and 10 1-liter bottles of oil.  I baked a bunch of Christmas cookies and made little cards and wrapped up a bag of cookies for each family.  Our friend Stephen and our house helper, Adera, split up the food into eight portions, and on Christmas Day Stephen, Fred and Wesley delivered the packages.


First they visited Grace and Pita and Pita's kids, who received a water system at their home from the Ryding family earlier this year.  They found the family walking back from church.  Fred asked Pita, the blind daughter, what she was hoping to eat for Christmas.  "Rice, but we don't have any," she replied. They got the joy of making her modest Christmas wish come true.








Some of the homes they were going to were off-road, to say the least!  Wesley told Fred "This isn't a safe place to drive!"  The next home was of a family which had received a new house from Shantz Mennonite Church.  The HIV+ single mother who was the intended beneficiary of the house died the day before the Shantz team was to build the house, so instead they gave money to build a new home for the orphaned children later on.





When Fred, Stephen and Wesley arrived on Christmas morning, they found that the two young children are now being cared for by their teenage sister-in-law, who also brought her young sister to live there.  Milka, that child bride, probably an orphan herself, was so ill that she was lying on a mat in the compound. All the kids were gathered around watching her suffer. There was literally no food in the house.  None of them had eaten the day before and there was not even a match to light the fire. The children's faces when they saw the cookies and food brought tears to my eyes.

The next home was of a man Fred has been interacting with for several years.  Ramadhan has been paralyzed from the neck down since adolescence.  Through the palliative care he receives medicine to manage the chronic pain he lives with, and he has used the gifts from that program to start a small business selling bars of soap and matches to people in the neighborhood.  Prior to the visit from the Shantz Mennonite team, he would spend all day lying on his mat in front of his home in the glaring sunshine or pouring rain. The team built him a shade so that he can be more comfortable while doing his business. His elderly mother who cares for him was given the food to prepare for their meal.

The next stop was to a family we've never met before, but Stephen knows their situation well.  Saidi was a palliative care client of Stephen's who died in the past year from AIDS. His widow and children received a new roof on their house from a Canadian woman who visits each year to do projects like this.  When they reached the house yesterday, they found the door closed, so they started walking to find Mrs. Saidi and encountered her returning from a neighbor's house where she had gone to beg food for her toddler.  All that boy was going to eat for Christmas was a piece of chapati that the neighbor had flung in his direction.  As you can see in the photo,  he couldn't take his eyes off those cookies!  The baby girl has no clothes, but we have a bunch of baby clothes donated for Mama Maisha, so Stephen will return with some clothes for that little one.

Last February Fred worked with that same Canadian lady and gift from our friends, the Rickeys, to build a house and water system for this widow and her two grandchildren, who had been living in a tiny, dilapidated house.  They met the ladies coming from church.  The grandmother, Lucia, said she had to go to church to worship because God has done so much for them this year.  Asking some questions, Stephen found out that they really had very little food in the house, and nothing special to eat for Christmas day, but still they were giving thanks. How many of us could find that faith?

Johanes was the very first client I ever met in Shirati.  He is a paraplegic who is in the palliative care program as well.  This year a friend of ours in Newberg paid for Johanes to get a new house and a new bed and mattress.  Johanes is so proud of his new home, and eager for his new water tank, courtesy of a British friend.  They found two neighbor boys there chasing a snake out of the house. We are concerned about his security, since he has no phone and can't move to find help, so Fred is looking for a special low-power cell phone and flashlight to help increase his comfort still more.


Obadia is another client of Stephen's who lives in a village on the lake front.  He is also paralyzed and sits in the market area, where people might bring him a fish from their catch for him to eat or to sell.  Often those with physical or mental disabilities are neglected by their families, and they rely on whatever support the community can provide.

This was the end of Wesley's rope, although he did a really great job spending three hours on the back of a motorbike (hence the helmet) with an empty stomach himself, handing out Christmas cookies to other kids.  Inno has a bad cough or he would have gone as well, because we think it is so important for our kids to have exposure to poverty and difficult circumstances, and to be part of serving the vulnerable.  It is one of the major blessings of living in rural Africa as a family.

