Remembrance Day, November 11

Remembrance Day has always been important to me.  Maybe because my Uncle Leo Hancock, my mother's brother, fought in World War II, landing on Juno Beach on D-Day and surviving to tell the tale.  Maybe because LeRon's Uncle Smellie Redd and Uncle Bryant Jensen both were in the war.  Maybe because many men in my Ward in Taber, Alberta, Canada also served in the war -- men such as Dale Clifton, Norman Hall, Henry Renner, Burns Wood, Ray Evanson.  Henry Renner always walked with a limp due to injuries from the war; he was in pain every day.  He also had recurring nightmares but he never complained in public.  I thought he was amazing.  And Burns Wood was amazing too.  He had only 3 hours of flying lessons before he was piloting war aircraft.  He said that farm boys were mechanically minded so it wasn't hard to learn to fly.

We in Canada commemorate Remembrance Day on November 11th each year.   World War I ended on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour.  So if I were home this year, I would have gone in to Taber to the Remembrance Day commemoration and I would have joined with hundreds of others standing for the two-minutes of silence in remembrance.

But I am in Kenya where they have different challenges -- including conflicts in countries surrounding us and also the constant threat of terrorism.  Kenya, as part of the British Commonwealth, also commemorates Remembrance Day but not quite like we do in Canada.  LeRon and I will wear poppies on Sunday.  (They commemorate on the closest Sunday to November 11).

LeRon and I have been several times to war sites in England, France, Belgium, and also Germany, and have felt the spirit brooding over those places.  Three of our kids have also been to these sites and it has been sobering and moving to them also.  People in those countries definitely remember and are continually grateful for the freedoms they have.

Our youngest son, Eric, has written two posts about his experiences in visiting these places.  His first was written in 2009 and the second in 2010.  They are both excellent posts about these places with gorgeous photographs.  Eric is an amazing photographer.  Highly recommended to read these posts!

Check out his posts here:
http://www.eat5hams.com/2009/06/june-6-1944-normandy-france-d-day.html
http://www.eat5hams.com/2010/11/remembrance-day.html

Photographs to follow are of a memorial monument that my sons Michael, Eric, and I made for the Grassy Lake Cemetery.  Grassy Lake men such as John Kast and Con Kast and others served in World War II.  John Kast was a young married man with a wife but he volunteered for service because, as he told me one day, "Someone had to go and stop that mad man" referring of course to Adolf Hitler.  There are many mad men today too.  We need to fight for our freedom and be grateful for what we have.

I have been serving as the president of the Grassy Lake Cemetery Committee.  We beautify the cemetery and keep it clean.  So good to honor and remember those who have passed on before.  We don't have a lot of money to work with so we were unsure of how to build a fitting monument to those who served in the wars.  I found an idea on the internet and with the help of my amazing sons, we came up with a low-cost design for a small monument.  The Cemetery Committee installed it on November 10 of this year.  I was so pleased to be able to talk to committee members over Voxer and see the installed monument.

Eric helped design and cut out the soldiers and Michael (above) spent weeks painting and re-painting so that it would be protected from the weather.  It's all made of heavy steel and bolted into concrete.  (Grandpa Marvin Torrie would be pleased that his grandsons are carrying on his work with welding and steel!)  It's very heavy and should be sturdy enough to resist vandalism.  Sad that we have to worry about vandalism in a cemetery that should be respected.

Here's two of our committee members, Faye and Elsie, with the monument.  Wish I could have been there too!

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!

Part of the Bucket Brigade: Putting out the Fire

We had an exciting night last night.  It was after 10 p.m. and we had just turned in.  Our compound is usually very peaceful, calm, and quiet at night so we were startled by loud shouting just outside our apartment.  I peeked out and it looked like people were fighting.  Very unusual for our compound.  Then I heard things popping and I said to LeRon, "I think there's a fire."  He didn't think so but we both jumped into our clothes and headed outside.  By then there were more people around and someone yelled, "There's a fire."  Sure enough the apartment upstairs and to our right was on fire.

We grabbed our laptops, our passports, my purse, and shoes and locked them into our truck and moved it away.  We turned off the gas to our stove and the electricity.  Then we joined all our neighbors to find out what was going on.  Apparently a candle had caught the curtains on fire.  The men in the apartment had been drinking so everything got out of hand very quickly.

People ran for buckets and we became part of a bucket brigade to carry water from the swimming pool upstairs to the apartment.  Hard, heavy work.  I could barely carry a bucket of water and the African ladies were carrying two buckets of water.  Wow.  We worked for a couple of hours to finally extinguish the flames.  In the meantime we heard the fire truck sirens but the truck never came.  Finally, about half an hour after the fire was out, the fire truck arrived.  There are no addresses in Nairobi (or in Kenya for that matter) so the fire truck got lost and couldn't see any flames so figured it was a false alarm.  They were amazed that we had put out a fire of that magnitude with buckets from the swimming pool.

