Learning curves for everyone

Kristen here....

Rolling out a pie crust for the first time...the secret is out, I always used to buy the premade ones at the store.

 

This week I have learned a lot about power.  Specifically, the electricity that runs through our house.  I never really gave it much thought before. We have had more constant power here recently as the rainy season seems to be coming to an end, but I never realized that the quality of the electricity can really matter.  As we have decorated for Christmas we have put up a few lights in the house and every night when we turn them on we have no idea what they will look like.  Sometimes, though when we have electricity and our overhead lights are on the current is so weak that our Christmas lights are dimmer than a candle.  Sometimes they don't light up at all.  This also affects our microwave.  Yes, we do have a microwave in our home, but you never really know how it is going to work.  The other night Dan was trying to reheat some leftover pasta.  The microwave turned on, made noise like it was working and all the lights came on.  However, after several minutes of reheating and the temperature of his food was no different than the temperature of the refrigerator that it came from and he gave up.  The next day he skeptically gave the microwave another chance and after one minute his food was hot!  You just never know.  I thought that microwaves were either on or off....apparently there is an in-between too.

We are also learning about the produce here.  It is not uncommon to walk into the little open air market in town where the locals are selling their fruits and vegetables and see something completely new.  Who knew that these are both completely ripe and ready to eat avocados?

Anyone want to vote on if Dan needs a pedicure? :-)



 

We also learned about tomato tree fruit today.  I am now really sad that I didn't take a picture of it.  The outside looks like a small purple roma tomato with a stem.  I asked one of the ladies there how to eat them and she gave us a demonstration.  She picked up one and bit off the bottom. Inside this bright red juice came out.  It looked like blood.  She described it as "sour, very refreshing."  I don't know if I am quite ready to sink my teeth into one of those yet. 

 

I am not the only one learning things though.  This week both of the regular anesthesiologists were on vacation so the hospital hired someone from Eldoret to come and fill in.  She and I were talking before one of my cases and she was asking me about life back home. She wanted to know what the most common diseases were where I come from.  I started listing off diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease.  She looked at me sort of funny and then asked, "don't you have malaria or typhoid?"  I had to smile to myself.  Our worlds are so very different.  I told her we do not have malaria or typhoid back home.  I then told her we also don't really have worms or parasites (I know some would argue about such a blanket statement, but compared to here we are worm and parasite free back home).  Her jaw dropped at this point.  She could not imagine a place that didn't have worms or parasites.  She began asking me how this could be.  How do you describe having totally purified, filtered water piped right into your home, ready to drink and parasite free to someone who has never even dreamed of such a thing?  Or how do you describe the FDA and all of the regulations that get put on the things that we eat? Supermarkets full of almost every food you can think of and all of it guaranteed to be safe to eat and marked with an expiration date. People here eat mostly what comes out of their gardens and on special occasions add meat to their diet that is butchered in their back yard.  Dan and I often laugh about how "cage free, all organic" foods back home are a premium.  Here just about every animal is "cage free" and is definitely not being fed any special, expensive, hormones as they scavenge around to eat anything they can find including the local garbage.  I am hoping that "cage free, all organic" back home means something different than it means here. 

 

The learning curve here continues.  We have had many good laughs as we learn the ropes, make mistakes and figure out the way of life in this new country.  Lots more stories to come!

Grocery Shopping – Not for the faint-of-heart

Yesterday we made our first trip into Eldoret since arriving in Kapsowar.  We needed to go the Orange store (our internet and phone provider) and Nakumatt to get groceries – you never know when your next chance to go to Eldoret will be and we wanted to make sure we had some baking supplies as we get ready for Christmas.  There was a short-term doctor that was leaving yesterday and had hired a driver to take her back to the airport.  We decided this would be a good opportunity to go with them and have them take our car as we needed to have the car inspected for insurance purposes.  We were scheduled to leave at 8am.  We arrived at the hospital to meet our driver who also turns out to be the hospital ophthalmologist.    Just as we were about to go, we found out that a young boy had come in with a stick in his eye and our driver was going to need to go to the OR to remove the stick.  About an hour later he came out and we were ready to go.  He said the boy would be fine and would heal. 