Stephen and Fred dropped Wesley off at home and went to one last house.  Lucy and her teenage son were living in a very poor house, practically homeless in fact, until last July when the Shantz Mennonite team came and built her a new house.  Their hand prints are in the mud walls of her house, and she is very proud of this home. She is making small improvements, even though she is lame and walks with a cane.  Fred and Stephen arrived at lunch time and found no food or cooking fire, so she was very appreciative of the food they brought.  She wished they could stay so that she could cook for them and share a meal, but both men had their families waiting at home, so they excused themselves.

We love working with Stephen because of his great heart, and he told Fred that for him, this is the very best way of celebrating Christmas.  Although we couldn't go as a family, these stories really impacted us all.  Having Wesley to represent us made the clients feel like this was really a gift from our hearts to them, not a project, and bringing our young son into the homes of clients communicates that we are not afraid of their illness, a stigma that keeps many people away.

We want to take this chance to thank the many donors who have contributed to these families or to our personal support.  These financial gifts enable us to live here and engage with the most vulnerable people in our society, meeting physical needs and offering love and fellowship to many who sit in dark corners.  If you have been part of our support team, you are part of this work!

If you would like to help us continue caring for the widows, orphans, and other vulnerable people, please click on the button below to give a one-time or recurring monthly gift to our support.  If you'd like it to go to one of these clients in particular, just email me to let me know how you'd like your gift to be used.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Photo Update Courtesy of our Canadian Visitors

Our friends, the Janzens from Shantz Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ontario, were visiting last month with three young men from their church to do a number of service projects.  They were very good about updating their blog and taking loads of pictures, so here are a couple of highlights from their visit.

Their first project was repairing a water cistern and doing some minor repairs and upgrades at the home of a pastor we work with a lot, Pastor Joseph Buna.  

 

Jane went with me one day for a Mama Maisha client meeting while the guys built a new home for a very vulnerable family.  At the end of the project, they prayed to dedicate the home.

Terry's birthday happened during their visit, and I made him a birthday cake so we could all celebrate together.

They also helped install a water cistern for a teacher they met last year during their first visit.  She hosts an HIV support group in her home, and her intention is that the clients will benefit from the water.

The major reason the team came was to work on the bathrooms for the vocational school that Fred has been working on for years now.  The music department that Jane oversees and the choir that Terry participates in did a benefit concert that raised all the money to build very sophisticated bathrooms for the school.

The team was supposed to do one more house build for an HIV+ widow and her two adolescent children.  The night before they intended to go build, the news came that the mother had died that afternoon.  They reorganized their schedule and built a sunshade for a paraplegic patient of the palliative care program.  He spends most of his day in the sun and rain, so this shade will be a huge benefit to him.  The house for the new orphans was built after they left.

We so enjoyed having the Shantz team here, and hope it's not the last time we see them here!  Thank you to Shantz Mennonite, KCI Music Department and the Janzen family for caring so much for the people of Rorya District.

Post Number 199: How Fred is Changing the World This Week

People always ask Fred what his job is, and he responds "Director of Planning and Development for the North Mara Diocese of the Tanzania Mennonite Church."  Well, that's the title on his CV (resume), but what does it really mean?

This is the second year of the Combating Gender Based Violence program he manages.  In the first year, Fred and his colleagues, Rose and Tumaini, were reaching out to the villages of Rorya District to teach people about gender based violence to try to reduce it.  They discovered as they helped victims and talked to oppressors that the systems intended to intervene for the protection and justice of the victims were broken.  The illiterate woman in the village whose husband beat her so badly she was living with an untreated broken leg could not access the village elders, the police or the courts which might help her and her children.  So at the end of the first year of the program, Fred's team decided that they would apply for a second round of funding with the intention of trying to smooth the way for victims to receive the help, protection and restitution they need.

