We don’t know what we’re doing, but hey we’re doing it!

“We don’t know what we’re doing, but hey we’re doing it!” Said in jest recently, this quote pretty well sums up this expedition into the unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable. Over halfway done! It is hard to believe that we have already gotten this far. We can only hope that the second half of this journey is as amazing and enriched as the first. We have done everything from cave-tubing in Belize to volcano-boarding in Nicaragua. We have explored Mayan temples in Guatemala and gone surfing in Costa Rica. I could sit here all day listing the adventures and shenanigans that we have gotten into in the last three months, and it makes me smile recalling them. When spending this much time with the same people day in and day out there are bound to be lows as well as highs. Fortunately for us the highs have far surpassed any minor setbacks we have had. We started out as a loosely affiliated mixture of individuals who wanted to have adventures and go to Brazil on bicycles. We have since congealed into a family who understand and look out for each other. At some time or another each of us have had strong desires to just call it quits and find the next flight back home to loved ones and security. So far we have been able to withstand these urges and plunge on into the unknown thanks to the love and support from so many throughout the travels. We want to thank all of you who have been with us from the beginning, as well as those of you who have joined us along the way. Your feedback and encouragement goes a long way to strengthen our morale and resolve to keep pedaling. Thank you, Gracias, Danka, Arigato, Merci

Traveling Again

Its great to be back in the saddle again. I never really expected it to be a bicycle saddle, but I am really glad that it is. It is quite amazing the range of emotions one experiences throughout a day of bicycle touring. There is no feeling in the world like a gradual downhill easy clip of 45 kilometers per hour with a slight breeze and looking up to see a jaw-dropping volcano appear in front of you. On the other end of the spectrum a few mintues later I may run into a thousand foot elevation increase with no wind whatsoever and the sun just beating down on you. Those are the times when I spend the hour wishing I was anywhere but on a bicycle. I expected this journey to be physically demanding, but it is really more of a mental battle. The majority of the day is spent with my feet mindlessly peddling and my mind in a thousand different places. Sometimes I play out different scenarios for what might be next after this trip. A lot of times the changing scenery around me brings back memories of places I have been before. Parts of Guatemala reminded me of Brown County, Indiana, lately I have been seeing lots of East African type landscapes. These send me into hour long daydreams of fond memories. Many times these are interrupted by the blasting horn of a bus flying by while dangerously passing a slower vehicle around a bend. At the end of most days my body is quite sore, but it is a good sore, a sore that reminds me that I accomplished something today that put me closer to my goal. At the moment I am thrilled to be alive... at least until the next uphill.

Everyone dies, but not everyone lives

Since I came to Los Angeles I have spent a lot of time on the weekends playing Ultimate Frisbee in a park high up on a mountain under the famous Hollywood Sign. If you don’t know what ultimate Frisbee is, it is an intense sport with some aspects of football and some of soccer, but with a Frisbee. This has been a great catharsis for me to release all of my energy and work out any anger I have from the previous week. Through this activity I have also gained a lot of good friends, many of who I hang out with even off of the field. Some have even asked to come to church with me. I have also had the pleasure to have several of my roommates and old friends come to play with us.

Yesterday morning I went to the field expecting the usual Saturday game. Upon arriving I was informed that one of our friends had passed away this week. This information really blew me away. Our friend Tom was only 24 years old. I found out that cancer was discovered in his body less than a month ago, and now he is dead. I realize that people all over the world die every day from many different causes, but it still makes you stop to contemplate life when it happens to someone you know. A lady from First Pres. Church of Hollywood died this week in a house fire. You never really know when it could happen to you.

Think about what you did last year, last week, yesterday, this morning. Would you change what you did if you knew that it was your last day on this earthly plane? This reminds me of some song lyrics that I wrote last year.

If you were given a warning
that you’ll die in the morning,
what would you do with tonight?

Would you throw a big bash?
Would you blow all your cash?
Would you try to set things right?

If you were told by a friend
That tomorrow’s the end
What would you do with today.

Would you release all your fears
After all of these years,
Or would you simply run away?


I think the point of all of this rambling is this. If you are not happy with your day to day life, change what you are doing. Pretend that you knew that you would die tomorrow. How would you spend your last day? Would you want to talk with your family or friends? Would you rather spend your last living hours watching television? What is the point of not enjoying life? Many people say that they are not happy with what they are doing, but that it will all be worth it for the payoff in the end. Do the ends justify the means? Sure, you can plan for the future, but at what date in the future does the happiness begin. Lately there have been many billboards put up around Los Angeles that proclaim that May 21, 2011 is the end of the world. This may or may not be true. I personally don’t believe it to be true, but it could be the last day for any of us. We might as well live as if it is.

