Ongata Ronkai

Today was our day off so we spent it visiting Pastor George and Florence’s hometown Ongata Ronkai. Both of them still have family in the area. We started off in the main part of the city. Within five minutes we had seen three of Florence’s siblings. She comes from a particularly large family and has 15 siblings. We walked around running errands and picking up groceries to take as a gift to Pastor George’s family (pictures below). Along the way we ran into Florence’s niece and she showed us around. We eventually ended up at her mother’s sewing shop. We went to pick up a skirt she hand made for Florence. Before we left, she took my measurements /so that she can make me some custom kitenge (Kenyan dresses). Tomorrow, Florence and I will go go the market to pick out the fabric for them. I’m so excited and will be posting pictures once they are complete!   

After we walked around for a while, we drove outside the city to Pastor George’s family property. His father built the family home in the 1970s and it is now occupied by George’s mother, brother, sister-in-law, two nieces, and one of his sisters. When Pastor George’s father brought the property, it was considered pretty rural. Apparently wild giraffes would come by and eat the bean plants out of the ground. Now, the surrounding area is more populated and unexpected animal guests are much less common. 

George and Florence built a house on the lower part of the family property where they hope to retire. They frequently spend time off visiting it on their days off. When we arrived, we had a cup of tea and then spent the afternoon digging up potatoes and weeding around the kale plants. It’s been a while since I had that much dirt underneath my fingernails and it felt good. As I may have mentioned before, this is the rainy season. This is a particularly heavy season as Kenya has had more rain than it has in 20 years. So the crops are drowning and the weeds are thriving. Since they don’t have time to come out to this property much, it was good for us to do a little weeding. 

After we spent time in the yard, we enjoyed a late lunch with George’s mother and had tea with Florence’s family. As is common with most families in the diaspora, these folks do not speak much English so George had to do quite a lot of translating. A few days ago, they got to meet my mom (via video chat) and today I got to meet their families which was very special. We will probably be going back there another week.  

~ Nell in Nairobi