Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Bedford Falls!
Merry Christmas You Old Building and Loan
Merry Christmas Mr. Potter!
Merry Christmasss!!!!

Ah the classic finale to the greatest Christmas movie of all and also my mother's favorite movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" starring Jimmy Stewart.

I'm 8 hours ahead of the East Coast right now which makes it almost exactly 7am there. Most of you will wake up in the next 2 hours or so I imagine. Just so you know, the world didn't end, christmas is here, and even in Kenya you get Christmas cookies and I've heard the sisters are going all out tonight and cooking turkey and stuffing!

Anyways on with it! Last week we did some more painting! That exterior wall is really coming along now. The whole thing is black with a red stripe going along the top and a green one going a long the bottom. Then we started filling in the wall sections. So far we've got a map of Kenya, the flag of Kenya, a cross, and two Benedictine quotes. I chose the quotes as well as I could. One is the overall motto of the Benedictines, "Ora et Labora". It means prayer and work. I put it there for a number of reasons. One, it's a Benedictine establishment. Two, it's a quote of the founder of the order. And three, I think it reminds us why we do what we do. The paint job isn't just about painting a wall. It's about the activity itself. Painting can be pretty monotonous and boring or it can be therapeutic and healing. Everyday that I painted, kids flocked to me for the chance to hold a brush or just to hang out with the big white kid, the "mzungu". Most of those kids either aren't in school for holidays or the aren't in school all together. I gave them a week with a protected place to play and maybe even sort of learn a trade. It was a big deal.

The second quote I put up was from St. Anselm, another early Benedictine. He is the namesake of my High School and this quote is my school's slogan, "Pax in Sapientia". Literally, it says peace in understanding, but you can also say peace through understanding which I believe to be more accurate. There is a lot of misunderstanding and disagreement in Kenya. From matatu drivers to the intratribalism to even the Catholic Church, understanding is something that is missing. I thought I would post that quote as a hopeful reminder that peace is only totally found when both sides try to understand the other.

This above painting went from Wednesday to Saturday. On Sunday, I went to Karen to spend the remainder of the Christmas Holidays with the girls!

Monday was where some fun started. I got the girls some chocolate ice cream on Sunday and hid it in the refrigerator, so when Christmas Eve came around, everything was closed, and there was no real celebration during the day, I broke out the small pints and distracted them for awhile. It worked pretty well I gotta say. Throughout the course of the day we went to maybe 5 different prayer services. We had vigil mass around 10pm and afterwards there was a little get together in the refectory with cookies and muffins and hot cocoa. Then we went back to the apartment. I exposed my second surprise to be a bottle of white wine! So we popped it open and watched "It's Wonderful Life" as is tradition in Kate and my's families. Caitlin just went along for the ride.

We all passed out and woke up again at 7 to go to 7:30 Lauds and Mass. At a good size Brunch and then I took a 3 hour nap. Glorious. That pretty much takes you up to right now.

I know this post is little early in terms of how often I post, but I figured I give you all some reading material for the lulls in your day if there are any!

I posted that quote at the beginning because I can actually picture myself saying it all if I was back in the states. Don't be surprised in late April if you here of some crazy kid running around Charlotte, North Carolina screaming "Merry Christmas!" at everything.

Also since today is a day of Thanksgiving, I would like to appreciate all the donations that everyone has sent me. I'm not entirely certain of everyone's comfort level with me posting their names, so I won't do it. But you all know who you are and so do I and so does God! You're all amazing. And all of you who haven't been able to send money, don't worry! Your thoughts and prayers have been carried by the wind and skies over to me and they lift me everyday. I feel like I have the energy of a thousand people on some days.

Merry Christmas, America!! Sing an extra carol for me! I miss and love you all!

God Bless and Enjoy You Christmas!!!

Harris

It's a Wonderful Kenyan Life!

To Mail Me Anything: 

Benedictine Fathers

Amani Conference Centre

P.O. Box 32101-00600

Nairobi - Kenya

To Donate Anything: 

Southern Benedictine Society

100 belmont mount holly road

Belmont, NC 28012

(Write "BVC - Harris" in the comment section of the check)

Hey everybody!

It’s been forever I think since my last post so it’s about time I do so. In fact, I’ll do you one better and post two! I’ll give the general summary post, and then if you look at the tabs above you’ll see one tabbed “MCF”. Definitely click that after reading that. I got a chance to have a pretty in depth interview with a beautiful woman who lived through the election violence in 2007, and the interview goes into that and what she’s had to deal with since then.