We left the hospital around 9:30 for Eldoret.  We saw some monkeys alongside of the road.  This is the first time I have seen wildlife that is not normally seen in the US.  The first part of the drive is a pretty drive as you drive through a forest area.  The roads are absolutely horrible though.  The first half of the drive is all dirt road with rocks, pot holes, and huge ruts in the road.  You cannot possibly drive much more than 25 MPH on these roads.   The cars really take a beating.  I would say that the very worst dirt road in the US is still far better than any of these roads.  You also have to just know where you are going here.  Not that there are that many options of different roads to take to get from one place to another, but none of the roads are labeled with signs, including in the major city of Eldoret.  There also doesn’t seem to be any stop signs, stop lights, or traffic laws for that matter.  Once you get closer to Eldoret the road is paved and is not too bad but they have speed bumps all over the place, so again, you can’t go that fast.  The speed bumps aren’t marked in any way which can lead to an interesting ride if you are not paying attention.  On our way to Eldoret we found that one of the dirt roads near ITEN (pronounced E TEN – ITEN is the town that all the Kenyan runners who win all the marathon races train) was closed as they were doing “improvement” on the road.  Our driver found a detour (not marked), although it took us basically through some dirt trails that looked like we were driving through some guy’s farm.  Eventually we made it back to the main road.    

We finally arrived in Eldoret around noon.  We went to the Orange store first.  It is always a challenge trying to explain to the locals what you want and then try to understand what they are telling you.  I think we figured out what we needed there.  Our driver took our car to the insurance company while we were at the Orange store and everything seemed to go smoothly there.  Praise God! 

Next was Nakumatt.  Nakumatt is basically your Walmart only with a lot fewer choices.  It is the one store that really carries things that resemble anything from back home.  We try not to have to go to Eldoret anymore than we have too since it is such a long and exhausting day to go there.  We are always having to check our surroundings as theft is a very common crime here in Kenya.  I am sure we are quite the spectacle as we are shopping for hopefully a month’s worth of groceries with 2 shopping carts full of groceries and other supplies for the house.  One strange thing they do not carry is shredded cheese.  They have a lot of block cheese, but no shredded cheese, so we have to shred all of our cheese.  We pull up to the check-out lane with our 2 carts and it takes 45 minutes to check-out.  They scan all our groceries and box them all up so we can attach them to the roof of our car if needed.  We pay with American Express which never works at the register.  The guy first tries to make the card work, then you have to take your card and passport over to the service desk where they can actually do the transaction for you.  Then you bring everything back to checkout line, the guy enters information that the service desk gave him, and then we are done! 

It is now 4pm and time to head back to Kapsowar.  This time it took almost 3 hours to return due to the road being closed near ITEN and us getting lost on a detour through some guy’s farm.  I did learn something from yesterday though.  I need to take Excedrin and maybe Dramamine when I go to Eldoret.  I had a splitting headache on the way back and was feeling sick most of the way back.  Luckily, I was able to take some Excedrin as soon as I got home and was feeling better about an hour later.  The roads were so rough yesterday that our car was making a noise by the time we got back like something was loose.  Hopefully it is nothing major. 

Other observances from our trip yesterday

-        Saturday’s in December are wedding days here in Kenya.  We probably passed 5 or 6 weddings on the way to Eldoret.  December is a month when many of the locals have time off to spend with family so a lot of weddings are scheduled for December.  The wedding party’s are all kind of the same.  They put ribbon and bows and balloons on their cars, and they drive in a parade of a few cars to the church.  Since there are so many weddings in December, and so many people have time off in December, we are told that September will be a very busy month for Kristen at the hospital delivering babies.   

-        When driving in the more rural parts between Kapsowar and Eldoret (this statement makes me laugh because Kapsowar is about as rural as you can find) you always see kids along the road.  The kids love to yell out “mzungu” meaning “white person” in Swahili whenever they see us as they don’t see white people very often.  The kids are friendly and just want to wave hi or yell out “how are you?” which must be something they are taught to say very early as most do not know very much English.

-        Many Kenyan’s ride “motatu’s” or “pikipiki’s.”  Motatu’s are basically small minivans or pickup trucks converted with a covered seating area in the back.  These vehicles are jam packed.  I seriously think there are close to 15 people that they jam in there and sometimes you will see people hanging off the back bumper.  This is a form of public transportation here.  The pickipicki’s are motorcycles that are a form of taxi.  It is not uncommon to see 4 people sitting on the motorcycle.  I also saw some large trucks that kind of looked like what we would use a military vehicles to transport troops in back in the States.  These were another form of public transportation with loads of people on them. 