One of the ways they are doing that is through equipping the Gender Officers at the local police stations.  They met an amazing, inspiring police officer named Saumu (wearing a navy blazer and white head covering in the photo below).  They brought her some resources for her office, and she was very appreciative and helpful as they discussed how to better equip the well-intentioned officers dealing with an overwhelming and emotionally draining case load.  These officers have few resources to seek out the cases they're meant to be addressing and often suffer uncertainty as they balance traditional solutions to marital and family conflict with the national laws for the protection of women and children.

Fred's plan was to create "GBV Hotlines" by giving each Gender officer a new mobile phone with a phone number which would be publicized throughout the district so that people would have emergency access to the appropriate, trained police officer.  An opportunity came to partner with the mobile company Tigo, which donated nice phones on which the officers can take photos to support their cases and also access the app WhatsApp.

The day Fred (front, NOT in uniform), Rose (second row in teal blazer) and Tumaini (second row, giant smile) came to
deliver the phones, they found all the district police officials had come to make it an official event.

WhatsApp is a mix between text messaging and chatting, and it allows for groups to communicate with all members simultaneously.  All of the officers who received phones have a group on WhatsApp where they can compare notes, brainstorm together, and support one another.  The response has been pretty incredible.  One officer recently wrote "I have a case of a woman who became pregnant and the father abandoned the woman and baby.  Now the child is two years old and the father has come demanding the baby to be taken the the grandmother [the father's mother]. I refused him custody based on the 1998 Act for Protection of Women and Children.  Is the the right justification?  What do you all think?"  (This isn't an exact quote, as it's translated and summarized.)   Many of his fellow officers responded to encourage him in his interpretation of the law.

Fred's job is often tedious, involving many more days of budgets and reports than days that feel like he's changing the world, but he is really proud of this solution, with good reason.  He is the central cog linking international donors, the police force, a national mobile phone company and the victims of gender based violence in an innovative way that actually makes a difference!  This idea is so interesting to people, that they're going to be on local radio and national news.

God has given Fred an incredible, creative mind and the drive and backbone to bring his ideas about.  I'm so proud of him and proud to be his wife!

"First, eight men and one woman lift the roof off..."

Johanes

Johanes is almost totally paralyzed, and he has been living in a tiny, dark hut for a long time.  That hut is starting to fall apart, and a friend in the States agreed to pay for a new home for Johanes.  The project started back in March, but ran into problems.  The house was built in traditional style--wooden poles sunk into the ground, then a roof structure built and finished, then the walls mudded.  The contractor who was working on the house assured Fred and Stephen that the small poles he was using would be perfectly fine, but by the time the iron sheet roof was put on and the walls nearly finished, the house was already starting to lean.  The smaller poles couldn't support the weight of the roof.  Below you can see Johanes' current house in the background and the first attempt at his new house in the foreground.

Johanes' neighbors and family members assumed that the leaning house would be "good enough" for him and they prepared to move him into the new house.  Fred insisted that it was not acceptable, and he and Stephen found new thicker poles and had another contractor restart the building a few feet away.  Yesterday eight men and one woman lifted the iron sheet roof off the leaning building and carried over to the new building to be installed.  (No photos because everyone was lifting that heavy roof!)  Here is new house as of yesterday.  The walls should be mudded and ready for him to move in by this weekend, when they will also install a large water tank with a tap inside his home.  Johanes was nearly in tears from his bed in his old house.  He never believed that someone like him could own a house with a metal roof, and he was as amazed as everyone else that Fred and Stephen invested their time and the donor's money in building a proper house that he can live in comfortably for the rest of his years.

Dorina

If you get our monthly emails, you heard that another project funded by friends in America was finished last week.  Dorina's house suffered a lot of storm damage back in April, and I talked about it here.  Last week we got the photos of Dorina with her newly repaired house!  One of the two donors replied to the photo saying "When we can't save the world, we can try...one person at a time!"

