There's A First Time For Everything

We first met Danki in 2013 on our initial visit to Mokhotlong.  We didn’t have a place to live here yet and we had only come to visit a colleague, Jayne, and survey the town.  Jayne took us around Mokhotlong, showing us where we could find some groceries and to show us what a rental house might look like.  Along our tour, we met an elderly lady who sat on her front porch and chatted with us for a while.  Sound familiar?  I blogged about her on Christmas Eve.  There were a dozen young kids around, understandably curious of the outsiders who had come to their little part of Mokhotlong.  Jonathan, Kyle, tiny Ellee, Lacy, my mom and myself were there and in our pictures, Danki was there, too.  We didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out that we moved in next door to that elderly lady, MaTopi, and she is now our neighbor.  Because Danki rents a room from MaTopi, he is also our neighbor.  He first moved to Mokhotlong in 2009.  The youngest of ten children, he was born and raised in a village until age ten.  At that point, he moved to Mokhotlong to continue his education in the better town schools.  Eventually, he began renting a room from MaTopi and started high school nearby.  He recently graduated and has since been doing odd jobs around town.  He hopes to go to college and study engineering.  He will have to work to pay his way through school.

Around Thanksgiving, he told us in conversation that he had never been to South Africa.  He said he had a passport, but it had never been used.  He wanted to see the ocean.  We asked when he turned 18, since it’s much easier to take someone across the border once they are an adult.  He said his 18th birthday was the first of January.  So, we told him we’d take him along sometime when we were going to the coast.  When we decided to fly Lacy home out of Durban, we determined it would be as good a time as any to take Danki with us as well. 

Typically when we go to Durban, we’re there for doctor’s appointments and necessary shopping.  We usually stay with friends and oftentimes don’t even make it to the beach.  For Danki, however, the beach was first priority.  Thus, I found a condo right on the beach for an absolute steal and booked it for a couple nights after Lacy’s departure.  Danki was counting down the days weeks ago.  He told us he could barely sleep last week because he was so excited.  On Sunday morning, we packed up and embarked on a trip of firsts.  We knew seeing the ocean would be a first, but it hadn’t even occurred to me exactly how many firsts he would experience during a few days in South Africa.

First ride down Sani.  First border crossing.  First passport stamp.  First monkey sighting.  First ride on a freeway.  He couldn’t believe how fast the cars were going.  First automatically opening doors.  First time in a mall.  First time ordering from a menu.  First meal at a sit-down restaurant.  First shower.  First time seeing a small dog.  First McDonalds.  First traffic jam.  First view of an airport.  First look at the ocean.  Second, third, forth, fifth shower - he’s hooked.  First night in an air-conditioned room.  First time seeing a poodle.  He roared with laughter.  All the dogs in Mokhotlong are mutt herd dogs.  A groomed poodle was just a hilarious sight to him.  We enjoyed his reaction.  First elevator.  First escalator.  He went up and down a few times just because he could.  First time to a movie theatre.  First swim in the ocean.  First swim in a pool.  I couldn't believe he knew how to swim, but he did!  First milkshake.  First parking garage.  First air hockey.  First soda fountain.  I should’ve counted the number of refills he got!  First water fountain. First drive thru.  His reaction was priceless.  He couldn’t believe there was a person behind the screen taking our order and that the food was going to magically appear out of a window.  Jono explained the headset concept.  First bumper cars.  First zebra.  First ostrich.  And I'm sure many more I'm forgetting!

While we were out, the monkeys got in and made a huge mess!  The housekeeper left the window open and this....

It’s so interesting how commonplace all these things are to me.  In fact, for us, coming to South Africa is comforting because it feels like home.  It looks more like America than anywhere else nearby, and the sights, smells and sounds are much like those from home.  It’s still different, but it’s a whole lot closer to American life than we find in Mokhotlong.  Danki, on the other hand, knows nothing of life outside of Lesotho.  Excluding a very short school trip to the capital city, he barely knows life outside of Mokhotlong.  Needless to say, he’s intrigued and maybe a bit shell shocked by life there.  And it was so fun to watch him experience it. 

I don’t know where his bright smile and kind heart will take him in life.  I hope and pray he makes wise choices.  He has the potential to have a bright and successful future.  I suspect this won't be the only trip to South Africa he takes with us.  It really couldn't have been more fun for any of us!

