Ken ya diggit

Christmas at home in Nairobi

2011-12-31T14:53:00.000+03:00

We hadn't thought about it until this year, but we realized that we had never had Christmas at "home", that is in the house that we were living in at the time. We had always traveled somewhere else. Well, after just coming back from Madagascar, we did just that. Kaarli's sister Kelsey, fiance Heather and son Rowan all came up from Tanzania to spend Christmas with us. We also had our good friend Dan in town from Phildelphia, with his two nephews and niece and plenty of Nairobi friends also stayed in town.

We had our first Christmas tree at home thanks to Dan. Dan said that he couldn't let Kaleb have a first Christmas without a Christmas tree, so while we were in Madagascar and he was staying at our house, he bought a live Christmas tree and decorated it. Dan said that as a Jew he never thought he would be responsible for saving Christmas, but he was willing to do so for his good friends. Thanks Dan!

We had a great time playing with Rowan who both taught Kaleb some cousinly lessons and learned that you have to be prepared when getting into a water balloon fight with your Uncle Aaron.

We had a great time with all of the family and good friends. Here are a few pics from the week.

Rowan sharing some advice with Kaleb

Kelsey, Heather Rowan, Aaron, Kaarli, Kaleb

Dan and Kaleb

Filling water balloons with Rowan and our next door neighbor Asmatha

Man to man conversation

Kaleb and Ayka

Otem

Jason and Harper

No pressure Kaleb, you don't have to play baseball.

Anderson, Nate, Anna

Sara, Anna, Yuni

Madagascar

2011-12-21T13:48:00.000+03:00

After our success on our first short trip to the beach, we decided to take advantage of Kaarli's maternity leave and go to one of the places that we had always wanted to go. Madagascar had been on our Africa short-list for quite some time, so we figured we might as well give it a shot. Another couple, Katie and Jason and their 6-month old daughter Harper also joined us on the adventure. We made a pact that we would do as much as we could, but not stress too much if there were things that we couldn't do with the babies. None of us were convinced we could actually do this, but we decided to give it a try.

Flying to the capital of Antananarivo was only a three hour flight, so we figured it would be good practice for building up our and Kaleb's tolerance for flying, so that we might be able to come back to the US this June. Mercifully, Kaleb slept nearly the entire flight, through customs in Madagascar and through an hour long car ride to our hotel.

Antananarivo is a city with a population of around 1.4 million according to the Internet although local residents all quote populations of 5-6 million. It is a big sprawling city in the mountains surrounded by lush green rice paddies. Madagascar is a real mix of ethnicity. The population consists of African and Indonesian ancestors and was colonized by the French. The result is that walking down the street you see many people that could be Kenyan or Indonesian or a mix of the two with a little French mixed in. Not that different from the complexion of Tiger Woods.

All of these influences (Asian, African and French) have left a rich culinary legacy and we had fantastic meals throughout our entire trip. The people were extremely friendly and welcoming. The national language is Malagasy, but most business communication is done in French. Kaarli and Jason had both studied French and did a great job getting us around. We occasionally did find people who spoke broken English and that is when Aaron took over with hand gestures, smiles and jokes that left everyone confused.

As soon as we arrived in Antananarivo (just called “Tana” to people in the know), we left the same morning for Vakuna, which is a forest reserve famous for lemurs. The moms and dads took turns hiking in the national forest, while the others stayed back at the hotel with the kids. The moms went first and did see two species of lemurs. The fathers were told the next day by the same guide that the moms didn't see as much because they were in a hurry to get back to feed their babies.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Aaron, Jason and the babies had a nice breakfast and then went for their own hike around the hotel. After hiking for about 45-minutes, the boys got a little cocky and made comments like we should have all gone together to see the lemurs as this wasn't too bad. The babies whimpered occasionally, but seemed to also be enjoying themselves. However, 50-minutes in, the wheels fell off and both Kaleb and Harper lost it. Neither Aaron nor Jason could hear themselves think as they hiked 50-minutes back to the hotel. To make matters worse, Kaarli and Katie, who had rushed back from their hike to feed the kids, were desperately searching for the hikers, when they began to hear their babies screaming in the mountains and echoing all around. There were no happy faces between the exhausted fathers and exasperated mothers, but all quickly recovered after some white wine at lunch.

Also in Vakuna, we went to Lemur Island. This island had several species of semi-habituated lemurs who were very comfortable with humans (so much so that they had no problem jumping right on all of us). Tourists are not allowed to feed the lemurs, but the guides bring a couple of bananas to help gather them. All of us were quite concerned about the lemur-baby interaction and the lemurs seemed especially interested in the babies, which made us even more uncomfortable. However, after about an hour, we started getting a lot more comfortable (as you will see from some of the pictures).

We then went to a lake in the interior of Madagascar that was known for its lemur inhabitants and beautiful beaches. It wasn’t easy getting there, as it was about a 7-hour drive through windy mountain roads from Antananarivo and then a 1-hour boat ride through mangroves and canals to get to the lake. The place was amazing. We each had our own bungalow overlooking the beach with a nice patio to camp out. The hotel staff seemed quite surprised to see us arrive with two young babies, but they did their best to make us feel as comfortable and welcome as possible.

Katie and Jason then had to head back to Nairobi and we had a couple of days left. As a final trip, we took a short flight to Diego-Suarez at the northern tip of Madagascar. The coastal scenery looked much different than the rest of the island and more like the Kenyan coast. We had two relaxing days there, but the main activities seemed to be deep sea fishing, long mountainous hiking trips and quad bike racing. Another time and place we would have been into all three, but we decided to end the trip by just hanging out, walking on the beach and relaxing by the pool.

All in all it was a fantastic trip that we would highly recommend.

Capital city of Antananarivo

Brown lemur

Bamboo lemur

Jason, Katie and Harper

Indiri indiri lemurs. These are the largest lemurs.

Indiri indiri making its terretorial warnings to other families of indiri indiri.

Crowned lemur

Looking at a huge walking stick

Female crowned lemur

Indiri Indiri with baby.

Aaron and Jason carrying Kaleb and Harper to Bush House after a 1-hour boat ride

Thanksgiving on the Beach

2011-11-25T12:16:00.000+03:00

We weren't sure how Kaleb was going to do on his first trip to the beach. This was going to be our first family plane ride and first time going on vacation with a group of friends with Kaleb and we were pretty nervous. The plane ride was only 45-minutes, but having been on many flights with screaming babies, we didn't want to be "those" parents. Kaleb ended up doing great on both flights. We were amazed at our how friendly, understanding and compassionate the other travelers were towards us.

We went to a beach called Watamu on the Indian Ocean and the house and beach were amazing. We hadn't really thought through how having a baby would impact the beach experience, but we quickly realized the obvious: that you can't really take a baby on the beach except early in the morning and evening when the sun is not as strong.

As always, what made the trip was our 12 amazing friends who joined us. They not only made a fantatstic Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, pecan pie, pumpkin pie and all sorts of other dishes, but they were also very understanding when Kaleb decided to "sing" during all hours of the day and night. It was helpful to have one other baby there. Harper is five months old and is the daughter of our friends Jason and Katie. Kaleb and Harper are already fast friends, as you can see in the pics.

We have much to be thankful for! We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

Kaleb's first plane ride

Kaleb and Harper really like each other

Just hangin' at the pool

Getting laughed at for my Baby Bjorn sunburn

Thanksgiving posse

Halloween

2011-11-06T11:34:00.000+03:00

This Halloween was a little harder as we needed to think of three costumes, but thankfully we were inspired by our Kenyan surroundings. In case you can't tell in the pictures we dressed up as two safari guides and a giraffe. It turns out adult parties are not as exciting for Kaleb as they are for us, but unfortunately our parties do also seem to be getting a bit more mature lately.

