Ava Turns 2!!!!

Today, Ava turned 2 and to celebrate we had a costume party. We all dressed up and went to our favorite coffee shop/restaurant Java House. We had a great time and by the end of the day, Ava could sing along to Happy Birthday. Two year olds are so much fun!

The birthday girl was "Barbie Princess"

Kerry (the dental hygeinist to the stars), Princess Mel, Emma the Rockstar, Princess Erica, Tristan as Frodo Baggins, Aaron as Indiana Jones (he did have a great hat on earlier!) and the Birthday girl, Princess Ava

We were tired out after a full birthday

Yummy Cake!

Superstar!

The girls

Frodo... home at last!

Daddy and his beautiful girl

What a great day!!!

Festival of Lights

A few of our neighbours making their own light show on the street behind our apartment during the Hindu festival of lights.

Nairobi is an ethnically diverse city and is without a doubt the largest urban centre in all of East Africa. While we spend our days in Eastleigh serving among displaced Somali (and Oromo) people, we live in a very different part of Nairobi with its own cultures and customs. Most of our neighbours refer to themselves as south east Asians and practice various eastern religions including Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam. Our side of the city is peppered with temples of various persuasions.

Currently, our Hindu neighbours are celebrating the "festival of lights" or Diwali (celebrated with the new moon of Ashwin in the Hindu calendar). Diwali is the abbreviation of a Sanskrit word "Deepavwali", meaning "row of lights". Many of our neighbours burn tea lights on their porches and walkways each evening and some even string electric "Christmas lights". There are a few different stories told about the origins of the festival. For instance, some Hindus believe it celebrates the mythic occasion of Krishna and Satyabhama, his wife, killing a demon (Narakasura). Another story says the festival is celebrated for the return of Rama and Sita to their kingdom after years of exile.

Along with the pageantry and family feasting, the festival involves a lot of fireworks! For about a week leading up to Diwali (October 28th this year), we would see and hear fireworks almost every night. The big show happens on the night of Diwali with fireworks lasting from 7:30 pm to almost midnight. Each temple has its own display, but for the most part the fireworks are more about the BANG than the bling! Honestly, you would think there were mortar shells going off! Around 10 pm the loudest booming explosions happen, enough to shake the windows and set off car alarms up our street.

We are so thankful for the people

and places where God has lead us.

Eastleigh Street Life

A view from the Streets of Eastleigh

Looking back over our photographs, I thought you might enjoy a few street shots from Eastleigh. They do not begin to do justice to the colorful and varied experience of life in Eastleigh, Nairobi's largest Muslim ghetto, but we hope that they will give you a bit of the flavour!

Erica and I met this gentle musicman during the Eastleigh street march in September: He played us a song on his tin box guitar (and with his foot bells) while we waited for a street performance by children of the community centre. Street performers are actually quite rare in Nairobi, we usually encounter street preachers and hawkers.

This kind woman allowed us to take a photo of her fresh tomatoes surrounded by the various electrical moldings and sockets for sale around her. Her pink flip flops are a common type of sandal found throughout Kenya. In Dadaab, it is common to wear another persons flip flops. One night, a friend of ours was surprised to find a large pair of white rubber boots in the place where he kept his evening flip flops. He was very unnerved by the experience, thinking that there was some supernatural source to the alien boots. He was quite relieved to discover days later that a worker at the CARE compound had been over for a visit that afternoon and switched his boots for the light sandal in the hot sun.

There are two primary industries in Garissa, livestock (goat, lamb, camel and cattle) and charcoal: both of these products are in high demand here in Eastleigh and throughout Nairobi. Sadly, the popularity of charcoal has contributed to the rapid deforestation of most of Kenya. Much of the land around Kenyan villages and towns is denuded by the constant need for firewood.

Bits and Pieces

Little shops (or dukas) like this line the streets of Eastleigh, selling everything from used clothing, produce and freshly charred corn-on-the-cob to bits and pieces of metal and wire (often salvaged by children and youth from the garbage dumps of Nairobi). It is amazing to see the shear variety of what people are buying and selling.

It was a joy this week to spend time with Sharlene and Brian Craig, visiting from CBM's head office in Toronto. On Thursday, we brought the Craigs into Eastleigh to meet the women of Iftin and to see some of the work we are apart of at the Eastleigh Community Centre. Today, we gathered together as the Kenya team for worship and a potluck lunch with the Craigs at the beautiful home of our team mates. Ava was in heaven, dancing to the worship music and trying on every one's shoes and sandals.

This week we are celebrating Ava's second birthday on Wednesday, October 29th. We continue to wait on the court to locate Ava's case file. We are pryaing that it will be found this week so that we can get a date for November.

We are also getting final preparations together for Don and Joy Hepburn, a couple who are coming to serve with us in Eastleigh for a month in November and December. Along with volunteering at the Community Centre, they will be leading the teachers at the centre through professional development training in cooperative learning. We are looking forward to their arrival early in November.

