Again, I apologize for the lack of blog posts, I had an issue with my computer a few week ago and couldn’t finished my post.  This is what I wrote then:

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers and words of encouragement and support; they have been a huge blessing to me.  ‘The Sarg’ has resigned from his duties as the royal pain in my…abdomen.  My biggest pain-inducer is sneezing, which I quickly learned to manage by firmly pressing my incisional area (nursing 101: support the area of incision).  Every once in a while, though, I forget this important fun-fact and after suppressing a string of profanity, I scrape the remains of my seething body off the floor and remind myself that maybe next time, I should be a little less distracted with Facebook and more concerned with proper splinting. J

Christmas Time is Here

This year was the first year that I celebrated Christmas without my family.  I was actually surprisingly accepting of this concept during the weeks leading up to Christmas, mostly because it didn’t feel like Christmas to me.  The standard mass of outdoor lights, gargantuan Christmas tree, white powdery snow, and most surprisingly, tinkling of familiar Christmas carols that we are used to in America are nowhere to be found in Kakamega.  I missed making a snowman so much that I improved a little and decided to make an "Ugali-man".  Unfortunately, I'm not able to post the picture of it here, but let me tell you...it was epic, second only to Michelangelo's 'David'.

Anyway, I was really missing home this Christmas and made one of those dreaded 3am phone calls to my parents.  I had a mini-melted down, but somehow managed to pull myself together with the help of my very understanding parents, and moved on.  I was invited to the house of a good nurse friend, Anne, for Christmas Dinner.  It was a smorgasbord of chicken, beef, ugali, rice, kunde, sacoma wiki, and much more.  Despite my insisting that I was completely full, Anne continued scooping more food on my plate.  It was a very nice time for sure and I am so thankful that she invited me. 

Jael

As I divulged in my last post, I have a 15 year-old girl living with me named Jael, and I have been teaching her how to use the computer.  I am amazed at how quickly she is catching on.  I found a set of interactive typing tests on the BBC website and she has been flying through the lessons, despite the fact that she can’t even understand a single thing the program is saying, given the characters’ strong British accents (frankly, I have a hard difficult time understanding it as well).  There’s another website with practice lessons that will time the typist as well as indicate the number of errors.  I practically split my stitches numerous times, because when she types something wrong the computer makes an irritating ‘baa’ noise, like a goat.  It’s definitely like a reverse version of Pavlov’s Experiment.  One time it “baaed” at her so many times that she threw her hands in the air and exclaimed, “WHY ‘BAA’?!  I hate ‘BAA’.” Now sometimes we joke with each other and when one person is saying something, the other person will interrupt with “BAA!”

Knock, Knock…Who’s There

One night, Jael and I were watching a movie (a little later than we should’ve) in the comforts of our room, when suddenly we heard a tapping on the window.  At first, I thought that it might be a bug or some other creature because frankly this house sounds like a rehearsal for the Blue Man Group, during the night hours.  However, the tapping persisted for about 15 minutes and it was really starting to scare us.  I of course decided that I was going to pummel the person with my mwiko (ugali stick), but as I jumped out of bed to look out the window, Jael stopped me and told me that this person could throw something at the window and hurt me.  I let my blood simmer a little, and concluded that her advice was pretty sound.  I decided that I should call the head watchman to send the night security guards around my house.  Unfortunately, the phone service around here isn’t that great, and I was unable to get ahold of him.  That was about the point that I panicked internally, and said to Jael, “Now What?”  She told me to call her mom, Everlynne.  I thank God for Everlynne because once I made that simple phone call, she practically called the entire hospital and within ten minutes, I had the administrator of the hospital and 2 Maasai security guards (complete with their bows and arrows) at my front door.  Unfortunately, after a thorough search of the compound, they didn’t find anyone.  I’m convinced it was a child, because my bedroom window is set high off the ground, so that a child could only tap on the window, not bang.

As we were waiting for the security guards to come, I decided that both Jael and I needed to calm ourselves, so I figured we should read a little out of the bible (and at least this way, if I happened to ‘kick the can’, God would see that the last thing I was doing was reading the bible like a good Christian.)  :-P  It was interesting because a dear friend of the family had sent me an email earlier that day and within it she asked me to read a scripture: Psalm 27.  I firmly believe in my heart that God put it on this women’s heart to send this scripture to me.  I won’t share the whole thing, but if you’re curious just Google Search “Psalm 27”.  Part of it reads:

The LORD is my light and my salvation—

   whom shall I fear?

The LORD is the stronghold of my life—

   of whom shall I be afraid?

 2 When the wicked advance against me

   to devour me,

it is my enemies and my foes

   who will stumble and fall.

3 Though an army besiege me,

   my heart will not fear;

though war break out against me,

   even then I will be confident.

This was the exact comfort we needed as the strangers were tapping on our windows.  Until I read this Psalm, I felt trapped and surrounded.  After, I knew that God was enveloping our house and that everything was going to be fine.  Thank you to the incredible woman who gave me this scripture…you know who you are. J

This post was supposed to be for the week of Christmas.  I will write more about the events of January soon.  Love and Blessings to ya’ll!