They Say It Takes a Village...: And I'm Back!

I am back from the States and have had an insanely busy three months! I will keep this one relatively short and sweet.

Pictures are at the bottom and videos are throughout.

1. My furlough in the States was non-stop between going to Mexico for my brother’s wedding, visiting my sister and her family, moving out of my apartment into storage and trying to see all my friends and family in between. Needless to say, I think I crammed something into every possible second I was home but it was well worth running myself ragged!

2. About a month after I returned to Kenya we took the kids to Mombasa for a trip to the Indian Ocean. Many of our children and staff had never seen the ocean before which made the trip all the more exciting. To see the looks on their faces as they played in the waves was something I can’t quite do justice in retelling. It feels so good to be a part of such a beautiful memory in their little lives.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was actually watching the Kenyan staff and their reactions to what we were doing. Many of them have lived their whole lives within a 10-hour drive to the ocean but have never gone. They were just as excited, if not more excited, than the kids. This video of one of our housemoms learning to swim tells it all!

Video of Teaching NV Staff to Swim

3. It must be wedding season because I have attending 3 weddings and 1 dowry negotiation ceremony in just the last three months. If I could sum it all up I would say that weddings in Kenya are LONG (and I mean LONG) but their colorful traditions make the 12+ hour experience well worth attending.

The day of the first wedding started with the groom’s family going to the home of the bride to retrieve her for the ceremony. Everyone in the neighborhood surrounded the house as a huge procession of honking vehicles waited outside. The female relatives of the groom sang and danced for about an hour until the bride’s family allowed them inside the gate. Once inside, the groom’s parents made their way to the front door. As the bride walked out of the house, all the women started to lay down their mashuka (clothing wraps) on the dirt ground. One after another the mashuka were placed until the bride reached the vehicle that took her to the church. At the ceremony, when the bride walked down the aisle, the bridal party shot foam guns in the air so that the foam fell on the bride as she walked past them. The ceremony was many, many hours long and filled with song/dance performances by friends and family. Even the Naomi’s Village kids sang a song. This particular wedding was a community event to say the least with hundreds of street children in attendance. That is one of the beautiful things about Kenya… everything is focused on the community so when I say that hundreds of street children attended, I mean they stayed for the entire ceremony and reception. They were treated like all other invited guests and were fed a meal and cake.

Video of Bride Retrieval Ritual

The second wedding was the wedding of our NV financial director. Hands down, my favorite part of the wedding was when the groomsmen and bridesmaids walked down the aisle. I won’t try to explain it. You just need to watch this video.

Video of Bridal Party Dance Entrance

4. We have been struggling with what to do with our NV kids concerning education for quite some time due to an extreme lack of quality schools in the area. Never did I imagine being a part of opening a school in rural Kenya would be another step in this journey but lo and behold, we opened Cornerstone Preparatory Academy on January 14^th to 31 of Kenya’s future leaders!

Kenya is ranked the 9^th country in the world for school dropouts and of the 1.3 million Kenyan children starting school every year, only 62% finish primary school and 30% actually graduate from secondary school. With the state of Kenya's education system, we knew we had to do something drastically different to give our children, and the surrounding community, a fighting chance to end this cycle.

The school’s motto is 'Change Starts from Within'. The core of Kenya’s problems will never be solved with foreign aid. Real, sustainable change must come from Kenya's own people taking ownership of implementing and enforcing that change. We desire for our students to be agents of such change. Cornerstone’s holistic approach focuses on each child as an individual as we instill dreams, honor, respect and communal responsibility. I cannot wait to see where these children go with what they have been given. Kenya will never be the same.

5. Although I missed home terribly this holiday season, I can’t think of any place I’d rather spend Christmas if home isn’t an option. Some of the highs and and not so highs of the holiday are as follows.

When I picked up Baby Evans on Christmas Eve he wrapped his arms around my neck and called me momma.
I saw my first ever goat slaughter on Christmas day. All I can say is... wow.
I made my mom's holiday hot fudge and vanilla ice cream for the kids and the result was a lot of bowl licking and chocolate smeared faces. Even though I’m on the other side of the world, I wasn’t about to miss the tradition of making that delicacy during the holidays!
We had our first ever broken bone on Christmas Eve when little Kimberly fell and broke her wrist. Needless to say, her cast was the talk of the village!
Spending the holidays with the kids reminded me what the true excitement of a child feels like. And that’s a good feeling to have.