I’ll finish this blog with the story of Tom’s memorial. Sometime this week a few of Tom’s closest friends organized an ultimate Frisbee extravaganza memorial for today. After church I got a ride to the North Hollywood Park to find games in full swing. Tom’s friends were grilling, having some drinks, laughing, and making new friends. It was estimated that over 70 people showed up throughout the day,and this wasn’t even planned until Friday. It was a great day of enjoying life. I got to know friends better, and even made several new ones. They had a box of some of Tom’s things, like dvds, books, and posters, that they wanted people to go through and take, to enjoy and think of Tom while they do. Overall it was just a great celebration of his life. I’m sure Tom would have had an incredible time if he were there. At the end of the night somebody said that we should have gatherings like this more often. I thought that the comment was very true. It shouldn’t take somebody dying, for the rest of us to really live.

One morning in the life of Josh

A sample of one morning in the life of Josh Orem

6::45 a.m. First alarm goes off. Snooze

6:50 a.m. First alarm goes off for second time…. Snooze

6:53 Second alarm goes off. Snooze

6:55 First alarm goes off for third time…Snooze

6:58 Second alarm goes off for second time….. Get annoyed enough to open my eyes and write down whatever parts of my dreams I remember. Climb down the step ladder from my loft and get dressed for the work day including khaki pants and burgundy polo shirt. Wake up roommates who should already be awake. Dilly dally around. Make a bowl of oatmeal. As I wait for bowl to cool realize how close to being late I am. Dump oatmeal into Tupperware and put into backpack.

7:25 Put on helmet. Jump on bike. Ride like mad.

7:35 Arrive at work. See my supervisor pulling into garage so hurry inside, up the
elevator and into office so it looks like I was there on time at 7:30.

7:40 Check phone messages from the weekend. Write down who they are from and place on appropriate desks. Check work email. Reply to necessary ones. Make and bag 15 bologna sandwiches.

8:20 Board outreach van with outreach partner and call client to inform him we are on our way for pickup.

8:30 Arrive to hillside where clients live. Find a few extra passengers requesting a ride. (One is a pit bull mix) The now six of us head back to town.

8:40 Arrive to Department of Motor Vehicles with two of the clients needing to get IDs. Partner takes other client to hospital emergency room for a broken jaw. We believe we have all of the paperwork we need to get a California ID. Our newest client (of 10 minutes) goes off on his own without any problems. The priority client and I get to the front of the line and are told that the Florida birth certificate will not work because it is a photocopy. I go to a higher up in the chain of command.(who we spoke to last week with LAPD assistance) I tell him we now have what he requested of us. He now says he can’t help us. I ask him who else we can speak with. He directs me to the office supervisor’s desk. Things are not looking as good as we had hoped. We meet the supervisor. I explain my relationship to the client and that this ID is the only thing keeping a homeless veteran from a potential apartment. I explain how this is our fourth trip to the DMV in a week to try to get this ID. We give her a Veteran’s Affairs card, a copy of a Florida birth certificate, a record of all the information the LAPD has about the client, my business card, a weak smile, and a silent prayer. She takes all this to her desk to deliberate. After some agonizing minutes she oks it. We hurry to process it and give the lady the 7 dollars before they can change their mind. Once we get a receipt we know it’s a done deal. Client gets photo taken and we are out of there. We should expect the ID to arrive in the mail in one to two months. We need the ID sooner than that in order to get the client into an apartment, but hopefully the receipt for an ID will do the job.

This is one example of a few hours of work at PATH. I will try to update on different scenarios that I see in my current line of work.

Pre-blog

This morning I had the privilege of being a panel speaker at a Mennonite Conference in Northridge, CA. It was a great experience. Basically I was there to explain how I came to be in the position I am currently in and what I am doing in said position. As per usual I had no idea what I was going to say until I was up to bat. As I started my rambling stream of consciousness a thought really struck me. I started thinking about how many people are truly involved in this process of volunteerism. This is not a one-man show. If I had to list everyone involved in the process I know that it would take up pages in very small font. And then I talked about how important communication is to all parties involved. As I was thinking about this, I realized how much room I have for improvement on this aspect of my current vocation. I think that one way of doing this is to simply blog more. Sometimes when I contemplate blogging I build it into a big thing in my head. I think I should just start writing more about everyday events, because most of you can’t really picture my day to day activities. I will start that this week. I will choose one day and just write down everything that happens and then relate it to you the viewers. I am posting this now just to hold myself accountable in this area. So thank you all. Also you all could help me by giving me specific areas that you would like to know more about what I am doing here.

Thanks,
Josh

Breaking the writer's block.