Sunday mornings are interesting here as well.  There is a church, probably a mile away, that has a really good sound system.  They like to start singing and preaching (but mostly singing) at 5:30am every Sunday morning.  We can here them very clearly all the way at our house.  Their service seems to go until sometime in the afternoon with singing in Swahili most of the morning followed by hours of preaching.  Most African church services are fairly long (can be 2 -3 hours), but this church is definitely the winner for longest service.  Is it bad that I was praying for a power outage this morning to spare us the 5:30am wake up call?

Kristen and I have not been feeling very well this past week.  We seem to be trading off who feels better from one day to the next.  Please pray that we can start feeling better. 

Dan’s first day at the hospital and more

Dan here – Yesterday was my first big meeting at the hospital.  I met with the hospital administration to discuss their IT needs.  I was encouraged by our initial conversation.  The hospital has very limited IT use right now.  They have about 15 computers spread out amongst the hospital, but most of them are just sitting on desks not being used since they really do not have a good network and program in place to make them usable.  The hospital also has a decent server that can be used for starting an IT environment.  The administration seems to be onboard with bringing technology to the hospital.  While the hospital does have some limited IT hardware, I will still be building the IT infrastructure from the ground up.  They will need an internet connection, more IT hardware (such as a better battery backup as the server shuts down every time they lose power, which is daily), and the goal will be to implement an electronic medical record (EMR)/billing software program to help the hospital keep better track of finances/payments.  An updated computer system would also help short-term medical missionaries who are more familiar with working with EMR systems in the States to provide quicker and even better care to the patients who come to Kapsowar.  While the hospital’s main goal is to share the gospel with every patient that enters its doors, they still need to be able to pay for basic supplies and local Kenyan staff.  With the current system, it is sometimes hard to track who has paid and how much they have paid.  An EMR system would really help to make sure the hospital earns the proper revenue for the patients it is seeing which would help tremendously with the lack of supplies.  While I was in Michigan, I met with a local company that builds EMR software for mission hospitals.  I am planning to reach out to them and see if their product will fit the needs of Kapsowar hospital.  I think implementing this new system could keep me very busy over the next couple of years as I install the software and configure/tailor it to meet the specific needs of the hospital.  I will also need to train all the staff how to use the program.  This will be a challenge as I have an IT background not a finance or medical background which I will need to have knowledge of in order to implement and train the staff properly.  Many of them have little training in using computers.  I will also need to train a local Kenyan to be an IT guy and support the computer equipment when I am not here.  I think finances could be a significant issue with this IT project as computer equipment can get expensive really fast.  If you would like to help the hospital financially in achieving their IT goals, please let us know and we can let you know how you can help. 

Some of the other locals are starting to find out that there is an IT guy in the area.  At church Sunday morning, the local pastor said from the pulpit “Dan please see me after the service.”  I thought, what did I do wrong now?  It turns out that his laptop won’t boot up.  I think he is having a hard drive problem.  I am going to look at that today.  He also showed me a “computer lab” that the church has for some students attending a Bible college.  It consisted of about 7 computers of which 2 were working.  I have not seen computers of this age for quite some time.  One of the computers that was working was a Pentium II 233 MHz processor with 160 MB of RAM with a 12 GB hard drive.  To give you some perspective for the non-IT readers here, I threw out an old pc in Michigan just before I left as no one would buy such an old pc.  It had a processor that was about 3 times faster and about 5 times the amount of RAM that the pc in the computer lab had. 

Kristen and I also had Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday afternoon with everyone.  There were 21 people in all.  Everything was made from scratch as there really isn’t any box mixes or prepared foods here in Kenya.  The food was excellent.  My favorite table was below, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and my wife’s apple pie.  Of course I had to sample a little of each!

 

 

Kristen and I also decorated our house for Christmas.  It does seem odd to be decorating when it is in the mid-70’s with no snow on the ground.  It does help to have some Christmas decorations out though!

 

If you would like to send us a Christmas card, we would love to see them!  Larger packages are sometimes hard to get here as customs may charge us a heavy fee.  Our address  is

Kapsowar Mission Hospital

Attn Dr. Kristen Bracy
PO Box 68
Kapsowar 30705
Kenya East Africa

First days at the hospital

Kristen here....

