“Off we go”

There was a light knock on the day. It was five am Friday morning and I was lying in bed, awake as usual. I had already been in the bathroom, gotten dressed and was now just waiting for our wakeup call.

“We’re up,” I hollered to the unseen knocker, who I actually knew was Nate, getting us up early so we could be to the bus on time.

“Come on, girls,” I urged my roommates. “It’s time to get moving.”

Within a half hour, we were all in the dining room eating breakfast. Usually the kitchen staff was up before us and made breakfast for us of French toast or pancakes or the like. This morning it was cereal, toast and fruit. Well, then we all pretty much skipped the cereal because the milk had gone bad. At first we didn’t know if the chunks in the milk were because it was frozen, but one of the men unsuspectingly drank it and kindly shared the correct information with us.

I brushed my teeth for what would be the last time in a bathroom sink and headed to the bus. Our suitcases had been packed the night before with the rest of the supplies, so most of us carried on only our backpacks.

We left HEART pretty much on time - 6:05. We had to pick up some more people across town and got to the designated parking lot as scheduled, just as the sun came up. That’s when we remembered that we were in Kenya and on Kenyan time, which meant the people we were meeting didn’t arrive for another half an hour. After we picked them up, we picked someone else up at the Compassion center and then had to stop at the pharmacy for something.

Finally we were on the way and heading for the massive Rift Valley.

“More preparations”

When we returned back to HEART that afternoon, there were a lot of preparations to be taken care of. The following morning we were leaving at 6 am for our journey into the Bush, to the land at the end of the road, to a magical place called Mosiro.

Before we got there, however, there was packing to do. I hadn’t mentioned this before, but along with our clothes, comfort food and donated supplies, Val and I had packed a tent in one of our suitcases. We had to repack this now for the trip to Mosiro. Michelle and I would call this tent our bedroom for four nights while we lived in the middle of nowhere.

We also had to pack into our bus food for eating, supplies for the medical clinics we would be holding, and jugs of water, as there was no fresh water where we were going. In addition to the 15 original team members, four more American volunteers joined us. Kalea another teen-age girl, Terri, her husband Scott, and another man named Tomas. This made for a rather full bus. And it is going to get even fuller before we leave Nairobi.

But first, was our last supper. It was almost as if the staff at HEART was fattening us up for the slaughter, or more likely, because they knew this would be our last meal having any resemblance to our American diets. We had barbequed chicken and steak on the grill, baked potatoes, cooked carrots with peas, and one of Joyce’s always magnificent desserts. Instead of eating in the dining room, as usual, we even ate outside on the veranda. It was a beautiful night, and I don’t just mean the weather. There was a huge group of us outside eating that night; men, women and teenagers who had, it seemed, just met but all shared the common bond of a love for Kenya and her people.

It seemed as though, to get anywhere, we had to take a long ride through Nairobi. One day, on one such drive we passed this sign. What does it say to you? To me it says, "Bring your children to this park and let them play in traffic".

Lost in Paradise

One day while we were in Kenya in 2006, we took the orphans from Brydges Orphanage to the Park called Paradise Lost, just outside of Nairobi. 
When the orphans arrived it was quite the spectacle. All 60 kids, plus their teachers, were crammed into what was probably a 20 passenger bus. It was painted with fantastic hippy designs. The kids hanging out all of the windows made a wonderful vision. Their ride to Paradise Lost Park from Ngong was much longer than ours had been.

Both buses carried us all down a steep rocky trail which only had the premise of being a road. At the bottom of the hill were a surprise lake and the trailhead to the waterfalls and cave. The park which at its entrance appeared barren, dry and boring turned out to offer a few things of interest, though it was all pretty old and worn.

We headed down to the lake, where the boats were just waiting for us. Most of our team divvied up and jumped into a boat with a handful of kids in each, life vests having quickly been donned. None of the orphans had ever been in a boat before, but it only took a few simple instructions for them to take off. Luckily the lake wasn't very big, or I don't think some of them would have ever come back to shore.  

After everyone had made it safely back to shore, we headed down the trail to the waterfall and cave. This was amazing, like something from an Indiana Jones movie set. The trail wound along the bottom of the hillside and right under a tall meager waterfall. Soon the path entered a cave. The cave went on for a while, before our journey ended in a large cavern. From there several pathways branched off leading to other smaller caverns. Many years before, when the British ruled Kenya, the MauMau tribe lived in these caves, hiding from their British persecutors.

When we left the caves, we hiked back up to the top of the hill for lunch. We served the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, carrot sticks, bananas, cookies and bottles of soda. After lunch the kids from our team presented a skit on making the right decisions. Then the orphans all sang for us. What beautiful voices they had!

Next on the agenda were camel rides. That poor camel! The handler would make her get down on her knees, three kids or adults would pile on her back. She would walk a few hundred feet, turn around, walk back and then get down on her knees again to let her riders off. Her sorry fat knees had to be so sore by the time all the kids had taken their turn.

A few minutes on the playground, group picture and it was time to load back into the bus. It was such a full day and the kids had so much fun. What a sad thought that now they had to go back to the small cramped rooms of the orphanage.