As many of you have probably noticed(and some of you not so much) I have not written a blog in quite some time. Like four months or so. Apologies are in order for both you the reader, and to myself the writer(or non-writer as of late). Every week for the past four months I have promised myself that I would write a blog. And every week for the past four months I have broken that promise. It has not been for a lack of desire. And it has not been because I have been too busy. I sit down to do it, and just can't. I make up excueses even when I have none. Call it writer's block. Lately I have been really having a strenuous time mentally and emotionally dealing with some issues. Don't get me wrong, I am glad to be here in Hollywood doing the work I am. I really do feel like this is where I am supposed to be for the time being. I think that a lot of my problems have to deal with the stark contrast between my life six months ago and my life today. Six months ago it was a 45 minute walk to the nearest town; now I can get to five different pawn shops in less than a ten minute walk. Six months ago I was watching bootleg screener movies that I could buy for twenty cents a pop; now I live a stone's throw from where some of these same ones were filmed. Six months ago the toughest food decision was what can we cook with tomato and onion sauce; now its which of the 500 grocery stores or fast-food chains do I want to buy from. Six months ago I could go outside and hear only the birds and wind; today I fall asleep to the lullabys of ghetto birds(police helicopters) and angry chihuahuas. Six months ago I lived in a land where a person would give one of his last dollars to another in need; today I live in a county that has upwards of 80,000 persons without a constant roof under which to sleep. (As well as over 262,000 millionaires.) Six months ago I knew high school students who said that they would die to live in the America; today I live in a city where they do. I felt like Kenya was a land of optimists. Things may be bad now, but we have it better than some, and tomorrow will be better. If you focused on the hardships, you would drown in the questions of "Why us?" Today I feel like now I live in a land of entitlement. "I deserve this even though I have done nothing to deserve it." "I have so many resources available to me, but I will ignore them and complain about how I deserve a better life" In short; much of the world has little and can make the most of it, yet another portion of humanity has much and turns it into so little. This culture shift has really been playing with my mind lately. I realize that this post has been kind of a downer, but hey I was able write something at last. I want to make this a habit. If I have not written a post in over two weeks, please email, facebook, or call me and tell me to write something, if not for your sake then at least for my own sake.

Over and out,

Josh

Hollywood

Hey everybody, long time since the last post I know. I'm going to go ahead and use the excuse I've been too busy. Last you heard from me I was in good old Kenya. Since then I have proceeded to go back home to Indiana after a day of visiting friends in England; Spent a few weeks home doing important things like napping and eating American junk food; took a road trip across the country in a U-Haul; and now am in my newest home...HOLLYWOOD. I feel like its going to be a great year(of course I feel that way about every year though.) I am living in a house with five other similar minded young adult volunteers. Our house is located next to Paramount Studios, just a few minute walk from Hollywood and Vine. It is all quite exciting but also quite whelming. I'm not overwhelmed yet, but I think parts of my brain are. We have gone to the beach once; walked to Grauman's Chinese theater on the walk of fame; prepared meals for a massive operation that gives 1600 meals to people with terminal illnesses every day; and stumbled into a free big name band concert in a music store where we just wanted to buy a CD. Most of us will be working in some part or another with the organization PATH. Check them out at www.epath.org. I'll let you know more of what I'm doing when I figure it out myself. Until then, thanks for reading, and have a "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night"

Life's punctuation marks

So my time in Kenya is almost up. I can hardly believe how fast the time has gone by. When we first started this epic journey Africa seemed like such a far off scary place. As excited as we were to get to our new placements, we were also leaving all of our family, friends, and everything we know behind. We came, we adjusted, and life went on. It is pretty much the same with every major transition in life. The first day of school, the last day of college, moving into a new place, losing friends to marraige, loved ones passing on; they all seem like such life-changing events. And they are; but then the day passes and a few more pass, and then it becomes a memory. It always feels like you are going to be putting a period at the end of one of life's sentences, but all it really turns out to be is a comma, or maybe a semicolon(I was never really, good with punctuation"
I am at one of those points now. It feels like a full-stop at the end of my Kenya experience, but really it is only a comma in my life sentence. In a few short weeks I will be doing the same thing as I did a year ago, and have to leave my new family and friends behind. I am very excited to go back to see my American loved ones, but I am still quite sad to leave this new home of mine. Not too long after I get back I will start the process all over again in Los Angeles. I like to think of all of these people and places as pieces to my life's puzzle. I would not be whole without each of them. Whenever I leave a new friend, it helps to realize what a small world it is. The odds are very good that they will be seeing me again before the end of my story. And then next time we will be filled with so much joy to see each other again. So don't worry Kenyans, this is not the last you have seen of this Adventurer Friend.

