We Made it to Kenya!
Wow.
What a whirlwind the past month has been. I have no idea where to begin or even summarize all that’s happened since we boarded our flight out of San Francisco and moved to Kenya. My brain is still processing and digesting all that’s happened this past month. It’s been quite the adventure, so if you’re curious what it’s like to pack up and move to Kenya as a family of four - let’s start at the beginning!
Traveling to Nairobi
Micah and Sage did amazing on our nearly 30 hour journey. It began with a 10 hour flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam. The kids didn’t sleep a wink that first flight from all the excitement and unlimited TV time they had, but both did very well. There was a little girl behind Sage who played with her in the seat, and a sweet grandma in front of Sage who didn’t mind at all when she kicked the seat in front of her. Plus, there was a very kind flight attendant who brought treats like ice cream periodically. Small gestures of kindness like these do not go unnoticed when traveling with kids!
As soon as we got off the plane, Micah conked out. So of course, he slept the whole 3 hour layover. You win some, you lose some.
And so it begins!
Micah won’t remember much of the Amsterdam airport.
The only meltdown was boarding the Amsterdam to Nairobi flight when Micah, totally jet lagged, sobbed the whole way walking down the aisle to his seat, overcome with pure exhaustion. I could feel the worried glances on me from other passengers that turned into empathy when I told them we had just come all the way from San Francisco.
The kids finally knocked out, as did we, which made our second 8 hour flight go by much faster. One passenger told Jack as he walked down the aisle with Sage near the end of the flight, “I was really worried this was going to be a terrible flight when you got on with your kids, but they ended up doing great!”
We finally made it to Nairobi at 10pm local time. We were so grateful we were ushered to the front of the very long customs line by a police officer saw that we had young children with us. All of our bags arrived safely, and two porters helped us gather our things together and get us all to our car.
Very happy for this cute ticket to the front of the customs line.
All the bags made it!
Our Week in Nairobi
We made our way about 45 minutes from the airport to the home of another Serge team member who lives in Nairobi, Stephanie. She graciously let us stay in her beautiful home for our week as we adjusted to the new time zone and shopped for things we needed that are much easier to find in a large city like Nairobi.
We quickly found out that much more difficult than traveling with kids was dealing with jet lag with kids. The first night, we all slept great as we were exhausted from the travel. On night two, the kids were wide awake at 2am and refused to fall asleep again. Trying to take care of kids and getting them back on a schedule while we ourselves were exhausted was not easy. But many props to Jack who took the brunt of this while I went around town trying to buy all the things we’d need for our new house.
I was VERY impressed with Nairobi. You forget you’re in a developing country as it is a very modern city. Stephanie jokingly calls it “Africa-lite”. It’s very easy to Uber around the city to the various shopping malls which are just as nice (or nicer!) than what you would find back home. The only downside is that the price of most things are literally three times what you would pay for it in the States due to the fact that everything is imported. My heart already longs for Target once again, ha!
Nairobi has some very nice malls!
You can find anything in Nairobi - just be prepared to pay three times more than you would in the States for it!
As easy as it was to navigate around the city - each day felt exhausting as I tried to figure out which store I should go to for what (Where do you buy pillows? Or dishes? A mosquito net? Or a blender?). Or if you did find what you want - there’s no way I was paying that much for it. ($45 for a down pillow?! $4,500 for a small couch?! ). I’ll never forget staring at an entire wall of kitchen bathroom cleaners and not recognizing any brand. Talk about decision fatigue. I mean, I’m grateful there are brands to choose from, but I pretty much just grabbed what was at eye level.
I also went to the furniture district area of Nairobi called Ngong Road where it’s about a mile long of vendors on the road selling furniture. I was grateful for a new friend referred to me, Kelvin, who I paid to drive me and made sure I got charged a fair price. I was happily surprised to find some really talented artisans who made beautiful furniture! If you know me - you know I love mid-century modern furniture. And here were people in the middle of Kenya, making exactly that out of real, beautiful wood. Wow. Simple, small moments of joy like these feel like nods from Jesus - he sees me!
Stumbled upon these chairs which will be our own!
How beautiful is this table?! It will be in our home soon!
