Surviving and Thriving with New Rhythms in Life this Season

Tailor-made matching outfits

Some things are changing in life as of late, which is making this blog more and more difficult to write. I think it may be a huge new time commitment that I have, namely, choreographing the musical for David's high school. I mentioned in the last entry that they are doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the musical--somewhat different from the book or the movies. David is in it, which is great; he is Mr Salt, Veruka's father and has a very funny song in Act 1. 

I was actually excited about being offered the opportunity to be the choreographer for the show. Rebecca had told the choir teacher at the school the year before that I had been a dancer and choreographer, and they asked me to help out a bit last year with the student choreographers for High School Musical. I had a blast, and this year they really needed someone who could commit to doing it. With some trepidation about the amount of time it would take, I got permission from my supervisors to take time off from 4 to 530 Mon-Thurs to work at the school on the musical. 

It was not until I committed that I realised how many full dances are in the production. There are, at last count, 12! That is quite a big time commitment to choreograph that much movement. In addition, there is a very amusing, but challenging necessity to create dances of many different genres, ex, Augustus Gloop is introduced with a polka, Veruka, a ballet en pointe, Violet, a hip hop routine, and Mike is kind of thrashy with some TikTok worked in. Charley and Grandpa Joe's music is reminiscent of Mary Poppins Step in Time chimney sweeps. The opening piece, set to Sammy Davis Jrs. Candy Man has an old Broadway, Chorus Line kind of feel, and the end of Act One, Willy Wonka at the factory entrance for the whole cast, I have used a combination of tango with Bollywood accents. Wonka does a lot of hat and cane work as well throughout. 

Don't even get me started on Act 2, but there are some returns to themes like a Nutcracker Suite for squirrels and Veruka, and a stamping dance for Mike TV entitled Vidiots. There are many I did not mention, but each one is a project unto itself. At this point, I am finished with most of the pieces, but it has consumed a great deal of my time. (I would say about 3 hours of prep time for every hour of rehearsal I have with the group(s).

Needless to say, combined with my job, which I usually need to continue for another hour or so on my return home, I feel like I don't have a lot of time or mental energy for writing or even reflecting on anything from the past days, forget weeks. 

Last day old office

I am sorry I don't have any photos or videos to show of the work so far, but taking photos of high school students is a sensitive matter, so you have to imagine what these rehearsals look like. The performance is in April.

Other things have made the month more than just normally stressful at work. Because of the musical, I have made sure I don't have to do any work-related travel in or out of the country. That has not stopped visitors from coming to see us, though. We have had visitors and conferences in town for at least 3 of the last 4 weeks. I am happy that we have program coordinators who can be on the ground for these visits, but there is still a fair amount of admin and logistics support that Rebecca and I have to provide. 

We had two groups overlap in mid-February, one was a consultant who was doing a program evaluation of our maternal and child health projects using the care-group approach. MCC had received a large grant for this work, and there was interest from HQ to see the impact of the program in countries in Africa where MCC implemented it. (It was implemented in Burundi, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.) It is continuing in Kenya. The approach has been adapted and innovated in different ways in these different contexts. Kenya has been doing caregroups in urban informal settlements (slums), and in the past phase, we have added a livelihoods component (savings groups) to improve nutrition outcomes by giving women access to savings to start small businesses. 

While I only went with the consultant to the field on the first day, we had to do a lot of advance work, including getting survey instruments translated, hiring a research assistant and interpreter, and arranging for all transport to and from the field. I was very happy Judith, our health programs coordinator, was there to help.

At the same time, we had a person from HQ in Canada come with some MCC Uganda food security program staff to visit a project we have in Turkana involving an irrigation scheme and climate-smart agriculture. They want to implement a similar project and came out to see our work. Turkana is difficult to access and usually involves a flight to a town called Lodwar. I had arranged a flight with a travel agent, but it was cancelled at the last minute. The team had to drive to Turkana from Nairobi, which is very far, and requires crossing a regional border where there is ethnic conflict that can result in carjackings. Charles, our FS program officer, drove them up to Turkana and coordinated with our local partner to be sure they could safely cross the border and get to and from their destination. 

New office visit from ADs

You might wonder what Rebecca and were doing to keep us so busy at the office while all this was going on. Well, we were moving from our office in Westlands, Nairobi, to a new place in Ridgeways, Nairobi (mercifully closer to our current house). MCC and Mennonites have a long history in Westlands, it was where the old Mennonite Guest House was, and our office was next to that location. We were told last year that the property was going to be sold, so when the lease was up for renewal, we looked for a new place and found a house with reasonable rent in Ridgeways. 

Moving an office is a daunting task, and it was made more difficult when we realised we would not be able to bring our guards with us since the new house already had a guard service. This was also true of our housekeeper, who was eligible to retire and could not have kept up with the work of the new place. 

New office living room

The process of letting our support staff go is elaborate according to labour law, and we had to visit the labour office several times to drop off documentation of redundancy and have numerous meetings with our staff to support them in finding another opportunity. It was a challenging, sad, but necessary process. On our last day at the office, we had a party for them and gave them some gifts and speeches of appreciation. I am also happy to say that MCC does far more than the minimum required by labour law as far as severance compensation. 

We officially moved into our new office on Feb. 5th. It took a huge moving truck, 2 trips, and a very long day to complete the work. Rebecca and I stayed at the new office until nearly 9pm that night. Since then, we have been doing a lot of work to equip the place, as it is bigger than our old office, and we even have some space for guest bedrooms when our volunteers visit us. 

International Day at Rosslyn

All of these things involve a lot of logistics, and Rebecca and I have been very busy getting settled while also hosting guests, and this is also the season of interviewing new volunteers for next summer's cohort. Needless to say, it has been stressful. 

On the home front, we were also hosting our friends Erwin and Angelika, who came to Nairobi from Tanzania for health issues and spent about 10 days with us during treatment. Erwin got quite sick while here and spent several days in the hospital as well. I am happy to say that at this writing, they are back in Arusha and doing better. 

I will mention several highlights in the month, one of which was my Birthday. We had a big blow-out last year for 65, so we were pretty subdued this year and just celebrated with the neighbours. I think with the musical and everything else going on, it was too much to do more than that. 

David's school had an international day, which was fun despite the onset of the rainy season. There were contributions from about 40 countries represented at the school. Our family contributed a line dance for the USA to the music of Footloose. It was very well received. 

There was really too much happening to get it all here, but I will close with something that has been nurturing, which is Rebecca and my participation in a 6-week marriage course at our church. As part of it, we are supposed to go on a date as a couple every week. That has been a lot of fun. We do have a planned vacation for a week in March, so hopefully it will be a less stressful month.

Birthday

Erwin and Angelika

David's youth group bowling outing