Peace and Love
Josh

April Part Deux

April Trip Part deux

So the night of Easter Sunday I talked to Professor Grace Msangi on the phone. We decide that I should leave with her handyman Albert the next morning to go to Usangi, Tanzania. This is her home village and where we are trying to start a resource center. This means that I must wake up at 4:30 a.m. in order for her to pick me up at 5:00 and catch the bus. So I wake up and walk the ten minutes to the pick up point. The sun is not yet up so I spend the time waiting making up songs in my head. After an hour or waiting and a few unanswered calls to Grace I almost give up and head back towards my bed. Thats when I see her old yellow VW bug pull up. I quickly get in, but upon arrival at the depot we of course were too late. Grace had just overslept. Fortunately I had not bought my bus ticket in advance. Unfortunately Albert had. Some others had also missed the bus, so they put us in a little van that took us to another van that took us to the border. The plan was to catch up to the big bus because our bus was supposedly faster. We arrived at Namanga to find that yes our bus had arrived, and yes it had already gone on. I got my passport stamped, exchanged some money, and put my thinking cap on. We found a shared car going to Arusha. We stuffed ourselves in and were off again. Vehicles around here don't exactly go for the one person per seatbelt plan. I was maneuvered between the driver and shotgun in a position in which I was forced lift my whole self up every time the driver had to shift gears. After a few hours of this we switched to a bus from Arusha to Moshi. From there another bus up the mountain to Usangi. Finally we arrive at Grace's house late in the evening. I still don't understand why sitting in a bus all day wears me out so much. I just wanted to get inside and rest, but of course it was not to be.We put the key that Grace gave us into the padlock on the front door and.....nothing. We try all the other doors.....nothing. Plan B, we turn around and go twelve hours back home. Plan C, we have got to break in. I find a window I can open a little bit, but both of us are too big to fit through. Albert ends up using a panga(machete like tool) to remove some wood around a glass pane in the back door. We remove the glass and reach in to unlcock the door from the inside. Finally we were in. But the rest of my time in Usangi I had to squeeze through a two foot square hole in a wall and walk around the house just to get in or out of the house. Already I knew that this trip would be an adventure.

Stay tuned for more of the April Adventure.

Hell's Gate

April "The Beginning"

I had a very interesting April break. The schools in Kenya are year round, so they have month long breaks to separate the terms. As soon as school was over all of the teachers had a celebratory outing where we went to an awesome restaurant called the Chicken Palace and stuffed ourselves and just relaxed after a long term of work. The next day Jacob and I went to Hell’s Gate National Park for our first safari. One of our friends is a former Park Ranger so he went with us as a tour guide. We first rode around in a mini-bus and saw a lot of gazelle, hartebeest, impala, zebra, a bustard, baboons, and warthogs. Later we let our tour guide go rest and Jacob and I rented some bicycles and went on our own adventure. It rained every other day that week, but somehow it never did that day. We ended up riding for about five hours. I think they need to hire a new cartographer and sign-maker for the park. We weren’t lost per say, but we couldn’t find where we were for awhile. We did get pretty close to some eland, hartebeests, zebras, giraffes, and finally buffalo. This was going up and down some pretty massive inclines on some pretty janky bikes. At one point we ended up in the middle of a Massai herd of cattle going down the same mountain path. We were supposed to have the bikes back before sunset, but we didn’t quite make it. It was pretty exhilarating riding in the dark in a National Park with who-knows-what animals all around us. We slept quite well that night in a YMCA thatched roof hut. The next day Ranger Gitau(our friend) took us to his former office. We then went down to the lake where I saw my first wild hippos. Very cool. They were just hanging out in the water with their heads sticking out. We then took a little boat to a place with Gnus a.k.a. wildebeests, zebras, and waterbucks. Gnus are very bizarre looking creatures. We then headed back to Gatundu to pack and then Nairobi for Easter. The next day I went to the International Lutheran Church for Easter Service. A few of us YAVs then went to lunch with some amazing friends of ours, Lyle and Terry Dykstra and Cal Brand. I got some awesome lasagna with lots of cheese, finished up with some delicious chocolate cake. The next day I began “The Journey”. Stay tuned for Part II of my April experience coming soon.

Update

Not really a blog today, just an update on my goings ons. I am currently in Vuchama-Ugweno Tanzania. I am back visiting the place I stayed at in December. Sometime this week I plan on taking a 27 hour bus ride down to Lilongwe, Malawi to visit the family of my good friend Shadreck Kamwendo. It is rainy season here and rains about every night. I have found a new love for parachichi (avacados). I love you all. Josh

Give somebody a chance to Shine

Figured its time for a another blog. Not a long one today. Just a thought really. By the way the library initiative is going well. We elected a librarian the other day. When it comes to running a meeting in Kenya it is a lot different than the US. I can rarely tell what people want in these meetings. So when I say election basically it means I chose someone and the club members supported it. Very democratic, probably not. Anyway I later found out that the student I chose is not known to be a stand out student. The student doesn't really display much confidence or have many leadership skills. I thought oh boy, did I make the wrong choice? Turns out I don't think a better student could be the librarian. She has really stepped up to the plate and excelled in the role. She is showing confidence and asserting herself when it comes to the library rules. Other teachers have even told me that they have pleasantly surprised at how well she is dived into the role. It makes me wonder how often this happens to students and even grown-ups. We see people who have achievements and accomplishments under their belts and it is only natural to reward and entrust them with other jobs and responsibilities. What about those who have never been given chances to prove themselves. Just showing a person that he or she is trusted with a duty can do wonders in achieving self-fulfilling prophecy. It is difficult to believe you can do it if nobody else does. People we label as lazy and irresponsible usually know when they are given this label, and why not live up to it if people already believe it. This is a lesson that I am going to try to take to heart when interacting with people.
Matthew 25:29 says To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance.