~Abby

Time Drags On and Flies By

I recognize that I've taken a blogging hiatus the past couple months.  We've been busy and we've had visitors and it's been lots of fun!

Anticipating the arrival of my mama, I spent most of September digging through and cleaning out areas of the house that often get overlooked.  Drawers get full of stuff we don't need to keep, in-between season clothes get put in random places and the cabinets needed a thorough cleaning after our month+ long battle to rid ourselves of an unwelcome resident mouse (we won).  It feels good to get things back to ground zero occasionally.  I feel like much of my day is spent shuffling junk from one place to another, namely toys.  So one Saturday while my neighbor took Kyle and Ellee for a walk, Jono and I kicked into high gear cleaning out and boxing up half the toys just to reduce the volume of stuff around the house.  That felt way better than I expected.

Due to some passport complications, Mom's trip was bumped back a week longer than we had planned leaving us up here in no-grocery-land to fend for ourselves on local food.  My attempts at making tasty meals out of basic ingredients were well accepted, thankfully.  By the time grocery shopping came the second week of October, we were out of just about everything.  We lived.

On October 9th we picked up Lollee bright and early at the Durban airport.  I was so excited.  Kyle was so excited!  Jono was so excited and Ellee was so clueless.  We had lots of fun catching up and getting happies she'd brought along from friends and family back home while we hung out in Durban for the rest of that morning.  It felt surreal to have her here.  We spent a night in Pietermaritzburg and then drove up to Mokhotlong on Friday after buying one of everything in the grocery store.

During our two weeks together in Mokhotlong, Mom and I embroidered a ton of stockings, watched more murder mysteries than I'm comfortable with admitting to, cooked lots of yummy meals and had late-night sleep overs.  We walked to town for Basotho "donuts", fed our neighbors' chickens, and played Memory with Kyle.  Ellee loved the attention from Lollee and decided she'd attempt walking (finally!) to impress her.  We took picnics to the river and let the kids splash in the water.  Thanks to an internet fluke in our favor, we were able to download a bunch of seasons of our favorite TV show, The Amazing Race, and we enjoyed watching the episodes during mealtimes.  Mom picked the first place winner for both seasons and now we owe her a gift card to a restaurant.  We gave each other pedicures, watched the Hobbit special features, fixed my vacuum so it works great now, and cleaned the house from top to bottom with it.

To wrap it up, we spent four nights in Durban on the coast before she flew back out yesterday.  We ate at some of our favorite restaurants, shopped till we dropped - or at least until our feet ached - and walked down to see the ocean despite the intense wind.  For breakfast we cooked bacon and eggs and toast in our room and fed the monkeys bananas through the windows.  One monkey nearly got in the room through the window and I just about had a heart attack.  Then I closed the windows completely and had a good laugh.  It was actually sort of funny to be on the glassed-in side of a zoo.  There were at least ten monkeys outside our window looking in at us eating our breakfast.  One mama monkey had a half-asleep baby clinging to her fur on her belly while she jumped and swung from trees and rooftops.  It was incredible how tightly that baby monkey had to have been holding on and yet was still able to sleep!  I tried to make sure she got food because I know what kind of slim pickings mamas get sometimes.

Time is such a funny thing.  The days were dragging as we waited for Mom to come, but they went by so fast while she was here.  Three weeks isn't nearly long enough to pack in enough fun to last half a year or more.  She could be here for three months and it wouldn't be enough.  As much as I tried to soak in every moment, I still feel like it flew by.  And as much as we did, there was still so much more that I had wanted to do but we didn't get the time.

I hate saying goodbye.  It physically hurts.  Every time I try to psych myself up and say I'm just gonna be tough and get through it.  And every time I just want to curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out.  Three weeks ago, I was so excited to go to the airport and pick her up.  Yesterday I hated the airport for having to take her away.  Coming back to the house is so hard because it feels empty and lonely.  I can barely look in her room without tearing up.  Thankfully I know this feeling passes.  When she and Lacy left last year, I was unprepared for how hard I would grieve.  This time I knew it was going to stink and that we would just have to get through it.  It's hard not knowing when we'll see each other again and knowing that there isn't really any chance of an unexpected visit.  I know it'll be a long time so I know it stinks.  And I know it hurts.