Grace and Pita

And finally, one more exciting side project that is coming together is the water tank for a widow named Grace and her daughter, who is blind, and two little grandsons.  A couple who heard our presentation in the States wanted to help with water, so we identified this family.  The first of two large tanks has been installed along with guttering to capture rainwater, and it goes to a gravity-powered tap that blind Pita can operate without assistance.  The donors are so excited about the opportunity to help this family that they have also given a gift to replace the mattress and pay for TB treatment for Pita and also meet some other needs.  They wrote "Just terrific to hear that the small amount of money we sent could help so much."

We often hear about situations like these, where very vulnerable people can transform their lives with a relatively small amount of outside help.  If you'd like to do a project like one of these above, send us an email or comment below so that we can get in touch!  A big thank you to the friends who have made these three projects happen!

"You kids get off my lawn!"

My brother and I used to tease our mom about being the "mean" neighborhood lady.  She would get really annoyed about things that seemed so petty to Roy and I, like our neighbors' friends parking in front of our house or the neighbors flicking their cigarette butts into the overgrown wilderness behind the house.  She simply couldn't explain to our satisfaction why it mattered where our neighbor's dog pooped.

Mom, I owe you an apology.  I understand now.

I've written before about my frustrations with Shirati townspeople violating the sanctity of our home environment, but lately I've become convinced that people here are determined to drive me out of town.  In the past two weeks (two weeks only), all of these things have happened:
          - People pasturing their cows, goats and chickens in our yard
          - Neighbor kids stealing our garbage
          - A mentally ill man stole out of our garbage
          - Local grade schoolers  and neighbor kids sneaking into our backyard to steal fruit, breaking limbs off the trees to get to it.  The neighbor kids know they're not supposed to take fruit off the trees, and their grandmother knows we don't want them taking fruit, but when Fred went over to reiterate with her after chasing the kids off for the umpteenth time, he found her eating our fruit.
          - Two little girls snuck away from a church program to use our trees as a toilet
          - A man used the bushes between our house and the road as a toilet
          - A woman brought her small child to use our back yard as a toilet (sensing any themes?)
          - An old man, who has been warned seven or eight times, returned to steal more wood from our fence.  Every time he gets caught, he says "forgive me, forgive me" while he continues to pull posts out of the ground or break boards.
          - Eight high schoolers used the gap in our fence to come through to where I was sitting on the back porch with the baby, and they proceeded to make fun of the baby, thinking I couldn't understand them.
           - Actually, every time I go outside, foot traffic on the road slows as every child walking by shouts "mzungu" hoping to get my attention. (Seriously?  I've lived here for more than a year.  Get over it!)

Now this week, the straw that breaks the camel's back...

The local church, which is across the road from our house, is having a women's conference this week.  They're having it under tarps in the field, and they started the week by cutting down every dead or semi-dead or "expendable" tree in the compound, including at our house.  (This has been done several times over the years without replanting at all, so a compound that was one full of lovely mature fruit trees is now relatively barren.)  Yesterday the conference opened, and it suddenly occurred to the pastor that the kitchen staff would need a place to sleep if they were to stay for night prayers and have tea ready in the morning, so he asked Fred if all the kitchen staff could stay at our house.  Aside from the inconvience of housing and expense of providing bath water to a bunch of women we don't know, bringing a whole bunch more women around to advise me on how to care for my son was not an appealing prospect.  Then the conference kicked off last evening with "night prayers" which started around 7pm and lasted until after 10pm.  As with most of the African church services I've attended, they crank the sound system to maximum volume.  There are no noise pollution laws, so the pastors take that as the Lord's invitation into as many homes and businesses as subwoofers can reach.  Since ours is the second-closest house, we are getting the full effect of the services resonating through our house, including the extensive prayer times.  (For all the Swahili speakers out there: "TOKA katika JINA la JESU!!!  MOTO, MOTO, MOTO!!!")