I say in order to do well with what they are given they must first be given something to do well with.

Anyway that is my thought for the day. I hope you are all well and had a happy St. Patrick's Day. I am still looking for a way to watch March Madness games here. I can't believe how fast the time is flying. I will be home before you know it.
Peace

Book Blog

Books. I love them. As far back as I can remember they have always been a big part of my life. They helped me to become the master vocabularian that I am today. Prior to embarking on this journey, Tyler and I had some important choices to make at the Half Price Books store in Greenwood. Which pieces of classic literature did we want to tackle on our respective furlongs into the world. There were so many choices at our fingertips for very little money. I think we both ended up choosing about five each. We got some Dostoevsky, Dumas, and some others that now escape my memory. Anyways the point is that we have always had easy access to liturature of all kinds. Upon arriving at Icaciri Secondary School I was somewhat dismayed to find that finding books would be difficult. There is a room on the school compound labeled library, but upon further inspection all that it had were shelves on the walls. Not a single bit of printed material in the room. This made me a bit sad, but I figured Oh well, I will just borrow books from the other YAVs. This was all fine and dandy for a while. Then I noticed a desire to read in the school. Every time I would pull out a book to read I would have students and staff asking me to "assist them" with the book so that they can read it next. Unfortunately I could not always say yes due to the fact that many of them were just loans to me. Over the past few months I began to really think about this predicament. The students want to read books but don't have access. The staff want to read books but don't have access. Then it hit me. Lets figure out a way to get the school access to reading material. Easy right. Wrong. I found a makeshift library in the local town that seems to use books that the customers bring in as collateral. So in order to check out a book, you must first put down one of your own as a deposit plus pay the fee to check out a book. To utilize this option would take a lot of logistics figuring, such as where the money and collateral should come, plus how to get the books to the students or the students to the books. While taking some time to try to figure this out I began buying cheap books where I could find them, either for the students to read directly or to use as deposits for the Gatundu library. I presented some ideas at a staff meeting, and we even formed a Reading Club committee. Very Presbyterian right? I went to the primary school next door to talk to the principal there about ideas. I saw on his desk a new hardback copy of The Poisonwood Bible, which I remember well from junior year at Shelbyville High School(thanks Mrs. Learned, maybe thats what gave me the Africa bug.) I asked him where he got it and he said that a former student who has done well for himself had mailed some boxes of books to his school and even a box to mine. Nobody had mentioned this to me before, or even seemed to know about it. I did some digging and true enough I found a box of fairly new books under a pile of stuff in a store room. I took these to my apartment to try to catalogue somehow. This happened on Wednesday of this week. Seeing as this weekend was the midterm break I thought it would be great for the students to be able to take a book home to read if they wanted during the four day weekend. After a lot of help from a few teachers and some scrambling I was able to pull a library together on Friday. We gathered about 80 fiction books, and found tons of old reference books to put on the shelves.(Mostly all discarded text books from America in the 70's) Gotta finish this blog quickly, the coffee shop I am in is shutting down. Long story short we put a makeshift library together, and had 40 students check out a book in the half hour we had the library open. We will get it more organized next week, but hey its a start. I am brainstorming ideas to make it bigger and better so let me know if you have any ideas. I'll update you in the future about the library/ reading club happenings.

P.S. This weekend we had a retreat in which we stayed at a Benidictine Monastary. Very Peaceful

Zanziblog

Its that time again. I have recently returned from an amazing retreat to the island of Zanzibar. I know what you are thinking. That's not a real place. Believe me, it exists. And everyone knows that you can't get there by a car, cause its too far to Zanzibar.That's pretty much true. We tried. After a sixteen hour bus ride to the coast, we were forced to stop in Dar Es Salaam. From there you have to ride the ferry another two hours to the island. This trip was scheduled for reasons both educational and relaxational. Zanzibar has a very interesting history involving the slave trade. In fact the hostel in which we stayed was directly on top of one of the last dungeons to hold slaves before going to market in Africa. Like I said interesting history. But on top of that it was simply a beautiful place. I have never been to a place in which I felt safer walking down dark alleys at night. You see Zanzibar has not been connected to a power grid for over a month. The only places who had electricity were the ones who could afford generators. So at night the streets were dark, but as I said before, not scary. I'm not sure exactly what it was, just a sense of peacefulness maybe. The beaches were also quite nice. Clear water and soft sand. One day I was even able to take a boat out aways and swim with wild dolphins. That's not something I will ever forget. God has created some pretty magnificent things. Sometimes you just have to get away from all that man has created to see the infinitely detailed simplicity of this world that God has provided. I will try to upload pics soon. Let me know what you want to hear about on this blog.