My relationship with my mom is something I'll always cherish.  We could not get along any better than we do.  Our days together are always fun, always light hearted and we always like the same things.  It makes it easy to be together and very hard to be apart.  I love you, Mama!  Thanks for traveling the world to come see me and my family.  We miss you!!!

~Abby 

Atlantic, Pacific, now Indian!

I grew up going to the beach for family vacations.  While I tend to label myself as more of a mountain girl, I do thoroughly enjoy a visit to the ocean; the salty air and the relaxing sound of the waves crashing on the sand are comforting to me.  Probably my only irritant with the beach is the sand that inevitably finds its way into my bed.... But a few sweeps from my hand and that's fixed.  Having spent the majority of my beach time on the Atlantic but also visiting the Pacific in Hawaii, I was really excited to dip my toes in the Indian Ocean.  

Although we're closer to the Durban area than to any other large city in Lesotho or South Africa we've visited, we had yet to find the opportunity to drive west and combine our monthly grocery shopping with a trip to the coast.  Typically we have one reason or the other that we need to drive east for a meeting or to visit a certain store.  This month, however, we didn't have anywhere else to go for groceries and decided to combine that trip with a scope of the place before my mom flies into Durban in October (yay!).  I was surprised that it took only four hours to get to Pietermaritzburg where we stopped for McDonalds, and exactly one more hour to drive to where we were staying in Durban.  The Sani Pass, albeit rugged, wasn't as bad as we were anticipating.  We even drove back up it after dark last night.  I'm sure my mom will be white-knuckling it when she rides up in October, but for us it's just the way life is here.  Jonathan drives carefully and we all hold on tight and pray our brakes don't give out.  Reliable Rocky comes through again!

Ellee holding on tight

Top of Sani

GPS warning of car sickness

A couple weeks ago I suggested to our friends in Pretoria that they meet us in Durban for our little vacation.  We were thrilled that they decided to join us and we proceeded to book a lovely ocean view guest house for not much more than the price of a Knights Inn room in America.  Our room was just what we needed, complete with a little corner to tuck away Ellee's pack & play from the rest of us.  Little Lady likes her privacy when she sleeps, otherwise she's keen to stand and cry and beg for someone to come play with her.  We opted out of the breakfast part of the B&B for a discounted rate and I baked muffins and brought instant oatmeal packets from home.  For lunch we ate sandwiches and fruit on our balcony to save our appetites for dinners out.

For dinners we tried a couple new restaurants (at least they were new to us).  One was a genuine African cuisine right on the beach and the food was fantastic.  The other was a seafood grill built on something like a pier and that was also very nice.  The cheesecake with berry sauce I splurged on was probably the best thing about all our dinners out....  I do love cheesecake.

Arcade fun

Dinner photography a la Kyle

Dinner photography a la Kyle

The highlight of the guest house was either the hot water flowing instantly from the tap into a giant tub or the monkeys that roam the trees and rooftops in search of something they can eat.  It was really nice to have a hot shower after a week of frozen pipes.  But seeing monkeys in the wild was really a special treat!  I couldn't help but think that Kyle is growing up thinking this is a normal aspect of life, sort of like seeing squirrels in South Carolina.... 

I found it hard to believe that the climate in Durban was so vastly different from way up here in Mokhotlong until I actually got there.  Even in the middle of the winter, the afternoons were warm and the mornings and evenings were pleasantly cool.  I imagine in the dead of summer, the heat there is unbearable, probably not unlike what we experienced in Mexico.  The ocean was fairly chilly though and we didn't do much swimming... well I didn't at least.  Jonathan and Kyle enjoyed a nice dip in a calm beach we visited on Wednesday.  The beach by our guest house was rocky and the waves were enormous.  Plus, there was a posted warning sign that the beach wasn't protected by shark nets and that was plenty enough deterrent for me.  Still, we walked on the beach a number of times and Ellee had a great time playing in the sand with the new sand toys I bought from a lady walking up and down the beach.

When I invited our friends to join us, I didn't do so with their photography skills in mind.  But certainly having them and their camera around didn't hurt.  They offered to take a few family photos for us on the beach and we took them up on it.  It's been over a year since they took our family photos in Bloem, just after Ellee was born.  You can see that it was windy but we had fun playing around for a bit while Meredith worked her camera magic...