People really worked well together.  All the neighbors joined in to help save our apartment building of four apartments.  The man who started the fire with a candle felt so bad.  He had cut his hand really badly trying to break a window.  Not sure why he was trying to do that because there are steel bars on all the windows so even if he broke the window, he still couldn't get out.  I think he wasn't thinking clearly and panicked plus he had consumed a lot of alcohol.

When it was all over, everyone was pretty hyper so we sat by the swimming pool and talked over what went well and what we should do to prevent any further fires.  No candles we decided.  We also talked of the need for big fire extinguishers and ladders in the stair wells of all the apartment buildings and for more buckets and hoses.  We talked of having a "horn" we could sound to alert people that we needed help.

Everyone mentioned that they thought it had been a domestic quarrel at first or that we were being attacked by robbers.  Our landlord, who is a government politician, was in bed when his daughters alerted him that something was going on outside with all the shouting and commotion.  His first thought was that we were being attacked so he grabbed his gun and ran outside.  (We teased him that he was going to fire on the fire!)  Then he could see the fire.  He is a very religious man, so he went back inside and put his hand on his big Bible and prayed for help.

We teased him again that while he was inside praying we were all outside working.  But then we agreed that God really had helped us and that it was a miracle that no one was hurt and that the damage was contained in the one apartment.  At the end of our little meeting, LeRon suggested that Francis, our landlord, give a prayer of thanks.   We all listened carefully as he thanked the Lord for the miracle we had had that night and everyone gave a loud "amen."

So many good people live here in our compound.  I'm so grateful for the good friends we have here and for the miracle we saw last night.  With God's help and the hard work of good people, we were all safe.  Also glad that everything here is made of solid concrete blocks.  At home with our houses made of wood, the whole thing would have gone very quickly.

Needless to say, Francis asked the people who started the fire to leave the compound.  He tries hard to rent to people who keep the peace, act intelligently, and respect property.

Australian Flame Trees

This is my 5th post this evening.  My head is aching and my eyes are blurry but I wanted to get caught up.  I'm about two weeks behind.  I'm starting to not make a lot of sense but bear with me.

I love the Australian Flame Tree.  So vibrant.  My plant book says that it blossoms infrequently.  Well this year I've seen these trees all over the place.  They are starting to drop their flowers now so I'm glad I was able to get a few pictures.  They look like they are covered with red berries but they're actually small, fiery-red, bell-shaped flowers.

These trees are gorgeous; they flower before the leaves come out.  You can see the bright red from a long distance away.  

Even though they look like berries, they are actually tiny flowers.

The wind was blowing so I held it still to get a better picture.

So pretty against the clouds and blue sky.

Don't they look like little berries?

Funny picture.  I couldn't make the camera focus on the flowers.  It insisted on focusing on the bark of the tree.

Street Scenes and Other Things

Everything here is done by hand.  Men shovel sand into a truck and then they unload it shovel by shovel.  Hedges are everywhere and they are all trimmed by hand.  So interesting to see how life goes on here.  Lots of interesting street scenes.  Outdoor businesses line streets on both sides.  People lay out their wares -- used and unused.  Just wanted to share some fun pictures with you tonight.  I've spent the last three or so hours going through photos and putting them on my blog.  I think I've done 3 or 4 blog posts tonight so you'll have to check below to see more.  Too tired to make sense.

Everything here is done by hand.  Even trimming miles and miles of hedges.  This man waved at me after I took his picture.  I usually like to ask before I take a picture but he didn't seem to mind.

I can't get over the cattle on the streets.  I'm forever taking pictures because it is so amazing.  Cars go zooming by and the cattle just walk sedately along.

Ngong Road is interesting.  Lots of businesses on both sides of the road.

I love these colorful pots.  So many nurseries here that you wonder how they can all stay in business.

Would you like to buy a peacock?

Strong Kenyan men!

I haven't seen this before -- sod for sale all piled up.  I wonder how it stays alive!

Nairobi Zone Conference November

Missionaries gather quarterly for Zone Conference to learn from their Mission President.  It's a day of learning, visiting, and eating.  Here are pictures from the Nairobi Zone Conference that includes Nairobi, Naivasha, and Kilungu Hills.   I'm much too tired tonight to put captions so I'll let that go for another day.

Today was Elder Egbert's birthday.  Sister Msane presented him with a cupcake and candle and we all sang Happy Birthday. Here in Kenya they add a couple more verses to the normal happy birthday song.  Kind of crazy words.  I'll have to learn them.  Sister Msane often sings Happy Birthday to the missionaries in Zulu but she didn't this time.

