What to do with those used water bottles?

   When we were in Kenya last month, we spent two nights at our friend Izzo’s safari camp. It is a work in progress, progress that was brought to a stand-still during COVID and which is just now starting to ramp up again.

You looked at this picture and probably thought, “what in the world is that all about?”

It’s basically Izzo being his usual ingenious self. These used water bottles, filled with sand, are solving not one, not two, but three problems.

First, there is a huge garbage problem in Kenya. People all over the country have been prone to throwing their trash out wherever they are. Some Kenyans are starting to do more recycling, even finding all sorts of creative ways to reuse their debris. Also, a few years ago, Kenya outlawed the use of plastic bags, which really cut down on that sort of blight on the landscape.

They are working to make plastic bottles illegal as well and have banned them in national parks, conservation areas, and other places. Unfortunately, out on the edge of the Masa Mara Game Park, there seems to be no limit on the number of discarded bottles.

So, Izzo has asked the women of the area to collect as many bottles as they can, fill them with sand, and bring them to his camp. Not only is this helping with the problem of pollution, Izzo is paying the women for the number of bottles they bring him. This helps with a second problem – supplying the local Maasai with an income.

The third problem is getting building materials out to the Mara.

Ta-da! Build with those sand-filled bottles. The day we were there, we watched two young women bring bag after bag of bottles to add to their pile. Every trip, they offered us their most beautiful smiles.

And after all their hard work and the hard work of a small construction crew . . .

This is the unique, sturdy villa you end up with. 

Click on this link for more on what Kenya is doing to help the environment:  https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/kenya-emerges-leader-fight-against-plastic-pollution#:~:text=And%2C%20as%20of%20June%202020,or%20straws%20into%20protected%20areas.

 

This article was in one of the Kenyan papers while we were there. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original article on the paper's website, so I couldn't post that link. 

Ripoi School

When my friend Denise and I were in Kenya three years ago, we visited Ripoi School on our way to the Masa Mara.

Back around 2015, our friend Izzo was driving out to the Mara one day, when he saw a group of children and an adult under a tree in the middle of nowhere. Turns out the adult was trying to teach the boys and girls in this outdoor classroom with no supplies whatsoever. Being the guy he is, Izzo started raising funds and awareness to build a regular school for those kids.

Thus, Ripoi School was born.

When we were there in 2019, four classrooms had been built, and some of the rooms were busting at the corners with kids wanting to learn. 

This year, when we returned to the school, it had doubled in size. The number of students had more than doubled. And more importantly, they were happy and were thriving. 

It’s a reminder that there is still good out there. 

 

The Beautiful Rift Valley

     After those two flights and that 14-hour layover in Istanbul, we arrived in Kenya at five am Wednesday morning and immediately fell into bed for several hours. That thin, hard mattress felt amazing, and the shower after those few hours of sleep felt amazing as well. I’ll share pictures later of the volunteer house, which acted as home base. Today, though, I’m going to tell you about the next morning, Thursday, when we drove out to our real home in Kenya – the Mara in the Rift Valley.

Here's our first view of the Rift Valley. Yes, on every trip, I take the exact same picture. But it never gets old. Never.

None of the views in the Rift Valley get old for me. Especially, when a few zebras sneak into the scenery.

A Maasai market somewhere along the way.

The wonderful road we take to get to the safari camp is always interesting, but it does get old after the first few hours.

Wishing they would replace the bridge across this riverbed someday. 

But we did see some Egyptian geese just after crossing the river. 

And some more zebras further along.

But in general, these are the sites I could gaze upon all day.

I’m so thankful to be able to experience God’s beauty in faraway places.

Which reminds me. Whenever I travel to a new country, I ask one of the locals to teach me how to say “thank you” in their language. When we were in Istanbul, we asked our Uber driver how to say “thank you” in Turkish. It is “teşekkürler”, which we couldn’t pronounce without making it sound like “testicular”.

Istanbul

     Okay, I’m ready to do this – share stories from my latest trip to Africa. I want to open with the disclaimer I’ve been sharing in the fine print any time I talk about this trip: we did not do any volunteering, this was strictly vacation.

With that in mind, we thought we’d start vacation before even getting to Kenya. When we booked our flights, we purposely chose one with a long layover on the way over, so we could take a couple hours to tour a city we might not otherwise visit.  