Saying Goodbye to Family

2011-11-05T12:25:00.000+03:00

It was sad to see everyone leave and head back home to Michigan and Tanzania, but it was great to have Kaarli's dad and sister for two weeks, and mom for a whole month. We had a lot of Kaleb time, but we did other stuff too. We went out to fabulous dinners, played some golf with Charlie and Kaarli's mom volunteered at a local primary school. Hopefully, we can now convince them to move out here.

Kaleb's First Safari

2011-10-29T11:52:00.000+03:00

We had planned to go to Aboselli national park on safari with Kaarli's parents before her dad had to go back to work, but unfortunately it simply was not to be. We left at 2pm and after 3 hours, we had gone a total of about 20 miles because of some of the worst traffic any of us had ever seen.

We ended up turning around and getting back to the house around 10:30pm having only traveled a total of 40 miles in 8.5 hours. Kaleb did remarkably well considering, as he was not the only one who cried during the car ride.

We tried again a couple of days later when we went to Lake Nakuru. This time we were more successful and had a fantastic day.

"We shall slaughter a goat for Kaleb"

2011-10-22T10:59:00.014+03:00

While Kaarli's family was here, our good friend Theresa and her entire family came over to our house to slaughter a goat in Kaleb's honor. This was a new experience for all of us Americans.
We weren't exactly sure what to expect when the taxis pulled up with Theresa, her three sons, daughter, her children's signficant others and a few grand kids, but when a large live male goat jumped out of the back of the taxi, we knew it was going to be a day we would never forget.

We started around 9am in the morning by slitting the goat's throat and hanging the carcass from our tree to let the blood run out. Next, we carefully cut off the skin all in one piece, so it could be stretched and dried. Then we disembowled the goat, carefully saving nearly all of the organs, as each piece was a "delicacy" and roasted in a special way. We then made "matura", which is made by stuffing the goat's intestines with pieces of meat and blood to make a sausage type dish. Lastly, we roasted the head and hooves to burn off the hair said we could make a hoof and head porridge.

It took quite a while, but after hours of preperation, we had a fabulous Kenyan feast. We then spent the afternoon eating goat, lounging around in the sunshine and teaching the kids wiffleball and bocce ball. What a wonderful afternoon.

A big thank you to Theresa and the entire family.

Family Time with Kaleb

2011-10-18T10:09:00.004+03:00

We were blessed to have almost the entire Heeringa family come stay with us at our house in Nairobi to meet Kaleb. We certainly miss have family around, so it was a special treat to have Kaarli's parents, Kelsey, Heather and Rowan all come spend time with us. Kaleb had never been such a popular guy, as there were always multiple people willing to hold him, play with and spit up on.

It was wonderful introducing Kaleb to his new family. We can't wait to introduce him to the rest of you.

Kaleb 1-month

2011-10-16T21:58:00.000+03:00

It has been quite a first month.  Kaleb continues to be the best son you could ask for during the day. During the day he sleeps for hours at a time. He enjoys being held by practically anyone. He has now been to most of our favorite restaurants and has been remarkably well behaved, except for one time, which is now known as "the incident".

Kaleb shows he is a true Kenyan baby by prefering the bumpiest and most potholed roads, gets along great with our four leopard tortisses (Charlie and his angels) and gets cold when it is below 76 degrees.

Kaleb has also offcially made the Nairobi co-ed softball team and played with his mom and dad. He has not made an actual appearance in a game yet, but he is working dillegently on his skills.   Unfortunately, at Kaleb's first game, Aaron was playing shortstop and went for a ground ball up the middle and tore his hamstring. He had to be carried off the field and couldn't walk for several days.

Grandma Heeringa also made the trip up from Tanzania for a few days, where she had been visiting Kelsey, and we were delighted to introduce Kaleb to his family. We also had numerous other friends and co-workers stop by.

We are hoping that in month two, we all start sleeping much more during the night and less during the day. Wish us luck!

Our First Week as Parents

2011-09-25T00:36:00.004+03:00

We had an amazing first week as parents. It has been amazing watching Kaarli transform into a caring mother. It has been amazingly humbling trying to pacify a crying baby. Amazing how little sleep is actually necessary to maintain basic life. Amazing how long we can just stare at little Kaleb as he sleeps.

We also had amazingly thoughtful and caring friends bring us dinner almost every night our first week. We can't thank you all enough.

Kaleb's Birthday

2011-09-18T23:07:00.000+03:00

It was one of those experiences that you reherse in your mind, but you have no idea what to really expect until it happens. We had taken the Lamase classes and officially been certified to give birth, but really had no idea what we were doing. We had all of the baby gear and the room was ready. After several hours, we even installed the car seat without the help of the trusty local fire department.
In the end, it happens how it was meant to. Kaarli started having contractions after a delicious Java House buritto around noon on Saturday, September 17th . Aaron also felt like he was going into labor, but that turned out to just be the burrito. As the contractions got more intense we headed to the hospital around 5:30pm. Finally after considerable effort to make it to his official due date, Kaleb Wesley Sundsmo was born at 1:30am on September 18th. We were told that only 5% of babies are born on their due date, so Kaleb is already at the head of the class for punctuality. He weighed in at 7.9 lbs and was 20.5 inches long.

We instantly fell in love with him and couldn't wait to take him home and start introducing him to friends and family.

Oven Mitt and Koop

2011-09-03T22:49:00.008+03:00

Congratulations Dave and Caroline! We couldn't be happier for the two you. Another memorable Nairobi wedding.

The Calvary Arrives

2011-08-20T20:58:00.002+03:00

With our son on the way and several new projects just starting up, Aaron's company sent an all-star team to come help get ready for the new addtion. Thanks Jennifer, Brett and Faith.

Of course when people come to Nairobi for the first time, we have to get out of town to see the sights that make Kenya famous. The below pics are from our trip to Crescent Island.

Nairobi Showers

2011-08-13T20:58:00.001+03:00

We are truly blessed with amazing friends. Thanks to all of our Nairobi friends for a great baby shower. We now feel ready to welcome our new son. Exrta special thanks to Anne and Murph for hosting. You guys are the best. Thanks everyone.

Working Hard in Zambia

2011-07-14T20:29:00.001+03:00

Honestly, what is the point of going to a workshop in Zambia, if you don't get up before the workshop begins to do a little quad bike racing through a game reserve before meetings start?

I have nothing but respect for my Danya colleagues who were completely up for the early morning adventure.

11th Anniversary

2011-07-08T20:23:00.000+03:00

We had both been traveling way too much this summer and with Kaarli starting to appreciate Kenya's bumpy roads less and less, we decided to rent a room at a romantic lodge just 30 minutes out of town. One of the advantages of living in Nairobi is that you can do this sort of thing and feel like you are really out in the wild, while you are still really close to home.We had marvelous food and company on our anniversary weekend.

I could not ask for a better friend to spend my life with. I love you baby. Thank you for everything.
Aaron

Pokin' Around the Poconos

2011-06-28T19:45:00.000+03:00

To finish off our 2011 trip to the US, we spent the week in the Pocono Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. Aaron's sister Alecia, a new Pennsylvania resident, organized a fantastic cabin on a lake fully equipped with kayaks, hot tub, fishing hole, and fire pit. Aaron's parents, other sister Joy, her husband Brett and their three boys all joined in on the fun to make for a legendary family vacation. A great way to end the trip and spend time with the family that we just don't get to see enough of.

Pregnancy Tour Moves on to DC

2011-06-05T19:23:00.002+03:00

After a great week in Grand Rapids, we moved on to a two week swing through DC. Aaron worked during most of the trip and Kaarli worked for a week, but nearly every night we got to hang out with all of our DC friends who spoiled us with two more baby showers, one at Danya (Aaron's work) and one with our friends. Once again we were truly humbled by our friends' genorosity. Thanks Veronika and Mark and thanks Danya family. We are lucky to have you in our lives.

Pregnancy Tour

2011-06-03T22:20:00.032+03:00

Many friends and family had given up on us having kids years ago. We did not just suspect that this happened, people told us this repeatedly on our most recent trip back to Grand Rapids. It really had been a few years since people really were prying into when exactly we said we were going to have kids.