Kenyatta Day 2008

On Monday, we enjoyed a day off from school with our kids as Kenya celebrated "Kenyatta Day": a public holiday in honor of the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. While the Air force roared over the city stirring great excitement, we avoided the crowds and enjoyed a fun morning playing at Rosslyn Academy where we swung...

... and swung some more!


Emma finally left her training wheels behind,
She had a fun time on her bicycle -- she's a natural!



For lunch we met our friends, the Enns family, and together had a great afternoon of playing in the gardens of Kentmere, in the tea hills above Nairobi. Tristan, Emma, Ezra and Isaiah had fun making bamboo boats to float down a little muddy stream. Sadly, Tristan got a little more than he bargained for as he emerged from the woods with a handful of tiny thorns. He was a good sport, and hardly flinched as we pulled them out!

Ava, our little climber, was much more interested in the monkey bars than the rest. She had a fun time keeping mommy and daddy on their toes!

This Week:

1. We are awaiting the BIG court date for Ava's adoption. The Children's Department has finally completed their report, praise the Lord! But unfortunately, the court has misplaced Ava's file. We are assured that it will be found and that a court date will be assigned to us this week. We are praying for a November date in court!

2. Sharlene Craig, the director of Member Care for Canadian Baptist Ministries, is visiting the Rwanda and Kenya teams this week with her husband Brian. We are looking forward to spending Thursday with them as they come.

3. Please continue to pray for the ministry in Eastleigh. On Friday, Erica will be accompanying the director of the Eastleigh Pottery Ministry, James, as they meet with experts in ceramic beading: Erica and James are developing a new jewelry making project as an income generating initiative for impoverished refugee women in Eastleigh. Please pray for wisdom and discernment as we lay the ground work for this project.

Thanksgiving Day

Last Sunday, we celebrated a Thanksgiving with about 25 of our fellow Canadians out at the Bannister's home near Athi River.

Ava enjoyed the potluck turkey dinner with

Tim Bannister's famous pumpkin pie!

Tristan playing catch with our
Kenyan colleague, Andai Jackson.

While Nairobi has had an abundance of rain lately, most of the countryside is dusty and dry. The wide plains south of Machakos are withered and dull brown from the hot sun. We were surprised to meet some thin Oryx on our drive up to the Bannisters who seemed too tired to run away from our approaching van. As we pulled up to the poor antelopes, they slowly turned and walked away into the amber plain.


It was a good time to be together and give thanks for the many blessings that the Lord has brought into our lives. We thank everyone who has shared Thanksgiving wishes and prayers with our family. We just got back online after a week without Internet, and it was a joy to receive email again.

Moi Day

On Friday, Kenya celebrated Moi Day (in honor of the second president of Kenya, Daniel Moi). We had the fun of hosting a party with the fourteen members of the Iftin group who had taken part in the International Literacy Day in September. It was a great time of getting to know some of the Iftin women better as we shared food and laughter together in our apartment.

Erica preparing Somali Chai for the party.

A Simple Recipe: A little water, lots of milk, too much sugar, loose tea, and Masala spices (black pepper, cardamon, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg).

Erica and Emma with our friend Oromia, who was the only Oromo woman present at the party. We have the pleasure of teaching several Oromo refugees who have come to Eastleigh in exile from Ethiopia. The Oromo people are Cushitic cousins of the Somali tribe, and they are the largest people group living in Ethiopia (about 32% of the population). Oromia is a very bright student and we so proud of how well she is learning English.

Our friend Jess Buchanan is one of the fourth grade teachers at Rosslyn Academy. The Iftin ladies really enjoyed getting to know Jess and bringing her into the group dancing and sharing about life in Somalia.

Some of the ladies helping Emma learn the ways of the head wrap. There are several different styles of head coverings worn by Somali women. Most start out with a simple scarf.

And of course, what is a Somali party without henna?

Our friend Bisharo decorated several of the ladies including Erica and Emma (above) who had their feet beautifully decorated.

In Prayer:

Please remember our friend Kerry who left for home last night after the tragic death of her aunt.

Please continue to pray for the ministry in Eastleigh and Northeast province. Many of the Somali women continue to struggle on in their studies, but it is not easy.

Finally, we pray that you will all have a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend! We will be traveling out to the Bannister's home with Chuck and Peggy French on Sunday to share a turkey with several members of our CBM team.

A Great Big World

The vast majority of Nairobi's urban refugees live in Eastleigh, a densely populated low-income area of Nairobi. Eastleigh has been called "arguably one of the most unruly, overcrowded and unorganized estates in the world" ("Eastleigh: A fast growing city within a city". The Standard, February 11, 2007).

Aaron working on map skills with ladies from Iftin.

There is a lot that we take for granted coming from a country like Canada: take nature for instance. Erica and I grew up in communities where we could ride our bicycles, play in parks and explore streams and wooded areas near our homes. Summers always included swimming and camping and simply enjoying the beauty around us. This freedom to enjoy the outdoors is not a reality for the urban poor living in the slums of Nairobi. Sadly, much of the wide open beauty of Kenya will never been seen by the millions of urban poor. Most of the Refugee women in our classes have rarely left Eastleigh, let alone the city. For most of their children, the concrete and mud of Eastleigh is their only experience of the world we share.

