After the Fire

Three days after the fire (see the previous post for story of "the fire"), our flat smells more smokey than it did.  They are cleaning out the flat that burned and the smell is filtering down to our apartment.  People who have been in it say that it was a miracle that no one died and that the fire was contained in that one apartment.  Monica, a sweet young black mother, said "God saved us," and I agreed.

Some of you have suggested that fighting the fire together (till 1 a.m.) brought our little community together.  But as LeRon and I have thought about it, we realized that the people who came to the two community get-togethers sponsored by our landlord (and not everybody did) were actually the ones who rolled out of bed to help.  There were a lot that didn't.  So having those get-togethers helped us get to know each other and helped us to feel a sense of community and when that community was threatened, they pitched in to help.  And then by helping together, we bonded further.  I can't say enough good about the people who live around us.  I feel safe knowing that they are there.

Here are some of our neighbor boys.  Don't they look spiffy in their school uniforms?  Imagine how much better our High School teenagers in the West would act if they dressed like this every day!!  The better you look, the better you act.

One of our neighbors, a young couple from South Africa, showed us a delicious French bakery in a horse stable complex.  We had to drive into the yard of the horse stable and then drive down a little lane to a closed gate.  A guard opened the gate and we drove down to the bakery.  Delicious food.  But so funny to be behind a locked gate within a horse stable complex! And not many signs to let you know there was a bakery here.  Within this horse stable were these gorgeous Australian Flame Trees.  (I posted about them earlier).  I just had to go back to take more pictures with my big camera.

Blossoms so beautiful against the sky.

Tried and tried to take good pictures of the blossoms but the breeze kept moving them around.  

The little balls of brilliant red are so beautiful.

The blossoms fall to the ground making little pinging sounds.  Like huge raindrops falling.

Kenyans learning to ride at the horse stables which are just a few minutes' drive from where we live.

Then coming home from church on Sunday, here were our friendly baboons on the side of the road.  

Here they are on the sidewalk by the road.  There are very few sidewalks in Nairobi and this is one of them.  On the tree side is the Nairobi National Park.  Sometimes we've seen people walking down the sidewalk while the baboons scampered about, totally ignoring the people and the people totally ignoring the baboons.  Yet not so long ago, one of our missionaries was driving with others in the Park and had his window rolled down to take pictures.  AND he had a granola bar on his lap.  The baboon lunged through the open window and grabbed the granola bar!  So my French sister-in-law, Christine, is right:  All wild animals are wild animals even though they appear to be tame!