A little warm R&R does the heart good, especially when coming back to frigid Mokhotlong, with still frozen pipes.  Our fire is dead and it's on my to-do list to start it this morning.  Right now I can barely feel my fingers to type so I'll leave you and move on to that task.......

~Abby

Our Home Away From Home (Part 1)

Last week Jonathan, Kyle and I took our first "real" family vacation back to Cancun, Mexico where we lived in 2010.  Jonathan and I went back and forth for months over whether or not we should try to make the trip.  Wanting to visit our friends and church there before leaving for Africa, but not knowing if it was wise to spend the time and money, we finally determined that returning was the best thing for us to do. When we found this past Spring that instead of having to pay taxes, Uncle Sam was gifting us a large sum of money thanks to Kyle's birth and Jonathan's school bills, we saw how the Lord was providing for us to make this trip.  He does all things well! We booked the tickets a few months ago. In my heart I wanted to take a couple of these days to just spend as a family at the beach and the Lord provided through a family member for us to stay at the Marriott for two nights at no cost to us.  We rented a car enabling us to come and go as we pleased.  As we left on Tuesday, Jonathan and I agreed that the trip could not have gone more perfectly.

Driving to Atlanta on Monday the fourth to spend the night and catch our early plane Tuesday morning, we were giddy with excitement!  We ate at the famous Varsity restaurant for dinner.  I got a burger while Kyle and Jono devoured their hotdogs.  Being in downtown Atlanta with a car full of luggage and electronics, we sat where we could keep an eye on our loot.

Tuesday morning we woke up and had a yummy breakfast before catching a lift to the airport.  It is cheaper to spend a night in a hotel and park your car there than it is to park for a week at the airport. So, we were excited... can you tell?

Caught Kyle trying to grab more of the chocolate muffin as I took this picture.... little sneak!

Kyle scored a free seat beside us as the plane was nowhere near full.  He flew like a champ.  Great missionary kid.

By the time we arrived at the airport, though, he was worn slap out.  He made his desire for a nap well known in the airport as we waited to pass through baggage, immigration and customs.  Lots of funny looks from people probably wondering why we brought a one-year-old on our vacation.  I wondered the same thing a couple of times, but he's ours and we like to keep him with us.  He made it out alive and we were no worse for the wear.  I felt like crying, too, although for me it was because of how wonderfully familiar the smell in that airport was.  It felt like we were walking back into a closed chapter of our lives.

Once we got the car rental squared away, we headed for the hotel zone.  Before checking into the Marriott CasaMagna, we stopped into McDonalds to grab a bite to eat.  Jonathan and I have been in this McDonalds lots of times, but this time we brought a third Coca slurper along.  The cup reads : Where Mmmmm meets Ahhhh.  Yeah, I think that pretty much describes Coke.

Mommy and Daddy, Cancun 2010

Daddy and Baby, Cancun 2012

Then we checked into our hotel for two days of beach bum bliss.  The weather was gorgeous, the hotel was fabulous, but the company was the best part.  I think my eyes started to sweat a couple times as I tried to just soak in the few hours of sweet family fun.  I love my life and my boys.  We went to dinner, swam in the pool under the stars, took naps, played in the ocean and ate at a breakfast buffet fit for a king!

Pancakes with LaLechera (American equivalent might be sweetened condensed milk). Yet another reason why I love Mexico!

The donuts were.... so, so. They don't hold a candle to Chedraui donuts.  More on those later.  The marble cake was delish, along with everything else.

3/4 of the breakfast buffet.  My camera couldn't fit it all in.  That guy in the middle will make you any kind of omelette you can think of.  Jonathan took him up on that.

Our room was on the front of the building, fifth floor with an incredible view!

Kyle borrowed some nice little boy's trucks. Vroom vroom....

Doesn't Mr. Baby look so happy to be on vacation?  He is such a good boy!

Back for breakfast round two beside a large window overlooking the crystal blue water!

The best apple juice on the planet, Con Frutta jugo de manzana.  We brought some back in our suitcase. 

The enormous Mexican flag on the zona hotelera.  Viva México!

To be continued......

~Abby