So I’m sitting down to my last meal of chapatis, noodles and beans. A chapati is somewhere between a tortilla and that yummy East Indian bread. We are leaving Machakos in the morning (tuesday) and will fly to Uganda Wednesday morning. We are grateful for the time here but are ready for the next phase! We know we have some language orientation coming up (more on that later) so it will still be a few weeks before we get into our home and university setting, but God is good and each new phase of African orientation (so far!) has been helpful and worthwhile.

So…signing off from Machakos,

Aletha

PS. FORGOT to update on the Kenyan constitutional referendum. It was indeed a YES vote, and there was no violence or riots! It was peaceful, praise the Lord! After the post-election violence a few years ago here, when 1300 people were killed and MANY MANY displaced, your prayers were very appreciated!

Hello! Here are a few pictures from our lives the past few weeks.

This is our current, “Home Sweet Home” – the Moi Dormitory at Scott Theological College where there are about 85-90 of us staying. It’s a zoo!

Our little family. Note the blue fence–it’s strung with barbed wire! There are barbedwire fences all over the place!

Looking out our window.

Acacia trees give a whole new meaning to a “crown of thorns.” Wow.

A Tuk-tuk. Three-wheeled public transportation. We took one to church. Just let me say we felt very adventurous.

The Kisooni AIC (Africa Inland Church). It is a building in progress, as you can tell by the LARGE piles of dirt on the right hand side of the picture. This was the choir doing a dance special. We didn’t realize the men and women were sitting separately, so whoops. Blair and I were sitting with the older women and children. Note the WINTER hats. It’s about 60 degrees and the Kenyans are QUITE cold. Even on warmer days, people stop me on the street to tell me to put a hat on Soleil.

This is Soleil’s lovely nanny, Cynthia. She is great!

A BEAUTIFUL flower in a lovely garden pond.

A  local church challenged us to a soccer match. They won, naturally. We did have several Brits on our team, so in the end the score was 3-1. There was a rematch the other day though, and we did WIN! :0)

On a half-day off, some of us went to a game park down the road (about 30 minutes away) and got to go on a small game-drive. Our first sighting of animals in the ‘wild.’ (aka not in a north american zoo!) A White Kenyan family (3rd generation) has a ranch with 20,000 acres. What used to be farmland is now a reserve for animals. It was a treat in the midst of busy busy orientation classes. After  our camera died (classic!) we did see wildebeests, ostriches, cool birds. Zebras and giraffes are my favorite though! 

And for Soleil fans, here she is enjoying her yummy play pen. Right now she’s in the ‘trying to climb as high as she can’ phase, so grabbing onto the playpen top with her gums probably gives her another half inch.

My sweetie pie. She’s currently running a fever (like alot of the other kids here) but yaay for Tylenol! She’ll be fine, but keep us in your prayers! She and I (Aletha) both have colds. No fun!We leave for Uganda next Wednesday. We will have a few more weeks orientation (more focused on Uganda) once we get there but then we will settle into our house and begin working with University Students. Even now, our church has begun outreach to new students and is gearing up for the new school year. PRAY that the Lord would be preparing us for our new discipleship role and the students for us! Also pray for us as we will soon entering our community, new language, and new ministry. We are looking forward to being learners in our new environment but know that it will be a long process. We appreciate your prayers for perseverance and wisdom! 

All for now! Love, Blair, Aletha and Soleil Breckenridge

It’s our first day off today in 10 days so I finally have enough time to post this. I’ve been trying to get up a blog for the last, well, 10 days! Anyways, here it is…I wrote the first section (about our arrival in Kenya and the first week of classes) last week sometime…but this will give you an idea of what we’re up to anyway…

We are in Kenya! It looks so much different than Uganda, but it is so beautiful all the same. Uganda is very lush (at least where we have been) and here in Kenya (an hour south of Nairobi) it is more arid, dry, and totally reminds us of Eastern Washington!  I half expected to see the Tri-Cities come into view. But no, what I actually saw was Pride Rock! (remember from the Lion King?!) I’m SURE the Disney team saw this rock jutting out from the landscape.  Sadly, there were no African animals roaming around free. There was, however, a cowboy. Of the Kenyan variety, of course! J  He was walking with his cattle, stick in hand, with a blanket draped over his shoulders in the Kenyan way. Another reminder that we really were in Kenya was the sign above a building that read, “Butchery and Hotel.”  I love Africa.

Seriously though, we’ve been learning the differences go so much deeper. I can’t even tell you how much our brains are processing and trying to keep up with the overload of information. Two wonderful Kenyans, Joy Mindo and Duncan Oyumbe, have spent four days with us teaching on the African Worldview, African Culture and Spiritual Warfare. Those neat and tidy headings really don’t come close to portraying how complex those subjects are.  Wow, wow, wow, I have learned so much. (btw, my “wow” rhymes with “now.”  I am not the “wow” rhymes with “row” sort of person. Just something to keep in mind…)

Back to the African worldview. For instance, do you know who the “Living Dead” are? You have probably heard that it is very important for Africans to have children.  The pressure is so strong from everyone –parents, aunties, uncles, friends, leaders, elders, strangers you meet on the road, etc…  I never knew why, until this past week.

