You swept me away: An ode to Valentine's Day in a Kenyan Orphanage

(Can you tell from the title which album I've had on repeat lately?)

I've been in Kenya for nearly 6 weeks now, and I get a panicky feeling in my stomach every time I think of the fact that there is less than 10 weeks remaining. I have settled into life at the orphanage as much as possible (a friend asked me the other day what a typical day is like which is a question I can't answer! I don't think I've had a typical day since landing in Kenya, and I love that). I'm becoming more familiar with Nairobi and Karen (the suburb of Nairobi where First Love is), riding matatus, turning down offers to try various types of meat, seeing camels and baboons on the side of the road, shaking everyone's hand when I enter a room, and faking my way through Swahili conversations. I love it all.

Valentine's Day snuck up on me this year. First of all, it doesn't feel like February at all here (I've already gotten sunburned twice this month). Secondly, I never know the date because it usually seems rather irrelevant to my daily life. So I didn't even realize Valentine's Day was fast approaching until someone mentioned it the week before, and I was still unfazed...I never do much for the day of love other than enjoy a lot of post-Valentine's Day sale candy.

Life at an orphanage and with kids is different though, and we threw what I will argue was the best Valentine's Day part-ay ever.

There are a handful of wazungu working at First Love: myself, Ginger (who works at Baraka Women's Center...more on that later!), Nancy the nurse, Jane (an intern from the Czech Republic), Rochelle (an honorary muzungu), and Tom and Linda, who are the directors of First Love International and just completed a six week stay in Kenya on Saturday. There are also a dozen+ Kenyan staff who live and work at First Love, and do more of the day-to-day care of the kids. Our Valentine's Day party was to be two-fold: both to party with the kids and to honor the Kenyan staff for dedicating their lives to these kids by letting them relax and enjoy the party while the wazungu cooked, served and cleaned.

We spent Friday afternoon decorating the dining hall with hearts and doilies and rose centerpieces (I'm adding flower arrangement to my resume!) and cooking a ridiculous amount of food. Since the rainy season has started unexpectedly, we were doing so amid the power going on and off for a few hours...thankfully it was back on by the time the kids got back from school! There are 85 kids + staff, meaning we were cooking for 100+ without industrial stoves. I was on spaghetti duty, and here's a lesson I won't forget: don't turn off the stove! We have to light the gas stoves here with matches, and somehow my match box disappeared after the first pot of spaghetti, with 9 more pots to be cooked....ay ay ay (as the Kenyans would say). Despite some panicked moments, we somehow pulled off a huge meal of spaghetti, peas and carrots, coleslaw and bread, not to mention 250 cookies.

When the kids finally arrived, it was so fun to see them in the dining hall. Everything was exciting: there are paper hearts taped to the walls, wow! These doilies, I've never seen anything more beautiful! The wazungu are in the kitchen...what? ha. Seeing things I take for granted through the eyes of children never stops being fun...their excitement about things I don't usually care about (i.e. Valentine's Day) is absolutely contagious.

We inefficiently served the food (props to Dominic, the cook, and the aunties who work in the kitchen and do this for every meal!) Most of the kids loved it, but we had a few returned plates from the babies (the littlest kids here are 4 & 5 years old and always referred to as the babies). They had never had noodles before and were afraid that they were worms! No worries, they got lots of extra veggies and bread.

After the meal, a group of middle-schoolers did a dance routine, complete with djembe in the background. It was well-done, but also hilarious...oh, how I love those kids.

Next we had a time of worship which was, as always, amazing. There was a Swahili song or two and Days of Elijah, which we sing every night before dinner. I don't think these lyrics will ever leave my head for the rest of my life: Behold He comes/ riding on the clouds/ shining like the sun at the trumpet's call/ Lift your voice/ it's the year of Jubilee/ out of Zion's hill salvation comes! My dear Frida, a high-schooler here led the worship with some backup singers, and my heart was filled with such joy as I danced alongside nearly a hundred orphans with eyes closed shouting "lift your voice! it's the year of Jubilee! out of Zion's hill SALVATION COMES!" There was unimaginable joy in that room, my friends. I can't even describe it.

As wonderful as the worship was, the next part of the party was my favorite: each Kenyan staff member was honored individually by a child who gave a little speech about them and presented them with a gift. Doris, Caroline, Zipporah, Diana, Irene x2, Boaz, Chris, John, Patrick, Dominic, Steven: these are people with servant's hearts, doing immensely important work...they're raising 85 kids, and doing it incredibly well. Frida was asked to speak about Doris, and she told her "I want you to know that when any of the girls see you here, they think there's my mother, because you are our mother." I cried for the first time since I've been in Kenya, and these were tears of absolute joy.

We of course wrapped up the night with dessert: 2 cookies each, ice cream (a very rare treat for these kids), and pop. It was mass chaos: the babies were falling asleep on their tables, you couldn't hear over the yelling, pop was spilled all over the floor, brain freezes were happening left and right, cookies were being traded and thrown, someone threw up...(yeah, that's not a factor to be included in making it a great party). The ear-to-ear grins on those kids faces though: those cannot be beat. I've never seen a more beautiful sight in my 21 years. This was my favorite Valentine's Day yet.

Valentine's Day at First Love made me realize that I've fallen in love with this place and these kids. I'm at USIU (the college I'm kind of attending) right now and I literally ache to think that I won't be there when my babies get home from school this afternoon. I can't wait to go back to where I belong.