Only in Kenya...
My goodness, I love this place. And I love all the daily experiences that cause me to think, “Wow, only in Kenya.” Let me share my two favorite examples of this from the past few days.
First of all, only in Kenya would the taxi seatbelt eat through your skirt. Let me explain. My friend Juli (another ELI staffer) and I took a matatu (Kenyan taxi) down to Nairobi on Monday to pick up the team that was arriving. We were chatting away during the drive when all of a sudden, I looked down at my brown skirt and realized that the top of it was turning bright pink. “Juli, my skirt is changing colors!” I exclaimed. We both started cracking up at the random occurrence. Neither of us could figure out why my skirt was turning pink. The other 12 people in the matatu found the whole situation quite amusing as well. We thought it might be from my seatbelt, but when we looked at it, there was nothing on it, and it definitely wasn’t pink. Juli decided to test it anyway. She rubbed the seatbelt on a lower part of my skirt that was still brown, and sure enough, that section turned pink. Now we were really laughing. She tried the seatbelt on her skirt (which was red), and to our delight, it turned BLUE! Both of us were crying because we were laughing so hard. Our skirts were already ruined, so we decided to decorate them all over so at least the bright pink and blue would be distributed evenly throughout them and look like part of the design. We became quite the fashion designers and created some very interesting tie-die skirts.
We arrived in Nairobi and began to attend to the errands we needed to run there. We had been walking around for about a half and hour when I realized that I needed to turn my skirt back around. (I had put the back in the front so that I could decorate the back of it). Now I realized that I had never switched it back to the right direction. As I turned the skirt around, to my horror, I found two huge holes in what I had been wearing as the “back” of my skirt. Whatever had dyed my skirt, had now completely eaten through it!!! And these weren’t small holes- this was like all of Nairobi had been seeing large sections of my underwear as I had been walking around for the past 30 minutes. “Julie, my skirt!” I yelled. When she saw the holes, she almost fell on the ground she was laughing so hard! Now neither of us could stop the tears because we were laughing so uncontrollably. The worst part was that her friend Bernanrd then arrived to greet us, and I had to cover myself with one hand, and try to greet him with the other hand, all while trying to suppress my laughter enough to actually be able to talk. Praise the Lord that Juli had an extra skirt with her and I was finally able to change out of my very inappropriate one. I don’t know what was on that seatbelt- it must have been some type of bleach or battery acid. But wow, did it provide for an eventful day!! I must say that I think this is one of the strangest and funniest things that has ever happened to me. Only in Kenya…
Second, only in Kenya would the lights go out in the middle of a seminar, resulting in spontaneous worship in the pitch dark. We were holding a night meeting for the 30 Kenyan alumni students from our 6-month training program. Our director, David Tarus, was speaking about AIDS and the testing that would be offered in the morning, when our solar energy ran out and the lights went out. The room was completely dark- much darker than the dark of America where there always seems to still be some type of light source shining some light into the room. The room erupted into the most beautiful, accapella worship ever. What a sacred time of heartfelt worship in the stillness and darkness of the night. The staff eventually got a generator started and the lights came back on, but I will forever treasure those 5-10 minutes of worship in the dark. When the lights resumed, David told us all, “You know, it’s no problem if the lights go off. This just gives us another opportunity to praise God. We get to be like Paul and Silas in the dark dungeon.” It’s moments and lessons like these that I praise God for every day. Only in Kenya… There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now.
First of all, only in Kenya would the taxi seatbelt eat through your skirt. Let me explain. My friend Juli (another ELI staffer) and I took a matatu (Kenyan taxi) down to Nairobi on Monday to pick up the team that was arriving. We were chatting away during the drive when all of a sudden, I looked down at my brown skirt and realized that the top of it was turning bright pink. “Juli, my skirt is changing colors!” I exclaimed. We both started cracking up at the random occurrence. Neither of us could figure out why my skirt was turning pink. The other 12 people in the matatu found the whole situation quite amusing as well. We thought it might be from my seatbelt, but when we looked at it, there was nothing on it, and it definitely wasn’t pink. Juli decided to test it anyway. She rubbed the seatbelt on a lower part of my skirt that was still brown, and sure enough, that section turned pink. Now we were really laughing. She tried the seatbelt on her skirt (which was red), and to our delight, it turned BLUE! Both of us were crying because we were laughing so hard. Our skirts were already ruined, so we decided to decorate them all over so at least the bright pink and blue would be distributed evenly throughout them and look like part of the design. We became quite the fashion designers and created some very interesting tie-die skirts.
We arrived in Nairobi and began to attend to the errands we needed to run there. We had been walking around for about a half and hour when I realized that I needed to turn my skirt back around. (I had put the back in the front so that I could decorate the back of it). Now I realized that I had never switched it back to the right direction. As I turned the skirt around, to my horror, I found two huge holes in what I had been wearing as the “back” of my skirt. Whatever had dyed my skirt, had now completely eaten through it!!! And these weren’t small holes- this was like all of Nairobi had been seeing large sections of my underwear as I had been walking around for the past 30 minutes. “Julie, my skirt!” I yelled. When she saw the holes, she almost fell on the ground she was laughing so hard! Now neither of us could stop the tears because we were laughing so uncontrollably. The worst part was that her friend Bernanrd then arrived to greet us, and I had to cover myself with one hand, and try to greet him with the other hand, all while trying to suppress my laughter enough to actually be able to talk. Praise the Lord that Juli had an extra skirt with her and I was finally able to change out of my very inappropriate one. I don’t know what was on that seatbelt- it must have been some type of bleach or battery acid. But wow, did it provide for an eventful day!! I must say that I think this is one of the strangest and funniest things that has ever happened to me. Only in Kenya…
Second, only in Kenya would the lights go out in the middle of a seminar, resulting in spontaneous worship in the pitch dark. We were holding a night meeting for the 30 Kenyan alumni students from our 6-month training program. Our director, David Tarus, was speaking about AIDS and the testing that would be offered in the morning, when our solar energy ran out and the lights went out. The room was completely dark- much darker than the dark of America where there always seems to still be some type of light source shining some light into the room. The room erupted into the most beautiful, accapella worship ever. What a sacred time of heartfelt worship in the stillness and darkness of the night. The staff eventually got a generator started and the lights came back on, but I will forever treasure those 5-10 minutes of worship in the dark. When the lights resumed, David told us all, “You know, it’s no problem if the lights go off. This just gives us another opportunity to praise God. We get to be like Paul and Silas in the dark dungeon.” It’s moments and lessons like these that I praise God for every day. Only in Kenya… There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now.
posted by Kierra Higgins at 7:59 AM
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