Nearly 19 years in East Africa and counting...

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Mostly Kid Photos





Over the past several weeks it’s been mostly settling in to our new-ish routines. We haven’t traveled outside of Nairobi except for work. Kenya has much to offer and we’ll be partaking soon enough. For the time being it’s been good to focus a bit on the new job and explore our new city first.
visit from my beloved finance controller (Kenyan) from Burundi
In February, the girls’ school organized a “circus” where the kids were the performers. It was quite cute and it’s still strange to me to see my daughters performing. They seem quite comfortable in front of large crowds and I suppose that is part of the educational experience. At their age, I certainly wasn’t in fashion shows, performing acrobatics or even doing competitive running. 
the "circus"


Carnival is also a fairly big thing in many parts of Europe. At the girls’ school, which is French, they had an event where children were supposed to wear costumes, possibly like some schools in the US might do on Halloween. Only here they go a step further and have the kids parade around the playing field a few times. I’m not sure why. It’s sort of fun for the children to walk around, showing off their costumes and gives the parents opportunities to take photos. Doing all these events at this school for the first time, most of which are quite different, not only from our own experiences in elementary school but also a bit different from their experiences at the Belgian school in Bujumbura.
carnival
In March, we celebrated our tenth anniversary. Crazy. Given all that’s happened, it’s amazing what we have been able to cram into ten years. In some ways it seems longer – but not in a bad way. Ten years ago we were in Tanzania. Our Zanzibar beach wedding took place on at sunrise in the presence of our friends, Tim and Ingrid (who are now in Egypt). We were moving to the northern part of the country (I had already been there a couple of months) to work at the Burundian refugee camps. We would move into a tiny little house in a remote part of the world. It certainly was the acid test for a new marriage but it turned out to be a pretty intense but wonderful period in our lives.
elephant sa
her father in her eyes

Later in March we visited the elephant sanctuary. We’d been there before with Kiran when she was younger but she didn't have any memory of it. We had been visiting Nairobi for Priya’s prenatal checkup when she was pregnant with Kinaya. That would mean that she was probably a little over one and a half at the time. Time flies.

first lost tooth (pulled it out herself)

windy on our roof
The first quarter of 2017 is behind us. Off to Somalia next week. Heading to the Kenyan coast after that. Serbia in June. Then back to Somalia. Summer plans to Europe and the US are underway. Hang on to your hats.