Pikipiki

I have found a great time to pray. On the back of a motorcycle heading down a mountainside in the dark. The Lords Prayer and Psalm 23 are two of my main go-to's when I am terrified. Days of Elijah also comes to mind often. I'm not sure why. Maybe its the whole behold he comes riding on the clouds part. Maybe I'm just not created to be a motorcyclist. When I came to first came to Tanzania Pastor Frank(who I stayed with) said that we would be going places on his pikipiki(yes that is really the kiswahili for motorcycle). However his motorcycle needed to be fixed.(It's another story why it was broke in the first place.) We picked up some parts in Moshi which was an all day event. The next day we went to Kifula to try to fix the bike. First we tried to do it on our own. I'm pretty sure that we just exacerbated the problems that it already had. We then dragged/carried it down the hill and to the mechanic. He was not impressed with our work. He was also not sure how to fix our unique problems. Needless to say, what we thought was going to be a home by noon job turned into a home past sunset job. On average we are able to accomplish about one thing per day. Coming here has given me a new appreciation for the ability to get places easily by car. They say that you don't really appreciate something until you don't have it. Traveling without your own transport does not lend itself to keeping a schedule. Anyway back to the motorcycle. The day was ending and the mechanic finally gave us the go-ahead. We hop on the bike, Frank confidently, myself not as much, and we were off. I'm no mechanic, but I did not like the sounds coming out of that engine as we tried an incline. Three minutes later we are walking the thing back to town. We got a bus home that night. So our one task for that day was an epic failure( two days wasted if you count the previous trip to Moshi for parts). That should have been my first sign that I'm not meant for pikipikis. The next day we planned to journey to Usangi to check out the future resource center that is actually the reason for me coming to Tanzania in the first place. We called one of Frank's pastor friends and he said we could use his pikipiki in Usangi. Our plan was to leave at 9:00 a.m. At 6:45 Frank wakes me up and says there is a bus here so we should catch it. I throw some clothes on and rush out the door. The bus has already gone. Frank says that if we hurry we can catch it further along the route. I say let's do it, so we do an early morning run through the mountain jungle to the next stop. Twenty minutes later, out of breath, we arrive at the next stop. The locals there said that we just missed it but it usually waits at the next village for a while. We did a speedwalk to the next village. Gone. Maybe this was a sign to turn around and go home. We don't give up easily though. We squeezed into a van going our direction. A few vehicles later we arrive in Usangi. We get to the church and borrow the motorcycle. My motorcycle experience before coming to Africa is exactly zero. So to say the least I was not ease when getting on the back of this thing. Maybe if we were driving on the streets of Shelbyville it would have been different, but these aren't exactly paved roads, or even necesarily roads for that matter.(see Musings #17) Before we are even moving I have started praying. I was probably into my third reciting of Psalm 23 when we come upon an innocent looking bridge. When we were about 2 meters away I noticed a crevice in the road about a foot wide. Being a pikipiki novice, I thought this is interesting, what do we do in this situation. It turns out in this situation we first try to apply the brakes to no avail. When that happens, the next step is to fall into the hole. The next few seconds are completely gone from my memory. The first thing I remember is turning around and seeing Frank on the ground with the motorcycle half on top of him, half in the chasm. After asking if he was ok I pulled the bike off him as quickly as I could. His lips were torn up and bleeding pretty badly but other than that he said he was unhurt. I checked myself over and did not have a scratch, I was not even dirty. Somehow I went over the handlebars and Frank and seemingly landed on my feet. I have never put a lot of thought into guardian angels, but I could believe I was carried by one in this event. After checking over the bike, and yes the brake was broken, I thought we would walk the bike back to the church. Frank however got back on the bike and said lets go. I said don't we need that brake. He said the other one is the only one we really need and it seems to be working. Bucking up my courage I got back on the bike. We went smoothly enough for awhile until we arrived at a particularly steep hill on a turn. We slowly toppled over. Once again I somehow jumped at just the right time. We walked the bike up that hill. We finally got to our goal. We looked at the building for all of ten minutes. We then start to head back a different route. It is a beautiful view overlooking some mountains and I am starting to feel somewhat relaxed. I pull my camera out of my pocket and snap a few shots. We come to a fairly steep decline. We aren't going very fast and I'm feeling fine. Frank says something to me that I can't hear and then we start to go towards the side of the mountain into some brush. Once again confused as to what is going on, I am forced to alight from the bike. This time I wasn't quite fast enough and got my leg dirty, from rubbing against the wall while on the bike, and a scratch on my finger. Frank ended up inside the brush. What he had said before the crash was "Now we are in danger". It turns out that the motorcycle would not switch gears when he tried, so rather than go down the hill at an uncontrollable speed he opted for a calculated crash stop. We then walked the bike down the hill. And yes we did continue the journey on the pikipiki. We made it back to the church eventually. And we made it home that night. After another forty minute jungle walk in the dark we arrived to a dark house. The entire town had lost power. While taking a shower by cellphone light I looked back on the day. I was involved in three motorcycle wipeouts and all I had to show for it was a little finger scratch. God sure does make life interesting. In order to make this blog worth your time I am now going to turn it into some allegory. One interesting facet to the journey was that after each incident I became more and more comfortable on the thing. I chalk it up to seeing that, yes we would crash, but also we could survive the crash. In our lives we all have unexpected crashes. Some of them are worse than others. The choice you make after the crash is what determines if you reach your destination. You can choose to give up, say "I am too afraid to continue", walk the motorcycle home; or you can dust yourself off, say a prayer, and continue the journey. The first option is a whole lot easier, but have you ever heard anyone say they were proud of taking the easy way out. If any of you finished reading this story I am impressed. I myself probably would not have, if were reading it. I don't have much of an attention span for these kinds of things. As a bonus note for making it to the end you can know that I am writing this after seeing the sunset on Mt. Kilamanjaro then taking an uneventful motorcycle ride down a mountain in the dark.