Firstly, let’s get back on track a little bit. I got a good amount of rest after the Mombasa trip. In fact, probably too much. I had wanted to get going on my painting project at St. Maurus, but I was dealing with some banking issues, so I didn’t get started until later in the week. I got back to Nairobi on Wednesday of that week. I had stayed in Karen to help the girls pass out all the gifts to the elderly that they raised so much money for! It was very impressive. I think they got around 5 grand in donations, and now that whole group is going to have a wonderful Christmas.

I got back to Nairobi and started making arrangements for the painting job. I went down and got a decent idea of what we wanted to do. The walls originally were painted yellow with a broad white stripe going across the middle. In the stripe were a bunch of children holding hands all the way around the wall. Good design and good idea. Couple problems though. For one, all the children were white, and, secondly, the paint job was over ten years old and the paint (as well as the wall) was horribly chipped in cracked all over the place. So on Monday, I got the funds I needed and I bought two huge buckets of spackle and 3 4 liter buckets of black paint. I spackled the whole wall that day. Used up every bit I had. On Tuesday, we sanded and washed the wall and popped open the first can of paint. I got about half the wall although I was skipping the pillars. The next day, myself, Henry, and a bunch of random kids who showed up to help finished painting the first coat. We finished all the pillars and the remainder of the paint by the end of the week.

I didn’t originally plan on it, but I’ve decided we gotta put a second coat on. On a couple of the wall segments the little children underneath are poking through. Pesky kids. I went back to the paint place, and they told me they won’t have the base they need for the paint until tomorrow (12/19/2012). So I got a few other things and put the project on hold for a few days. I’m planning on putting a red and green strip across the top and bottom to be in line with Kenyan colors. I also want to put some good quotes from their culture and the Bible up there as well. Maybe across the top. Big additions that I’m planning on is putting a painted version of the Kenyan flag on one of the walls, and then I want to take another wall segment and dedicate to St. Maurus. Then when all the kids come back to school, I’m gonna have them put their hands in white paint and have them put their hand prints on the wall and maybe put their names under them as well. I’ve the creative juices flowing. Any suggestions would be welcome!

On the Saturday, I went to Karen because I hadn’t seen them in 10ish days, and they also wanted to see the elephant orphanage. It was pretty cool. They facility houses about 25 elephants ranging in ages 3 months to 3 years. We only got an hour with them though because the end game is to let the elephants out into the wild at some point again, so they limit the amount of outside contact to one hour a day. Kate kept scaring off the elephants otherwise we’d have gotten some pictures touching one. I did touch one’s butt though. That was cool. After the orphanage trip we went to see The Hobbit! I was definitely a little surprised they even had the movie, and there were only maybe 8 people in the theater total. I greatly enjoyed it though! I know there are haters out there, but I think peter Jackson did a fine job translating a great book into a great movie even if he did take some license in some areas.

I took it easy Sunday, and yesterday and today I’ve been working on the article on the interview I got last week. I’ll save most of the details for the actual article, but it’s an intense story of a 16 year old girl who was just trying to get home the night after the election results in 2007. She unfortunately got a lot more than just a little trouble. It’s a pretty graphic story. Some people may rather not read it, but I’m gonna post it anyway. It won’t be on this main page, but rather another page listed on the tabs above “MCF”. I’ll also post a bit of information on what MCF(Mathare Children’s Fund) does as an organization.

Anyways, it’s been perfectly eventful as well as uneventful depending on the day.

Here are some extraneous thoughts.

1)      How can a paint warehouse not have the base paint for black? Or red? They were missing that one, too. Although, I was able to get green. Things are always at 80% here. No one is ever at the top of their game, and it doesn’t really seem like anyone cares to be at least business wise. When it comes to the bar, they go pretty all out.  It’s just difficult to get anything done in any sort of a timely manner. Still trying to switch to that mindset. America did a number on me, I guess!

