Out of Canada, Into Kenya - Shawn's Journal

It's Been One Week

We’ve now been in Kenya for one week, however it seems like it’s been four. We’ve had a great time, met lots of wonderful people and seen so much.

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to be dorm parents for 19 guys (grade 11) and had a lot of fun. We also were babysitting for the Milligan’s kids, all six of them, but they really took care of themselves.

On Saturday, Danielle and I had a chance to get away for a little while and we hiked the “guard’s trail” around the RVA campus. RVA is completely fenced in with an 8-foot tall barbed-wire fence. It seems like a bit of overkill at first, however, this is the highest concentration of US expatriots anywhere in Africa, so it is actually considered a major “target” for terrorism. There are several guards on duty 24-hours a day. During the night-time, they walk the perimeter of the campus (just inside the fence) with dogs. That path around the perimeter is known as the “guard’s trail”.

The Milligan’s house is right up against the south edge of the trail, so we decided to walk it ourselves. We realized that RVA is a lot larger than we thought! It took us about an hour to walk the entire perimeter and it was pretty steep in some places due to the fact that we’re on the side of a mountain. We were rewarded with some awesome views. Above, you can see the view of the Rift Valley as we relaxed in the grass for a few minutes - it was a gorgeous day.

On Sunday, Danielle helped out with one of the children’s Sunday School classes, while I worked in the nursery. (These were roles that Stephanie Milligan normally fills, so we did them for her so they could get away for the weekend). It went fine and we both had a lot of fun playing with the kids and getting to know more families here.

In the afternoon, I got to ride on a “picky”. The nearby villagers call motorcycles “pickies” because of the noise they make (picky, picky, picky, picky - come on, say it out loud!). Jon and I rode down into the Valley. It was my first time riding a motorcycle (more like a dirt bike than a Harley, by the way) and I didn’t even drop it once! I had a lot of fun and am looking forward to going riding again.

All said, the weekend was great and a fantastic end to our first week in Kenya. It looks like we’ll be here until Wed. or Thurs. then we’ll head back to Nairobi to visit the Felkners for a week before meeting up with the group from Vancouver for our three-week travel study. Below is a photo of Joey, the Milligan’s youngest. I’ll be writing more about the family in a day or so. If you want to see some monkies, be sure to check out Danielle’s journal.

Posted by slvrfrg at June 13, 2004 03:34 PM