This fall, we are planning a number of field trips with the ladies to help them experience more than the three zones of Eastleigh. We are having the women break into small groups that will travel together to various sites just outside of Nairobi; where they will picnic and have a chance to see another side of this great big world.

On the Map

Two of the major objectives of the Somali Women's ESL Program (Iftin) are mobilizing the community and building the capacity of Somali mothers and young women. Along with learning English as a Second Language, the Iftin participants are growing in important areas of leadership and cooperation. Today several of the women took part in a community mapping activity where they worked together to create not only a picture of their community, but collaborated in identifying various resources available to them within Eastleigh, from subsidized clinics to the best places to find deals on basic food.

Please keep these women in your prayers as they work together to overcome poverty in their community. They have come a long way since July, not only in their language skills, but in their love and trust in each other.

Please also pray for Paul Carline and our Kenyan colleague Yattani as they are in Garissa this week looking for a house to rent for Yattani and his soon-to-be wife Salome (They will be married in Northern Kenya on December 6th).

Tree house

This past weekend, we got out of Nairobi with our friends Mel and Kerry to celebrate Mel's birthday. Together we camped along the Malewa River in a beautiful tree house perched in an Acacia forest. The tree house was built by the owners of the Malu farm (where we had gone for our anniversary earlier this year) as a secluded getaway. We are so thankful for such a restful time together.

Along with our groceries we packed some birthday goodies!

Mel and Kerry were even able to bring some "American" junk food (much to the pleasure of Tristan)

All weekend, the forest was always alive with birds and monkeys. The Malewa River that flows just below the tree house was swift and chocolate brown. Ava was enthralled over it singing out "drink, drink". On Saturday, we tried hiking back to a waterfall about two km away, but the trail was too steep and slick with mud. Although hippos had been seen in the river in the last few months, we weren't so lucky to see any on our walks. We were also told that several leopards and Genet cats live in the forest and that one Genet in particular liked the tree house and would no doubt show up. We were encouraged to keep our food secured and not to be alarmed.

The Genet never came inside, not that we would have heard him anyway: As we were treated both nights to some terrific thunder storms. The rain beat a wonderful rhythm on our roof and the wind (not to mention just the seven of us moving about) made the tree house gently sway like a ship on the water. Our family slept in the loft which seemed to give us just a little more motion -- it was great!

Emma and Tristan had lots of fun playing hide & go seek around the tree house and at night we all played board games: Settlers was the favorite!

The forest was filled with troops of Vervet, Colobus, and Sykes monkeys: From the balcony we could watch the monkeys playing in the tall tree canopy all day long. Some of the Sykes monkeys got very curious, peeking in the windows and snatching any stray muffins or fruit. Aaron caught a picture (above) of one large male sneaking up to grab a banana we had left as "bait" on the ground beneath the tree house (It was sort of like seeing a wendigo walking out of the forest).

A solitary Sykes monkey keeping an eye on the tree house.

We could often hear his loud repeated call "peoo! peoo!"

We enjoyed a great lunch at the Malu lodge and had our family picture taken with a friendly zebra, who the locals affectionately named Bob.

We're so thankful for our team leaders, Malcolm & Patty Card, who loaned us their 4x4 for the weekend; after the heavy storms, we could never have made it back down the slick mud track to the main road without it. At one point we met a delivery truck stuck in our path. While we worked with some local men in overcoming the mud, from behind us emerged two shepherd boys (no more than 9 or 10 years old) bringing a flock of rain weary sheep down the hillside -- the sheep were much better suited for the terrain!

Sharing the Light

Erica with some of the women from the Iftin group, who shared their poetry this week during the Eastleigh Community Centre's 50th Anniversary celebrations.
Members of our Iftin group preforming a Somali song at the Eastleigh Community Centre's Assembly Hall during the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations. The Somali women's group took part in a disaster relief meeting of various community participants.

Hitting the Streets

Throughout this week, the Eastleigh Community Centre has been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. On Thursday, the centre took to the streets with a community awareness march.

As we walked through Eastleigh, the procession stopped at two different venues to share songs and dramas about the ministry of the community centre and the reality of HIV/AIDS and violence against children.

One of the students marching with her message.

Aaron shared about the importance of community, and our privilege of being apart of the work of the Eastleigh Community Centre and the Eastleight Community through the Somali Women of Iftin.

At both street rallies, we had the fun of watching students from the Eastleigh Community Centre model in front of cheering crowds. As part of the vocational skills training program, the models encouraged their neighbours to take advantage of the vocational training available at the community centre.

Students from the Eastleigh Community Centre

primary school show their dance moves

at the Second Street stage.

It was a little too far for some to walk, but Erica was able to help two children make it to the final street rally in front of the Eastleigh Community Centre compound on Second Street.