June 2007

May was a month full of smiles, frowns and tears. Our opening ceremony was cancelled. It was a big disappoint to the team and the community. The Ambassador and the two Kenyan Ministers could not attend since President Kabaki cancelled all public ceremonies as part of the national day of mourning for the victims of the Kenya Airways crash. So, we cancelled everything except the actual opening! We are three weeks into being up and operational and we have 23 women and older youth (18 -24) in training. It was smiles for the 23. I also frowned with disappointment because 3 of our trainees have already been eliminated – one for lack of a national ID card and two for being no shows. One never came and one came two days late…..

While I am back to my Kiswahili lessons, I am still not fluent enough to carry an 8 hour training session on my own. So, I hired my tutor as a translator for the work/life skills training I did with our trainees. She knows my American accent better than anyone else. The women are also forcing me to use my Kiswahili so I am smiling about that! The work/life skill training is very important for our trainees. Something as simple as coming to work every day and on time is a frequent challenge. Showing initiative and keeping focused on work is a continual struggle. The culture is such here, one woman wanted to know if she had time to go home 3 times a day and check on her family…….I frowned…….and then just had to laugh.

Speaking of family, I must give my thanks to my daughter-in-law, Darah. She not only helped me to pick out a very good pair of hiking sandals that have kept me from slip sliding away in all the mud around here, but she has kept a running blog on my grand-daughter’s weekly adventures for me. It is my best smile of the week when I get out on the web and discover an update. The words and pictures do not need translating. Gus’ smile says it all.

I am not smiling at the mud (I am just plain tired of it). My toes and feet may never come clean again. It is a good thing the sandals can be soaked in soapy water and cleaned many times during the week. And, they dry out very fast. I did smile when I walked to church in the rain one Sunday morning and found out no one else was brave or foolish enough to go out in the downpour to come to church……just me, the preacher and the song leader……we had a good laugh, a short prayer and then even we went home.

I am definitely not smiling about the indoor water situation (which is to say, I still do not have any). I was not smiling in my 3 encounters with the water department and may have to adjust my thinking to never having running water while I am here. Now, that’s a frown.

I do smile when I think about God’s plan for all this rain and the very short dry periods where the good people can go out and actually dig up their gardens and get them planted before the next torrent comes. How the seeds stay in place or how they do not rot is beyond me, but God knows. I see evidence of growing maize and beans everywhere. God’s plan for sowing and growing are definitely at work here in more ways than one.

I am not smiling at the US government who has audited my returns for 2005 but I am smiling because I do not have to deal with it. My son, Mike, has gotten stuck with sorting out the issues with a little help from his brother, Aaron. So the burden and headaches rest with them. I have had to adopt the attitude, what will be will be. God is trying to grow my ability to let go and let others pick up the slack and grow themselves in the process. Who would have thought that letting go was possible for me!

I am not smiling at my Weighbridge women’s project. They are still not operational because they cannot decide who should be hired as the two employees. They have saved their share of costs for start up and got the donated space we were praying about. It is an excellent location and I smiled the day we drew up the memorandum of understanding with the NGO who has control of the property. It is very disappointing (see Patty frown) to have the project slow down to a virtual stop while they try and agree on their next steps. Of course, they have also been distracted by planting the community garden, so I have had to lighten up a little about the whole thing. I am guessing this is another “sowing” on God’s part in my life but I am not feeling the growth…….

I had good smiling time with the geckos this month as I watched three of them play follow the leader across my walls and ceilings. I think it was a mommy gecko and two babies. The larger one took a few steps and the other two would take a few steps. It looked like a game they were playing. It went on for at least a half hour with the small ones copying momma’s moves and then waiting until she moved again. I was smiling as I watched them crawl along the ceiling and down walls, but not smiling when they got too close to me. Of course, any movement on my part scares them so badly they scurry away or freeze where they are with the hope they are invisible. I did get startled by an albino gecko about 4 inches long at my front door one morning. The gecko was very white, pinkish and appeared translucent. I wasn’t smiling then.

I did smile very big when I got malted milk balls and a puzzle from a friend back home. And I really smiled when another Peace Corps Volunteer came and helped me set up QuickBooks for the little factory. The PCV is a CPA and a retiree, like me. We had a good week together and I learned a lot about accounting I hope to be able to forget one day! But it was fun having company and sharing meal preparation and small talk in the evening.

I got lots of smiles when I made my mother-in-laws’ holiday fruit salad for one of the merry go round meetings. We did not have grapes or apples for it, but I had lots of other fruit; mangos, pineapple, bananas, avocado and even some walnuts from the Nakumatt! I made the pudding for it. Next meeting I have promised to try baking chocolate chip cookies for them if Damaris’ oven actually works. She is one of the members who has a chicken farm. She has about 100 chicks and chickens in some stage of development at all times. She has had the oven for a couple of years and has never turned it on.

Most days this month I have had times to smile, frown and even cry. This has been a very emotional month for me for a lot of reasons I still cannot even talk about. Kenyans do not like to see anyone cry. A couple of times this month I was just so sad, I could not help myself from crying right at work. The trainees were very uncomfortable and pretended not to see me. One of my devotionals for the month of May said that moods don’t change by praying about them, they change by kicking them out; making a choice to act better than we feel. I knew that, but it was a meaningful reminder. Another one was about being carefully careless with the things of this life. I like that expression, carefully careless. People and things come and go and our rock through it all is God’s love for us. I have needed those messages this month. Keep me and my family in your prayers. I am sure they are doing some crying of their own and yet I know there must be some laughter and smiles, even in our grief.