My own Musings

A rebuttal to Tyler's musings of India. If you have not read them on his blog then you should. They are at http://tylergoestoindia.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

So here it goes.

1 Even though people don't have pets as companions, don't be surprised to find any animal in any place. Like a hen in a kitchen, dog in a classroom, cat in a hospital room, rooster in a living room. All of which I have seen.
2 Ninataka choo and Ninatoka choo do not mean the same thing. Choo means toilet. Ninataka means I need. Ninatoka means I come from.
3 People like to decorate their walls. About every house has a picture of Jesus and/or Obama. But I have seen posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Titanic, and The Undertaker from pro wrestling.(all in the same room)
4 Just because a man is wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt doesn't mean he likes the Bulls, has heard of Chicago, or has even knows what basketball is.
5 Even though you are on the sidewalk, you still have to watch out for Matatus(commuter buses). If there is a traffic jam, no place is off limits to them.
6 If you feel homesick for America, just find the closest mall. They are pretty much the same everywhere
7 Most Kenyan students know more American rappers and R&B artists than I do.
8 Sometimes in order to get from where you are to where you need to be you have to just jump in the back of a random truck.(or walk for hours up a mountain)
9 I have seen Pepsi products in Uganda and Tanzania but none in Kenya. I wonder if it has anything to do with Kenya's website url endings. ie. www.google.co.ke
10 You don't really appreciate western style toilets until you have the runs and your looking at a small hole in the ground.
11 Sometimes it is better to just close your eyes and take a bite. Wait till you are finished before you ask what it was you ate.
12 Don't be surprised to hear a cell phone ring at any time or place; restaurants, church services, funerals, weddings.
13 There is always room for one more. This includes taxis( I have been in a five-seater car with ten people in it) matatus( 25 people with 12 seats) Tea time(26 people sitting and drinking tea in a room not much bigger than a bedroom)
14 If you ask what time an event begins don't put too much stock in the answer. First of all the system of time here is 6 hours different than ours. For instance at noon they say it is 6:00. And it is pretty safe to show up about an hour after the supposed start of anything.
15 Even if you can't figure out what time it is, it is probably Chai(tea) time. As they say here, "Every time is chai time."
16 If you like music at church then show up on time to the service. The first hour is almost always singing.
17 Every place is a path(or road if your a matatu). If there is no razorwire in front of you then it is ok to walk there.
18 Every place outside of a building is a toilet(at least for the boys).
19 It is rude as a guest to refuse food and drinks if you come to visit. So just put on a smile and eat the whole thing.
20 Don't drink something too fast unless you want more. As soon as you finish a cup of tea it will be instantly refilled. So if you don't like the beverage, but you want to be polite and finish, time the cup so that you finish as you are leaving the house.(It took me too many cups of bad coffee to figure this one out)
21 They also play the roll-the-hoop-with-a-stick game. They are pretty inginuitive at figuring out things that can roll. I still don't get out they roll them uphill.
22 Kaka kakamavu ana mkakate ka kakakaka. Try saying that out loud. If my Kiswahili grammer is correct(which it most definitely is not) this means "My cunning older brother has a plan to rapidly sit.
23 When we were walking through a mountain forest the other night. I told the Pastor I was with that it was "so muddy" he that I said it was "samadi" which was kiswahli for cow manure.

Hope you got a few laughs from these. I am having a great time. Stay in tune for stories from Tanzania. Merry Christmas!

Waitence

Word of the day; Patience.... and Waiting. I guess thats two words. Lets try that again. Noun of the day; Patience. Verb of the day; Waiting. No, I like to have only one word of the day, lets make one up and call it Waitence, which now means waiting with patience. Now I'm rambling. Thank you for your waitence.

I can't speak for all of Africa, but at least for the parts of East Africa that I have seen, I can say that time is relative. America absolutley loves time. So much of what we do revolves around being places at very specific times of the day and doing things for very specific amounts of time. Even when I was in America sometimes I would say that we are slaves to time. Being in Africa has only reinforced that idea. Don't get me wrong, they do have clocks in Kenya. They are just not always in places where they can be seen, or have batteries in them.

