Last night was my second night eating alone in my house. I have been overwhelmed with a wonderful welcome in my first 2 weeks here at RVA, having dinners with many of the RVA staff and their families. I have been able to spend some great time being reunited with the Myhres. This weekend I spent time in Nairobi with World Harvest Missionaries, and have been totally blessed by a visit from Josh. But Josh had returned to Uganda, the Myhres are out of the country and I was left in my little house alone.
I cooked up some veggies from Nairobi (the veggie selection here is wonderful!), warmed a leftover hamburger from one of the other few nights I have actually had to cook something, and sat in my little arm chair under a blanket watching a pre saved TV show on my laptop. I finished eating and the episode ended. I thought to myself, I really need to work on some lesson planning. But I was warm under my blanket (we are not out of the cold rainy season in Kijabe yet and at 7,000 ft it can get pretty chilly) I didn’t want to leave my warm haven. I was feeling lonely and like I needed to indulge myself, so I started to watch another episode. A few minutes in to the episode there was a knock at my door! I jumped up and found my neighbor Lauren (soon to be 6th grader and future student). She greeted me in her peppy, smiley way and asked if I wanted to watch “I love Lucy”. We had previously discovered that we shared this interest. I couldn’t have been more excited!
Lauren ran down to her house to pick up the show and change into her PJs and I put on my pajama pants too. Our viewing was frequently interrupted by restoking my little wood stove with Lauren’s help, the wood was green and had trouble staying lit. Not long after we started watching, there was another knock at the door. Three more of my future students playing “bigger or better” in attempts to trade their item for something in my house that was either bigger or better than their CD. I found a bulky old suitcase that had been left in my care by a previous RVA staff person, definitely fitting in the “bigger” category, and in my opinion “better” too. They continued on to another house but Lauren and I invited them back, and sure enough in about 15 minutes they seemed to have gotten as big as they wanted to go, or they were tired of the cold. So I now had 4 kiddos in my house, their chatter and company and Lucille Ball in the background made it anything but lonely. At some point in our time the power went out and I stumbled around in pitch dark for a while trying to remember where the matches were. Just as I had them lit, poof, power was back on. The kids stayed a little longer before braving the Kijabe winds back to their homes, but it was a great night the first of many more to come I'm sure!
