Stories

First, I should say that we got rain last night. PRAISE GOD!! We have been praying for rain. Yesterday, we found out that there are two camps in Kenya, those who say that the rains come starting Oct 10 and those who say that the rains will start Oct 20. This year, at about 7 pm, the rains came on Oct 10. It sounds like we were having a crazy windstorm and I opened the door to find it down-pouring outside. Todd ran to get the boys and we all went out on the porch. Isaiah said, "We need to thank God right now. Dear God, thank you for answering our prayers and sending rain..." It was a very sweet prayer, then we all put our hands in the rain and got wet. It would be best if the rainy season lasts for 1 1/2 to 2 months.

Now, I have bug and animal stories. We found our first gecko in the house. The boys were delighted to watch him run around a bit. I have been hoping that we would have some geckos because they eat mosquitoes. None of us are taking anti-malarial medicine and I'm especially trying to avoid getting malaria. Africans view malaria similar to how we view the flu. One of the attitudes we have noticed is, "Why are you so concerned? People get malaria and then you treat it." We have spotted two mosquito-eating machines in the house and I'm not chasing them out.

How about a string of yucky bug and food stories? Sometimes the local grocery store sells frozen fish. It's quite expensive and sometimes has questionable quality and/or packaging. We bought fish for the first time a couple of weeks ago. The fish went into a plastic bag and must have thawed a bit before getting to the freezer. That trip to the grocery store we also bought a flat of eggs (30 eggs). My pantry started to stink! I got the eggs out and discovered that I had tiny ants all over the cereal boxes. (By the way, eggs don't have to be refrigerated until after they are first refrigerated. Eggs sold in grocery stores here are not refrigerated because they don't need to be and almost no one has a refrigerator. With how often we were losing power, it's much easier for us to not refrigerate our eggs either). So, my pantry started to smell a little better with the eggs out and I killed a whole bunch of little ants.

The eggs stayed on the kitchen counter and mildly stunk up the kitchen until Nate and I found the rotten egg. It was so funny! We now know where the phrase "bad egg" comes from. I was making corn bread and Nate was helping me. I cracked that rotten egg and black slime came out along with the most potent stink. Nate started yelling, "Stinky! Stinky!" I almost barfed and got that egg outside and into a plastic bag as fast as I could. It smelled so horrible that it really was comical. I was in a hurry that morning because I needed to serve a snack to about 14 people and prepare some food for a funeral. (So, I forgot about the bag of rotten egg just off my porch). That evening, I'm outside trying to figure out why I have 100 flies just sitting on the bush outside my door. It was almost like they were drunk, if flies can be drunk. They wouldn't fly away when swished and they were slow when they did move. Then I saw the bag and almost gagged again, while realizing it was my fault that the flies were everywhere. They loved the rotten egg!

But the pantry only started smelling a little better with the eggs gone. The day after we bought the fish and other meat, my refrigerator broke. We had to move our frozen things to another missionary's freezer and later were allowed to use a small fridge in the guest house. (We were without our fridge/freezer 1 1/2 weeks, not bad). Since the fridge broke, we had to start making several trips over to the guest house per day to utilize our cold foods. I'd often grab a bag out of the pantry to help me carry things. On a particular day, I thought my mom might call so I grabbed my phone and tossed it in plastic grocery bag to walk over to the guest house. Then a stink hit me. I opened the bag and looked in and was hit by a smell that made me want to vomit again. (Good thing my stomach is much sturdier in the 2nd trimester or I'd have been cleaning up even more yuck). I pulled out my phone, which was completely slimmed and had a maggot crawling around on it. It turned out that the plastic bag that the fish had been in ended up in the bag of bags in the pantry. The fish juice that leaked out into the plastic bag rotted and attracted maggots. My phone is cleaned up and usable again. Now, thankfully, my pantry has a lovely, neutral smell. And, only a few small ants have dared to enter this past week. No mercy, I squish all ants on sight.

A fun thing that the boys do at home is to go on "fly safaris." We happen to have 3 males and 3 fly swatters. Dinner time can be an especially annoying time for flies. It seems that the flies all invite themselves to dinner. Todd started a game where the boys each get a fly swatter after dinner and get to run around trying to swat the flies. They do jump swats and everything. It's hilarious as long as they don't hit each other.

I'm sure that I have more stories, but I will save some for a later post. To whet your appetite, we did a mini-safari on 20,000 acres on land this past Friday afternoon. We will post pictures with that blog posting. We did see our first giraffes here in Kenya. Spectacular! Have a great Sunday everyone.