Fooo-nnn-deeees : Fundis: Guys (or gals I suppose) who come and fix things.
As I type, I have 3 Fundis in my house. Doris is in the living room folding laundry (have I mentioned how much I love Doris!?) while the 2 fundis are there at the sliding glass door, drilling and banging and doing WAAY too much to install a new lock/latch on the door. Seriously. They were here yesterday for 3 hours. Today, we're hoping they are here for only an hour. It's like the beginning of a joke, "how many Kenyan's does is take to change a lock on a door (instead of light bulb)" OH yeah, and yesterday, there were 3, THREE men working on it. LOL. It's to the point of being humorous.
The other fundi is on my side of the house, where I type from our master bedroom, with the door open, since Cute Child is having a very good nap. The fundi is attempting to repair one of the MANY many many many plumbing problems we have in this apartment. He is currently standing looking at the sink in the guest bath with a very befuddled gaze. It is filled in the basin with about 4 inches of water, and from underneath, right where the basin meets the pedestal, a steady stream of gushing water is pouring all out onto the floor. He has just told me he is going to use putty to stop up the two holes. ?
Every solution here is one that I question. "Putty, Really?", I think to myself, and shake my head picturing water, stagnating on top of the putty until it rots through. *Sigh. But who knows, maybe they are right. I just don't have much faith in things getting fixed here. If I could, I would have basic plumbing, electric, mechanic, and carpentry skills mandatory for someone living in Africa! haha!
This afternoon I am attempting for the third time, yes 3rd you heard correctly, to make chocolate chip cookies. The first 2 were disasters, just awful. Flat and hard. I've tried butter, margarine, and now I am going to try with the closest thing I have found to shortening. If that doesn't work- um. We will be having no chocolate chip cookies in the country of Kenya.
Baking and cooking is a challenge here. The high elevation makes things very different - spaghetti noodles take 2-3 times longer- and very rarely does a tried and true recipe that you've used 50 times and your mother, and her mother have used 500 times, ever turn out exactly the way it would have back home. Maybe it's the sugar, the flour, the baking soda (also known here as 'bicarbonate soda'), the weird brown sugar that looks and smells nothing like our brown sugar back home. It's everything, and so I just pray. Tomorrow I am signed up to bring snack to Baby Bible. We haven't had power the last 2 days, so Doris and I are running around the house, baking and doing all the laundry, praying it doesn't go off in the middle of a load, or a cake.
It's been a rough couple days, (I feel like I sound like a broken record!) with no electricity, my emotions, and hormones all over the place, and drama with a conversation I had with some other women here which had me in tears. .. I feel at times, that I am the only one.
I know that isn't true, and you would think that I would feel that way in the United States, but at least back home people know we're different, and other things we have in common with people- like worship and we're all American, and we know what real milk shakes taste like. But here, not only are we against abortion and didn't vote for Obama (shhhh!)(something that makes us different in the States), but we are also some of the only ones we know of who have Kenyan friends (and not because they're in a project our 'mission' is working with), who work in a mostly Kenyan office (and Kikuyu at that), and who not only took a major salary cut to be here, but are still in the 'for profit' sector. This is where I got into trouble the other night. I feel that if you come here, and you are in the non profit sector, or a missionary, a salary cut is almost expected. But in Hot Husbands line of work, most often you do not have a salary cut, you get a salary raise. The fact of the matter is that we have not gotten any more at all, and that in fact, his company cannot seem to hire anyone right now because the salary is too low, the contract particulars having no benefits for those from another country. I realize that we are making similar or only slightly less then others. The one thing that is different is that most non profits and missionary groups get in their contract not only a roundtrip ticket back to their home country for all members of their family 1-2 times every 18 months, but that they have a set amount that is allotted for their living expenses. This includes always the rent, but can include petrol (gas), groceries, utilities, help around the house, etc. This explains why the [High-profile American NGO] people we know rent a $3,500 a month home, and the husband told me over Christmas that they haven't been able to save anything for the last 2 years because his salary is too low. "Um, say what?". I mentioned to the women two statements: 1. Wouldn't it be better to give people their living allotment and what they don't spend they get to keep for savings? And 2. It's frustrating to me that we are not able to save or pay off debt in a job that is secular. Meaning if we are going to work in the secular field at least we want to make some money!
Both of these statements caused titanic sized waves across the table of women. One woman gave me a Bible lesson in how all money comes from God (I agree btw). Another woman asked if I don't think that non profit, or religious jobs should make much money (not my point AT ALL). And another totally disagreed with the idea of people's allotments being more up to their own spending. Anyways. I am sitting here and through our windows I am watching two vacant apartments in our compound being fitted for tenants- they will be furnished and they will rent them for 150,000 shillings (about 2,000USD a month). Not because people can afford it, but because the UN and all the different organizations here just pay whatever is needed to get people to live here, and it's not part of their salary, it's part of their living allotment. Speak to any Kenyan, and you will hear the frustration oozing from their pores of how this sort of policy has driven up prices to near impossible for the average person. Not only in living, but in the prices of private schools for children. I read somewhere they the school prices have gone up 5x's what they were 4 years ago.
Anyways. I came home crying. But in the end I really felt like God was telling me that it's okay. It's okay for me to think the way I think, to not agree with them, and to feel as passionate as I do with the way different systems operate. I spent a couple days really searching my heart to see if there was that evil sneaky vine of jealousy in my heart, but no. I don't think this time there was! I have a tendency when faced with major opposition, or when I feel shut down, respond emotionally, to completely hate myself. To backtrack, blame myself for everything, and curse my tears, my emotions. But this time, I came home, I cried a lot on Jason's shirt, I explained everything to him... and at the end of the day I feel like oh well, they don't see things the way that I do. That's okay! That's okay if they don't get me, it's okay if they misunderstand me. It doesn't change who I am, it doesn't make me any less of a person, it doesn't make me weak, or not strong. I am still a tough cookie, hear me roar!!!!