 

My time at the hospital started a day earlier than expected.  A young girl with a placenta accreta came through the door on Thursday and I was asked to evaluate her.  Placenta accrete is when something goes wrong during a pregnancy and the placenta grows into the wall of the uterus.  When this happens the placenta never comes out causing lots of bleeding, pain and even infection.  Often a woman will continue to hemorrhage until the placenta is removed which is usually done by hysterectomy.  This patient had delivered several weeks ago somewhere and had significant bleeding since that time requiring blood transfusions.  I evaluated her in the OR and tried to remove the placenta without success.  At that point it became clear that the safest thing for her would be a hysterectomy.  This broke my heart. She was only 17 years old. I had talked to her about this possibility beforehand and had so hoped that it wouldn't come to this.  I am thankful that the surgery went well and the patient is recovering nicely.  I am thankful that she has one child, a boy.  This will make the scar of losing her ability to have children a little less painful.  When I talked to the patient the next day I was in awe of her attitude.  She wasn't angry, or upset, or sad or any of the emotions I expected her to have.  She was simply thankful.  Her inability to have any future children will significantly impact her standing in society. She knows this, but her attitude has been unwavering.

My second day at the hospital involved another hysterectomy.  This one was for an older patient who had multiple fibroids. When she came to the clinic for me to examine her I didn’t even bother to get out the ultrasound.  You could see the fibroids through her abdomen.  This was going to be a more challenging case than the surgery from the day before.  I was a little nervous as we started and there was a lot of prayer that went into the first incision.  Things went well and she is recovering wonderfully.  I am so thankful.  It is amazing the type of pain tolerance the patients have here.  We really don’t have a lot in the way of narcotics.  After surgery the patients get the equivalent of oral Tylenol and ibuprofen. With a vertical incision on my latest patient I was really worried about how she would do with this type of pain control. She seems completely un-phased by this.  She is up and walking around and not even wincing when she gets out of bed. I am amazed.  Back home patients are often hooked up to a PCA and given an IV drip of narcotic pain medication for the first 24 hours and then oral narcotics for weeks afterwards.  I wonder what the difference is…..genetic, difference in lifestyle, expectations?  I am not sure, but there is definitely a pain tolerance difference.

Well two days of work and two hysterectomies done. I wonder what this next week will hold. 

I thought I would post this picture from the hospital. This is one of the signs posted on the grounds. It gives the prices for common procedures and treatments. This is not a free hospital, but it is significantly less expensive than any other facility even remotely close to this area.  These prices are a stretch for patients to pay for, but they don’t hold a candle to the cost of health care back home.

 

 

I am not sure if you will be able to read this but translating the prices into US dollars you will pay somewhere between $50-250 dollars for major surgery (aka like the hysterectomies I did this last week). A prenatal visit for pregnant women is $2 US.  An ultrasound is $6 dollars. If you break your arm and need a cast it will cost somewhere between $1 and $20 in US dollars. When the average person makes less than $3 US dollars a day in the area it is not uncommon for people to be unable to pay their hospital bills.  The problem is that the cost of suture, sterilizing equipment and laboratory supplies still needs to be covered.  We try to get as many donated supplies as possible and none of the missionary physicians are paid by the hospital which makes the cost significantly less than other places.  Still, the seemingly staggering prices can be overwhelming. It does make me think twice sometimes before ordering "routine" labs that I would have normally ordered out of habit back home.  The bovies we use in the OR are recycled with each case and our surgical gowns are all cloth that can be washed, sterilized and reused again.  There is a fine line between providing affordable care without compromising the quality. I am sure that I will learn more about this struggle in the coming weeks.  It is amazing, however, how much can be done with so little.

Kapsowar beginnings

Kristen here….

We are settling in and the house is coming together. It is nice to have it start to feel more like home.  I am really thankful that before we left people suggested I pack pictures from home and picture frames.  It seemed like an extravagant unnecessary thing to do when we were packing, but it has really made a difference to have a few familiar keepsakes around the house. 

One of the best things about our new home, however, is not the inside, but the outside. The views from our yard are amazing. We have a little back patio that overlooks the rift valley and Dan and I have been enjoying sitting out there at lunch time.  The weather has been wonderful during the day with heavy rains at night leaving everything fresh in the morning.  The sunshine is one of God’s blessings on us as we adjust to life here.

Views from our front yard

View from our backyard

One of the things that has been different here is that we lose power almost daily.  Last night we had homemade nachos for dinner by candlelight J Not normally the meal you would chose for a candlelight dinner, but it worked for us.  I am going to have to figure out how to brown meat by candle light.  It is hard to tell when it is done when the light is so dim. I even turned on the little battery operated lantern we brought, but it is just not the same.  I might have over cooked the meat a little J  Oh well, live and learn. I am thankful for a patient husband.