“PBJ nightmares”

Thursday morning dawned and as usual I was wide awake at five am. I dressed silently, so as not to waken my roommates, and slid down to the kitchen. This was the day we were taking the orphans from Brydges to the park, which meant lots of sandwiches had to be made before we could leave.

I thought, here is something I can do to help out the team. And you would think, seeing as I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch every day for 20 years, that this would be an easy task for me. Wrong. This was Kenya and nothing was the same as at home.

The plan was to make the sandwiches and slide them back into the bread bags. The problem with that idea was that the bread bags didn’t come closed with twist ties or even the square plastic thingy with the hole in it. No, they were sealed with a piece of tape, which once torn could not be reused.

Having raised a boy scout, I tried to always be prepared. I snuck back up to the room and dug out a roll of medical tape I had packed in my suitcase. So as not to misplace it, I tied it on my person via the drawstring on my skirt.

The next problem was that I could not anywhere in the kitchen find a can opener and the jelly came in big sealed cans. I finally dug a can opener out of the bottom of some junk drawer, but it worked so poorly that I thought I would have better luck opening the can with my teeth. I managed to cut half of the lid off and just bent it back enough to reach in with my knife.

Then there was the peanut butter. Remember the Eljoy peanut butter project? I told you I would revisit that. The peanut butter at room temperature spread more like it had just come out of the freezer. It took some practice to get it to stay on the bread in a layer instead of as a little lump and without ripping the bread up.

I had hoped to have a lot accomplished by the time the rest of the adults from the team started wandering into the kitchen around six am. Instead I think I might have had one bag of sandwiches ready to go.

“Meanwhile, back at HEART”

I gotta tell you I don’t quite remember what the rest of the team was doing while we were at Compassion on Wednesday. I think some of them went shopping for supplies and someone did laundry. When we got back, though, not wanting to tell anyone that we had just had ice cream, the girls started making cookies. The next day was going to be another big day out. We were going to be taking the orphans from Brydges to a park for the day. Along with everything else this park offered, we were going to be serving them lunch, to include a dessert of homemade cookies.

The kitchen at the HEART compound was a large industrial one, with a large stove, huge stainless steel countertops and deep double sinks. There was a large refrigerator and freezer. But there was no oven. So the girls mixed the cookies in the large kitchen and then carried the dough to the other end of the compound to bake them in the oven in Vickie’s quarters.

Maybe now is a good time to tell you some more about these girls as well as the rest of the team. Amanda was from Delaware. She was petite and cute as a button, a little bit silly and an incredibly good sport.

Sara, Carson’s older sister, was a tad more on the serious side. But she was also the singer of the group. On our many bus rides around the city she was often the one who would lead us all in songs.

Sara’s and Carson’s parents were Cathy and Jon. Cathy is an obstetrician / gynecologist from Indiana; her husband Jon is a farmer. In addition to the two kids they brought with on the trip, they had several they left at home. They have been friends with the Bells for years.

Because of that, Carson and Nate were already good friends. Brandon, though, seemed to get along with them just fine. Brandon and his dad Geoff were from the Madison area, where Geoff taught at one of the high schools.

The last adult was Michelle. She was from Iowa and had been to HEART in the past. She was married and had an assortment of children; she was already planning to return to Kenya with some of them the following year.

You already know me and Val. And I have told you enough about Dave, Jen, Nate and Kari. That leaves the last team member, Brie. Brie was from the Appleton area and was supposed to have flown with us from Wisconsin. With some phone calls and schedule changes, Dave was able to get her a flight to Nairobi on Wednesday. She arrived at HEART late in the evening, the same flight we had had. She was exhausted, not only from the long day and time change, but also from the stress of flying so far by herself. She still had a smile on her face though as I took her up to our room. She needed to get some sleep, the next day would be another busy one.

“Your Way Chinese Restaurant”

As a special treat to Mwazunga, his social worker and the woman who worked at the Compassion center, Dave took all of us out to eat for lunch that day. And we didn’t go to what I would consider a normal Kenyan restaurant. Instead we went to a Chinese restaurant named Your Way. Why Dave picked that particular restaurant I am not sure, except that he did know the owner and the food was excellent.

The owner practically met us at the door and ushered us to a private room. He also changed the radio to the only American music he had, Madonna. Val and I talk in German on occasion, just a few words not a whole conversation. So while we were in the Chinese restaurant in Kenya, Africa, with Madonna playing overhead, we were speaking in German. How many continents can you cover at one time?

But this day wasn’t about me; it was about Kari and her Compassion child Mwazunga. He ate the food just fine, though I bet he had never had any kind of foreign food before. And when it came to dessert, Dave insisted we all have ice cream. I don’t know if it was just that it had been so long since I had had ice cream (which is one of my big weaknesses) or if it was really that good, but it was really that good.

And what did Mwazunga think about it. Well, his social worker told us that he was certain that the little boy had never had ice cream before. He didn’t know quite how to eat it. He just kept licking off his spoon, instead of putting it in his mouth. When he was asked if he liked it, though, he beamed, his smile going from ear to ear.

It was way too soon that we had to drop them back off at the Compassion center.