I think it was due to this long wait that so many of our friends and family were so generous in throwing us a baby shower with such great gifts. We also learned another advantage of waiting to have kids is that your friends already have practiced on their own kids and have good advice and great baby presents.

One special treat was that this year Aaron got to participate in his first Heeringa family egg crack. This is a sacred tradition that was invented by the Heeringa family and involves coloring Easter eggs and rolling them down plastic tubes to smash into each other. The laws of physics dictate that only one egg will crack. This of course lends itself to a full March Madness style tournament bracket. Neither of us won this year, but we had a terrific time.

As always, it was great seeing you. We can't wait until next June to come see you again. Hopefully we will be able to introduce you to a new family member on that trip.

Roughin' It

2011-06-01T20:45:00.001+03:00

After five years of apartment living and with a new baby and visiting in-laws on the way soon, we decided to rent a bigger place with a yard. We hope the below pictures of our new house help dispel any concerns of hardship of raising a child in Africa and rather convince you that you should come make use of our guest room.

Seriously, come on over. We would love to see you!

Going Away

2011-05-21T22:11:00.003+03:00

Without question, our favorite thing about living in Nairobi is the friends we have made. We have met so many amazing people in our time here. Unfortunately, our least favorite thing in Nairobi is that friends always leave when their contract ends and they are off to new adventures.

This year we said goodbye to another set of great friends. In the summer months, almost every Saturday is a going away party for someone. The below pictures are from one particularly memorable going away party for 12 friends.

Kelsey, Heather and Rowan come visit

2011-04-03T21:58:00.004+03:00

After Kaarli's sister Kelsey moved to Tanzania late last year with her partner Heather and her son Rowan, we finally convinced them to come visit us in Nairobi. We had a wonderful few days seeing the sights of Nairobi, and getting out of town to Lake Naivasha.

It is great having family in East Africa. Now if only the rest of you would move here.

Holi

2011-03-12T21:44:00.015+03:00

We have a fantastic time every year at Risha's Holi party and this year was no exception. How could you not have a great time throwing dye and water baloons at your closest friends? At some point it would seem like we would grow out of this, but it really doesn't look like it will be any time soon.

Kai and Kayley Come to Visit

2011-02-22T22:10:00.014+03:00

We were thrilled when we heard that Kaarli’s brother Kai and his wife Kayley were coming to visit. Kayley had been saving her tips from the hair salon for over a year and surprised Kai with the tickets. We couldn’t think of a better gift and encourage all of our friends and family to follow Kayley’s lead. After planning for nearly a year, we finally found a time that would work for everyone. We had an ambitious schedule with time in Nairobi, Lake Naivasha, Masai Mara and Lamu.

We first headed to Lake Naivasha, which is only a little over an hour out of Nairobi. We rented a house on a connecting lake that had flamingos and was surrounded by wildlife including zebras, giraffe and hippos. We played a few rounds of couples frisbee golf amongst the animals, watched a family engage in a feces fight (ask one of us to tell you about this one), went hiking in Hell's Gate and Crescent Island, and played board games into the night.

Next up was a safari at the Masai Mara National Park. As many times as we have been there, the park never disappoints and we always see something new. This time we saw our first actual kill. We had been watching a family of cheetahs, a mom and seven cubs. The mother cheetah was teaching the cubs how to hunt, but the cubs were more interested in wrestling and sleeping. After watching them for around 30-minutes, we saw the mom stalk off into the brush. Just a few minutes later, the cubs all perked up in unison and the mother came tearing around the corner in hot pursuit of a grand gazelle. In just a few seconds, it was all over. The cheetah brought the gazelle down from behind and the cubs bounded towards mom with newfound energy. It was awe inspiring to watch. After the game drives, we had fantastic food and were able to hang out, tell stories and take a nap or two of our own.

To end the trip, we went to Lamu. Lamu is an island off the coast of Kenya near the Somali boarder. There are no motor vehicles on Lamu, so all transportation is either by boat or donkey. We opted for mostly boats. On this trip, we had eight of our good friends join the four of us. The weekend corresponded with one of our good Nairobi friends, Brad’s last weekend in Kenya before heading to Pakistan, so this was a goodbye party for him as well. To accommodate the 12 of us, we needed a big house, so we rented a castle. No really, there is a full size fort for rent right on the beach with fortified walls, a huge spiky door, and of course a huge pool. We had a great time hanging out on the beach, eating fresh seafood at every meal, touring the island and taking a questionably safe boat ride to see dolphins.

Of course all good things come to an end too soon and we were sad to see Kai and Kayley go after spending ten days together. We hope to see them back out here again soon!

KJAM

2011-02-05T21:57:00.004+03:00

For avid Ken ya diggit readers, you will remember KJAM is the Kenyan, Japanese, American Sushi and Music festival that we invented last year, as a reason to have a big sushi party with the Japanese softball team. As demand started to grow for KJAM II over the last few months, we realized that this will need to become a yearly event. Once the Japanese agreed to quickly pull together a sushi technical working group, we were well on our way and within a few weeks all plans were laid.

This year the party was hosted by our good friends the Murphs. We had a great turnout of Kenyans, Japanese and Americans….and even a Canadian or two may have snuck in. There were enormous amounts of sushi, and the watermelon smash game came back out after being a fan favorite last year. The big finally was a Japanese fire dancer, who swung fire balls on the end of two chains like num chucks to music. In the “you can’t do that in America” category, the fire dancer then asked for volunteers to try swinging the fire balls. Aaron and several others tried it and surprising everyone survived except for a few pieces of charred clothing.

Mt. Kenya Safari Club

2011-01-16T22:03:00.009+03:00

Many of our Nairobi friends head off either home or on vacation in December, as Nairobi pretty much shuts down. When everyone was back, we decided to get away for a weekend to the Mt. Kenya Safari Club. It was an amazing resort with views of the mountain, a golf course, tennis courts, croquet and an animal orphanage. In the 50’s, the resort had been owned by William Holden and many of Hollywood’s stars of the 50’s and 60’s were pictured on the walls.

While it was a great time to connect with friends, the most memorable aspect was when we were attacked by a “naughty llama” at the animal orphanage. The orphanage had dozens of species of abandoned animals, including several species of monkeys, impala, bongo, water buck, cheetahs, and many others. All were friendly and used to humans, except for the llama who came charging us as we came around a corner and reared up on its hind legs nearly kicking Aaron. To show the llama who was in charge, Aaron promptly screamed and went sprinting away. One of the workers explained that this was a naughty llama. The worker told us that he won’t hurt us as long as you stand your ground. Aaron wasn’t entirely convinced by the stand your ground strategy and stayed as far away from the llama as possible. Our friend Tom on the other hand, took on the llama mano y mano. This battle lasted nearly 30-minutes and had our entire group crying laughing. The llama kept head butting Tom, or biting his shoes or trying to upend him by lifting his head up through Tom’s legs. Tom didn’t think it was quite as funny, as he was the one fighting for his life, but we still can’t look at these pictures without laughing out loud.

Borneo Bound

2011-01-02T10:19:00.034+03:00

Both of us had been swamped at work and we were only able to take off the week between Christmas and New Years. Kaarli was just coming back from a work trip to the US on December 21^st and our vacation started Christmas Eve. Knowing that she would still be pretty jet lagged and tired from her trip to the US, we didn’t want to go too far but, this did make for a ten-day travel opportunity, which is exceedingly rare. We started brainstorming and came up with several options, but one-by-one they all started to be ruled out for reasons like the temperature gets below 50 degrees at night, or it is during hurricane season, or the pirates have been particularly active in that area lately.

