Remember how I mentioned that I washed my clothes on Sunday afternoon? Yeah well my sweatshirts were not dry until Thursday morning. That’s almost 4 days. It’s cold here, and really damp.
EXCEPT for today, which was sunny and warm and gorgeous. I think because one of the missionaries brought a team of 20 people from Texas here, and God knew they wouldn’t a. have a good time or b. be able to handle the cold and rain if it was like it usually is. :-P It was nice for me to see them, among them was the missionary I met at the World Missions Summit in December 2009. He’s been back in the US for a year and just came here with this team for the couple weeks. They got a tour and I tagged along since I never got an official tour of the place. I learned something very interesting.
There’s a gas stove in the kitchen (this I knew) , fueled by….cow manure. (this I did not know.) Apparently a few years ago the missionaries did a project where they dug a huge put and put in a huge tank. Into this tank they throw a few buckets of cow manure every day, and the bacteria break it down into methane, which is piped into the house to fuel the stove. Apparently all you have to do is mix it with water to get the right consistency and in it goes. The next step is to use it to heat water for the house. They’re also in the infant planning stage of getting a system like this for human waste in the slum of Mathare in Nairobi. THAT would be awesome. It would solve the waste problem, as well as help with the deforestation problem Kenya is facing as tree after tree is cut down for cooking fires. (they don’t build with wood, termites are way too abundant).
Thursday afternoon we found out that the above mentioned Americans were coming so there was some frantic thorough cleaning done. The good thing about not being able tobuild with wood is that everything is made with concrete, which is extremely washable. The kids just got a bucket and started washing the windows and the walls with soapy water and a rag. It all dripped on the floor and was used to wash the floor. To rinse, they threw cups of non-soapy water at the walls. I tried to picture myself doing that in my house but all that image brought about was how much trouble I’d be in when my mom caught me dumping water all over her hardwood floors. :-P
I spent almost 2 hours with a wad of steel wool scraping the goop from the smoke off the metal window bars in the kitchen. They were black where they used to be (and now are) yellow. One of the boys was scrubbing the smog off the formerly-yellow-but-recently-black-and-currently-yellow-again walls, the contrast was ridiculous. And I still have steel dust or something in my nail beds from that, but it was fun. You know, scraping and peeling, my specialties
Thursday evening I had my interview with one of the masters programs, and it went well, I think. I was really antsy for it to start while I was waiting for them to skype me but wasn’t really nervous. There was nothing special about the interview itself, it was just the questions you’d expect. We talked a little bit about my predicament with trying to make the timing of re-applying work so that I don’t have to take an extra year off, and they gave me hope for 2 reasons…1 being that this program has trimesters, which would get me a transcript a full month earlier than any other program if I did it, and 2 was that in general, their school and they thought other schools, would have no problem delaying a decision about my application until I could get in a first-semester transcript. This is a slight disadvantage because the general feeling is the earlier the better, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take to avoid another year off. So I now have even more information that I’m not sure how to act on. God give me wisdom pleeeeeeeease and thank you!
I’d been invited to the pastor’s house for dinner Thursday night…but they didn’t ask until Thursday at like 6. So I told his nephew, who invited me, that I couldn’t because of this interview. He told me he could carry my laptop to the house for me. …. … … I tried several times to explain to him that that wasn’t the problem, my laptop was very small and it wasn’t a problem to carry it, it was a problem to be eating dinner with a group of people when I needed to have a quiet room to talk to the people in.
Apparently he didn’t tell the pastor that, because 10 minutes before the interview started he knocked on my door and said “why don’t we go” and I said “where?” and he said to his house for dinner. So I told him about the interview, and that I’d told his nephew…he was never given the memo. Ok sorry, maybe some other time. Great.
Then I finished and went out into the living room, and a few minutes later the nephew shows up carrying two casserole dishes FULL of food. They said if I couldn’t go there to eat it, they would bring the food to me. Hahaha. So I was (surprisingly and thankfully) assured by MamaAlice that I didn’t have to eat ALL of it, so I took what I wanted. I also learned just about that time, that the day was pastor’s birthday. The guy looks about 40 but he turned 60 yesterday. So along with bringing me dinner, I was brought a heart-shaped cake with rock-solid frosting that said “happy birthday”. I still don’t understand why he gave me the cake. So after dinner I cut it into 14 pieces, which was a feat because how do you divide a heart-shape into equal sizes? And everyone ate some. I guess he wanted me to have a piece of his birthday cake that bad? I don’t know. (To those who were in Kenya with me the last time, it was the same deal as my birthday cake was…not-very-sweet-cake inside with rock-solid brightly-colored frosting like a shell over it.) So that was interesting. Apparently visitor status is even greater than “its my birthday” status (Emmy you can have a heart attack now. :-P)
The really awesome thing about yesterday though was I had a chapati at every meal. One at breakfast (dipped in fried egg, like last time), 2 at lunch, and 1 with dinner. Score, 4 in one day!
I’ve been slacking on my running lately because it’s been rainy and I’ve been cold (yes, I know, running makes you warmer….) so I think I’m going to go do that now.
Update: the blog website was down so this was written Friday evening but posted Sat. afternoon
No comments:
Post a Comment