I remember my days at Shelbyville Middle and High Schools. Each class period was an exact number of minutes,and I remember even setting my watch to the precise second so that I could know when to jump up and run to lunch. The passing period between classes was 4 minutes I think. If you weren't in a classroom in your seat when that bell rang, you would be listed as tardy and there would be consequences. Looking on that now from an African lens it makes me think "We Americans do like stress don't we." Here when it is near the time that the 40 minute class period is over a student will get up and ring a bell. If the student is five or ten minutes late or early, not a big deal. Nobody stresses. Then the teacher will mosey towards the classroom when he or she feels like it and start class. If there is an interesting conversation in the staff room, then the students can wait by themselves a few minutes until the teachers arrive. Nobody stresses.(If I remember right I think some of the math/social studies teachers at SHS employed this technique.) I have not seen any place to keep attendance, let alone tardy slips. And you know what, its ok. Why should the kids be policed to come to school. They realize the importance of an education and want to be there. If they do not show up then it is probably for an important reason. Maybe there is work on the farm that needs done today. Maybe a mother is ill and needs help. I don't think that we could use these policies in America unless there was some major overhauling of our attitudes. We are very rule oriented and we like that structure. Time, as a rule, rules our lives. Sorry I'm rambling again. Have some waitence.

Anecdote 2: I went to Uganda this past weekend to go white-water rafting at the source of the Nile. (God did a very nice job wih the Nile.) Traveling to and from Uganda we took large coaches, kind of like Greyhounds. From Nairobi to Jinja it was supposed to take ten hours. Actual travel time; thirteen hours. But whats another three when you are already sitting for ten right. I slept through most of that anyway, so not a big deal. It was the trip back that really tried my waitence. My group had to split up going home because of the availability of tickets and work schedules. So my friend Lauren and I were to take the 6:00 pm bus to Kisumu where we were supposed to meet our friend Anselm. Leaving at that time we should have arrived by 10:00 pm when our friend would be waiting to pick us up and take us to his home. We arrived at the bus station at the scheduled time of 5:00. We waited. Six came around, no bus. We waited. Seven, no bus. Some buses passed through, but the workers said these were not our buses. They were going to other places. Eight, no bus. At about ten we find out that one of those earlier buses was our bus, but that it was full and could not take us on as passengers (even though we had bought the tickets a day earlier.) But we could get on the next bus. Midnight, finally a bus arrives that they tell us to get on. YAY, more hours of sitting. We get through the Kenyan border ok at about 2:30. After another police check, we are off again. I ask one of the bus employees to let us know when we get to Kisumu so that we don't fall asleep and go all the way through to Nairobi. To our chagrin he informed us that this bus was not going to Kisumu. Surprise. After some conferring they decided we should get out and wait for another bus. Fortunately there happened to be a Matatu bus going to Kisumu for whatever reason at 3 in the morning. Not a pleasant ride, but anyway we finally get to Kisumu as the sun is coming up. My first American reaction was "Who can I sue, or what can I get out of this bus company in compensation." My next thought, "Haha, we are in Africa now, it happens, don't stress."
I'm trying to learn now. If I am supposed to be at a meeting at noon, it may or may not get started at two-ish. If a post office's posted hours say open till six, I better get there by three if it is important, because they close when they feel like it. I'm going to try really hard to master this way of looking at time.
So in conclusion. I apologize in advance for when I return to the States and Orem time is two hours late instead of only fifteen minutes. Have some waitence with me. Peace and God Bless

Tests

The school year in Gatundu is coming to an end. The Form 4s(Seniors) recently left the school. Kenya has a very intense examination for the students finishing their schooling. This is called the KCSE test. It tests material that they have learned over the past four years. The examination process takes about 3 weeks. It is divided up into each of their classes. So on one day they may have a biology practical and then a 2 hour English essay test. This test decides if university is in their future. The rest of the students have final exams pretty similar to our own, except that they are worth a lot more towards their semester grades. There are only three grades that go into the gradebook. Two tests throughout the term worth twenty percent each, and the final exam worth sixty percent of their term grade. That puts a lot of pressure on them to do well on the exams.

Happy November!

Yay, I have begun to receive mail. Email is great, but there is something special about receiving physical lettters and pictures. It appears that it takes between 10 and 17 days for mail to reach me from the states. Keep this is mind, as I will not be at this address for the month of December. That is when the break between school years is. I am not sure where I will be during December so mail may be best be sent to Phyllis, my site coordinator. I am not sure what that address is, so I will put that up soon. I hope everyone had a fun Halloween. I went to Nairobi to celebrate with my fellow Americans. Seeing as I did not have my full arsenal of costumes I had to settle for a flowerchild of the 60s and wear my tie-dye and a bandana with a peace sign and a guitar case. My extensive facial hair helped too. I hope everyone is having a great fall season. Until next time.