Tuesday, July 11.
Here's another day at BCEA. But it's not the same as before, because today will be the first day with a full day of classes. Well, I'm not taking classes, but the students are. We don't have classes Friday afternoons and Mondays because some of the students minister at churches back home on Sundays, so they need time to travel.
The day starts at 5:30AM for early morning prayer. We meet at the main chapel, which is about a minute walk from my room. This morning was my second time going, and I find it quite nice to start my day in the Word and prayer... That's what I should have been doing in college, but it's much easier here because all students are required to go. Hopefully I will be disciplined to start my day with reading the Scripture and prayer.
Wednesday, July 12.
I started writing yesterday's entry in the morning, but it was a busy day, and I didn't get to finish. Starting yesterday, I've been "working" in the school office. I say "working" because I don't really do anything school related. I just sit here and do my own thing (e.g. writing my journal). Today I'm in the office again. Since I had nothing to do, yesterday Eben asked me to go with him to buy some sand for some construction project at the school. We took a pickup truck, and they dumped about a 1 ton of sand in the back using a bulldozer. When we came back, Richard approached us and told us about one of the students who passed out the night before in the bathroom. His name is Paul, and he is in his 40's. He doesn't know how long he had been out, but he must have had a stroke, because one side of his body was aching. Mrs. Kim had a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope, so I went to Paul's room, and took his blood pressure. He had a really high BP (160/100), so Richard and Pastor Kiarie took him to the hospital. Good thing I learned how to take BP when I was in FISH (Fellowship of International Service and Health). Maybe I'm not useless after all.
Yesterday after school, the students and faculty played some volleyball together in the school field. I hadn't played volleyball since... I can't even remember, but I did better than I thought I could.
It's actually quite cold right now. July is the coldest month of the year. It's been cloudy everyday that I've been here. It even rains right before dawn. But I'm told that the rest of the months are sunny and warm. I can't wait till August...
I might be going to Masai next week to volunteer at a clinic there. BCEA established an elementary school, a secondary school, and a clinic in Masai. They've handed them over to the government for them to use, but the partnership is still there. A missionary from Singapore works there as a nurse, and she'll be coming here on Friday. Rev. Kim will talk with her then if I could work with her. I would be thrilled to go and volunteer at the clinic. If I go, I'll probably be there for about a month. They say that the environment is not as nice as here, and I won't have any internet access while I'm there. That means I'll have to finish my med school application before I leave... The problem is that if I go, I'll most likely be leaving this weekend. So I really don't have much time... I guess I'll have to get working then.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Doxa in Kenya: A 22-year old baby
Monday, July 10.
I'm not going to go into details about each day here as I did before. Well, I guess there's no need to. Now that I've been living here for 3 days things are beginning to repeat itself (so I don't have to write about the same thing every time it happens).
So, let me talk about my living situation. I'm staying in one of the houses that teachers live in. I'm on the second floor, temporarily sharing an apartment with Richard Tiu, a missionary from the Philippines. I have my own room for now, but in a week or so I'll be living in my own apartment right next door (same building). Right now my apartment-to-be is filled with luggage that came with a missionary team from London (they are in Tanzania now, I'll talk about that some other time). The building is on campus, which is fenced and gated all around.
On my first day here, Rev. Kim, his daughter HaYoung, Richard, and I went out to grocery shopping. We went to a mall called Nakumatt. Apparently it's one of the nicest mall in Eastern Africa, but it's nothing like any of the malls in the States. When I got my currency exchanged, it was 71.50 Kenyan Shillings to a dollar. But interestingly they exchange $100 and $50 bills printed in 1996 and 1999 at 2 shillings lower than other bills. Someone later told me that about 60% of the large bills are counterfeits, thanks to North Korea. (Really, thanks Kim Jong Il or whoever it was, I lost KSH200 because of you!)
I need to learn how to buy groceries more effectively. First, I need to be able to quickly divide every price tag by 70, then learn where things are, what brands are "good" (or edible), how to choose fruits/veggies, and how not to get ripped-off. I never did much grocery shopping in the US, so it's hard for me to tell if something is relatively expensive or cheap.
I'm supposed to take care of my own food, but others have been helping me a lot. For breakfast, I just eat some cereal with yogurt, banana, and honey, but for lunch, Richard cooks rice and some simple food for both of us, and for dinner, I'd been invited over to people's houses. There's another Korean missionary family besides the Kims. Eben Yoon, his wife, and their daughter HaEun. HaEun is the cutest and smartest 2-year old I've ever seen. Last night, the Yoons took me out to dinner at Jambo Grill where we had some goat meat, goat liver, and chicken. It took one whole hour to prepare the food... But it was all worth it. The Yoons live in the apartment below mine.
For some reason, it's taking a while for me to adjust to the sleeping condition. Most likely I'm still jetlagged. The first couple nights I woke during the middle of the night three or four times because I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Last night I only woke up once, so I think I'm making progress. I'm sleeping under a mosquito net, but I haven't seen a single mosquito yet. Right now the season is dry and cool, so mosquitoes aren't around.
Kenyan coffee is amazing... On my first day, I went to a café called Java House, and had some iced coffee. They have wireless internet set up, but when I went, their ISP was down, so I couldn't go online.
Speaking of internet, the way I'm getting internet is by dialing through a wireless phone. It's not a cell phone, but it looks like a regular phone but uses antenna to make calls. I can only get 115kbps (twice the speed of dial-up), and only one person can use it at a time, so I don't get to go online very often. When I do, everything takes forever... I miss broadband. If only I had a car and a license, maybe I could drive myself to an internet café downtown and get fast but inexpensive internet. But what we have here is fast enough for e-mails, chats, and voice chats, but not video chat...
That's another thing I need to do: get a driving license. I also need to learn how to drive stick, because most of the cars here are manual. Err, if only I had bought international license before I came... That was my mistake. But hopefully I can get a permit here since I brought my California license.
Living here, I feel like I'm a baby all over again. I can't go anywhere outside campus, I can't get internet whenever I want... It's like I've lost my limbs, and I can't do anything by myself. I feel so dependent. I guess I was never independent, but I didn't realize how much I depended on others and different things while I lived in the US. I also feel quite useless. Yeah, so what if I graduated from UCLA with summa cum laude in biophysics? It means nothing here. So what if I speak Japanese? I'm not on a mission trip to Japan like I was two years ago. I'm just an ordinary person, just an overgrown baby.
Some people may call me foolish. They might say, "Why in the world did you go to Kenya then?" To be honest, I don't know what for yet, but I just know that I'm here because God called me here. I feel weak and useless, but I'm making myself available to what God has called me to. Only God knows what He's going to do with me, and He will reveal them to me in His time. I need to be patient.
Speaking of feeling weak, I also feel physically weak. I noticed that I start breathing heavily when I climb up stairs. It's almost like when I had asthma up to 4th grade. I just found out that it's because of the high altitude. Oxygen level is a bit lower than what I'm used to. Apparently, it's also because of the high altitude that there aren't any mosquitoes around here. The altitude is about 1.6km (1 mile or 5280ft) here.
I figured I have to get used to the low oxygen level, so I decided to pickup basketball. If you know me, you know that I'm not good with any type of sports, especially those involving a ball. Anyway, Brother Eben taught me how to play for about an hour or so. I think I'll be practicing more in the future.
We call each other "brother" here. I'm fine being called brother, but I'm still not used to calling them brothers yet, especially since they are older. I just call them by their names.
I wanted to feel useful, so I decided to cook rice for Richard and me tonight. But as soon as I was about to start, the power went out... Richard says we'll just have to wait, it'll be back in a few minutes... Or an hour. I guess we never know what happens.
Taking a shower has been interesting. Our (Richard and I) apartment is on the second floor, but the bathroom is on the third floor. So the water pressure is very low up there. So when many people are using the water on the first floor (or in the dorms) for taking showers and such, we don't get any water for the shower or the toilet. (Oh! The power's back! I'm going to go cook some rice now...)
Wow... That was some meal. We had rice, eggplant dipped in eggs, shrimp sautéed with garlic and ginger, corn cream soup (I brought packets from the US), seaweed, and papaya. I feel a bit spoiled (that I'm eating such good meals in Africa), but then it took a lot of work and time cooking. I suppose I'm learning to become more independent (or at least how to cook). I really didn't expect to eat so well here. Before I came, I thought I would be just eating with the students (who don't get to eat all that much, from what I heard). I also didn't expect to have my own room, and didn't even imagine I would have my own apartment! I thought I would be living in the dorms with the students. I really don't deserve such treatment... I was ready and willing to just rough it. But I'm sure I'll get a chance to do that as well.
Oh yeah, about shower. Thankfully, we have a water heater so I can shower in warm water, but we have to turn on the heater at least 45 minutes before you want to take a shower. Since the water pressure isn't very reliable, we collect the warm water in a bucket, and use it if the water stops in the middle of soaping up.
When resources are scarce, you start thinking of ways to conserve the resource, minimize cost, and be more effective. I'm beginning to think that way about many things. You really don't realize how much you're wasting until you don't have much.
This entry is already long, and it's getting late (It's 8PM, and I started writing this morning. Of course I wasn't writing the whole time).
I'm not going to go into details about each day here as I did before. Well, I guess there's no need to. Now that I've been living here for 3 days things are beginning to repeat itself (so I don't have to write about the same thing every time it happens).
So, let me talk about my living situation. I'm staying in one of the houses that teachers live in. I'm on the second floor, temporarily sharing an apartment with Richard Tiu, a missionary from the Philippines. I have my own room for now, but in a week or so I'll be living in my own apartment right next door (same building). Right now my apartment-to-be is filled with luggage that came with a missionary team from London (they are in Tanzania now, I'll talk about that some other time). The building is on campus, which is fenced and gated all around.
On my first day here, Rev. Kim, his daughter HaYoung, Richard, and I went out to grocery shopping. We went to a mall called Nakumatt. Apparently it's one of the nicest mall in Eastern Africa, but it's nothing like any of the malls in the States. When I got my currency exchanged, it was 71.50 Kenyan Shillings to a dollar. But interestingly they exchange $100 and $50 bills printed in 1996 and 1999 at 2 shillings lower than other bills. Someone later told me that about 60% of the large bills are counterfeits, thanks to North Korea. (Really, thanks Kim Jong Il or whoever it was, I lost KSH200 because of you!)
I need to learn how to buy groceries more effectively. First, I need to be able to quickly divide every price tag by 70, then learn where things are, what brands are "good" (or edible), how to choose fruits/veggies, and how not to get ripped-off. I never did much grocery shopping in the US, so it's hard for me to tell if something is relatively expensive or cheap.
I'm supposed to take care of my own food, but others have been helping me a lot. For breakfast, I just eat some cereal with yogurt, banana, and honey, but for lunch, Richard cooks rice and some simple food for both of us, and for dinner, I'd been invited over to people's houses. There's another Korean missionary family besides the Kims. Eben Yoon, his wife, and their daughter HaEun. HaEun is the cutest and smartest 2-year old I've ever seen. Last night, the Yoons took me out to dinner at Jambo Grill where we had some goat meat, goat liver, and chicken. It took one whole hour to prepare the food... But it was all worth it. The Yoons live in the apartment below mine.
For some reason, it's taking a while for me to adjust to the sleeping condition. Most likely I'm still jetlagged. The first couple nights I woke during the middle of the night three or four times because I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Last night I only woke up once, so I think I'm making progress. I'm sleeping under a mosquito net, but I haven't seen a single mosquito yet. Right now the season is dry and cool, so mosquitoes aren't around.
Kenyan coffee is amazing... On my first day, I went to a café called Java House, and had some iced coffee. They have wireless internet set up, but when I went, their ISP was down, so I couldn't go online.
Speaking of internet, the way I'm getting internet is by dialing through a wireless phone. It's not a cell phone, but it looks like a regular phone but uses antenna to make calls. I can only get 115kbps (twice the speed of dial-up), and only one person can use it at a time, so I don't get to go online very often. When I do, everything takes forever... I miss broadband. If only I had a car and a license, maybe I could drive myself to an internet café downtown and get fast but inexpensive internet. But what we have here is fast enough for e-mails, chats, and voice chats, but not video chat...
That's another thing I need to do: get a driving license. I also need to learn how to drive stick, because most of the cars here are manual. Err, if only I had bought international license before I came... That was my mistake. But hopefully I can get a permit here since I brought my California license.
Living here, I feel like I'm a baby all over again. I can't go anywhere outside campus, I can't get internet whenever I want... It's like I've lost my limbs, and I can't do anything by myself. I feel so dependent. I guess I was never independent, but I didn't realize how much I depended on others and different things while I lived in the US. I also feel quite useless. Yeah, so what if I graduated from UCLA with summa cum laude in biophysics? It means nothing here. So what if I speak Japanese? I'm not on a mission trip to Japan like I was two years ago. I'm just an ordinary person, just an overgrown baby.
Some people may call me foolish. They might say, "Why in the world did you go to Kenya then?" To be honest, I don't know what for yet, but I just know that I'm here because God called me here. I feel weak and useless, but I'm making myself available to what God has called me to. Only God knows what He's going to do with me, and He will reveal them to me in His time. I need to be patient.
Speaking of feeling weak, I also feel physically weak. I noticed that I start breathing heavily when I climb up stairs. It's almost like when I had asthma up to 4th grade. I just found out that it's because of the high altitude. Oxygen level is a bit lower than what I'm used to. Apparently, it's also because of the high altitude that there aren't any mosquitoes around here. The altitude is about 1.6km (1 mile or 5280ft) here.
I figured I have to get used to the low oxygen level, so I decided to pickup basketball. If you know me, you know that I'm not good with any type of sports, especially those involving a ball. Anyway, Brother Eben taught me how to play for about an hour or so. I think I'll be practicing more in the future.
We call each other "brother" here. I'm fine being called brother, but I'm still not used to calling them brothers yet, especially since they are older. I just call them by their names.
I wanted to feel useful, so I decided to cook rice for Richard and me tonight. But as soon as I was about to start, the power went out... Richard says we'll just have to wait, it'll be back in a few minutes... Or an hour. I guess we never know what happens.
Taking a shower has been interesting. Our (Richard and I) apartment is on the second floor, but the bathroom is on the third floor. So the water pressure is very low up there. So when many people are using the water on the first floor (or in the dorms) for taking showers and such, we don't get any water for the shower or the toilet. (Oh! The power's back! I'm going to go cook some rice now...)
Wow... That was some meal. We had rice, eggplant dipped in eggs, shrimp sautéed with garlic and ginger, corn cream soup (I brought packets from the US), seaweed, and papaya. I feel a bit spoiled (that I'm eating such good meals in Africa), but then it took a lot of work and time cooking. I suppose I'm learning to become more independent (or at least how to cook). I really didn't expect to eat so well here. Before I came, I thought I would be just eating with the students (who don't get to eat all that much, from what I heard). I also didn't expect to have my own room, and didn't even imagine I would have my own apartment! I thought I would be living in the dorms with the students. I really don't deserve such treatment... I was ready and willing to just rough it. But I'm sure I'll get a chance to do that as well.
Oh yeah, about shower. Thankfully, we have a water heater so I can shower in warm water, but we have to turn on the heater at least 45 minutes before you want to take a shower. Since the water pressure isn't very reliable, we collect the warm water in a bucket, and use it if the water stops in the middle of soaping up.
When resources are scarce, you start thinking of ways to conserve the resource, minimize cost, and be more effective. I'm beginning to think that way about many things. You really don't realize how much you're wasting until you don't have much.
This entry is already long, and it's getting late (It's 8PM, and I started writing this morning. Of course I wasn't writing the whole time).
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