After weeks of brainstorming, Aaron saw a National Geographic documentary on Borneo in his hotel room on a work trip to Zambia. It described the unique plant and animal life that is found nowhere else on the planet. It showed great footage of one of the most remote and well preserved old growth rainforests. It had a long feature on the orangutans and proboscis monkeys. The documentary finished with a line that said something to the effect of, while it is beautiful, only the most hardened travels ever venture here. While the credits were still rolling Aaron called Kaarli and told her that we just found our next destination.

What we had not completely thought through was that Borneo is quite a journey from Nairobi. The best travel option was through Dubai (5-hours) to Kuala Lumpor, Malaysia (8-hours) to Kota Kinabalu (5-hours). With layovers, that meant nearly two-days of travel each way. That did make us pause and reconsider, but we had made up our minds and were already hooked. We began to research our trip and embarrassingly we were not even initially sure which country Borneo belonged to. We knew it was the world’s third largest island after Australia and Madagascar, but not much beyond that. For those of you who also didn’t study this in your world geography class either, Borneo is actually divided into three countries, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei (famous for the Sultan of Brunei, one of the world’s richest men). We decided to focus on the Malaysia side of the island, as it seemed to have the highest concentration of things that we wanted to do.

We left the evening of December 23rd and that got us to Kuala Lumpor for Christmas Eve. We arrived around 9pm and our next flight wasn’t until 7am the next morning, so we decided to hit the town and check out KL’s (all the people in the know call Kuala Lumpor KL) famous night life. The streets were packed with Christmas Eve revelers. While being a predominantly Muslim country, it is very moderate and tolerant of other religions. In fact, there were hundreds of Santa hats and full Santa suits being worn by men and women. It was different seeing petite Asian men not weighing more than 120 lbs wearing Santa suits, but their energy was contagious. Being some of the few westerners present, numerous people on the street stopped us to wish us a Merry Christmas. After a great dinner and some dancing, we headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Kota Kinabalu, the largest city on the Malaysia side of Borneo.

We arrived dead tired and were anxious to sleep. KK (local nickname for the city) was a fairly modern city complete with Starbucks, shopping malls and nice hotels. This is where many people launch their travels to the rest of the island. The next day we went to Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain in the region. It is a world heritage site, mostly because of the amazing plants. There are dozens of varieties of rare orchids, and pitcher plants that trap and are able to digest small birds and insects that look like they are straight from a cartoon.

The next few days we chased orangutans and proboscis monkeys up and down the rivers of Sabah. In a small power boat, we went up and down the river for hours listening for the proboscis monkeys’ distinctive call. It took us a couple of hours, but we finally heard it and were able to pull our boat directly below several different families of the monkeys.

Tracking orangutans proved to be much more difficult. Only after arriving were we told that most tourists never get a chance to see orangutans in the wild. There is an orangutan rehabilitation center where you are guaranteed to see them, as they are fed in the same place in the forest every day. We went to see them there, but we wanted to also try to see them in the wild. After a few hours of searching, we finally saw a mother and adolescent high in the trees. We were able to watch them for about five minutes and got a few pics, but it was really tough through all of the brush.

One experience that Kaarli won’t soon forget is when we took a day trip to see where bird’s nests are harvested for bird’s nest soup, the famously expensive Chinese delicacy. We were driven to a huge cave where workers climbed small bamboo ladders that were pulled hundreds of feet in the air by ropes held by workers far below. This was something you had to see to believe. What we were not told going in was that tens of thousands of bats also occupied the cave. There were literally black “snow banks” of bat guano 6-8 feet high all around. I won’t describe the smell, but let’s just say you didn’t open your mouth if you didn’t need to. There was a wooden walkway that went around the circumference of the cave. The wooden deck was extremely slippery with the humidity of the air and slimy guano. It was extremely difficult to maintain your footing especially since the hand railing and ground below was alive with thousands of huge cockroaches and other huge insects that have no name and we thought only existed in children’s books.

Our last stop in Borneo was Sipadan Island. This is one of the top scuba diving sites in the world and, while we are certainly not great scuba divers, we didn’t want to miss it. Sipadan Island is miles off the Borneo mainland and we took a speedboat about 45-minutes out to a floating hotel. Each room at the hotel was its own small hut from which you could look straight down at a rainbow of tropical fish, starfish and coral. It was definitely one of the nicest places we have ever stayed. We finally went for our first dive and the dive master promptly informed us that our two-day course that we took in Kenya did not give us the background required for such an advanced dive. He told us not to be disappointed that this was for our own safety. Considering we had come half-way around the world and with 50% of the members in our marriage committed to doing this, we finally convinced the dive master to let us try. He assigned a dive instructor to accompany us at all times, which we were happy to have. We swam right up to enormous sea turtles, next to 8-10 foot sand sharks, white sharks, box fish (you should Google “box fish images”, you have to see these) and within a school of thousands of barracuda that looked like they might turn on us at any moment. It was not only the huge marine life that was so impressive. If you focused your attention to any small space you suddenly realized that there were dozens of tiny small creatures living in their own miniature world everywhere you looked.

Surprise Trips Home

2010-12-21T09:45:00.025+03:00

Both of us had unexpected quick trips back to the US over the winter. Wow....was it cold! To borrow a phrase from our friends Julie and Steve, we are no longer equipped for Michigan (or even DC) winters, but it was so great to be able to see family and friends so close to the holidays. Kaarli even got to pick out a Christmas tree with her family and surprise Kai at his graduation dinner! Here are a few pictures.....you can tell which of us is more inclined toward photography on these occasions. :)

Softball Champions!!!

2010-12-04T17:55:00.001+03:00

After a bitter defeat last season to the Japanese, the US Embassy team was able to claim our rightful place as Nairobi softball champions. We had to do this the hard way, as many of our teammates were out of town. We barely had ten players and had to recruit new players that had not ever played with us before.

This rag-tag bunch of players was tested to their very souls as our first game against Japan was a nail biter. We won the game by coming from behind in the last inning. The championship game against Canada then went into extra innings, where our scrappy bunch was finally able to push a run across. As soon as the run crossed everyone went completely crazy including our fan. In addition to the championship, Kaarli had the best hit of her life as she crushed a moon-shot over the infield.

As with all of our tournaments we had a BBQ afterwards. The Japanese team always outdoes every other team at the BBQ and this year was no different. What an awesome day!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T17:28:00.000+03:00

Looking back at the past year we truly have so much to be thankful for. We have been blessed to have each other to get us through the hard times and share in the joys. We have the love and support of both of our wonderful families, who we wish we saw more often. We have the world’s best friends who were on the playground with us growing up and who are currently making memories with us here in Kenya on a daily basis. We both have jobs that make us feel that we are doing something worthwhile with boss’ that appreciate our efforts. Thank you all for being part of our lives. Next time you hear either of us complain about something, which is often, please tell us to quit whining.

For Thanksgiving this year, we went to the beach and rented a great house on the ocean with a huge pool and 13 of our best friends. “We” made a fabulous Thanksgiving meal with a huge turkey. The weather was perfect and we thoroughly enjoyed our four days there.

For Aaron’s birthday, Kaarli organized a deep-sea fishing trip, which Aaron had wanted to go on for the last couple of years. Aaron caught several enormous prize winning fish. No one could believe what an amazing fisherman Aaron was. Unfortunately, the camera ran out of batteries, so there are no pictures of Aaron’s fish, so just ask him to tell you about them next time you see him.

Si Sahani Tournament (It is not a plate-in Swahili)

2010-11-20T16:17:00.009+03:00

One of our Frisbee friends has been working with teens from slum areas of Kenya and one of the team building activities was playing ultimate Frisbee. The end of the month long program was to have a tournament between all of the 12 teams of ten players. As the players were learning the game they kept yelling back and forth to each other to throw the plate. Our friend kept reminding them with a smile that it was not a plate, but a Frisbee. She aptly named the tournament the Si Sahani Tournament (It is not a plate).

Each of the teams needed a coach, so we volunteered to each take a team. This was Kaarli’s first time to ever coach a sport. It was awesome seeing her prowl the sidelines and yell encouragement and strategy to her players.

