Sunday June 24th

Abigail, Robbie and Elizabeth's daughter

the boys "making room" for more of Elizabeth's cooking. ^^

Sunday morning we woke up early and went to a Maasai market. These markets are all over Nairobi and are similar to swap meets. You can buy just about anything there. It was so exciting to barter with the vendors! I got some amazing deals on all sorts of Massai weapons for the brothers including spears, knifes, shields, and rungus. Rungus are big ivory clubs that the Massai boys have to kill a lion with to become a man. Can you imagine sending your little son out with nothing but a club and telling them to go find a lion! I also bought some fun African clothes and jewelry for some girls I babysit and some neat African print baby carriers for our foster-baby-to-be. I also bought plenty of earrings and bracelets that the ladies made.

The vendors wanted anything that came from America and would trade things for gum, pens, or anything else we had. The biggest hit was peanut butter. They were so fascinated by it and you could buy anything you wanted for a jar of Skippy! One man wanted 8,000 Schillings for this huge Massai knife but when I told him I wouldn't pay that much he said he would give it to me if I gave him my leather Gap bracelet that I had bought for just a few dollars! Needless to say some man in Kenya is wearing a Gap bracelet and I brought home an enormous knife for my brother!

The most memorable part of our time at the market was getting proposed to! I had been warned ahead of time that this could happen, and that the men aren't joking. They want to marry an American girl so they can come to America. Apparently the blond hair doesn't help either. The man was very forceful and would not take no for an answer. From then on when men started to ask questions I told them I was already married.

After we were done at the market we drove to a church that one of the missionaries, named Robbie, started. I was so excited for the church service, but a few minutes into worship time I got so dizzy I almost passed out. I asked Allysa if she had any food, but by the time she found some I couldn't even see anymore. It felt like I was looking into binoculars from too far away and everything was black except for a little circle. I snuck out of the room with Allysa and as soon as I got out of the doors I collapsed onto the floor. A lady came by and told us that there were couches downstairs that I could lay on. By the time I got to the couches I was shaking and shivering (I was later told that my temperature was over 103 degrees). Apparently I slept for quite a bit of time, but was still shaking in my sleep. I woke up to a lady telling me that I had malaria! Allysa tried to explain to her that we had not been out of Nairobi (Nairobi's elevation is too high for malaria) but the lady was not listening. She said that soon I would start hallucinating and that I needed to go to the hospital. Thankfully church had just ended and my team and the missionaries came down and explained that it wasn't malaria, I didn't even have a mosquito bite.

We left the church and drove to a place called Prestige to eat lunch with all of the missionaries as well as a nurse who lives with a missionary family there. The nurse made me drink a huge bottle of nasty electrolytes. I had to drink an entire liter in 45 minutes, however seeing that I was very sick I would throw it all up and have to start over. It was horrible. Elizabeth, Robbie's wife, decided to take me to her house while the rest of my team went to the Imani boys house (a house for the older boys who are transitioning out of the orphanage). However, to get to her house we had to take a taxi. Driving in Kenya is probably the single most dangerous thing I have ever done. There aren't any rules and people drive wherever they want as fast as they want. So here I am sitting in the front seat of a taxi going over 90 miles an hour on the bumpiest roads in the world, nasty electrolytes in hand, with a driver who doesn't speak English and doesn't understand what "pull over I am going to throw up" means. He finally got the idea when I started to open the door while we were still going. Thankfully we pulled over just in time.

I spent the rest of the day sleeping at Elizabeth's house. Because I could not keep water or electrolytes down, I was very dehydrated and the nurse said I needed to go to the hospital to get IVs put in. I laughed when she said that, on account of even the IV specialists at Standford can't get IVs in me. Thankfully they decided to wait a day to see if I got any better.

Later that evening the rest of the team joined me at Robbie and Elizabeth's to have dinner and fellowship with them. Then we went on their patio and had worship time next to the fire. It was so cold outside (Annie Johnson was using my burning head to keep her warm!) but it was nice to lay out under the stars and worship after such a frustrating day. The day had been a very humbling experience seeing that I hate being the "sick one" or the "weak one" and being the one who needs to be helped.

I was still not doing to well when we got home and was so thankful for my noisy toddler "pee proof" bed!! I was supposed to be drinking the electrolytes all the time but I figured it was getting somewhat pointless seeing that it didn't stay in me for any length of time so I went to bed instead.