A wonder"full" weekend!

What a weekend!

We were starting to wonder if we were going to get to visit the all-girls secondary school (high school) that is affiliated with KIOF. We checked in with Florence who explained that we would go there on Friday evening and come back on Sunday. However, we had arranged with our friends Vivian and Mercy to go to the nearby town of Thika. Boy was that a mistake. At the mention of this, Florence got a little panicked. She started talking about the rules, of which we were never informed, and seemed to have major anxiety about telling the Director we wished to remain at KIOF. We tried explaining that our wish to visit the school was to see how it worked and what the classes were like. This objective would not be met on the weekend. So, we politely offered to talk to John, the director, ourselves (also getting us out of our second shoveling shift). During our tea break, Mercy called on us to say that no one is to turn down an invitation from the director and that we could go to Thika another time. However, we also discovered that it is very against the rules to make plans to leave the compound with KIOF students. We were in for quite a visit with John.

We found John and half enthusiastically accepted his offer, we would be heading to Small Earth Secondary School that evening. We took the afternoon to shower and get ourselves together for a one night visit; we would be coming back on Saturday.  At the end of the day, John took us in his car and we passed the Del Monte Pineapple farm and many coffee, tea and banana plantations. He stopped at a roadside market, on the side of the highway and was greeted by nearly a dozen pairs of staring eyes, wishing for him to by their fruit. After purchasing mangos and bananas, we headed onward. To our surprise, our first stop was at his house in Maranga. We met his 6-year-old daughter, Susan, wife, Monica, and 9-month-old son, Daniel. We came to realize that his family must be well of because they have many animals, a car, and a house helper and home with many bedrooms. As the Kenyans often do, Monica offered us tea and we politely accepted. As the sun dropped, we were more or less told that we would be spending the night at the director’s house and traveling with them to the school on Saturday morning. We knew this was a great honor. However, we could not ignore the small cockroach-like bugs that popped up on all the wrong surfaces, including the three that came from Daniel chew toy! Oh Lord! The glory of the situation was that the house help, Lydia, had been cooking up a storm and it smelled DELICIOUS!!! We got to eat pasta! Yay! The pasta was complimented by a fabulous traditional beef stew that had peas and carrots and sweet potato. There was also hot chapatti, which we really enjoy. For desert, we had fresh bananas, two juicy types of mango, and oranges. Soon after, we excused ourselves for bed, not knowing how we would sleep. In our room, usually occupied by their two older children not at boarding school, we tried, with no avail, to ignore the bugs that were on both the walls and the floor. We arranged our mosquito nets and did our best to fall asleep.

Saturday morning we did not need our alarm, the roosters outside woke us up with the sun and the kitchen clock rang at ever hour. We dressed and found Monica in the kitchen, eager to teach us how to make Mandazi, an authentic Kenyan breakfast dish. We rolled the dough of wheat flour, baking powder, salt and sugar and cut it into small circles. Then, we dropped it into hot frying oil. Essentially, it is like fried dough for breakfast. After enjoy our baking and more tea, we were off to Small Earth.

The school is situated in the lush, green hillsides, situated on 15 acres of land. At 10:00, the girls were deep into their “preparation” time, working on assignments and studying. We toured the classrooms, met the teachers and saw the dorms and dining hall. At the end of the tour, we were informed that the school and staff would formally greet us. The 60 students patiently listened to John ramble about a pen pal program that they have with a school in Minnesota. Every time he talked about the school and “the visitors” our home state of Colorado got and closer and closer to Minnesota. It came to be that we were teachers at a school right next to Maple Leaf. He told us after the meeting that he would be back to get us after lunch.

Puzzled with how we would spend these two hours, the girls at the school quickly discovered our hair. That was enough entertainment right there! They couldn’t keep their hands off of it and kept using words like smart and sexy to describe it. They also showed us around the campus and soon it was time for lunch. As we had transformed from manure shovelers to honored guests, we were given rice to go with the plain beans that the girls were served. After lunch, the girls started asking more important question about what the US government is like and what our agricultural system looks like. We also got to chat with one of the teachers about what teaching is like in the states.

We headed back to KIOF in a matatu. To our surprise, our bench mate had a chicken in her lap. Luckily, she fell asleep so we were able to take a picture. It was a bit unexpected.

Saturday night, we went to the local pub with our friend Yenni who is from the Basque Country of Spain. We also met up with a KIOF student, Charlie. We shared some Tusker beers and “chips”, which are really french fries. Charlie left us to visit his sister in Nairobi and on our walk back, we picked up another friend named Paul. Paul will save the world some day. We have watched him demonstrate his leadership on two different occasions, and he very much stood out. He is quite charismatic, energetic, and has amazing English! He was overwhelmingly flattered and said he felt empowered by us telling him he would save the world. It was a delightful walk home.

Sunday we woke up and went to church. This time, we made sure to check in with Florence and get her blessing. We took a matatu to Juja with Vivian, Mercy and Rachel and went to the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, Juja. It was packed but a nice service. We got the gist of the service about “putting your priorities right”, but it was tricky as the Pastor kept switching from English to Swahili. We walked to back to KIOF “pole pole”, “slowly slowly”, and then found Yenni to make plans to go to Thika.

After lunch was served, Yenni, Charlie and the two of us took another matatu to Thika Town. We walked around Thika and passed many closed shops, as it was Sunday. We got to see many of the fruit markets and many shoe shops were open as well. We couldn’t head back to KIOF without enjoying some food that wasn’t rice and beans (called githeri). We first enjoyed coffee and “drinking chocolate” then enjoyed more chips, Katie a sausage and Emily a samosa. We also stopped at the supermarket because we had run out of the toilet paper.

Our last night in KIOF will be a relaxing one as it is Sunday night and many students will be studying. We will be glad to say goodbye to the ants that seem to really enjoy our shower, but we will be very sad to leave our new friends. In our week here, we feel like have made a bit of a home and family. We have achieved another of our goals while being here: forming authentic friendships with Kenyans.