I discovered that I had missed a few Christmas photos, in my last post, so if you want to see them, you’ll have to navigate to my January 6th entry..

We’ve picked up the baton for having the elders and sisters who live nearby over for dinner every once in a while. In the US, wards schedule meals for the missionaries via signupgenius, and the missionaries are fed dinner by members of the church every day of their mission. In Kenya? Not so much. At Christmas time, we thought we should invite the local missionaries over for a few hours on Christmas Day, but we were told that they would get a lot of invitations from the local members and would surely have one or more places to spend the day. After the fact, we learned that none of the missionaries who live near us were invited anywhere. I felt so bad for them!

There has been a tradition of snapping a photo of the missionaries who came over for dinner, as they board the elevator to go home. The photos above are from two different dinners.

So for New Year’s, we had a little celebration in our apartment with all the elders and sisters who live nearby, with dinner, punch and desert. After dinner, things devolved to pushup, plank competitions, double jointedness competitions, etc. We have a 7 PM curfew, but the young folks stayed over till about 9 PM, going home before the fireworks started.

I didn’t want to tell them, but they missed a great show from our balcony. We could see fireworks in all directions, but the best show of all was just a few blocks away from the top of the Old Mutual building, where they launched a spectacular 45 minute show, where the entire show was like a grand finale. Just spectacular!

One of our office duties is buying items for the +/-62 apartments across a 300 mile swath of Kenya. Our office is currently full to the brim with all kinds of utensils, pots, pans, dishes, dish clothes, laundry tubs, mosquito nets, ironing boards, toilet brushes and plungers, light bulbs, fans, etc., etc., etc.–everything the missionaries need to cook, clean and survive. James is NOT a shopper, so he dreads shopping trips. I, on the other hand, AM a shopper, so I love getting out to spend someone else’s money. Simple pleasures.

James and I have both lost a few pounds, since leaving on this mission, but it’s not on account of not eating. (Could it be that the stress and inactivity from sitting in an office all day long is causing the weight loss?) We are doing what we can to keep meat on our bones, preparing a hearty meal every night and eating a hearty lunch at this little canteen about 60 yards up the hill from our office. For around $1.50 to $2.00 each, we get ourselves a couple of omelettes wrapped in chapati bread, or a hearty plate with lentils, rice, chopped spinach and kachumbari, a salsa-like relish that spices the food up. It’s the same food, same cook, same serving staff and same grill owner every day. Like everyone on our route to and from work, as we walk past on our way, they holler out “Habari Asubuhu” (good morning), and are genuinely happy to see us.

One of our first weekends here, before we had a way to get around, we walked about 2.5K to the center of the Central Business District (CBD) to take another walking tour of the sites downtown. It was a similar tour to the one we took a year ago, when we were here, without the interesting and dynamic tour leader who had a wealth of historical knowledge. I’m not complaining. We made the best of it. We were just happy to be out of the office and out of our apartment doing SOMETHING. This tour took us to Uhuru Gardens, which is less than a mile from where we live, and potentially a place where we could walk and get some exercise, without being squished by traffic and boda bodas. Sadly, the park has a heavy layer of litter, and thus would not be my favorite place to walk. It did have a nice pond, though, and a lot going on for kids and families.

One night, last week, at around 2 AM, the sound of fireworks that end with loud bangs started going off about 1/4 mile from our place, but this time the noise lasted for about 4 long hours of restless sleep. The next morning, the Stowells reported that during the nights, from their windows (they face south, and we face north), they could see A LOT of heavy equipment demolishing a large complex of businesses that line the railroad track running between us and Cafe Bistro, where we had eaten dinner, earlier last week. The following day, and for 2-3 days after that, hundreds of protesters gathered at the demolition site, and hundreds of military, riot police and private security personnel were deployed to keep the peace. Traffic was disrupted, as the busy road that passed through the demolished business district was closed.

On about day 3, James and I took a walk along the demolition zone, as we returned from picking up a Shwarma from the Carrefour Mall. Up ahead, we could see and hear protesters gathering and chanting. We didn’t want to get involved in that, so we high tailed it across the railroad tracks, making our way through probably 90 uniformed military and security personnel, who were donning riot control masks and carrying batons. Whew! We survived that.

Once on the other side of the tracks, we headed up the short hill to the street we live on. Passing us, on the other side of the road, was a gang of lawless looking young male protesters–making their way down the hill toward the tracks. They looked like they were ready for a confrontation, which made us really nervous. Shortly after they passed us, a loud sound lasted from near the train tracks, and all the young men started running back up the street. No words were needed to communicate to each other that we both felt like we were in danger. We both picked up the pace. A boda boda driver pulled up beside us to offer us a rescue, which we appreciated, but we were almost to our corner. We turned the corner and almost instantly felt like we were out of danger. Alas, we lived to see another day.

This late night demolition is apparently the beginning of a government funded project to build a commuter rail station and rail spur between nearby Nyayo National Stadium, Kasarani Stadium and the under construction Talanta Sports City. This whole rail project will support the 2027 AFCON (African Cup of Nations) biennial soccer championships, hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. If you are a soccer fan, you can read more about it HERE.

You know AFCOM is just 23 months away, right? They are just starting demolition of buildings along the rail corridor, so they can start construction, but beyond that, there is a lot of work to be done in a very small amount of time to put rail stations and this rail spur in, and construction projects move pretty slowly around here. Without all the red tape developed countries have, perhaps they will succeed with this project.

After work, today, we walked back down to see what was happening with the demolition zone along the railroad tracks. A tall (maybe 16 foot) fence was being constructed along both sides of the rail right of way. Aluminum panels were being screwed into a grid of wood sticks, to keep people from crossing the tracks on foot and boda boda at a very popular pedestrian crossing. I’m guessing over 1000 people of all ages, going to and from work and school, will now have to walk over 2 miles around the construction zone along some very busy expressways to get to and from their daily destinations.

Did you catch my reference above to the time before we had a way to get around? Well guess what? One of us is now driving, and it’s not James. I finally checked all the boxes and met all the requirements to drive and am now cheating death frequently so we can run errands and get to stores and the temple. More about that in my next post.