When you know you've been in Kenya a long time

While our family has just spent a year in Kenya, that year represents a huge amount of time for our kids. Nate has spent 1/3 of his life in Kenya, and Lexi 1/5 of her life. Both of the kids have changed so much in this year, and are going to face some culture shock when we return to the States.

Lexi was surprised to hear that not every home has guards that keep us safe and open the gate for us when we get home and honk the horn.

They will both be shocked at the number of choices there are in the States, and the number of toys. They are also used to us bartering when we buy gifts for other people - somehow I imagine Walmart would frown on that practice.

Fast food. It just doesn't exist here. Whenever we "eat out" here, we generally eat outside. Most restaurants have an outside eating area, many of them only have an outside eating area.

While we probably won't always think of it, we will miss the fresh food here. I will miss buying juice that only has one ingredient, for example the label on our orange juice says: "ingredients: orange juice". There are no preservatives in almost anything we buy.

Everytime we drive we see hundreds of people walking. That doesn't happen in the States. We pass dozens of bicycles, a few donkey carts (more often than not pulled by a person), a herd of cows, goats, or sheep walking somewhere across the road, and at least one three-wheeled taxi cab. The kids don't really remember driving without these things. There are also the hawkers usually standing between moving lanes of traffic. Whenever traffic comes to a stop, they try to sell you something (maps, flags, knives, sunglasses, puppies, dresses, birds, phone chargers, jumper cables, pictures, produce, hats, cell phone cases, toys, DVDs, warning triangles, magazines, hiking sticks, etc.

This week when we were driving downtown, and stuck in "a jam," my three-year-old son cried out, "Hey, this guy is selling apples! Roll my window down!" He was ready to start bartering for a bag of green apples.

Here is the 1/3 Kenyan tending a fire with a stick and sitting like a Maasai with his "warrior hat" on. (I have never seen any Kenyan actually wearing one of these hats, but they sell them on the side of the road, and one of our Aunts thought Nate needed one.)

There are many ways we will all face some amount of culture shock. We will miss living here a great deal. It is shocking to realize how much of their lives have been spent living overseas at this point. I hope we can come back someday.