2)      The past two months there have been no fewer than 3 different Norwegian schools come to stay at the Amani Center. The first two just came and saw the slums, walked around a bit, went on a safari, etc. This third one was here for two weeks, and they left this past weekend. They were different. I got a chance to talk to one of the teachers last week for a moment. They had a pretty cool little thing going. Basically, they bring 20 students and each of those students paid for one Kenyan to stay with them. They spent two weeks basically on retreat and studying… music. A couple of the girls kept asking me to come to their concert this past Saturday. As I already noted above, I went to the elephant orphanage. I did, however, get an invite to a parent’s only show. The parents of Kenyans wanted to see what they had been doing the past two weeks. The whole group did maybe 2 or 3 different song acapella. The real trick though was that everyone split off into groups of 4-8. They had written their own music, and the musical talent there was unbelievable. These were highschoolers mind you, but they were switching instruments left and right and the lyrics were fantastic and there were some incredible singers. I saw saxophones, basses, acoustic and electric guitars, pianos, jimbes, bongos, and drums. They did all kinds of music. Beatbox. Rap. Classical. Christmas. Pop. Reggae. All across the board. It was really cool to see the kids mixed together and sharing their talents. It really was awesome.

3)      On the Christmas note, if anyone wanted to send me some Christmas music, that’s be awesome because I’m missing the automatic music on 97.1 WashFM for the entire month of December.

4)      Hail to the Redskins.

Remember to take a look at the interview article by clicking on the MCF tab at the top of the page.

Thanks for listening! God Bless and I'll post again around Christmas!

-Harris Moriarty

"Untitled" by Artist

To Mail Me Anything: 

Benedictine Fathers

Amani Conference Centre

P.O. Box 32101-00600

Nairobi - Kenya

To Donate Anything: 

Southern Benedictine Society

100 belmont mount holly road

Belmont, NC 28012

(Write "BVC - Harris" in the comment section of the check)

I left you slightly over a week ago, and, when I left, I slept for 2 days. I slept and ate and watched videos on my computer and pressed repeat. I was SO tired from weeks of traveling. Of course, I'm not done or anything. I was just taking a break and well deserved one at that!

Monday I started my life again. I woke up early and went into town to send my money to Tanzania for our Mt. Kilimanjaro trip and secure our seats on the bus for Mombasa! I got to town and went down to the Modern Coast Bus Lines booking office. It was kind of in the ghetto, but the buses were really nice looking. Did that and then I walked to the other side of Nairobi to find a western union to transfer the funds. The company we are using for Kili told us the price in dollars. So I went to barclays bank and took out some money from the ATM. First problem. My bank account wouldn't let me take out enough to pay for Kate, Caitlin, and myself. So I went to the western union and changed the shillings I had over into dollars and then I went home and watched entourage.

Next day. Took my time in the morning and went back into town. Took out the rest of the money in shilling at the barclays. Went over to the western union and changed it into dollars. Then I found out that they couldn't transfer USD to Tanzania. I had to changed it all back into Kenyan Shillings and then change it into Tanzanian shillings. Huge hassle. I know I got screwed somewhere in there. THEN they said they were going to charge me an absurd amount just to make the transfer. aaaaand I didn't have enough money on me to cover the extra charge. So I walked out of the western union with far too much money in my pocket and no plan. I went to Barclays to see about opening an account because I could just use the bank to make the transfer but I had to have an account with them first. They made me jump through all sorts of hoops but the last one was I had to have a friend with a Barclays account fill out a form for me. Couldn't find one. So I talked to the girls and we put the extra money together.

Wednesday. Went to town ONE MORE TIME to figure out the mess. Went up to the lady at the counter, and she recalculated everything. Turns out the lady the previous day was going to charge me 10k extra shilling than she should have. Ugh. Whatever. I sent the money, and then I went and sat in a coffee shop for four hours while I waited for the girls to show up in downtown from Karen. We got there and then took a taxi back to Amani and chilled/ate dinner. Then we met the German girls from next door. They had ordered a cab, and so we jumped in there cab and left for the bus station around 8pm. We got to the bus station kind of early, so we stood around and waited for a bit while people walked by giving us creepy looks. People will stare at me, but no one really wants to mess with me. I have no idea why. Hah. We got on the bus and went forward to Mombasa!