I’d never thought of Istanbul, Turkey, as a place to tour. It just worked out that we would be there for fourteen hours and that my friend who went with has been there twice before. It was a bit of a whirlwind. And we didn’t see all that much, but I thought it was still super cool. But you know me; I’m content to just wander around or even sit in one place and watch life walk by.

We had to take an Uber to the area my friend thought we should see. Unfortunately, that meant zooming by some other cool places. Like what I think is called the Marble Tower. Information I found about it on the internet confused me, so I’m not going to share any more about it.

 I was actually more fascinated by the ships out on the sea. Unfortunately, there we were still zooming down the highway, and our Uber driver didn’t even speak English, so it wasn’t like he could plop his tour guide hat on his head.

Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey and reportedly the seventh largest city in the world. Also one of the oldest.

Though the area has been inhabited since 3000 B.C., it wasn’t until sometime in 700 B.C. that the Greek’s established the city of Byzantium. A thousand years later, the Romans took over and renamed it Constantinople.

Lots of stuff happened – wars and takeovers and it was too much for me to study after that. But at some point, in the twentieth century, the city acquired its current name. 

Inside the Sultan Ahmet Tomb, which contains the tomb of Sultan Ahmet and 36 of his family members. 

The bodies are buried under the floor and the tombs are just decorative. Quite decorative. 

Sultan Ahmet park.

The Blue Mosque, which was being renovated. We went inside, but there was too much scaffolding to get any good pictures.  

Hagia Sophia. This complex has really a lot of history.  

Also, a lot of people wanted to get inside. We were wandering the area for several hours and the line was never shorter than probably three city blocks. We just didn’t have the time for that.  

A nice park and the weather was nice. I haven’t figured out the name of it. 

Just three Wisconsin girls making the most of our stay in this exotic city. 

Give Thanks to the Lord

        Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever. Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies. For he has gathered the exiles from many lands, from east and west, from north and south.

Some wandered in the wilderness, lost and homeless. Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died. “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress.

He led them straight to safety, to a city where they could live. Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. (Psalm 107:1-9, New Living Translation)

Monday night, I returned from my sixth trip to Kenya. I’m sorry that this is my first blog post, but I am still decompressing. Every time I come back home, it seems to take me longer to get over the jetlag, catch up on laundry, and get my head back on straight.

As with every trip, there were many highs and lows. I’m not going to lie – this was one of the more stressful ones. Lots of long stories, and I’ll share most of them here soon.

But today’s takeaway is that no matter what we are struggling with, God is only a prayer away. If we take our every worry and stress to Him in prayer, He will answer us. Maybe the answer isn’t always the one we want to hear, but we can rest in the peace that our Lord and Savior knows more than we do and the answer is the right one for us.

Let me praise the Lord for His great love and for the wonderful things He has done for me. 

How I Know There is a God

    “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.” (Jeremiah 17:7, New Living Translation)

A week from today, I leave for another trip to Kenya. This will be my seventh trip, and every time, a couple weeks or a month before I’m scheduled to get on that plane, things in my personal life go off the tracks. People get sick, pets get sick, I get sick, people die, plans fall through, I don’t even remember all the dumb or tragic things that have come up. And when it gets to be crunch time – like right now – I question whether or not I should even go.  

But this is how I know that there really is a God in heaven and that His Son, Jesus Christ, is my Savior. Because the devil causes all those bad things to happen, and even though God could stop those things, He knows that then my faith would not grow stronger. As soon as I step off that plane in Africa, my worries, my stresses, my sorrows all melt away. I am where God wants me to be. And no matter what Satan does, God will take care of me and my loved ones.

Thank You, LORD, God, for all that You do for me and those I care about. Be with us as we return to Kenya and bring us safely home. Amen

PS. With that being said, I don’t plan on posting here until I get home after October 17.  I’ll keep you all in my prayers, and I know you will reciprocate. And also, we don't plan on doing much, if any, volunteering this time. It's mostly going to be rest and relaxation. Coz after two and a half years of COVID, I think we deserve it. 

God bless, Chris

Winging it in Port Wing, Pattison Camping Post #5

I will never get over the power of Lake Superior.

I’ll also never get over my fascination with the freighters out on the Great Lake.

But driving back inland a ways up highway 13, we came across the village of Port Wing.

This quaint little town has the distinction of being the first school district in Wisconsin to provide tax-payer-supported transportation to school.

The little memorial park had a few other places of interest.

But of course, it doesn’t take much to interest me.