Birthday boy, Elder Egbert and Elder Ellis

Sister Were, Sister ________, Sister Gondwe.

Sister Kiio, Elder Agesa, Elder Emmanuel

Elder Noel, Elder Covarrubias, Elder Egbert

Elder Kyuvi, Elder Pavik, Elder Muzwenje

Elder Ellis, Elder Manu, Elder Butters ?, Elder McGrath

Sister Ndonga

Elder Limu, Elder Musonda, Elder Mwaja

Elder Mugele, Elder Limu

Elder Wafula, Elder Chanani, Elder Cox

Elder Otika, Elder Ochieng, Elder Hales

Elder & Sister Lyman and Sister Petersen

Elder & Sister Lyman (Self-Reliance missionaries)

Elder & Sister Ford (Public Affairs)

Sister & Elder Petersen (LDS Charities)

Elder & Sister Torrie (office)

Fun Times; Busy Times

So much going on.  New missionaries arriving in Nairobi (see following post).  Lots of office work.  The banks here in Kenya are moving to chip debit and credit cards.  (We've already had them in Canada for several years).  So suddenly, missionary debit cards wouldn't work because the US banks hadn't issued chip cards.  So Elder Torrie had a huge problem on his hands.  He had to cancel all the missionary support cards while at the same time ensuring that missionaries had enough money to live and then he had to have the bank re-issue the cards with chips.  It was a huge headache.

We had a fun get-to-know you community party at our compound.  Then a Stake dinner and dance.  Lots of missionary work too as we share the gospel with all those we come in contact with.  Tonight we stopped at a little bakery/restaurant and the sweetest young girl served us.  She says she's a Christian but not attending church but would like to.  We shared the gospel with her and gave her some pamphlets to read.  So . . .  Life goes on.  I keep asking my kids . . . Do you think we can go for another year at this pace?!  Sure hope so!  By evening we are tired and thankful that we're not to be out after dark.  Nice to be home!

I'm still loving the foliage here.  We discovered a little park right next to "The Hub."  The Hub is a modern shopping mall with lots of stores and an arcade and lots of restaurants.  The park is lovely even though the water is very dirty.

Here's LeRon enjoying the park (with his eyes closed of course).

And now here I am with my eyes closed of course.  We both have poor vision as we age so we can't tell if eyes are open or closed until we get home and put the pictures on the computer.

This is the park from an upper level of The Hub.  Notice the walls on the left with barbed wire.  Sad that everything has to be fenced and wired and guarded.

I zoomed in on these storks so you can see the baby in the nest.  I only had my little point and shoot camera so the picture's not that great.

Any time there's an event, they set up these white tents.  They look cool.

The owner of our compound, Francis (on left) sponsored a get-together for all residents of the 30 or so apartments (called flats).  Here he is jamming with LeRon.  They had fun together singing gospel songs.  Amazing Grace.  How Great Thou Art.

Francis is a good Christian man and we enjoy visiting with him.  He is a politician but a very nice politician we think!  If we could vote here in Kenya we'd vote for him.  We never talk politics much; we talk Christianity and family and things like that.

Francis' two daughters are on the left.  Lovely girls.  And a friend from South Africa on the right.

LeRon and I are the oldest ones living in our compound.  Francis is just a few years younger than us but the rest are the ages of our kids.  So we have sort of adopted these two couples as our children.  They are from South Africa and Sweden.  We enjoy visiting with them.  Good people.

Here we are with Andrej and Francis.  Well . . . here is LeRon with Andrej (from Sweden) and Francis.

LeRon and I taught everyone the Chicken Dance and then they taught us an African round dance.  We joined in as best we could.  They were all singing in Swahili.

Our neighbor, Sammy, in the light blue shirt, explained that it was a song about a train.  So we joined in with the "choo choo choo."

Francis' wife Edith is a lovely person.  They provided this delicious catered meal.  For African food, it was pretty good!

Now a few pictures of the Stake Dinner Dance.  This was a first-time event for the Nairobi West Stake.  A first time event for any stake in Kenya.  The room was decorated simply but lovely.  Everyone was dressed up and it was an amazing event.  First the Stake President talked about strengthening marriages and how important it is to communicate but also to have fun together.  This was the point of the Dinner Dance.  In this photo you can see a mzungu couple (white foreigner).  They were the Grays, the only mzungus besides LeRon and me.  Everyone else was black.  But you know . . . we don't even notice color anymore.  They are just people.

Fun to see couples having fun!

The dance was a huge success.  More people were dancing than sitting.  The dance floor was hardly big enough.  LeRon and I enjoyed fox trotting and jiving while everyone else did their thing.  Lots of couples asked us how we learned to dance and said they would like to learn.