Dishes and Undies

Today the local women of Kijabe had planned a women’s conference at the church for Yvonne and Jen to share at.  The girls all headed off to the church in the morning and the guys had time to trek back out to the project site to see what work had been done while we were away.  The Kenyan time table is quite different than the US – the women were told the conference would start at 9am… by 10:15 the ladies started to show up.  So basically it doesn’t really matter where you are – the world waits for the women... Yes, I said it.

During the conference they handed out dish towels and ladies underwear.  They had been collecting them for quite awhile before the trip and ended up with some quite shocking sizes.  Brad had picked out a pair to complete his Superman outfit which he proudly wore to breakfast.  Unfortunately he kept us from capturing them moment with a bunch of doctrinal mumbo jumbo – however the image is forever burned into the teams memories.  Maybe that is the reason the counseling center was created.

Meanwhile the guys had to head back to the house we were building to deliver the meat for our meal – the next day.  This meant throwing a frozen piece of meat into a back pack and delivering it to a home without any capabilities of refrigeration… and tomorrow we will feast.   Oh well, as they say here… Hakuna Matata.  Along the way the boys found a chameleon which occupied them most of the day.  We also discovered that most Kenyans are afraid of these creatures – not sure why, but maybe it has to do with the fact that with all the dangerous driving conditions, any reminder of GIECO car insurance is quite terrifying.

Along the walk back we came across some local ladies cutting grass for their animals.  Brad observed the size of the bundles they had created and decided to see what it was like to carry such a load.  Once he was able to get it on his back and around his head – he lasted about 8 seconds before starting the universal man cry of help – the forced smile and crackle of laughter. 

Of course the ladies loaded up and started to head down the train tracks without much effort…  If an NFL recruit ever made it down this way I think they’d find several worthy candidates.

To help out with the women’s conference, the guys showed up at lunch to serve the ladies the food.  Seems it was pretty rare for the women of Kenya to see men doing kitchen work – not that they saw us doing much work anyway. 

The real test was doing dishes from the 130 women… it took us about an hour of searching before we realized there wasn’t a commercial dishwasher to run them through – and the only way to heat up water was over an open fire.  After 2 hours of work, we decided it would have been better to just go down the street to the town center and pay a few hundred schillings to some people to do the work for us.

That evening we had the privilege to attend the JAM (Jesus and Me) meeting for the local youth.  Charlotte sang and Brad taught… but really the highlight of the evening was the dancing.  Guess Kenyan’s aren’t Baptists…