The New Brothers and Our Cooks

If you’ve been following my blog, you may have read a few weeks ago that some of the Marianist Brothers were leaving this community at Chaminade. Well, two of the new Brothers have already arrived, and they’re SWEET! One is named Bro. Bernard, but people call him Beams for short. And the other is Bro. Adoku, who is from Kenya, and had a reputation that preceded him. Both of them have been here at Chaminade before, and from what we have heard, the students love Bro. Adoku. Both Beams and Adoku are very young, energetic, and funny. Even though neither of them has been here for even a week, we’re already developing pretty great relationships with them. After our first gathering with them, we challenged them and the rest of their community members to a volleyball match. We played that match today for an hour or two in the hot African sun before hopping into the Brothers’ Hilux (pick-up truck) to head to the lake for a swim. We then had our regularly scheduled, bi-weekly meal with them, which concluded with an assortment of cakes, brownies, and cookies, all prepared by us volunteers, and then the most delicious homemade-ice cream I have ever had, made by Bro. Adoku; I think he will fit in just fine here.

And then, today was both Mother’s Day and our cook Alick’s Birthday. Since Vicki, our other cook, is like a mother to us here—and is an actual mother raising four children on her own—today was a very special day for both of them. Kat commanded an effort to make a cake and some brownies for each of them since they always make baked goods for us on our special days. We then decided to deliver the desserts to their home, which proved to be a little bit of an adventure. We managed to keep ourselves out of too much trouble, and we only drove through one person’s vegetable garden. We soon surprised
Vicki when she heard us asking the nearby shop-keeper where she lived. Vicki then walked us over to Alick’s house, and we took him by great surprise as we started singing Happy Birthday as we rounded the corner to his house. They both seemed quite excited to see us, and I feel that they enjoyed us dropping in and sharing a simple gesture of our appreciation for them.

All in all, it was a great day! And get this, Mother’s Day is a National Holiday, so we didn’t have any school today!