DTS starts, the first week (Oct 4th-8th)

The first week has been out of this world and I can’t thank God enough for bringing me here. How can there be so many cool people in the world!?! Lot of fun things happened this week and it was more like an orientation week to get to know each other. We got or school and work schedule for the next 3 months and had some lectures, but we definitely had more free time then we will have the next coming weeks. Homework is pretty fun though! We have to read two books during the 3 months and do a little conclusion about them and wrote it in our journal. Journals are the coolest! Every Monday we hand them to Joram and other staff members so that they could see how are we doing. In our journals we record what we have learned during the week and little points from the lectures we have heard. We also need to find a scripture from the Bible that really spoke with us that week and then just decorate it. It’s so much fun!!!


My favorite part of the school day is the morning. Right after breakfast at 7:30am we have 1 hour QT(quite time) with the Lord. It means that we can go anywhere with our Bible and be back at the classroom by 8:30am. Our base is huge and there are so many beautiful places to go and sit and have a talk with God. I love it!!! I never had that time back in DC and here it’s on a schedule to do so…how can u not love it 

The beginning of the week went pretty slow. Another thing that we have to do here is work duty and that kind of sucked the first days. Work duty means that every day from 2:30pm until 4:30pm we do some kind of work at the base. It can be anything from cooking dinner, sorting out the beans and rice, cleaning the kitchen, classroom, toilets, planting and taking care of plants, washing dishes or sheets to killing a goat. Yeah, it’s pretty whack!!! Naah, actually it’s nice to get your hands on something, it’s just that I got the cleaning part the first view days and in that African heat I didn’t really like it. But oh well…it’s all good, at least we all work to make our living here better and sometimes it can be really fun as well.

I have learned so much Swahili during the week that I am pretty sure that when I come back I will speak it like old Kenyan. It’s so easy and fun …you better be ready, Charles! What else…oh yeah on Tuesday we went to see the lions that one of our neighbors has here or should I say simbas lol. Somehow it felt different to really see them here in Africa instead of the zoo in DC, it was cool. He also had tons of turtles, so pretty cool farm if I may say so myself.

The same night when we got back to the base I had my first ugali. Baaaahhh!!! I don’t like it at all! It doesn’t taste like anything and is just a white chunky thing looking something like we call “manna” in Estonia. I never liked “manna” either, so it might come from that. Anyways…another stuff that they eat with it is a green thingy called skumawiki or just skuma. It looks little bit like spinach but is more bitter. I kind of liked it…kind of.

On Wednesday on the other hand we have the best stuff to eat in Kenya. Chapati with beans, mmmm. If that’s not straight from the Lord then what is lol. It’s this goodness that looki little bit like tortilla or think pancake but is so much better and goes so good with beans. It really made me happy hehe. Actually from Wednesday everything has gone really fast and been so much fun. On Thursday we had Team Building Day. It basically meant that the whole day we played games, danced, played soccer and learned to know and trust each other. Isn’t that sweet!!! All the people are so fun, I already love them and everybody likes me too, so it’s great!

On Friday we had a little celebration here. Not only because we had finished our first week, but Celia, who is a staff here and working with the orphans, got the first house out of eight that Able and Lora(they are a couple from Netherlands working here to build 8 family homes for poor people and orphans) had finished and was ready now to move in. Celia has 2 biological and 9 adopted children. For that occasion the base had bought two goats to be slaughtered. I heard that it’s a Kenyan tradition, so it wasn’t really anything new, except for mzungus. I promised to myself not to go and watch the killing part, so I sent my friend over to take the pictures and went there after both of the goats were dead. Joram, Fred and Bonfec had this crazy sparkle in their eyes. Who knew that two goats and a knife make Kenyan men happy like a child in a candy store. It was my first time to eat goat meat and I must say it was quite delicious. At least now I really know where the meat comes from…here in Kenya.

On Saturday we went to Nairobi to get the modem for the Internet. Even though there is always lot of people in Nairobi, this Saturday was a mad house as Kenya had a soccer game vs. Uganda. The city was full of people waving Kenyan flags and lot of Ugandans wearing their country colors. It felt like the world cup lol. On the way back home in the little matatu I still wasn’t used to with the left lane traffic. Who knew that Kenyans have their steering-wheel on the right. We couldn’t help us stopping on the road to buy some sugar cane. Oh man, is that stuff good or what!!!! I love it!!!! I remember Juliana telling me about it once or twice back in the States, but I could have never thought that it is sooo delicious.

Yesterday was Sunday and our rule here is to go to a different church every Sunday and by the 4th week find one that we like the most and go and preach there or do a Bible study. So this Sunday was our second time and we decided to go to a church close to our base. It was this church next to the main road to Machakos. It was the longest service I have ever attended (3 hours) and it wasn’t so pleasant for us Westerns as we all have some problems with our stomachs at the moment lol. Anyways…we survived it and the message was really good. Back at the base we did our laundry and played some games. Can’t believe we only have 11 weeks left!



“I want God to make me the person I need to be to live the dream he created me to live” (“The Dream Giver”)


Mungu akubariki!