You can pick out exactly the fabric you want for your sofa!
Another small moment of gratitude. Due to weight we couldn’t bring many physical books for our kids with us - and Micah LOVES books. But in Nairobi there was a used bookstore shop where they have lots of children’s books for $2 a piece! As I was looking through the books to choose some, I found a new copy of Micah’s favorite book I have read to him since he was a baby - “Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site”. A needle in a haystack to find. A small but sweet reminder to me of the way God sees us and provides for us.
Journey to Kapsowar
A week after landing and buying the majority of what we’d need for our new home, we set out a week later to Kapsowar! It was an 8 hour drive from Nairobi, but by this point, the kids were champs at traveling. The journey was absolutely beautiful as we drove along the Rift Valley. We saw everything from zebras, camels, baboons and antelope. It was unbelievably green with lush, terraced hills that stretched for miles, dotted by mud homes with tin roofs.
As we made our way into Kapsowar, it truly felt surreal. Years of dreaming, months of planning, and a week of traveling - and we were finally at our destination and our new home.
We drove into “the station”, which is essentially the compound area of the hospital where all the houses are built, and saw our new home. We ended up staying in a guest house for our first week in Kapsowar, as our beds, fridge, oven, and microwave were not yet delivered.
Jack reading “Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site” to Micah at bedtime.
Just some zebras hanging out on the side of the road.
Views out our back window.
Our New Home
Everyone wisely advised us to take things slow as we arrived. To take our time to settle in, and adjust. We shouldn’t try to do too much at once. This proved to be valuable wisdom.
Our first roadblock was happily walking into our new home and realized it smelled like sewage. The station has no direct person overseeing operations, so it took us a while to find out how to get issues like this addressed. Thankfully there is a wonderful plumber who was able to help us sort out the issue as there was no vent to our septic system and thus our house became the vent (yikes!).
Nevertheless, even when you fix a problem - it’s not always solved. We woke up to our toilet leaking sewage all over our bathroom floor and on top of that our kitchen had flooded from a leak in the sink plumbing. But when I am tempted to be frustrated - I am reminded that I have a toilet and I have a sink, which is not something all our neighbors in Kapsowar can say.
So we have learned that each day a good goal is to tackle one problem. If we have accomplished that, I feel successful.
Her clothes will inevitably be covered in red mud about 30 seconds of stepping outside our home. So I’m glad to snap this photo while she was still clean ;)
The house plant fanatic in me is looking forward to including many of these in our home soon :)
At the end of one week I laughed as I realized that what I got done in an entire week here I could have accomplished in a day back home with a quick trip to Home Depot and Target, ha! But, I take heart that although I am inefficient in some ways - I am learning how to exist in a totally new environment and that is a big accomplishment in it’s own way.
And I am also appreciating the slowness of the culture here. I never feel rushed. So many days back home I felt the weight on my chest each morning of a pressing to do list. Here, you manage what you can, and you go slow. Things just take longer. You wash dishes by hand, you hang the laundry on the line, you cook food from scratch. And in between all these, there is time to greet your friend walking by, to hear how they and their family are doing. Lingering, rather than rushing, is the norm.
So in terms of accomplishing things, I have quickly learned to lessen my Western expectations. My to-do list each day is very short, and I give thanks for the things that go well, like when we manage to install the new lightbulbs! Or the stains come out of the cloth diapers! Or we get a juicy watermelon at the store! Or they have real cream for our coffee! I might take these for granted back home, but they are noticeable wins here.
I thought I was going to miss gorgeous views when I left Monterey. Nope!
Settling In
When our beds and appliances finally arrived, we were SO pumped to finally sleep in our own home. It had been nine months since we moved out of our home in Pacific Grove and stayed with family. So we were so excited to finally have our own space again! Micah was very disappointed that Sage was not sharing a room with him anymore (Very sweet sentiment, but we are very tired of them waking each other up at night so we happily split them up).
While we love our new home, I personally continue to try to manage expectations as we are fresh off the plane from our American dwellings. For example, our cabinets look lovely in photos, but half of them I have to yank hard to open and the drawers come off the sliders. The curtain rods, and curtains, are hung and sewn crooked. The doors don’t fully close. The painting job is sloppy. Mud is always everywhere. Spiders are always everywhere. The granite counter cracked. All these things can make me feel frustrated.
But once again - I manage expectations. I live in Kenya and I have granite counters. I have cabinets. I am not in a mud home as many of my neighbors are.
I think with more time, my living expectations will continue to adapt to our new home. I have to keep reminding myself - you live in Africa! And compared to many homes here - our house is truly extravagant!
Another huge win - this is Jack and I’s first time living in a home that we can do whatever we want to! We’ve always rented, so we could never paint or put screws in the wall. Although it’s trickier here with a concrete home - I am enjoying being able to plan out paint colors and shelving!
We weren’t huge fans of the creamy yellow so we’ve been hard at work painting our house.
I am very bad at remembering before and afters, but you can see it’s a much more neutral, taupe color now.
Making New Friends
One of the things I already love most here is the community. There are several Western docs and their families living here as neighbors, so there are lots of kids running around all the time! I’ll have to do a longer update later with who all these families are, but in short there are about 20+ western kids ages 1-15 on station!
On top of that, there are always Kenyan kids around too. There are quite a few Kenyans who work here at the station and their kids play here every day and also live close to us as neighbors. While the little ones don’t speak much English, Micah and Sage enjoy playing with them. There is a big swing here carved out of a rubber tire which Micah would happily swing on all day long. The kids love when I do the rocket blast-off sound effects as I launch them.
One of the chickens had chicks so it was fun to watch the kids hold them!
Baby chicks!
Sage is a fan favorite ;)
I personally am just really enjoying all the people around. As much as I can miss the comforts back home, I can remember many days back in California when I often felt lonely and stuck at home with kids all day. Here, there is always someone around. We have to use our imagination much more with what we do, as there aren’t lots of toys or playgrounds readily available. But to be outside a lot and playing with friends is definitely a huge win.
The only problem is we can’t always say much more to our new friends besides, “How are you?”, which brings me to my last point.
Micah’s preschool aged friends!
Celebrating Zoe’s birthday!
Micah sharing his favorite train set with everyone.
Learning Swahili
Jack and I have been very eager to dive into learning Swahili! During our month of training in Colorado, we learned a method that allows us to learn a language without a formal classroom setting. Our new friend Beatrice is helping us learn. But before I tell you all about Beatrice, let me back up.
Each house on the station employs a house helper. They help you with laundry, dishes, sweeping/mopping, and even watching kids if needed. I was a bit nervous who would be assigned to us, as I was nervous if they might be a good fit with our kids and someone you’d want in your home most of the week.
The station recently hired Beatrice to be our helper when we arrived, and she is truly an answer to prayer! She used to be a preschool teacher, so she loves little ones. She also speaks excellent English, which is very helpful right now in the house. She loves Jesus, and has even suggested we do short devotions together in the morning so that we can encourage each other in our faith. What a gem!
But even more than our gratitude for her, she is constantly expressing her gratitude to us. She has five kids, and is so grateful to be employed and have a steady job where she can save to send her five kids to school. As I shared how we had prayed for her before we had arrived, how grateful we are to have her in our home, and to help her in anyway we can, she literally burst into tears of joy. I am beginning to understand more of her story, and I know that this job at the station is a real gift to her. And she is a gift to us.
While we appreciate her help keeping our house tidy, we decided the most helpful thing she could do right now is help us with Swahili. She is a wonderful, patient and encouraging teacher who makes us feel like champs even though we sound like toddlers in Swahili!
Swahili lessons are going “visuri sana” (very well)!
We are so grateful for Beatrice! We are only six months apart in age so she already feels like a sister to me.
Our current set up is that Beatrice works with me on Kiswahili from 9-11am, and then with Jack and Kris (another Serge teammate here) from 11-1pm. We try to use our off hours to study more on our own, but taking care of our own kids is still a full time job we are working around as they adjust to life here.
This weekend, Micah and I took a walk to visit Beatrice and her five children who are just a 10-15 minute walk from our house. As I walked along the red, mud path with views of the incredible mountains and lush hills around us, I was overcome. To be here now, as a mom, in this stunning part of Africa, making new friends and fumbling along to ask for directions in the little Swahili I know - it’s just a dream come true.
Despite any minor setbacks with our house or figuring out language or culture, Jack and I feel better each day as we settle in. We truly, deeply, feel so grateful to be here. We continue to go slow, knowing this is not a sprint but a marathon. The time it takes to make a house a home, to learn Swahili, to build relationships - all these things will serve us very well in the long haul.
You may be wondering - what about the hospital?! Jack and I took the 5 minute walk up the hill and took a tour of it last week and saw all the various departments. While everyone is eager for him to start working, Serge requires us to focus on solely learning language for the first three months. As many western docs have warned us from their own experience, it is very easy to get sucked into work at the hospital quickly and then never get a chance to learn the language. So we are making that our priority now.
Jack did however, go in with a doctor who is here for the next few weeks so he could shadow with him before he’s on his own. He is also often getting calls for consults on patients there.
Jack’s first day on rounds with Dr. Koleski! He comes 3 months out of the year to serve so will hand the baton to Jack when he leaves.
First time in scrubs (thanks Jack), and first time in an operating room. Saw the whole shebang and…wow. So much gratitude for the healing presence of physicians - including my husband!
I too am eager to begin helping the hospital with it’s much needed marketing and storytelling for some urgent projects. Today I shot some b-roll of a surgery of an eight year old boy who fell out of a tree (probably due to the fact he has epilepsy) and fractured his jaw in two places. It was my first time in an OR - and boy. Wow. I was so moved to see these surgeons at work helping this boy who would otherwise not be able to have a functional jaw again. I can say much more about this situation, and hopefully will soon - but suffice it to say - I felt so deeply sure that I am right where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what God wants me to do with my life. What a gift and a privilege.
There are still a MILLION things more I can say. Unfortunately we had all had a series of various stomach bugs, viruses, ear and sinus infections since we’ve arrived in Kapsowar, but that is to be expected. Micah recently woke up in the middle of the night with a pretty bad case of croup. After a couple of hours of bad coughing, Jack walked up the hospital at 3am to get him a steroids. Moments like these make me feel unspeakably grateful to have a pediatrician with us wherever we go.
Side note - that reminds me of an unexpected blessing that you parents of young ones will appreciate! Micah has been potty trained for over a year - but has always insisted he went #2 in a diaper. He had never gone in his pants, but simply refused to go #2 on the potty despite our best efforts at bribery. We haven’t wanted to push too hard on the matter as he has been going through a lot of transitions this past year.
Well, he got a stomach bug when we arrived and, to put it nicely, when he had to go - he had to go. That led to us quickly throwing him on the toilet in haste, which Micah then realized it wasn’t so bad after all. And just like that - he is happily using the toilet now! Most people say their children regress with potty training during transitions, but Micah actually progressed, ha!
Sage and I hang out on the porch and practice our very limited Swahili with our neighbors in the evening.
I’ll talk more about cooking later, but let’s just say we are still making Saturday morning pancakes!
Sage loves sitting between these two trees.
Despite the runny noses, sore throats, and upset tummies now and then, the kids are doing really well. They enjoy their new friends and all the new experiences (like new baby chicks!). I have been so proud of Micah who has willingly chosen to share his toys with his new friends, even when there are 11 children all sharing his magnet tiles on our front porch. It is still an adjustment, but they are handling it all like champs.
Again, there is much more to say, but if you’ve made it this far, I am impressed. We are so grateful for those who have provided for us to be here and are praying for us every step in this journey. We are so, so grateful to be here.
I am sure there is much I am still leaving out, and questions you must be wondering about. So please feel free to email me any curiosities or questions I can answer whether via email, in photo, or in future blogs!
Which reminds me - the best way to get in touch now is through
Email either of us at reganstrutner@gmail.com or jackstrutner@gmail.com
If you have an iPhone, you can still text us, but instead of using texting our normal US numbers, text our emails instead (reganstrutner@gmail.com, jackstrutner@gmail.com)
You can message us if you have WhatsApp (Regan: +1 954-560-1501, Jack +1 831-419-3842)
Or, you can still text message Regan at her US number although the reply will be a bit slower as it is through Google Voice now.
Tuonane baadae!
(See you later!)