The highlight of the day was that our two teams played each other in the single elimination quarter finals. Games were played to 7 points and our two teams battled back and forth to a score of six to six. Fortunately, the best team won and Aaron was able to celebrate the victory with his team. His team then lost their next game to the Swedish school.

We both got seriously sunburned, but it was worth it.

Marine Ball

2010-11-13T21:43:00.005+03:00

This year we celebrated the 235^th birthday of the US Marine Corps together with about 300 others of the US Embassy community at our second Marine Ball. It is an evening where we honor both the commitment of the US Marines that protect the US Embassy in Kenya and those who serve all over the world. It is definitely impressive to spend some time with the Marines and see their amazing dedication and willingness to sacrifice for our country.

Halloween

2010-10-31T21:29:00.014+03:00

Let us start by saying that putting together a Halloween costume in Nairobi is not that easy. There are no 24-hour Halloween superstores, so you have to use your imagination and be crafty. Unfortunately, Aaron’s sisters got all the craftiness in the family and Kaarli never learned to sew like her mom, which leaves us with only imagination. Both of our imaginations have been pretty dominated by work over the last month, which is all a long explanation for why you won’t be able to figure out our costumes. We thought about suggesting that people guess at what we were dressed up as, but we didn’t think that would end well, so to answer your burning question we are dressed up in the joint costume of a staple foods (Aaron-see the food “stapled” to his body) value chain (Kaarli-see the chains with the sale tags). We had to explain that one all night long and even friends who work in the same field were confused, so its not you.

Anyway, we had a great time at Risha’s house. Check out the pics.

Dar es Salaam

2010-10-11T21:18:00.017+03:00

While Aaron was in the Mara, Kaarli hopped over to Dar to visit Kelsey, Heather and Rowan, who recently moved to Tanzania. We had a great time checking out the city in every possible mode of transport, trying to recreate a Swahili dish using lots of coconut shavings, playing in the waves and sand at the beach and even attending a fantastic dance performance. It’s crazy to think that the Heeringa girls are now living closer geographically than we have in over a decade. Hopefully we’ll see each other again soon!

Mara with Jennifer

2010-10-10T21:15:00.016+03:00

We always have a great time when people come to visit Kenya for the first time. This time, one of Aaron’s colleagues, Jennifer, was in town from DC to help with one of Danya’a projects. After a long week of meetings, Aaron and Jennifer, together with a Kenyan colleague Mwende, escaped the city and went on safari to the Masai Mara, as all good visitors to Kenya should. We saw lots of animals, visited a Masai village and ate surprisingly good food. All in all, another great trip to the Mara.

Home Leave 2010 - UK

2010-09-06T21:45:00.007+03:00

On the way back to Nairobi, we stopped through the UK to visit some of our closest friends from DC, Colleen and Scott, and their kids Isabella, Quinn and Scarlet. It was wonderful to catch up and get a chance to see their life in Cheltenham. We toured an English castle, hung out at a local pub and played with the kids, who are growing up so fast. On our last night, we headed back to London and had dinner with Petra – the Heeringa’s Croatian exchange student from when Kaarli was a freshman in high school. Petra is now living in London with her husband and family. It was an amazing opportunity to reconnect!

Home Leave 2010- DC

2010-09-06T21:11:00.008+03:00

Both of us had to work during the days while in DC, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t maximize the evenings and weekends. Every night, we were able to have dinner with at least one friend, which made the week race by. Alecia drove down from her new position at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania to spend the day with us as well, which was a wonderful treat. We also had our good friend Dan drive down from Philadelphia to come out for dinner. Just to clarify, we do know how lucky we are to have friends and family like you all.

One piece of excitement while we were in DC was that Aaron got caught in the Discovery Channel hostage situation, which happened just a few buildings down from his headquarters office. Aaron was walking up from the subway back to the office when he saw around ten police vehicles unloading guys with shields and loading very serious looking rifles. One officer was just starting to clear the busy intersection and yelling at the pedestrians to clear the area.

Aaron still didn’t know what was going on, but figured that he better stop at Chipotle to grab a burrito just in case the police didn’t allow people to come back. He looked into the Discovery Channel building to see everyone inside looking out their windows down at the crowd looking back up at them. At that point, Aaron really wasn’t sure who to feel sorry for, as everyone seemed to be confused. He had just made it inside Chipotle when a police officer came in and said that everyone had to move away from the windows and towards the burrito bar. There could be a second gunman on this street and everyone needed to stay calm. We had just seen the Grey’s Anatomy finale with the gunman in the hospital, so Aaron felt prepared should the gunman wander into Chipotle. Luckily, they did not stop serving burritos and Aaron got a barbacoa-fajita burrito with sour cream and extra guacamole (guacamole is way too expensive, but just in case this was his last Chipotle burrito, Aaron didn’t want to skimp). After only about 15 minutes, all of the patrons were allowed to leave Chipotle, but couldn’t go back toward the Discovery building. Aaron went to his office and heard the helicopters and sirens for the next four hours. Just around 5pm the swat team shot and killed the gunman who had apparently walked into the Discovery lobby with guns and explosives and had taken a few people hostage.

After that experience, we both decided that we needed to get back to Nairobi where things are safe!

Home Leave 2010 – Grand Rapids

2010-08-21T21:05:00.030+03:00

As many of you know, we get one home leave per year to visit friends and family in the US. It is always a whirlwind for us as we try to see as many people as possible while trying to get over jet lag. The good thing is that you all really keep it interesting. We never have a dull moment and love hearing all of your life adventures from the last time we saw you. It is also really convenient that both of our parents still live just a couple of miles apart, so we can go back and forth and organize group family activities. Hopefully the Sundsmos and Heeringas understand that any future moves must be similarly coordinated.

We started the trip visiting family and friends in Grand Rapids. Joy, Brett, Garrett, Bryce and Griffen also made the trip to GR from California to come hang out with us and grandma and grandpa. We had a great time with them, including Michigan’s Adventure amusement park, dune buggy rides, Lake Michigan, a West Michigan Whitecaps minor league baseball game and Vitale’s pizzeria just to name a few. We are always in awe of how Joy and Brett find time to do as many activities as they do each month with the three boys, and enjoyed being part of this month’s adventures.

As always, we had a blast with the Heeringa clan. Between the backyard BBQs, tennis, poker and philosophical discussions about how to make the world a better place, we got to see a lot of the family who kindly drove in from all over West Michigan (and beyond).

We were also thrilled to be part of Kaarli’s good friend Amy’s wedding. It was a night to remember with a beautiful ceremony, awesome food and crazy dance moves. Congrats Amy and Jonhathan!

Finally, we can’t come home without seeing our G-RAP friends. As we get older, the legends of yesteryear keep growing. I think we must know the finest collection of city league graduates to have ever come through the hallowed halls of Creston and Union. It is always a lot of fun to hang out with them and become sixteen again.

10th Anniversary!

2010-08-01T15:18:00.000+03:00

It is amazing to us both that it has already been ten years since we said our wedding vows at Calvin College and then partied into the night with so many friends and family. We would have loved to celebrate this special occasion with all of the people who were at the wedding the first time and all of the friends that we have been blessed with since, but several of you complained that Kenya was a long way to go for an anniversary party, so we decided to go on a romantic weekend adventure.

We went to Loisaba Lodge, which was famous for having star beds. The star beds are situated on a wooden platform on the edge of a cliff looking into the rift valley below. The beds were completely open with only a mosquito net around the top. In addition, the beds are in the middle of a nature reserve that is very well populated with all of Kenya’s animals. After going to sleep under the stars we were woken up around 3am by a pride of lions that was just feet away from the ladder that led up to our room. The lions began calling back to another group of lions that was on the other side of the valley. It was completely surreal, magical and terrifying. If there wasn’t a heavy trap door on top of the ladder to our room, we both would have been much more nervous.