We have also learned that our house is the last in the row for the water pipeline here on the missionary station.  This means that everyone else’s water tanks for their homes get filled first before the water reaches us.  We ran out of water yesterday which certainly can make life interesting.  I am learning how to flush toilets with water brought up in buckets from the river, how to heat water on the stove to use for a shower and how to wash dishes without using the sink.  In all of this I just have to smile.  The water for our homes gets pumped up from the river.  We were all running low on water yesterday and had someone out looking into the problem.  It was explained to us that there is a very small pipe that pumps the water up the hill to us from the river.  If a cow steps on the pipe in the forest it can pinch off the water supply until it is fixed.  Only in Africa.  We are learning the expression TIA (this is Africa) when things like this happen.  I just chuckle.  Welp, it just forces us to get a little bit more creative.  The water situation has now been fixed and we are starting to have some coming through our pipes again.  It is nice to have water pumped directly into your home. I appreciate this convenience.

Tonight I am going to give it my first try at entertaining in our new home.  I invited one of the other missionary families over for dessert and games.  There is no such thing as restaurants, movie theaters, bowling allies or any other form of entertainment in Kapsowar.  This just means we have to make our own fun.  The way for social entertainment usually comes in the form of game nights or movie nights which entails watching a movie someone has brought over on their computer.  It is more just the act of getting together and having fun that we are all excited about than the actual activity itself.  I am trying my hand at making a cake and frosting from scratch.  Wish me luck! Back home I loved to cook and entertain and really thought nothing of the work that got put into it.  Here, everything is just a little bit more complicated, a little bit more uncertain.  I didn’t realize that vanilla is a hard item to come by here.  I wish I had brought some from home.  I am really thankful that the other missionaries never think twice about sharing.  I hope my cake turns out ok!  Our oven is a gas oven and it actually has a temperature gage on the nob you use to turn it on, but the temperature reads in Celsius.  Not really sure how to cook that way so I sort of just set it in the middle and then cooked by smell, opening the oven to check if it was done when the smells in the kitchen seemed right.  So far so good.  I will have to let you know how it turns out.

I officially start work at the hospital on Friday.  Yesterday, I was walking through the wards and got called to come see a patient that has been readmitted several times. She delivered her first baby in October and has not done well since.  I am afraid that a hysterectomy is in her future.  Such a sad outcome for this momma of one.  We are trying a few other things first, but I have a feeling this might be my first major surgical case here in Kapsowar.  I would definitely appreciate prayer for wisdom as we treat this patient.  I want to avoid surgery if at all possible.

Well, that is all of the updates for now.  Thank you so much for following along on this adventure.  It is so encouraging to hear from everyone back home and know that we are not alone on this journey.

The Eagle has Landed!

That's one small step for God, one giant leap for Kristen and me.

Dan here - I told Kristen I wanted to write some of these blogs so you will have to bear with me.  We made it up to Kapsowar Saturday afternoon.  Another missionary couple met us at the airport in Eldoret which is about 2 hours away from Kapsowar.  We did some shopping at Nakumatt while we were in Eldoret.  Nakumatt is Kenya's version of Walmart.  We ended up spending 43,942 shillings on our first grocery trip.  We wont be going shopping very often as Eldoret is where our closest grocery store is located.  There are some American brands at the store but you do pay a little more.

We bought some spreadable butter at Nakumatt while we were there and tried to spread it on our toast the other day.  We put the butter in the refrigerator when we got home which is what you would do in the States.  Apparently that is not what you do here.  Our butter was anything but spreadable.  It actually was to hard for a steak knife to cut through.  So we are now leaving the butter out of the refrigerator (which is ok and what you are supposed to do with this type of butter)!

The ride to Kapsowar from Eldoret is somewhat of an adventure.  About half of the way here, the road is paved.  The other half is a dirt road which is a bit of rough ride to say the least.  Kapsowar is a beautiful place.  Our house overlooks the Rift Valley.  It is green and luscious outside.  We even have a poinsettia tree in our yard.  For the most part is warm and sunny here.  I would say it is probably in the mid 70's here each day.  Apparently this is their cold season.  I have seen local Kenyan's walking around in winter coats.  I dont think the temperature fluctuates very much between hot and cold seasons however.  

Kristen and I have been eating lunch out on our back porch each day.  I commented today how the landscape almost looks like you could be at a resort. Kapsowar does have it's drawbacks though.  We cannot drink or brush our teeth with the water from the tap.  We fill jugs of water and lay them out in the sun for the day so the UV rays can kill anything inside.  We then filter the water in a water filter before we drink it.  Another drawback is the power situation.  We tend to lose power for at least a few minutes most days.

