It's a Small World After All . . .

Hello, this is Julie (Marc's sister) here. Marc and Kylie haven't had internet access for 4 days now, but Kylie had already written this up as a draft, so they asked me (via the phone) to post it. Scads of pictures aren't included, but they will post them when their internet is up again (sporadic though it is).
Enjoy!

Evidence . . .
1. Our next door neighbour here in Kapsowar is from Calgary (she has been here for 20 years) and some of her biggest supporters are friends of Marc’s from Pioneer Ranch Camps in Sundre. Apparently they even e-mailed Marc last year that he should go to Kapsowar but we weren’t seriously looking at where we wanted to go yet so we don’t remember the e-mail. Marc’s parents connected with them last weekend in Sundre and they were shocked to find out we made it to Kapsowar through another route. (Marc’s cousin Rob who was here two years ago.)

2. I can still participate in March Madness from Kenya. I absolutely love NCAA basketball and even though I can’t watch it from here (this is really the only TV I am missing) I still entered the pool at my dad’s school. We don’t have a printer here so I copied the brackets onto a piece of cardboard. I picked Kansas to win based on my highly researched information. (Which consisted of me asking Marc – Kansas or Ohio?) Go Kansas Go!
3. Someone gave me a Canadian apron here. I am not completely sure yet where it is from (I wish my Swahili was better) but I love it. A little piece of home here.


4. There are a lot of bugs here that are really gross. This is not evidence that it is a small world because we don’t have these bugs in Canada but they are small and live in the world so I will show you some pictures of what I have been having to kill in the last couple days. Yuck!


5. Lastly, the best example of how small the world is . . . Last night we attended a birthday party for a man named Ajack.

He is from the Sudan and is working here in Kapsowar with Samaritan’s Purse under the Sudanese Doctor Re-integration Project. (Marc will post more about this later, he will be teaching some of the students as they come through and is very excited about this.) Ajack was born in the Sudan, then was in Cuba for much of his life and came to Canada in 2001. He lived in Edmonton until 2005 when he became involved in this project. Marc and I were talking with him last night and when we found out he had lived in Edmonton Marc asked if he attended church there. Turns out he did and he attended Central Baptist Church where my former youth pastor and his wife (Doug and Roxy) are now pastors. I asked if he knew Doug and he popped up and left his party. He came back with a picture of him and Doug and some of his fellow classmates. What a small world!!!!
Here is a picture of Ajack (on the left) and Doug (second from the right.) We had a wonderful conversation about Edmonton after and the winters in Canada. Ajack gave a speech afterwards about how he came to Kapsowar. What an amazing story he has and what a privilege it was to attend his birthday party!

Off to observe an English class at the girl’s high school and then I start this afternoon as the secretary for the hospital. (!!!???!!!) Wish me luck. (Sorry for the small pictures that's all I can upload right now.)

kapsowar

our house is beside the red roof between the tall trees in the top right of this picture

as previously mentioned we have arrived safely in kapsowar, kenya. it is a small village on the western edge of kenya, just past the great rift valley and 60 km from the ugandan border. the local people are called the marakwet, a part of a larger cultural group that speaks kalenjin. swahili is the local trade tongue and people who have completed high school can usually speak some english. the marakwet are an agricultural people and the hills around kapsowar are lined with terraced fields of maize and millet. kapsowar is ~8000 feet elevation which provides a very mild climate. so far it has been ~27 C every day and 12-15 C every night. it is extremely sunny but we have not been burnt yet.

our house here is much nicer than we expected and even more than we had hoped for. it is a very simple, small, brick and cement house with 3 small bedrooms, a nice little kitchen, an indoor toilet and a shower that actually has hot water! as posted previously, the view is amazing. the kitchen windows and the back door look out onto a steep valley that runs all the way to the rift valley. right now the walls are bare, but our fridge (yes we even have a small fridge!) and our wardrobe door are covered with pictures from home. many of those who read this blog are represented there. we are planning to pick up some wall hangings soon and then we will feel more moved in.



i started working for real in the hospital today after a 1 day orientation (read - a brief but comprehensive tour followed by me wandering around talking to whoever i ran into). it is a little overwhelming learning a new medical system, different drugs, different illness and presentations and 2 languages (kalenjin and swahili) all at the same time, but the hospital moves quite slowly compared to the ERs i have become used to, so i feel like i will have had time to grapple with things. some things really scare me, such as obstetrics (if a woman actually comes to the hospital there is most likely a problem) and peds (same deal, the kids are usually brought in after they have been sick for a week and are comatose or close to it) but i will not have to deal with those until i am on call for the first time next week. there are 3 other general practitioners here and one surgeon but a different one of the GPs (or medical officers in the case of the 2 kenyan docs) will be almost always be on holidays while we are here so i will be doing 1 in 3 call and working every 3rd weekend. the other western doc is a missionary from the US who is here with his wife and 2 fantastic daughters (5 + 3). they had us over for supper last night and i think we will become very good friends. the other 2 docs are both kenyan, 1 male and 1 female... i have just started to get to know them but they are both very friendly and quite knowledgable. the medical director of the hospital is also from the US and his family has been quite welcoming as well.