So for many Africans, it is through bearing children and naming them after a family member that that relative (often a grandparent) will live on. When the grandparent passes on, they become the ‘living dead’ because they are remembered by name in the life of their namesake. It is only after no one can remember that grandparent, great-great grandparent, etc., anymore that they become “ancestors”. So you can see some reasons why there is such a significance placed on having children. There is a very cyclical view of the family, which I think is really beautiful. There are other reasons for the emphasis on having kids, one of them being that children establish status in the community.

We’ve also spent time on Security, Ethnomusicology, a little on Language Learning and lots more… 

Besides the classroom learning, we have been experiencing lots too…for instance,

Our laundry is hand washed and dries on the front lawn. It’s really quite fun to shake out the bugs from my drying clothes! And then to shake them again and inspect them before putting them on!

 We are eating about 4 meals in rotation so that has been a fun challenge for some people. We’re doing fine. Breakfasts are bread and sausage, or bread and boiled eggs, or bread and fried eggs. We do have peanut butter and jam, so lotsa kids are having pb&j sandwiches for breakfast! Lunch and supper are usually variations of rice, beef,  potatoes, sometimes chicken, and a sauce.  And sometimes fruit and more often, some veggies! We’re actually probably gaining weight. (Tea time in the morning and afternoon with either fried doughnuts, pancakes, samosas, etc. etc. etc. Yummy stuff…)

And then there were the Nannies.   Diana was Nanny Number One and didn’t show up the first day. We found out her son was/is really sick. Deborah was Nanny Number Two the next day, but didn’t understand English (and so didn’t understand my instructions) and we had some troubles with naptimes and she was wanting to feed Soleil and and and and…I was willing to work through issues with a translator, but in the end Carolyn (in charge of the children) gave me Cynthia, who is a Kenyan who has worked as a Nanny for the ABO classes for years, (she must be over 40?)  And that has been working out really well. I’m able to relax for the most past as Cynthia doesn’t mind bringing her in if she thinks she’s hungry, or can’t get her to nap or whatever. So I’m really thankful it has worked out.

 Remember to PRAY FOR KENYA in the next few days! The voting for the Constitution was yesterday (Aug 4), results will be finalized within 48 hours, and our AIM leaders here are monitoring the situation closely to ensure we are up on any developments. Some violence has been feared in the hotspots…we’re not anywhere near those though, and we are in a real peaceful area.  We are in Kamba country, and the Kambas (a Kenyan tribe) pride themselves on being peaceful. But please do keep Kenya in your prayers as the results come out! This referendum was complete with a YES Campaign and a NO Campaign, VERY similar to election campaigning back home. Lots of big stadiums filled with people cheering. Lots of big speeches. The two camps (YES and NO), to REALLY generalize, are largely split along tribal lines (current president, of a certain tribe vs. last president of a different tribe).  This morning the papers here are saying YES is leading, but they have a LOT of votes to still tally.  So thanks for praying for calmness and peace!

  Thanks and God bless!

Hi All,

We arrived this morning in Nairobi, Kenya after an eventful flight on AIR UGANDA from the Entebbe Uganda Airport. Maybe 10-15 minutes up in the air we turned around and had to reland in Entebbe due to a mechanical problem. We couldn’t understand the pilot, however, so we had no idea why we were relanding and I, Aletha, was a little nervous! Flying over Lake Victoria had me thinking of water landings and what exactly I would do with my 8 month old. Anyways, we landed JUST FINE and found out it was a problem with the battery. They had landed to double check everything was fine. The Pilot walked down the aisle and said to those of us in the front, “Sorry, gentlemen and ladies, for the delay. We have now sorted things out, more or less.” 

More or less? MORE OR LESS? Well, what can you do but laugh and pray?  We were on our way again in about 20 minutes, and made it to Nairobi in one piece. We weren’t exactly oozing confidence, but we know the guy who built our Bombardier plane (yeah, Jay LaCrosse!) so we weren’t too worried.   

After a long hulabaloo about where to change Soleil (I was not admitted into the Ladies Room – I was directed upstairs to the Changing Room, only to find it was a Children’s Play Room with no changing tables at all…so I went back downstairs where Blair was waiting and saw the actual Changing Room just down the hall.) Anyways, after that wee adventure, we spent 20 minutes filling out immigration forms and then joined the Immigration queue…it wasn’t a long line at all, but who knew fussy babies could be such a blessing! Soleil got us expedited to the front of the line because she was beyond tired and a bit fussy…the Immigration officers refused those ahead of us and pulled us to the front of the line. I felt AWFUL as I heard, “You have GOT to be kidding me” from the people next in line…but what could we do?! One has to listen to people in uniforms! Of course then she was just a cutiepie all the way around while we got fingerprinted and photographed. I was all, “come on, Soleil, just cry a little for the men behind us! Then maybe they’ll be glad we went first!” LOL. I got her to fuss a wee bit but it was hardly deserving of the special attention we got. 

In one piece, more or less,
Aletha and Blair and Soleil