Paul and Rebecca Mosley in Kenya: New Home, Still Unsettled

The MCC Kenya/Tanzania Office, an old
villa that was home to many missionaries

How do you start again in a new MCC assignment?

New city, new job.

New team of staff to get to know, new partners and projects.

A new culture and language style to get used to.

New school, new community, new church.

So many new questions to answer: “How do I do ___ here?”

MCC Kenya/Tanzania team at lunch

And a new blog.

This will now be our fourth assignment as a family with Mennonite Central Committee.

We’ve set up a blog for each location and term, and I’ll list them below in case anyone is curious.

2008-2014 Paul and Rebecca Mosley in Burundi

2017-2021 Paul and Rebecca Mosley in Tanzania

2021-2024 Paul and Rebecca Mosley in Ethiopia

I’m recounting again, the number of times I’ve been in this situation of a new place: Baltimore; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Baltimore suburbs; Bangladesh; Baltimore suburbs; USSR (Kazakhstan), Williamsburg, VA; Botswana; hiatus in Baltimore; Vancouver, BC; Poughkeepsie, NY; Bujumbura, Burundi; Timonium, MD; Arusha, Tanzania; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And now one more new place, Nairobi, Kenya. Let’s just call it the 15^th. For Paul, it’s very nearly the same number of new places.

A friend helped me understand the Karura forest
one afternoon, a place I'm sure to enjoy in future

When I try to make sense of the big picture, it’s too much. I have no way to begin. That's why it's been 3 weeks since we moved without a blog. But fortunately, our job does not allow too much time for deep introspection. We are called to dive right into the mundane. And that truly is the only way forward—to deal with the circumstances confronting us in the present.

So, we arrived in Nairobi late on a Monday night, to a dark flat with no wifi and not enough airtime to even generate a hotspot. If it had just been a question of going to bed by candlelight, we could have managed that. But while we were en route, there had been a flooding disaster at our home in Baltimore. We found that out while we were in the airport using the free wifi there. We really needed to get online to authorize a technician to go help out our renters and follow up. Thankfully, we found an MCC Kenya staff member who was still up at 11 pm and able to help us get a rudimentary connection, and we were able to be sure the house disaster was under control before hitting the pillows.

Rosslyn Academy campus

In the morning we went to the office, met some of our staff for the first time, and got some help sorting out the electricity problem in our flat. Then we headed out to David’s school to firm up his 10^th grade class schedule.

Finally, we made our way to complete the most important housekeeping task for anyone who plans to spend time in Kenya: Any guesses as to what that is? Getting set up with Safaricom sim cards and the accompanying mobile money system MPESA. Kenya is so completely different from Ethiopia in that way. Cash hardly ever changes hands. Everything from Ubers to avocados on the street is paid for by mobile money. And there are at least five different systems of paying with your phone. Fortunately, most people speak English and are very kind and helpful to newcomers in explaining what to do. Actually, as much as Kenya is unique and different from other places we have lived, it is all made much easier to adapt to because there is virtually no language barrier.

Our temporary flat has a nice gym

For example, we have a new housekeeper to get to know. It’s a pretty big deal to have a new person become part of our household. But we can actually communicate quite clearly with Lucy, by text or conversation. She can easily read recipes in English. She can explain what she needs from us and what her questions are. Lucy has already been such a huge blessing to us as we have been trying to adapt and catch up to school and work and life. It’s been amazing to come home to find a tasty meal ready on the stove.

Anyway, on our second day in the office, we had an early morning back at David’s school for new student orientation. Rosslyn is incredibly organized about sharing all the necessary information with new parents, making sure we are hooked up with the school lunch program, the late bus list, the health center, and the technology all set. Several different newsletters go out weekly, with amazing communication. A couple of students in David’s grade gave us parents a good tour; David went on a tour with other new students to find his classrooms before the first day.

Rosslyn Auditorium at the open house

We visited the counseling center, with at least 3 staff and the learning support center with 4 staff. We got to meet basically all the high school teachers in one long lineup – and it was so clear about how well-resourced the school is. A tasty hot lunch was provided to all new families. And we left feeling incredibly grateful that David has landed here for the rest of high school, God willing.

I believe that we tried to help our team with some work tasks and decisions during that first week. I hope what we told them was helpful and coherent. We were not at our best with jet lag. But we did have a nice team meeting that Friday with everyone all together. We enjoyed the tasty fish and ugali at the Big Fish restaurant around the corner to inaugurate a new season for us in MCC Kenya/Tanzania. By the end of each day, we were totally exhausted.

Another shot of that team lunch
From left Judith (health Coordinator), Sharon (finance)
and Charles (M&E) are visible

We had a slow-moving first Saturday in town. A good sleep was in order. Our big treat was going to visit a mall West of town hosting a Decathlon shop. Sorry to get excited about consumerist matters, but it was incredibly fun to finally be able to buy ourselves a set of free weights for our morning workouts; we had been making do with sets of differently-sized bricks in Ethiopia. That more or less encapsulates the difference in approach to these two assignments.

One important element of our life here remains to be decided: where will we make a church home? We are hoping to find a congregation that is both local and international; with a quorum of teens David’s age; where women are welcome to participate in ministry; and where there is some room for us to join in serving (but on a volunteer basis, as our MCC work allows). We have friends who worship at a Vineyard congregation that meets near our office on the grounds of the old Mennonite Guesthouse, so we decided to visit that community first. We liked a lot of things about it and were pleasantly surprised that the preacher that morning was the elementary chaplain for Rosslyn, a woman. She gave a helpful and insightful sermon on the power of words from James.