kylie has been busy already setting up our house and getting to know our surroundings. today she walked an hour to visit an orphanage outside the village. it seems that she will have lots to keep her busy; she has already volunteered to run a day program for the local primary school kids out of the local library (i have not yet seen it, but kylie was impressed with their small collection) and has established several connections with local schools and is looking at doing some much needed organization at the hospital. if she is not careful she will be busier than me!

i suppose that is enough news for now. there is much more to tell but i know how intimidating big blocks of text can be to the multimedia generation. other than really missing niko we are doing about as well as could be expected. i will try to put up some pics of the hospital and surrounding area soon, but our internet connection has been almost nonexistent thus far. there has been one time since we have arrived that we got speeds in the kB/sec range, but often it does not work at all and if it does the data trickles in at 50-500 B/sec. aargh! often our mail program will identify 4 new emails but disconnect after downloading half of the first one. apparently this is currently a nationwide problem, so hopefully it gets fixed soon!

we're here!

the view out our back door

soest to nairobi

we have now arrived in nairobi safely with all our luggage intact and accounted for. after being set up for possible failure i was quite happy when we got our 3 month visas with no problem and got our boxes of medications and supplies through customs with almost no hassle. but perhaps i should start from the beginning, or if not the beginning then at least where we left off last time.

after our quick tour of friesland we headed to soest near amersfoort where we stayed 2 nights with our friend arjan's parents, rob and esther.

we had a great time visiting with them and enjoying their hospitality. rob picked us up off the street when we were wandering around soest after getting off at the wrong train stop and i had some serious deja vu. at one point i mentioned to rob that i was looking for computer speakers and 15 min later he came to me with the results of his internet searchs and a couple flyers and a tip about a discount computer retailer in the area. that is not all though, he also ferried us around in our search for both speakers and chocolate chips. we have learned that chocolate chips are very difficult to find in holland b/c nobody bakes. most people like cookies but they are always storebought. i did however buy some more dark chocolate to add to my stash.

we also had some great talks with esther over meals and in the evenings. she is a night owl like me.
those of you who where friends with arjan at UofL will be happy to know that he is doing well. we visited his flat which was tastefully decorated in an international theme with pieces of art from yemen and from his year in israel working in a home for handicapped children. canadians will be gratified to know that a haida painting and a haida paddle were central pieces in his collection. we had a great time looking at pictures and hearing stories of his travels through the middleast. he is still commuting 1 hour each way to rotterdam, but can handle it b/c of his swanky new renault. see anything missing in this picture?


wait for it...


wait for it...

that's right, no ignition... just a funky little black card for sliding into a little plastic invagination. it also unlocks the doors if you walk within 10 feet of the car.

we would have loved to stay much longer but our schedule was tight so rob drove us to the train station and off we went to schipol to reclaim our lost luggage, pack our bags and head to nairobi. everything proceeded quite smoothly and soon we found ourselves exiting the airport through customs.

when the customs agent found out that our big white boxes were full of medications she gave me a stern look and said something like "i am sorry sir, but only physicians are allowed to bring medications into the country." with a grin i produced my licentiate of the medical council of canada card, impressively embossed with an authoritative gold coat of arms and fancy signatures and the like. i remember thinking when i got it in the mail, "that's a waste of money, what will i ever do with a fancy card that says i'm a doctor?" when the agent called her superior over i produced the rest of our paperwork and we were ushered through the gate with nary a search and not a piece of luggage unpacked. we were met at the airport by a driver from SP, which made things a lot easier than the last time we were in africa and even easier than navigating the public transport of holland.

now we are safely in nairobi and will hop on a plane tomorrow morning to take us to eldoret where we will drive the last leg of our journey to kapsowar. yesterday we went with the medical director of kapsowar hospital to purchase a cell phone and modem and other supplies for our move. we had a good intro to africa while waiting over 3 hours to get our modem's card activated. we now have internet access wherever we can get cell phone reception. it is slow and expensive and apparently unreliable but still pretty amazing. maybe when we get to kapsowar i will try posting to our blog from the top of a mountain.

today we had a leisurely walk around nairobi picking up some last minute items. here are some local signs that exemplify truth in advertising, kenya style:

everything in africa is late, at least these guys are honest.

truth in advertising gone too far?


and finally my personal favourite (note the volvo wagon!); perhaps they are such good mechanics that they render themselves unnecessary?

tzum tzum

kylie left it to me to describe our time in friesland but unfortunately we are quickly running out of time here in holland with a free fast internet connection. i will just put up some pictures for now and a brief description and hopefully talk about it more later.

as kylie mentioned we stayed in a beautiful little hotel above a bustling square in franeker, friesland. my family is from this area and many of them came from a small town a few km outside of franeker called Tzum (pronounced "Choom" with a little bit of Z sound in the beginning - i dont think we ever got it right). my favourite part of our trip thus far was walking around this tiny town and seeing where my grandfather grew up. you could walk around the whole town in 5 minutes and for businesses it had only a bakery and a gas station which were both closed, but it had this amazing centuries old protestant church with an absurdly tall spire which disappeared into the mist. my family name is not a common one outside friesland but in Tzum's cemetary about a fifth of all the graves were related to me. we found my great grandparents as well as great uncles and aunts and other semirelations. walking around this old cemetary in the myst and seeing my name on all sides (as well as on license plates on parked cars) and seeing the fields my grandfather worked and the paths he walked as a child had a big impact on me and it was difficult to leave the town as we walked to another nearby town which was also populated by relatives.

in franeker we found a street named after one of my academic ancestors. not a particularly important straat, but a straat nonetheless.


after touring tzum and hitzum we walked back to franeker on a path through the fields and pastures and then took the train to haarlingen, a coastal town in friesland (btw amber, dont be fooled by all that german/paraguay nonsense, this province is where your husband is REALLY from). friesland is a beautiful area and the towns are amazing... all old bricks, lovely bridges and ancient churches. also very clean and super friendly. we felt very at home. a good grounding experience before going on to new things.

Friesland, Food, Footwear, Falls, Friends and Family

Try and beat that title! I could have also added Franeker but since it is in Friesland I thought it would be a bit excessive. This is going to be a double post. I believe this is the first time that Marc and I have both authored a post together. I will do the first four F's and he will then add in the last two with some details about the first one. Are you ready?????

Friesland
Marc's ancestors are from the land of Friesland in northern Holland. We travelled to this province on Saturday and then went to some smaller towns yesterday. We stayed in the town of Franeker and headed out from there. Franeker was a welcome break from the busyness of Amsterdam. It is a wonderful small city with canals and farms and sheep. Just how you would picture Holland to look. Everyone was so friendly and said hello as we were walking around town. There were also a lot of dogs in Friesland, although none of them looked like Niko. I did notice a sheep looking quite Nikoesque though when it laid it's head down to eat grass. A stretch maybe but it really did look like Niko.

On the train to Franeker:
Our hotel room (just above a little French restaurant)
Marc sticking his head out our hotel window:

A church in Franeker:



Food

We have (AHHHH I can't get the bold off) been enjoying the food here very much and have gotten away with only buying dinner. Breakfast is usually provided at the hotels here and we have managed to make that into a lunch as well. Breakfast here usually consists of bread, raisin buns, meat, cheese, (think cold cuts) fruit, cereal, yogurt and coffee. At our hotel in Amsterdam Marc managed to stuff a hard boiled egg, some bread, buns, meat and cheese into the cargo pockets of his pants and we would eat that for lunch. Most days it was really tasty but the other day on the train we had a kiwi in the lunch bag and it mushed all over our food. I still ate kiwi mush bun. Those of you who know me know that this is quite a feat. Here is a picture of Marc with our leftover breakfast packed as a lunch at our hotel in Franeker. We weren't as subtle with the lunch stealing there but hey what do you expect when you give two people half a loaf of bread. ;)


We ate at the restaurant below our hotel in Franeker on Saturday evening. It was a French/Dutch restaurant (Fruntch??) and we thought that the serving sizes would be fairly small. We ordered a soup to start (mmmm delicious) and went a little crazy with the bread. Then our meal came. This is what was left over. (There is also half my pasta under my napkin.) Again, those of you who know Marc and his famous (or infamous) appetite will be surprised that he could not finish much of his meal. He did tell the waiter he was upset that he couldn't make a meat sandwich the next day because we didn't have a fridge to store our left over food. The waiter looked at us quite puzzled and exclaimed - "But we are a restaurant, we have a very large fridge, you are staying here, we will keep your food!" So Marc got his meat sandwich after all. (and one less sandwich to steal!)

Okay no more bold. Footwear
When we were leaving Chilliwack I packed a box of clothes that I would be able to wear in Amsterdam and Lethbridge. Unfortunately in the chaos of packing that box got packed and did not make its way to Lethbridge. In Lethbridge I was able to use some pants my mother in law Bette hemmed for me and I bought a cheap pair of jeans to add to the one pair of pants I had worn to Lethbridge. I also acquired a sweater and a jacket. I did not however pick up any socks and realized when we got to Amsterdam that I only had 3 pairs. I wore the same pair for a couple of days then wore Marc's and realized that we had lovely fashionable socks from British Airways as well. I bought this pair of shoes in Lethbridge and it is a bit big so it fits perfectly with 3 pairs of socks. (Good for Holland, maybe not so good for Kenya.) Anyways one morning Marc saw me sneakily looking through his socks for a pair and asked why I didn't just buy socks here. What a concept! I also thought my feet were looking a bit cankleish with the thick British Airways socks and thought my feet could look a little more fashionable.


In Franeker we went to a local store and I found a pair of very cute brown socks with flowers. I bought them and we found a little garden with a shell path for me to put them on. Here is the shell path:
Marc started taking pictures in this beautiful garden while I was changing my socks. I opened the socks and found I had bought children's tights. Marc caught my laughing reaction on camera: (Yes it is hard to tell I'm laughing but I am laughing so hard I am doubled over, that is a laugh!)
We did go find some other pairs and I changed out of my British Airways socks in front of our hotel (very subtlely I must add.)
And now for the fall:

Yesterday as I mentioned we did a lot of walking. We also walked through Franeker with our backpacks and did a lot of walking with our packs at the train station. My pack isn't that heavy right now but with all the walking I was tired. As we were walking through one of the stations to change trains I stepped on an uneven piece of pavement. As mentioned before my shoes are loose (even with 3 pairs of socks) and when I stepped my ankle buckled. Usually I would be able to keep walking (thankfully) but this time with the weight of my pack I crumbled along with my ankle. This of course would usually not be a big deal (did I mention I was tired and we did a lot of walking and I had a large pack on my back) but because of the weight of my pack I could not get up. So I am laying on the ground in the train station saying Help Marc I can't get up. I start trying to get up but it doesn't work so I just end up writhing under my pack on the station floor. At this point I found this very amusing and started laughing. Marc eventually got me up (after a lot of readjusting of limbs and packs) and some very nice gentlemen picked up my magazine which I managed to throw across the lane. I wonder what they thought of the crazy falling writhing English girl who just happened to be reading Scientific American Mind's special on Sex and the Secret Nerve. Oh dear. This story gives me the giggles every time I think of it so hopefully you all had a good giggle too.

If you are still awake I commend you. As this is already an immensely long post you will have to wait for Marc to do the friends and family post tomorrow. Sadly this will not be the first ever collaborative post, we will have to save that for the future. Now you just have more to look forward to!

Amsterdam: A Picture Essay

These shoes cost 2000 euros. Wow!

terda

2 pancakes - spinach bacon tomatoe and lots of cheese, and bacon and apple. mmmm
this giant tortoise weighed 200 lbs.

half way there

we made it to Amsterdam with no major hang-ups aside from our biggest piece of luggage being lost. We don’t need it for now and BA assured us it should arrive soon (hopefully b/c it has most of our books and house supplies for kenya). We hope to just pick it up on the way out. we stored the other stuff we didnt need here in a big locker (big enough for me!).


On the plane we were boxed in by a grumpily hauty national post reading older man from Calgary (presumeably) whose only word to us (despite several direct questions) was “Hmmpph”. He accomplished the bulk of his communication needs to us with frowns and sighs and general body language indicating that any attempt on our part to get up and use the facilities was a direct affront to his aisle seat sovereignty.

Anyways, we wandered around town in the dark last night. It was raining initially but got quite nice around 10:30pm. At midnight Amsterdam is still bustling. Little old ladies were passing us on their bikes, markets were doing thriving business and there were people walking all over the streets. Also large piles of bikes all over the place.


Our hotel has an amazing breakfast room that is a couple hundred years old, and our cheerfully cozy little room backs out onto a nice little private garden.


yesterday we wandered around town stopping and gawking and map checking and picture taking like tourists. At least we fit in well when we pretend like we know where we are going; we will have to enjoy that while we can, it wont last much longer. we found an old orphanage with a local art display in the courtyard using the orphan's lockers as display cases.

today we slept in, toured the amsterdam zoo (where the animals are a lot less shy than we're used to) and found the proper adapters for our laptop and a sweet voltage regulator to protect our electronics.