Thursday

We arrived in Mombasa in the early morning. Not really sure what time. Got a taxi to take us to the hostel. We booked the hostel online and we weren't really sure what to expect. We drove into a little town just outside Mombasa called Mtwapa. It didn't look good for us. Pretty low class. Lots of matatus and motor bikes and people just sitting on the sides of the roads being loud and obnoxious. I sat back in my seat and put my hand on my forehead. We took a right and I knew that was the direction of the beach so I became at the least hopeful that we'd be close to the beach. We drove down a broken, sandy road path for at least 7 or 8 minutes. Then we came to the top of a small hill and drove down into a little parking lot where the road dead ended. We got out. We were there. I walked in the front gate, and right there was the beach! We were actually right on the beach! Also, it was really quiet. I immediately fell in love. We checked in and I went into my room for a small nap. Then I came out and ordered breakfast because the hostel has its own bar and restaurant and everything was reasonably priced. I ate my food and begged the girls to take it easy in the morning. Of course, when you're one guy with 4 girls, you will NEVER win a conversation. So we went to the public beach which meant leaving the hostel. ugh. Anyways, we got to the public beach, and that was pretty awesome. The ocean was at low tide and the beach stretch out for what seemed like miles, and even when we finally got up to the water, I could have walked another half mile into the water and only be around waist deep. Had to watch for sea urchins though. Those things were freakin' everywhere, but they're cool to look at. We drank beers and ate lunch on the beach. Went back to the hostel. I think Caitlin and I had a drink but the others just wanted water. My plan was to live it up and I stuck to it! Got dinner and hung out for a bit before finally hittin' the sack.

Friday

Best day ever. Haha I sent the 4 girls to go off snorkeling in the morning. I didn't go for two reasons. 1) I didn't want to pay and 2) I wanted to take it really easy. Vacation, right? I woke up around ten. Got a late breakfast, and went back to bed a for a little bit. Then I went and I sat looking out onto the beach drinking a beer. I met some of the other people staying there. A lot of germans. There were a few there after taking a medical elective, couple more just in from Germany on a vacation, and then there were two on a trip from Tanzania. Germans are all over East Africa. Two moved in right next to me(I had my own room with a double bed for a single price, hell ya). Their names were Tim and Benny, and they were awesome. They were both 29 and on a bro trip for the first time in 10 years. They'd been friends for most of their lives, but they hadn't gone out together for a sweet awesome trip since they'd gone to Spain when they were 17. Anways, everyone chilled the rest of Friday. What an awesomely chill day. I felt great. I even got to go on a late night walk right on the beach! Paradise was at my finger tips!

Saturday

Slept in a small amount. Got a late breakfast and then went back to the public beach. I sat in the restaurant/beach hut with all the girls stuff while they went into the water. I drank some beers and I think I got a plate of fries. It was just really beautiful. The girls got back and I took some pics of Caitlin and Kate on a camel. Yes. A camel. Kate was bracing for death the whole ride while Caitlin I think tried to do a backflip off. Interesting experience. Check Kate's fb pics for the details. Spent the day and most of the evening there. Then they kicked us out because they were hosting a bikini party. They begged us to stay actually, but the girls weren't having any of it. *sigh* Like I said, I never won on this trip. Well not quite never ;). I'm tricky. Anyways, we got back to the hostel and as it was our last night we all sat on the edge of the hostel overlooking the beach and got a few drinks. A little while later, Tim and Benny showed up and bought a round. Then our Tanzanian-German friends showed up, too. Basically, we had a big bash on our last night and we made some good friends. Hopefully, they'll find us on facebook or something. They were fun.

Sunday

Put ourselves together after the previous evening's festivities. Got in the cab and went back to the bus stop in Mombasa. At 1:30 we pulled out. We were making great time until we were roughly 50km outside of Nairobi and we were stopped on the highway. massive traffic jam. So bad that people just straight up got out of their cars and trucks and buses and walked around for bit. I must have seen 3 separate multi-car pile-ups. We arrived in Nairobi around 10:45pm. Immediately got a taxi to Karen. I took a short shower and passed the heck out.

Monday

Woke up at 9:30. checked my emails. Found out that the matatus are all on strike. So I have no plans to get back to Amani as of right now. A couple of the sisters might be driving that way tomorrow. So we'll see! I'm certainly not dropping 4k shilling to go back. I can tell you that right now. So I'm chillin' in Karen! All is well! Always looking for letters from friends and family. Just refer to the address above!

Fun Fact:

The power of the internet is ridiculous. I've had roughly 2500 blog views from these countries:

United States

Kenya

Russia

Germany

Canada

France

Nigeria

Spain

United Kingdom

Poland

Argentina

Switzerland

China

Ireland

Venezuela

Kinda weird, yea? If you're from one of these random countries, let me know who you are! Catch ya later!