There were also numerous activities to do at the lodge including hiking, horseback riding, rafting and message. We did them all over the course of the weekend and headed back to Nairobi exhausted. It was by far one of our best anniversaries. Thank you all for being a part of our lives and helping us make it this far.

Happy Birthday America

2010-08-01T15:11:00.000+03:00

There is something about fireworks that turns normally responsible adult males into twelve year old pyromaniacs. Aaron is especially susceptible to this transformation and once again became the boy who saved his paper route money to buy illegal fireworks from Indiana to put on a fireworks display that everyone in the neighborhood would remember. This is one instance where Kenya’s lack of public safety regulations played in our favor, allowing Aaron to purchase professional grade fireworks from a local Indian superstore.

For this year’s venue, twelve of our best friends in Nairobi together with Adam and Danielle, who were in town from Los Angeles, all rented a house in Ngong Hills for another memorable July 4th. The weekend was complete with a proper Kenyan BBQ, card games, squash, story telling and of course fireworks. Thankfully no one was hurt during the weekend despite our best efforts. The pictures were taken by our friend Shannon, who is a professional photographer.

Elephant Orphanage

2010-07-02T15:00:00.001+03:00

Our former roommate Adam came into town from Los Angeles with his girlfriend Danielle for a safari and service trip. It is always fun to introduce friends to Kenya and this gave us an opportunity to go to the elephant orphanage, which we had never done before. Any baby animals are cute, but baby elephants are so playful, awkward and social that all of us fell in love with them. We adopted Olare, a two year old elephant, whose mother had died and was found near starvation in one of the national parks. Olare was extremely mischievous and welcomed us by blowing water at a litte kid and then wiping mud on Kaarli’s T-shirt. We were hooked.

Loyangalani Cultural Festival

2010-06-20T15:22:00.001+03:00

Over the last few years, we have been able to cross most of the destinations that we had wanted to visit in Kenya off our list. One of the places that we had still not been yet was Lake Turkana National Park. It turned out that this year’s Loiyangalani Peace and Cultural Festival was to be held on the weekend of Kaarli’s birthday, so we could not say no. The German and American Embassies were sponsoring the event and the German Embassy had booked two small charter planes to head up to the air strip at Loiyangalani, which would save us a bumpy and dusty 18 hour drive from Nairobi, making it possible to visit for just the weekend.

We got off the ten passenger plane to a wave of heat and an airstrip full of the seven different Kenyan communities performing with song and dance. You will quickly see in the pictures that many of the communities still dress very traditionally. For the event, they were dressed in more ceremonial attire, but these are still very real and in use. On normal days, people dress in a mix of western style and traditional clothes. It is not unusual to see a University of Michigan or Manchester United jersey on a kid and a very traditional looking outfit on his parents (or sometimes vice versa).

These communities are primarily pastoralists or fisherman. These specific tribes have had a long history of conflict with one another over land rights, water rights, and cattle raiding. All of these communities are now extremely threatened as water becomes more and more scarce. Further complicating the picture is a new dam being built in Ethiopia on one of Lake Turkana’s major feeder rivers. Some predict that the dam could significantly impact the water levels in the lake if it goes forward.

Over the two days at the festival, we saw each community perform their traditional songs and dances, compete in wrestling, bao (like backgammon), boat races and “swimming”. The swimming race was especially interesting because we had heard that many of the groups can’t swim despite being fisherman and living close to the lake. It turned out that the "swimming" race started in waist deep water and the race was to see who could get on shore fastest. This meant a combination of jumping, diving and running. All in all, it was a fantastic experience and we were both glad that we finally made it up north.

Maralal Camel Derby - The Lost Video Footage

2010-06-19T10:52:00.000+03:00

For the dedicated Kenya Diggit readers, I regret to inform you that this year’s Maralal Camel Derby will be held when we are back in Grand Rapids for Amy’s wedding. I hope Amy appreciates what we are giving up. Kaarli was already training for the Tri-camel-thon. Last year’s Maralal Camel Derby proved to be one of our most read blog entries (Tri-Camel-thon, August 7, 2009). For all of you who enjoyed that posting, below is a series of never-been-released video footage of Aaron and segments from his terrifying camel experience as captured by one of our good friends who had moved back to the US and just came back to visit. Aaron started sweating all of again just watching the video. Enjoy.

FEAST II

2010-06-02T14:32:00.001+03:00

We continue to be ultimate Frisbee fanatics. It is a sad day indeed when we don’t get to play on both Fridays and Sundays. Over the last couple of years Kaarli has transformed from a timid player that hoped the Frisbee was not thrown to her to becoming a disc monster who waits for her defensive player to blink and then pirouettes in the end zone. It has been a blast playing together.

Last year’s ultimate Frisbee beach tournament, which we called FEAST (Frisbee East African Sand Tournament) was such a success that this year players began asking when the next one was going to be held. The only problem was that all of the organizers from the last couple of years had now moved away. One problem with living in Nairobi for four plus years is that you end up becoming in charge of stuff by default. Thankfully we mobilized a great team of tournament organizers and went to work. We decided not to break the mold and call the tournament FEAST II and rented the same house on Tiwi beach to serve as tournament HQ.

We were able to attract teams of ten players from Sudan and Uganda and we mobilized three teams from our Nairobi group for a five team tournament. With 50 players and another 20-30 friends, significant others, kids and fans it quickly turned into quite an event.

We were on the same team this year and called ourselves the Wilde-FEASTS. Hilarious, right? Anyway, the first day each team played each of the other four teams for an hour each. The Wilde-FEASTS migrated all over the competition and went undefeated. All of the games were close and highly competitive, but our superior skill and intellect won the day. This set us up for a match against the 4^th seed in the single elimination round against Uganda.

Uganda was much faster and more athletic than our team of veterans, but we had beaten them in the first round and hoped to shut them down again. It turned into a game for the ages. The score went back and forth with several lead changes for the entire hour. Being the good hosts that we were, we let Uganda beat us on the last point. It was a let down for our all of the Wilde-FEASTS, but we had a lot of fun and played some great ultimate.

One of our other Nairobi teams, the Trash Talkers ended up beating Uganda in the final game. After the championship game the real fun started. With an exhausted Trash Talked and Uganda team we combined all of the teams for beer ultimate, which is playing ultimate Frisbee with a beer in one hand. This of course led to a pool and dance party back at the beach house where insanity ensued. It definitely was another great weekend to remember.

Eyjafjallajokull what?

2010-04-21T14:30:00.010+03:00

Somehow, Kaarli first managed to get sent to Italy for a workshop, and then also managed to get stuck there due to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Here are a few pictures from the planned and unplanned trips, which eventually included Milan, Bellagio, Venice and Rome. Following multiple bus, train, boat and finally plane rides, she made it back to Nairobi four days later than expected, gaining no sympathy from coworkers or friends for being part of this natural disaster.

K-JAM 2010

2010-04-18T10:56:00.002+03:00

For those of you who were not able to attend, K-JAM 2010 was the first annual Kenyan, Japanese, American Potluck Party. The origin of the party came from several great softball games between the American and Japanese softball teams. The Americans won a few and Japan won a few, but we all had a lot of fun hanging out together and so promised to organize an evening to party together.

Well, the Japanese upped the ante and said that they would bring sushi and teach everyone how to make it at home. Once word got out that we were having a sushi party, people started coming out of the woodwork. We ended up having around 80-100 people at the party in our good friend Hanna’s backyard. Nairobi’s greatest Afro-fusion rock band, Murphy’s Flaw played and it turned out that one of the Japanese guys used to be the lead guitarist of a famous Top 40 band in Japan, so he joined in to jam with the band. Of course this then led to karoke.

The highlight of the night for me was learning a new party game using a baseball bat from the Japanese. You blindfold someone and have them spin around with their head on the bat to get them dizzy just like at the minor league baseball games in the US. They then have one swing at a watermelon that is laying on the ground. The volunteer has to find the watermelon based on the group around them clapping. When the person finally gets close, they get one swing straight down. If they hit the watermelon, it bursts and everyone gets a taste. It sounds kind of crazy, but it was awesome.