Today, we went to the local market.  It is filled with many locals trying to sell their produce.  We purchased about a week's worth of vegetables for about 5 dollars today.  Avocados were about 30 cents apiece and red onions were about 10 cents each.

We made it to Kenya!

Kristen here...

Thank you to the many that have been praying for us. We made it to Kenya last night and all of our luggage made it too! This is no minor miracle.  Our whole trip thus far has been no minor miracle :-)

When we went to the Detroit airport to check in for our flights the Delta employees took one look at all of our bags and said there was no way they would all make it on our originally scheduled flight from Detroit to DC. The plane we were supposed to take would be too small. I had called ahead and been reassured that the number of bags we were bringing would be fine, but apparently this was not the case. After some discussion behind the Delta counter it was decided that they should rebook us on a direct flight from Detroit to Amsterdam and skip the DC layover altogether!  So wonderful. This made our long journey just a little bit shorter, gave us one less layover to get our luggage lost on, allowed us to not stress over whether or not our 40lbs of carry-ons each would fit in the overhead bins.  It was an answer to prayer that I never even prayed for. Both Dan and I were exhausted getting on the plane after emotional goodbyes to our families.  Once on board the plane though, we realized that the flight was not very full and we both got a row to ourselves which allowed us to lay down and get some much needed sleep.  Our plane was a little delayed getting out of Detroit due to the snow, but with our flight change we had a couple of extra hours to our layover in Amsterdam which was exactly what we needed to catch our next flight without issue despite our delay.  The flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi was also fairly empty so we again got another row of seats to ourselves which allowed us to get some more rest. 

When we arrived in Nairobi we collected all of our bags and went to customs.  The customs officer was going to make us open up all of our locked bags and search through them.  I told him we were going to Kapsowar Hospital and then he decided we didn't need to be searched after all and let us go.  I am so thankful.  Unlocking and going through all of our luggage would have taken hours and with the chaos of baggage claim and customs with the 5 other international flights that landed the same time as we did I wasn't super excited to show all of our things to the world.  It was a blessing to be spared the search.

We met the Samaritan's Purse representative at the airport without problem and he took us to the guest house where we are staying.  It was so nice to arrive, take a shower and brush our teeth.  Crest never tasted so good! :-)

This morning our luggage was loaded onto a van to be taken up to Kapsowar (approx. 10 hour drive from Nairobi) and we stayed behind to take care of some things in Nairobi.  We were so excited to get to spend some time with our friends the Shirks!  The Shirks are also post residents that arrived in Kenya two months ago and are working at a different hospital. Not only was it nice to see a familiar face, but Dan and I so appreciated them walking us through the tedious process of finding some of things we needed in Nairobi.  Something like buying a cellphone takes hours.  First we went to one store that has all different types of phones and tried to decide which one is going to be what we needed. All of the phones are in a glass display case and none of them are powered on. You have to decide on the phone based on the price and the stats the vendor is rattling off to you from over the counter.  It is hard to keep it all straight. Some of them were phones that were somewhat recognizable from things we have seen back home and some were phones I had no idea existed.  After going through all the phones and purchasing the ones we needed we then had to go to another store to buy minutes for our phones.  This entailed registering our phones with our passports, buying sim cards (which is a whole new world of confusion for me) and figuring out their version of paypal.  A little jet lagged, accents that I am still getting used to, converting everything from shillings to dollars in my head and new technology for a girl that doesn't really understand anything when it comes to electronics made this a very interesting experience. Needless to say, I am so thankful Dan is here and we really appreciated guidance from the Shirks. I am still not sure how the paypal thing really works or how to add more minutes when I run out, but for now I think I will just take one day at a time and figure that out as it comes :-)

Tomorrow we will get up early and fly to Eldoret. We are meeting the McCurry's who are post residents that have been at Kapsowar for almost a year.  We are so thankful they are meeting us and are going to walk us through what is supposed to be an overwhelming first shopping trip.  Starting over from scratch in a foreign country when your grocery store is 2 hours away and Thanksgiving is right around the corner does daunt me a little.  Some prayer for that would be appreciated.  I know it seems so small and trivial, but everything takes three times the amount of effort as you do conversions and read labels to see if anything in the product is familiar or could be used as a substitute for something you don't have.  We are really looking forward to getting to Kapsowar and getting settled.  Thank you so much for following along with us, for your support, for your prayers and for the warm words of encouragement and cheering us on from halfway around the globe. It means more than you know.



Lunch with the Shirks!