There was a knock on the Hotel door – It was the Chef and he wanted to discuss the evening meal menu and to make sure he cooked it as Linda wanted. This is certainly better than the Tea Hotel, although after Linda had finished with her requests – fish – with no head, no tail – nicely filleted with rice, but no ugali and not too big a dinner he probably wished he hadn’t asked. I was easy – whatever is on the plate I eat.
I have had fish most evening as it is normally fresh and goes well with chapatti, ugali or rice. Linda has cheese most days, its amazing the Tea Hotel could never find cheese in the supermarket but our chef can. They are very friendly and keen to ensure we are enjoying our stay, although we leave by 8am and not back till 7pm in the evening.
Most days we are up at 6.30am and don’t get back to the hotel to 7pm and then there is preparation and marking to do as well as have dinner – so we don’t get to bed much before midnight – and this is a holiday!
I am teaching Evangelism at the College and it should be just for the 1st and 2nd years – but the third years and some fourth years have also turned up – I can’t help being so popular! Linda has been helping me for a couple of days – and has taken a couple of sessions. She is very good at it and they really liked her inputs and she has provided some practical examples to compliment the theology input. I have about 20 students.
The weather is wet but warm, it has been raining all day and the students are all walking around in jumpers,hats and coats – even in class. We are warm so we have only t-shirts on and they can’t believe we aren’t cold.
On Sunday we went to Liliat Church and Stanley’s church. The Service starts a 10 – so we arrived in time, but no-one else did! Some turned up about 11 – while others waited till midday or even later. The church has no electricity and so it uses a solar power to play the keyboard. The solar power is attached to a car battery and the keyboard to the battery – so they can have music. There is string down the isle – which I kept knocking my head on – and this is to make sure the ceiling and posts don’t fall down (although they only told me that afterwards) – Health and Safety would have a field day here.
The women sat on the left and the men on the right – but they didn’t tell Linda that – so she was the only woman sitting on the right with men. The service last a couple of hours, once it had started – with a couple just making it in time for the sermon. Linda said a few words – and then I preached.
After this we went to Stanley’s house for dinner. He has 10 brothers and a few sisters and they have about 20 children between them – and then and the neighbours all came to see us. It is amazing in the 21st century there are people and children who have never seen a white woman – although when the children saw Linda some hid and a few cried ( I can understand that)! They provided a meal and we then had a tour of the estate, as most of the family have their own houses there. The edge of the estate overlooks the valley from where Obama’s family comes from – so we have now met Obama’s neighbours!!
On Monday we had a meeting with a Pastor at our hotel and Linda had to go back to the hotel room to get a map. After 20 minutes she returned and said ‘I’ve forgotten what I had to go for.’ I said “How can you forget, where have you been’ She had got outside the door, seen some block from Nairobi and starting chatting with him, and then wanted one of our business cards to give him – she had totally forgotten about the map.
On Tuesday Linda went back to Stanley’s house to buy some charcoal for the college and the children saw Linda and cried again – although two of the older girls (8-10 years) had a lift in the car with Linda to their school. They had never been in a car before and kept touching Linda to see if she was real. I have been preaching at the town church on both Tuesday and Wednesday. The meeting was meant to start at 5pm – but on Tuesday no one turned up to 5.45pm, so today I didn’t turn up till then – and they had a already started.
I also went to visit the Sitotwet village and a prayer meeting at one of the students house. Most people have a picture of the President on the wall – but they had a picture of me on the wall – it was a nice big one, perhaps they were using it as wallpaper.
Linda has been busy today – she has visited 4 schools and a women's meeting at Tulwap Kipsigis AIC Widows. At the first school there was 303 children, at the second there was 852, at the third school 182 and at the final one 332 – so she has spoken to about 1669 children today. She told the first three the story of Zacchaeus and the last one about the Lost sheep. She also spoke about her job and keeping safe and at one school she had to sing a song to them – no wonder the kids cried!
Finally she spoke at the widows meeting and gave them a donation to start a self help group and are going to start knitting bags and table cloths as well as buying chickens that lay eggs and sell the eggs by the roadside. Linda has said she will be back in October for a report. So I am teaching the theory of evangelism and Linda is out there putting it into practice!
Of course Linda has taken plenty of photos – 133 so far and you can see a selection here.