Masai Mara with Aaron's Boss

2010-04-09T22:19:00.001+03:00

My boss Dave was in Kenya for the first time from DC and we had a full schedule of site visits to rural health clinics, government offices and meetings with our partners. However, with it being Dave’s first time in Kenya, we had to get out of town and head out on safari. For loyal Kenya Diggit readers, you will remember that my boss from DC has come numerous times before. So what’s up with that, you may ask. Well, as many of you know, I have multiple bosses both at work and at home, so please don’t be confused.

Dave and I were getting ready for our Saturday morning flight when I got a call from the travel agency telling me there was a problem with our reservation. They told me that they had overbooked the tented camp that we were supposed to stay at. The travel agent then informed me that we have been upgraded to a more exclusive resort. After asking the agent to repeat that we would not need pay any more money for this upgrade about five or six times, I prepared for the worst.

Amazingly, everything worked out just as advertised. The resort was amazing and normally would cost international tourists $1,000 per night per person and we paid a small fraction of that cost. The camp, food and staff were all amazing and we had a fantastic game drive. We even had a close encounter with the illusive leopard on the last game drive. Check out the pics.

Ngorongoro Crater National Park

2010-04-02T21:16:00.001+03:00

In much of East Africa, Easter is a four day weekend. As we don’t get many four day weekends, we wanted to go someplace that we hadn’t been to before. One place that we had always wanted to go was the Ngorongro Crater in northern Tanzania. Ngorongoro was a huge volcano that blew its top around three million years ago leaving a huge crater of a hundred square miles. Estimates are that the original volcano was larger than Mount Kilimanjaro, the current largest mountain on the continent. This hundred mile crater floor is surrounded on all sides by a 2,000 foot wall trapping the 25,000 animals that live inside it. Because of lack of new blood lines the lions in the park have become severely in-bread leading many genetic problems. Luckily, there are plenty of zebras, wildebeest and gazelles also trapped in the park to keep them well fed.

We enlisted eight friends to join us on the caravan of three 4WDs to Tanzania. It was an eight hour bumpy car ride to reach the crater. We stopped in Arusha the first night. We spent the day in Lake Manyara National Park on day two. Finally we reached the crater on day three and spent the night on the crater rim. Day four was reserved for the long car ride home. Remarkably everyone survived with only moderate adventures of getting stuck in the mud and locking the keys in the car while the car was running, but nothing to serious. It turned out to be a perfect four day weekend with good friends.

Irish Ball II

2010-03-13T21:06:00.000+03:00

There is something about the Irish that makes everyone love them. I am not sure if it is the accent, green sparkly clothes, or traditional Irish beverages, but just like last year all were in ample supply for the Irish Ball. It was even more cut throat then usual to get Irish Ball tickets this year. We had reserved three tables of ten each for our friends, but unfortunately they were oversold and we were told that we could only have one table. Thus, we had to tell twenty people they couldn’t come. However, this did make the ten of us who were lucky enough to get tickets feel responsible to have enough fun for thirty people. We did the best we could, but we will leave it to for you to decide from the pictures, if we succeeded.

Holi Moly! February 27

2010-02-27T15:15:00.001+03:00

Every year, Holi, also called the Festival of Colors, is celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs all over the world. It is primarily observed in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Holi is celebrated by throwing colored powder, water and dye at the other celebrants. Neither of us had been familiar with this holiday until one of our friends, who had lived in India for several years, floated the idea of hosting a Holi party at her house. Once we understood the details, that this was basically a big water fight with water balloons, buckets, colored water and water guns, we were sold. I think the pictures tell the whole story.

Ghana, February 13 (Kaarli)

2010-02-13T19:26:00.005+03:00

I have been traveling a bit more for work these days and in February had the chance to check out the other side of the continent, as I went to the West Africa Regional Workshop for the Global Hunger and Food Security Response and Global Climate Change. After a week in the workshop with very few steps outside of the hotel, I had a whole day Saturday before catching my evening flight to explore the countryside. I headed out with a few friends from work to Cape Coast, where we toured one of the old slave castles (where people were kept before being shipped off on the transatlantic slave trade). It was horrifying and depressing in so many ways, but something we should never forget.

After that, we went on Africa's only canopy walk, which was super high and gave me a minor panic attack, but I survived. Here are a few pictures.

Olympic Softball, January 30

2010-01-30T15:05:00.001+03:00

During our game versus the Japanese Embassy at the end of last year’s softball season, three nicely dressed, very official looking Kenyans walked up to the field and asked to speak to the person in charge of this game. Kenya has taught us well that when officials are looking for the person in charge, it is rarely to pass out awards or make your life easier. I looked around at our ragtag co-ed team and tried to decide who to throw under the bus and say that they were in charge. The problem is that I really like all of our team, so I decided to take the hit and take responsibility for whatever infraction we had committed. With memories of obstructing the President fresh in my mind, I ask them how I could help.

Francis then introduced himself and his colleagues as representatives of the Kenya Softball Federation and the Kenya Olympic Committee. They said that they had heard about our league and they were wondering if we would be interested in playing against some of the teams from their league. I was absolutely floored. I had never heard of any Kenyans playing softball, let alone a league.

We agreed on meeting at Olympic House to work out the details. After a few meetings, we organized an eight team softball tournament. We would have the four teams from our league (US Embassy, Japanese Embassy, Canadian Embassy, and Rosslyn Academy) compete against the top four teams in the Kenyan league. The Kenyan delegation informed us that with softball having been an Olympic sport and with it likely coming back, they need to build a feeder system to the national team, so that they can be competitive in the Africa Softball Cup of Nations, which qualifies for the Olympics. They said that they knew that if they could play against world softball powerhouses like USA and Japan, then the other African teams would be easy to defeat. I tried to inform our Olympic Committee hosts that our team was very far from being of Olympic caliber and would do poorly in small local leagues in the US. The Kenyan delegates gave me that knowing look and said that I was being very modest. I tried to insist that we really were not that good, but there was no use. This would have to be settled on the field.

Finally, the day of the tournament came. Our team showed up in force with 18 excited players. We started the day with a round of speeches by Olympic officials and all of the team managers. Unfortunately, after waiting around for a couple of hours, our first game against the Kenya Youth Service was cancelled because they could not find transportation to the field. So we advanced to the next round against Japan, who had beaten Nairobi Nazarene University. We played a fired up Japanese team that could not be denied. With our team up two runs in the last inning, we collapsed and made a few defensive mistakes and Japan took advantage by scoring eight runs. We were heart broken, as we had planned on winning the entire tournament, but Japan is one of our favorite teams because of their team spirit and enthusiasm for the game no matter what the score is.

Japan played Rosslyn in the finals with Rosslyn winning. Of all the teams where one of our international teams played a Kenyan team, the closest score was a victory by Japan by 20 runs. The other victories were by 30 and 40 runs, so there is still some work to be done before Kenya medals in Olympic softball.

There was an excited group of high school boys from Nairobi School watching all of the games attentively. They cheered on all teams and after each game was played they would take the field to take some batting practice. After our defeat, we decided to divide our team in half and combine with the Nairobi School players for a coaching scrimmage, stopping to explain the nuances of this foreign game. They did great and took all the instruction very seriously and were extremely thankful afterwards. Even though we lost to Japan, we had a great day and the final game with the kids from Nairobi School made it all worth while.

Aberdares Weekend

2010-01-17T14:54:00.001+03:00

With all of the family now safely out of town, it was time to head out on another adventure. We were invited to join some friends at a cottage in the highlands of Kenya at the Aberdare National Park. We had been there once before on the infamous Route 22 trip that ripped our car to shreds a couple of years back, but this time we realized there was a much easier way to get there.