Our future living room

After church, we drove out to the house we will be renting to settle some furniture purchases from the couple who is moving out, and to learn about the quirks and systems of the house. It’s a very charming old place, with beautiful wood floors and a nice space to receive guests. The garden has been nurtured in recent years and the green space looks really restorative. It was good to greet our soon-to-be new neighbors, who have a very hospitable son in David’s grade at Rosslyn. And then we rushed back to the flat where we were staying to get Paul ready to leave for Ethiopia.

David with his future neighbor in our backyard;
they found 2 chameleons in that bush

For the entire next week, Paul was in Addis, trying to wrap up some bureaucratic matters. Meanwhile, David and I needed to fend for ourselves back in Addis. It was a pretty exciting week for him, as far as exploring the opportunities at Rosslyn. His classes make me very happy! Finally, he can take Biology with a teacher who gives hands-on activities at least once a week. He likes his teachers in Math and French a lot. He’s in the High School choir, as well as an elective called Intro to Theatre Arts. He’s also taking World History and English, and hopefully, these will fill out some of the gaps from the past.

Students at Rosslyn by the gym

As far as extracurriculars, there are more options than he can handle. He was undecided about whether to join the swim team or to try out for the school play. We encouraged him to try out for both and see what happened. All of it was a good experience, a win-win. In fact, he had a good audition for the play “Emma” and was called back for a second audition. In the end, he didn’t make the cut, but that’s really to be expected as a new student and only a sophomore. We were so proud of him for trying. He will stick with the swim team for now, although the practices are quite grueling for him. And there is an opportunity to be part of the drama set crew one afternoon a week. We got some logistical matters sorted out, with David taking a taxi to school in the morning. In the afternoon, there is a late bus that takes him right to our apartment complex. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get home until after 6:30 pm. He’s been pretty worn out.

MCC Team Devotional with 5 young adults
about to be sent out into the world

The highlight of that second week was my interactions with the new cohort of young adults participating in MCC Global Service-Learning programs. The Kenya/Tanzania program selected and sent 5 young adults, 2 to the US through the International Volunteer Exchange Program, and 3 to other countries with MCC programs (Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Program). All five were with us on Monday for our weekly team devotional and check-in and then we shared lunch together – what a delightful bunch! The hard part was that one young woman was greatly delayed while the other 2 YAMENers left for their orientation in Cambodia.

From left: YAMENers Raymond, Esther
and Naomi and IVEPers Ester and Elvis

Esther is assigned in Cambodia but she needed a different longer-term visa; the Cambodian embassy is located in Egypt and their responsible staff was very delayed in approving the visa; and then it took absolutely forever for the passport to be collected by DHL and sent back to us. We were hoping she would only be delayed by a week, and so tried to keep her in good spirits, engaged in some MCC activities like a visit to a partner to see training. I invited her for dinner at our place twice. She attended the YAMEN orientation virtually, which was better than nothing but required her to start attending at 5 am because of the time difference. When we still didn’t have her passport after 8 days, she really was struggling to keep her spirits up. Finally, we got news on a Thursday evening that the passport was in Nairobi being sorted and would be released the next day. There was a last-minute panic to get a ticket booked for her Friday morning when we had the passport in hand, but she was on a plane at long last, just an hour before the new GSL group arrived!

SALTer Mary and YAMENers
Debora, Hijal and Menzi

This second group of young adults have come from many corners of the world and will serve in Kenya for about 11 months. They come from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Canada, and Zimbabwe, two men and two women. Two men will stay with host families in different parts of the country and the women will share a small flat, commute together to the same assignment location and will have a neighborhood host family who will have them over for meals and conversation regularly. We’ve enjoyed the process of getting to know them over the past few days, in work orientation sessions and they’ve come to our house for dinner twice. Much of our work in the next two weeks will be accompanying them as they learn the language and begin to understand MCC and their work better. Fortunately, MCC Kenya has a full-time staff person, Nelly, who is dedicated to supporting the GSL program.

At Nairobi Museum

Along the way, over the past two weeks, we have visited two more churches. We have really enjoyed special things about each of them, and it will be a hard decision at the end of the day. Nairobi has lots of good choices for just about everything. We had one fun outing to the Nairobi museum snake park on a Sunday afternoon. We’ve also made a few different trips back to our soon-to-be home in Ridgeways to meet repair people and do a house inspection. Fortunately, we have had good recommendations for how to get that work done to repair some termite damage and paint the house.

The most major challenge in Nairobi is driving. So far we haven’t had to contend with much bad traffic, but there are serious issues with following Google Maps and trying to stay on the correct part of the highway. One day, we missed a turn and were thrown onto a flyway that led us inexorably onto a journey of no return into the CBD (Central Business District), where every road seemed to snake around in an endless loop behind endless lines of stopped busses and van taxis (matatus). We went from being 8 minutes to the office to 34 minutes to the office. We concluded that every driving mistake is a learning experience; we will never miss that turn again!

We will not really start to feel settled until we move out of our temporary flat this coming weekend. Then we can start to understand our real patterns of life. So, let me stop there and post what I have for now. It is not complete or perfect. The blog itself is still under construction, much like our life. We don’t have any great photos of Kenya yet, mostly just a bunch of meals with interesting people who will become part of our work life in the coming months. But here it is; more to come in September.

Bonus photos: