Christmas is coming and things here do not look or feel like Christmas. The local Nakumatts put up decorations back in September. It doesn't make me feel like Christmas to see Santa in a palm tree.
A shot of our Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, potatoes, fruit and pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. YUM YUM ! Yes, I ate too much!
Another picture of our dinner. Why did the Sisters go first? We are real gentlemen or...they set it up and then started to serve themselves? Below are the gifts for the exchange. The price limit was 500 shillings and were to be stuff we would want to take home to remember our mission by. I lost out on the knife with handcarved scabbard and handle. I got a nice picture frame and Sister Jorgensen got a hand woven mat and a handmade Christmas Angel.
We went to Nairobi for our Thanksgiving Senior Couples Conference. We had a very nice dinner followed by a Christmas Gift exchange. The next day we had our conference which was very inspirational and made me want to go and do better. We were planning on going out to eat Friday evening but after we left the Church office compound we were stuck in a massive traffic jam. We were an hour and a half going two blocks. The electricity was off and no traffic lights were working. I doubt that mattered much since they tend to be ignored anyway. Finally an officer arrived at the intersection and go things moving again. We were following the Beechers in their truck and the Babcocks in there truck. We had three trucks there because the Babcocks and I needed new tires and we left the trucks there on Thursday so James could get new tires for them. I knew that I needed two but when they pulled them off I needed three. Tires are a casualty of the many holed roads. When we got back to the "Nest" (the apartment complex where the senior missionaries who are stationed in Nairobi live) the lights were still out and it was well after dark. They had a generator going so we had lights in a couple of the apartments. Sister Tuttle ordered pizzas and the other sisters brought stuff from their places and we had an impromptu pizza-pot luck dinner. We all kicked in a few shilling for the pizza and it was really nice. The Byrds were going home to America the next Monday so it was also a going away party for them.
I decided that we would drive through Kapsebet going to Nairobi even though it is forty kilometers longer so we could miss the construction and terrible diversion. I took us seven hours of driving. We took three Elders with us who were being transferred. Out side of Nakuru I stopped and we put all of the luggage in garbage bags because it looked like rain. We didn't make ten kilometers before we were in a downpour. It rained from there on to Nairobi before it let off. The road from Kapsebet to the Uganda highway is all broken up with pot holes and repaired sections like the one to Busia. The Uganda highway has deep ruts in the asphalt from all of the trucks headed to Uganda. Our truck weaved back and forth like it had four flat tires. Passing the trucks was an experience. We had to climb out of the rut we were in drop into another rut and weave around and then climb back into the rut on our side. That lasted about twenty kilometers, just short of the twenty five kilometers of the diversion going to Kerichio.
A group of the Sisters. Note the head wrap that was put on by the Kenyan Sister who was helping with the cooking. "White women do not know how to put on a wrap"
Doing the "Turkey Dance" Sister Beecher may not cook but she knows how to do a party.
Sister Jorgensen leading the singing
A cute little turkey on the appetizer tray.
On the drive back I decided to go through the diversion and construction since the road going was so bad, BIG MISTAKE!. The road is awful and the diversion is breaking up from all of the truck traffic. It rained from Nairobi to the diversion and things were really muddy and slick. We passed three semi trucks that were spinng their wheels and not able to climb the hills, one coming toward us and two going the other way. Getting by the one coming toward us wasn't too bad. Picking our way around the ones going the same direction we were turned out to be a little more of a challenge. We had to drive around and between them without driving off the roadway into the mud on the sides of the road. We passed one oil tanker down off the road. I don't know how they will get it back up onto the road again.
Watching these guys constructing this building provides me with some entertainment. I counted forty guys working on it one day. They are putting up the third of four floors.
We took a group of our prospective missionaries to the airport to get yellow fever shots. There were all kinds of different school kids there touring the airport. Must have been some kind of holiday or something. Each school has their own uniforms of various colors. I took this picture of one group.
"You can just drive down this road to my place. " I looked at it and refused. We walked in
A bunch of bananas given to us by one of our members. They are from his shamba. One of the boys hefted them up on his shoulder and carried them about a quarter mile to our truck since I refused to drive down his road. I carried them into the house. They were heavy. What do you do with that many bananas? We gave away a lot before they got over ripe
Kisumu Branch choir practice.
A shot of the Kisumu to Busia highway. This section is really bad and there is no pavement left. The camera does not show how deep the holes are. Small cars have a real problem getting through. These matatus are picking their way through. When our truck dropped into the hole the front of the truck hit the ground on the far side.
I tried to get a picture of the truck tires coming out of one of the holes. It didn't quite work out. That is a semi headed east.
Teaching Relief Society sisters in Busia. We went up there for a day on a Saturday. Sister Jorgensen was teaching the sisters.
I was overseeing a door repair. We repaired one broken door, made another one shut properly, fixed several plumbing problems, hooked up the roof top water tank and checked out the wiring in the chapel. A white shirt is not the proper attire for rolling around on the floor under sinks and crawling around on a dirty concrete roof hooking up pipes.
The "Short and Long" of missionary work. Elders Mbazima and Keno just before transfer day. They knew where they were going when this was taken. Mbazima to Mombasa and Keno to the office to be an assistant to the President. A couple of our good Elders.
Another shot of the workers putting up the third floor of the building. The yellow thing is the hoist that uses a gasoline motor to bring up buckets of concrete which is then dumped out onto the floor where it is scooped into wheelbarrows and hauled to where it is dumped into the forms. Labor is cheap. Elder Babcock who is an engineer watched and said that it isn't strong enough. If we have an earthquake the walls will just kick out. He also said that this building we are in will collapse into a pile of rubble like all of those buildings did in Haiti.
One of the better butcher shops. It has a glass in front of it with the prices posted on the sheet. The meat is hanging unrefrigerated on the hooks. The butcher just hacks off what you want.. Flies? what about the flies? The one next to it was a wooden building with no glass. It was really primitive.
Setting up her vegetable market. She was cutting and packaging Kale in small plastic bags for market. No, this is not Jubilee Market where there are hundreds of different stalls selling all kinds of stuff.
Teaching in a cottage meeting.
An ice cream and cake party for a missionary's birthday. Elder Keno's, I think.
Dinner at Bethshaba's. White rice, brown rice with potatoes, boiled cabbage , chicken in a broth, mixed vegetables, beans, chapata, and fresh pineapple. the green in front is a drink made from avocados and mango juice.
Looking out over the valley from the road to Nyabondo. The camera does not show how steep the drop off is along the side of the road
Primary children at Nyabondo. We tried to teach them "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" They didn't seem to get it. I learned that they do not understand English, only Lou. They did learn what "sweets" means.
Primary at Busia.
Sister Jorgensen and her Jack-O-Lantern. People asked "Who is that supposed to be?" "Are you Devil Worshipers?" I thought that since this was once a British colony that they would know about Halloween. They don't.
Sister Jorgensen teaching bead making to a young lady at Nyabondo. The next time we were up there she gave Sister Jorgensen a necklace that she had made
a