We did some fly fishing, hiking, picnicking by a beautiful waterfall and storytelling around the fireplace into the wee hours. It is always nice to get out of the city and get some fresh air with good friends.

Safari Njema (Good Journey in Swahili) with Family

2010-01-05T22:20:00.008+03:00

We drove down to the Masai Mara for our big safari to end the trip. We stayed in a tented camp called Mara Siria. The tents were not your average Coleman tents, but had a full-size bathroom and shower, full-size beds and a wonderful view of the Great Rift Valley below. Our Masai host, Le’sho regaled us with tales of Masai life and funny tourist stories at night while we went out in search of animals during the morning and evening.We saw quite a lot in a short time, including several prides of lions, elephants, giraffe, buffalo, crocodile, hippo, waterbuck, warthog, topi and zebra, just to name a few. It had been raining in the Mara, which made the two-tracks in the park quite treacherous and we got stuck several times. Thankfully, the safari vehicle was equipped with a radio and someone was always relatively close and could come pull us out. As always, there are opportunities for better logistics on these sort of trips, so we made a few suggestions to our gracious hosts.

On our way out of the park, we stopped at a local Masai village to take a cultural tour. This simply means that you give the village $20 each to have a guide walk you through the village and talk about everyday life for the Masai. The Masai love it because it is pretty easy money and it is always a favorite of ours and of previous guests. Aaron found a suitor for Alecia in this village who was very interested and willing to make Alecia his first wife, but Alecia wanted to think over his generous offer of 20 goats before accepting her new life in the village. Aaron also joined in the men’s jumping dance and was lucky enough to get a photograph of what he considers his superior jumping skills.

We were then off to Nairobi for our last day with the family. On our last day we did a lot of shopping, packing and eating. Then it was time to go. It was amazing how fast the two weeks together went, but it was fantastic for us to be able to share our new lives with our family. It was great to have them here and we hope we can convince them to come back again someday.

Family time at Lake Naivasha, January 3

2010-01-03T19:48:00.004+03:00

After a couple of days in Nairobi, we were ready to get back out to the countryside. We rented a literal log cabin a couple of hours out of town near Lake Naivasha where we would spend the first couple of days before heading to the famous Masai Mara National Park.

We had stayed in the log cabin for Gilbert’s going-away party a few months before and had a great time because of the huge patio overlooking the lake and beautiful mountainous scenery. Near Lake Naivasha, we saw the flamingos, had an up close and personal giraffe encounter, went hiking in Hell’s Gate and even played a round of golf at the Great Rift Valley Golf course.

Mama Kimani, January 2

2010-01-02T19:16:00.000+03:00

After coming back from the coast, we stayed in Nairobi for a couple of days. On one of the days, we visited Mama Kimani who runs a support group for HIV positive women in Mitumba slum. Mama Kimani is an amazingly inspirational person that we are proud to have known over the last couple of years. In addition to the women’s group, she also helps take care of around fifty kids that were either orphaned or have a parent that cannot take care of them.
Walking around Mitumba is no easy feat. There are only narrow muddy pathways in-between ramshackle housing, which forces one to make turn after disorienting turn down short alleys. The mud combines with waste water to make rivers of smelly badness that you need to try to avoid stepping in at all costs. None of us were able to completely avoid stepping in the badness, but locals skip from step to step often in white shoes or clothing that is completely spotless. The surroundings of Mitumba slum are heartbreaking as you see people living in these difficult conditions.
We visited several women from the support group and were invited into their homes. We heard many of their stories of being widowed or abandoned by their husbands once they were diagnosed with HIV, shunned by their friends because of the stigma and many times pressured out of their church for contracting a “sinner’s disease”. The irony is that often times the husbands contracted the virus and passed it to their wives. Some husbands refused to be tested for HIV, so never receive the same stigma, but they die without receiving any medication.

This is a heartbreaking situation, but Mama Kimani and the women of the group are all quite upbeat and remind us of all of the things they have to be thankful for. They talk of their many blessings and the faithfulness of God to help them through difficult times. It is hard to imagine where these women would be without their unyielding faith and positive attitude. It certainly always makes us truly embarrassed for our daily complaints. Spending time with the kids we think is best told with the pictures. Check them out.

What happens to a snow ball in Mombasa? Decamber 30

2009-12-30T12:39:00.007+03:00

The initial trip design was for everyone to have a day of rest in Nairobi before heading off to the Kenyan coast. Well, Allen and Alecia did get most of a day after arriving in the early morning, but Charlie and Jamie “decided” to spend the day in London and display some valor through the adversity of multiple flight changes. Before this trip, Aaron was quite convinced that he could pretty easily win the Sundsmo sleep-in challenge, but Alecia on the first day proved that she should not be underestimated and made an impressive showing. We ended up doing a little shopping orientation and went to a couple of our favorite restaurants before picking up Jamie and Charlie late the next evening.
We left early the next morning for the eight hour drive to the coast. Sometimes we forget how beautiful the Kenyan countryside is since we live here, but having visitors see it for the first time is always a fun experience. Everyone has their own specific detail that is surprising or beautiful to them. Many times neither of us had ever even noticed that feature and now will never look at it the same again.

We stopped in Mombasa first to see some of the historical sites, such as Fort Jesus and old town before having a late lunch. We then piled back into the car to drive to where we would be staying in Malindi. The Kenyan coast is one of the hottest places in Kenya. Because of its high elevation, Nairobi rarely gets over 82 degrees, but the coast gets hot. Since the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere, this is like going to Florida in July.

We had a great time on the coast snorkeling, walking on the beach, hanging out by the pool and having fresh seafood at night. The house we stayed in had air-conditioning, so there was some respite from the heat when one of our snow-bunnies started to melt. We drove back through Tsavo National Park on the way home and gave everyone their first taste of a safari. Tsavo is a huge park, the size of Massachusetts, and we were driving through during the heat of the day when you often do not see many animals, so we tried to set low expectations for this trip. Surprisingly, we saw quite a bit, including the first time that we had seen the famous man eating lions of Tsavo.

Kenyan Preperations, December 23

2009-12-23T12:20:00.003+03:00

It has been a dream of ours since we moved out here to introduce Kenya to our family. Finally, after a couple of years of planning and near misses, we were able to work out the timing for Kaarli’s parents (Charlie and Jamie), and Aaron’s dad (Allen) and little sister (Alecia) to fly out to Kenya for Christmas and New Years. The answer is yes, we were concerned that it would not go well. Our time here has taught us that the best laid plans and intentions can sour in quite a hurry, but we knew with a little luck they would all have a great time.

For those of you who have not yet traveled to Africa, there is quite a bit of upfront work that you need to do before you leave. First, you need to consult your international travel medical clinic to schedule your battery of shots that will protect you from a stray virus or two. Second, you need to not freak out from all of the information provided to you by the international travel medical clinic about the aforementioned shots and illnesses. Frankly, we’re not sure these people are helpful. Scaring people with the .001% chance of contracting ebola is like warning people coming to the America for the first time about getting injured by a foul ball as you walk down the street.

In addition to the shots, everyone needs to make sure they have a valid passport. Yes, it does expire, so check it out. Lastly, you need to make sure that the country you are going to can give you a visa at the airport. Kenya does, so it’s easy. And that’s it. Now you just book your flight and you are off. Not too bad, right?

After a series of phone calls and emails, our team of adventures were as prepared as they were going to be. Charlie and Jamie would be flying Grand Rapids – Chicago – Newark – Brussels – Bujumbura – Nairobi and Allen and Alecia would be taking the more direct Grand Rapids – Newark – Paris – Nairobi. Given that everyone was leaving the snowy upper Midwest in December and making multiple complicated connections, we knew there was the possibility of adversity. As you all know, adversity brings out courage and the courageous display valor. Everyone left Grand Rapids on time, but there were thankfully a few displays of valor by all of the travelers on the trip. After all, had the flight gone smoothly, then they would all probably start doubting Aaron’s fantastic travel stories of the last few years.