Even worse, though, was that these night prayers are an excuse for every adolescent with nothing better to do (aka all of them) to gather.  Around 9:30pm last night I was in our bedroom trying to get the baby to sleep when I heard a big group pass by on the road.  Our room is about a dozen feet from the road, so I distinctly heard another kid run through under our window and jump out to scare the group on the road.  Then they set off some kind of firecracker or something, which caused me to jump and the baby to cry.  Fred went out the front door, but didn't see anyone.  Then I saw a couple of young men in the back yard, so Fred went around to the back and chased them away.  The whole encounter was brief, but unsettling for me, especially since the conference is lasting until Sunday and Fred is leaving on a trip tomorrow.

In every single one of these events, when we have confronted someone to stop their behavior (or theft) they look at us completely unperturbed.  The general attitude seems to be that we are the unreasonable ones for not wanting animal and human feces in our yard.  We are un-African for having a fence and not wanting strangers to steal it for firewood.  We are ungenerous for not allowing random strangers to break limbs off of the trees for the unripe fruit at the top or to rummage in our garbage.  We are inhospitable for not opening our doors to a group of strangers on two hours' notice.  (Okay, I'll give them that one.)  People have told Fred that we are considered "mean."  I haven't been the "mean girl" since I ostracized Stacey Springstead for no good reason in 6th grade.  (I still feel bad about that, Stacey!)  This all makes me feel like a bad person and a bad Christian and a bad "missionary" (although I'm not really a missionary).

Part of the difference in perception is cultural, but I've run some of these things past Africans and long-term white people, and they agree that we're not totally unreasonable.  These events all coming together at once have made me really, really ready for a visit to the States.  Thank you to those who have already pledged or contributed for our airfare fund!  Now, I'm off to change an extremely pungent diaper before that problem starts to spread. 

An End to Criticalness?

I've been realizing that my last several posts have had a little negative spin to them.  To be sure, sarcastic observation is kind of the trademark of my generation, but I've been convicted that my complaining is not really giving you all an accurate picture of life here.  Thus, I've been trying to see the bright side of various things that are not my favorite.  For example:

When I get frustrated by...  

...I think about...





Neighbor kids digging through my garbage, prying open
dirty diapers to see what's inside...

...the same kids standing on the road watching
a bird in a tree in complete fascination.

Roosters crowing outside the window, waking up our
napping baby...

...every time I eat chicken or eggs I know that they
are locally grown, cageless and organic.

Sneezing my head off from allergies...

...that we live in a beautiful green environment.

 A baby who wants to eat all the time, day and night...

...how healthy and strong our son is and that he
has never had a problem with latching or nursing.

Innocent's constant interest in what I'm doing, from
changing diapers to cooking to working on the computer...

...how we have a bright, inquisitive boy who values
relationship over tv or toys.

Strangers asking to hold our baby everytime I walk
outside (and sometimes coming to the door to ask)...

...that we live in a community oriented culture, where
people are so happy for us to have a beautiful, healthy son.

Bleach spots on my clothes...

...that I don't have to wash my own clothes, and can
instead help support a kind, young widow and her kids.

Feeling lonely for friends...

...how my husband and I are truly best friends, and
spend our free time and energy on our marriage and family.

Fred traveling alot and being called at all

hours on all days...

...my husband having a job that uses his skills and
allows him to help poor and hurting people.

So all in all, life here, though not easy, is full of wonderful things (even when I'm typing one-handed with a nursing baby in the other arm and being interrupted to spell words for the letter Innocent is writing to his grandmother).  We really do have a blessed life here.

Measles, Medics and Mayhem

I've been quiet this week because it's been rather chaotic around our house.  Last Tuesday we got word that Innocent (our nephew, who we take care of) was admitted to the hospital by his boarding school because of malaria.  After two days he was released and taken back to school, and Fred went to see him on Friday, which, incidentally was also Parents' Day for this term.  Fred was intending to go on to his hometown to check on his grandmother, but instead I got a text message that he was returning home and bringing Innocent with him.  He had found Innocent still very sick, feverish and lethargic, and decided that Inno should come to our house where we could keep an eye on him.  The matron in charge of Inno hadn't been giving the boy his medicine for malaria properly and Fred was concerned.

