I promise I don't believe in witchcraft...

Lauren speaking… first off… WE’RE IN KENYA!! It still hasn’t quite sunk in. Even though everything is very different here, the fact that we’re more than 14 hours of flying away hasn’t quite clicked. We’ve all really enjoyed starting to try and adjust to the culture, but it will definitely take a long time to stop looking and pointing at things.

This morning we went to downtown Nairobi, and it was amazing to see the floods of people everywhere… literally everywhere.. Pamella, Jacob, and Beth (3 LIA staff members/volunteers) took us to the markets downtown to stock our cabinets full of yummy yummy Kenyan food. Praise the Lord that Holly and Courtney are on the trip, because they both really enjoy cooking. If I were in charge of cooking, we would be eating a lot of Kenyan PB+J’s… but we have been eating in style for the past few days. Today was one where I was completely out of my comfort zone, first because I was in Kenya (obviously) and secondly b/c I don’t cook. But it was a good day of learning more about the culture all around…

OK… I realize I’m not very good at blogging b/c I keep getting off topic. Anyway, today we went to downtown Nairobi and here are a few things we learned:
1. We would never, ever be capable of driving in Nairobi. It’s craziness. Apparently rear ending someone here isn’t nearly as big of a deal as it is in the states. And if you “break” a traffic violation (which I don’t really know how it’s possible to determine), the cops will jump in your car with you and drive your car around to “guilt trip” you for as long as they see fit.
2. While they do have a few “supermarkets”, most of the stores downtown are very small with a few select items. There are also several open air markets to get vegetables, fruits, etc.
3. Oranges in Kenya are not orange. They are green..
4.. The most embarassing thing I learned today was that I looked like I believed in witchcraft all day. I have a toe ring and an anklet on my left foot/ankle. Today, Beth asked me what they meant. I told her that they meant absolutely nothing. She proceeded to inform me that, in Africa, you only wore jewelry on your feet if you were trying to keep yourself from being bewitched, and that if I told someone about Jesus while wearing such items on my feet that they would be very confused b/c they would think that I believed in witchcraft. So, the rest of the morning while walking around in my witchcraft jewelry I felt a little awkward… but needless to say I took them off when I got back to the condo and now my feet are witchcraft free.

If I could, I would love to write for 4 more hours and tell of all the things we are learning and seeing and experiencing here, but unfortunately, that is all that I can report at this point. If you could be praying that we would be as helpful as possible even though we really don’t know anything that’s going on, that would be awesome. I don’t really know how to end this post, if I knew how to say “bye” in Kiswahili I would…

P.s. I write really long blog posts apparently. Sorry.