When they arrived Friday night, Inno was beginning to show a rash and by Saturday it was full-blown all over his body...clearly measles.  We heard that there had been an outbreak of measles on the Kenyan side of the border (where Inno's school is), so we figure he must have been exposed to a measles case either in the hospital or at school.  Because the measles followed so closely on the heels of malaria, Inno's immune system wasn't so much up to the challenge.  He couldn't keep anything in his stomach, so by Sunday afternoon we were worried about dehydration and Fred took him to the hospital here for admission.

Oh my word.  We definitely, definitely made the right decision not to give birth here.  First of all, Fred comes in with a sick, measles-covered little boy, and the admitting nurse's first and most insistent question is "Where do you live?"  Now, obviously they want to avoid an outbreak here in town, but shouldn't patient care come first?  Fred requested a private room, rather than the dormitory style general ward, and they insisted that the private room is reserved for staff use only.  Fortunately, we are friends with the hospital administrator, so Fred made a phone call along the lines of "Hello Mr. Magati, is this how you run your hospital?" and the admitting nurse quickly changed her tune.

Fred had requested a private room so that Innocent wouldn't be staying alone, since no one checks on non-emergency patients during the night.  Pretty scary situation for a six-year-old and his parents.  Also, the hospital doesn't provide food or water (for drinking, bathing or flushing purposes), so we had to bring food, drinking water, a blanket, a basin for Inno to vomit into (apparently he was just supposed to puke on himself) and several other things.  One thing that you really wouldn't anticipate having to provide to the hospital is something to clean the site of the needle for the IV!  Innocent stopped the nurse from putting the needle in, asking if they were going to wipe his hand first, and the answer was no, they weren't planning on it, so we brought baby wipes (which we conveniently happen to have around) and antiseptic hand wash for the nurses to use.

We were so frustrated over the two days that Innocent was admitted.  He was improving consistently, but the hospital staff were both rude and inept.  Fred has worked in a hospital before, and understands quite a lot about what medicines should be given and what dose for how long, and it's a good thing.  One medicine that was finished in two doses within 24 hours they tried to start him on again on the second day and again on the morning of the third day.  We have some friends who are nursing students who work at the hospital, and they got in trouble for coming to check on Innocent outside of the set times for rounds.  Every time a "doctor" (there are no actual medical doctors who work here, just "clinical officers" who call themselves doctors) came to see Innocent, they asked for the umpteenth time where the boy lives before inquiring about anything else, and telling the American medical students that are visiting that the parent is uncooperative, apparently assuming that Fred doesn't speak any English. 

Fred brought Inno home between his morning and evening treatments to eat and rest and watch TV, because otherwise he'd be spending the twelve hours between treatments alone staring at the ceiling of his hospital room. That way I could watch him while Fred got some work done at the office. Yesterday Innocent was released, he's looking heaps better and almost 100% recovered, except for a little nagging cough. We're really grateful that Innocent and Samuel are both healthy and strong.

They have a slogan in many of the hospitals and nursing schools here: "We treat, God heals."  I'm beginning to think that slogan isn't such a good idea to drum into the medical professionals' minds, because it almost seems to become an excuse for poor patient care.  Any kind of customer service or attention to patients' rights is non-existent, and the only people who seem to care if a patient dies are the family members of the patient.  Those family members who have nothing explained to them about what medicines or treatment the patient is undergoing, who are required to provide the patient's food and amenities, but only during certain strictly-enforced visiting hours, who are insulted or ignored by the "doctors," and who have zero recourse for complaint unless they happen to know someone important.  If the patient dies, it must have been God's will and have nothing to do with the standard of care the patient received.

All I know is that next time one of our boys is sick enough to need a hospital, we're hiring a car and going to one of the good hospitals in Kenya where they believe that God heals, but He sometimes uses doctors along the way.

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.