October-ness (and yes, I know its January)

Hello! Whew – October, November and December flew by with bewildering speed. And so, yes in January I’m finally finding time to post photos from October. Sigh.

I’ll keep the words short and photos plentiful for this post. October was a blur of fun, friends and surprises!

Fun: We had a birthday/house warming party, went on safari, did a KEZA photo shoot which you can view here and spent countless hours in the ocean and shopping for household items. We also dove head first into our consulting contract with Dorman’s coffee here in Kenya!

Friends: My lovely lady friend Kerry visited us for an entire month, a beloved friend James – whom I’ve known since my Uganda days – visited over my birthday weekend,  good friends from Rwanda who now live in Nairobi (also in kenya) joined us for a birthday party, our entire clan from Rwanda came to spend 7 days in the sun (sadly it rained the whole week they were here) with us and we ended the month with clients visiting from the states to see what Africa has to offer.

And SURPRISES: We found out we’re expecting our first little Angaza! Due for delivery June 14th. We are excited and finding pregnancy surreal, miraculous and adventurous. Stay tuned for updates on Baby Angaza.

October was full –  plentiful,  beautiful, eventful and wonderful. Enjoy the photos!

Ker & I enjoying a morning walk on the beach with our coffee.

 

The beach in front of our place at low tide, with our favorite of our furry neighbors.

 

Jared & James (our friend from Uganda) heading out to explore the low tide reef shelf.

 

James, Jared & I out to dinner with friends enjoying some traditional swahili coast food.

 

Swahili dinner with friends - Phil (our closest friend here in Mombasa), Kerry and Lindsey (visiting from the UK)

 

From L to R: Phil, Kerry smooching with the horse, Ilea and Matt (visiting from Rwanda). We were at the beautiful beach house the Rwanda crew rented for their week long stay.

 

The ladies enjoying our "couch" aka mattress on the floor during my birthday bbq.

 

Safari time....

 

 

This guy walked right by our vehicle and then turned around to pose for us and make sure we weren't following him. What a beauty.

Some lovely striped friends checking us out.

 

A lady lion snoozing with her love (laying in the grass next to her). I love how she propped her head up on the branch, made her seem like a character in a movie posing for the shot.

 

Proof I was really there! Watching a herd of elephants at a watering hole. Elephants never cease to amaze me. A part of me wishes that I was a wildlife researcher or photographer so I could hang out with these majestic animals all the time. Tsavo is full of elephants, so we saw multiple herds during our game drives - and I never got sick of them.

 

I love this shot of a baby hiding behind its mother's leg. So sweet. I wanted to snuggle in there too.

 

And finally - no Africa gallery would be complete without at least one shot of the sky. To this day is it one of my favorite parts about living here. The sky is endless, stunning and pregnant with possibility.

 

Love,

The Angaza’s

 

 

Many Thanks

As you all know, Jared and I have been “on the move” since the fall of 2009. In September 2009, we headed back to the states from Rwanda for what we thought would be 3 months. Due to our need to re-evaluate, re-organize, rejuvenate and get married – we ended up being there for 18 months.  We spent A LOT of time traveling all over the US, lived in LA for 6 months and took a few shorter side trips to Mexico (honeymoon!) Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda.  We learned a lot, had time to take a step back and re-think KEZA, re-evaluated our goals and got to spend lots of quality time with family and friends.  Though we felt a bit lost without Africa at first, it ended up being an incredible year full of adventure and love.

None of it would have been possible without the love and support of our family and friends. You each have deepened our belief in Ubuntu – for you have been Ubuntu to us. Even our weddings (yes we had two!) and honeymoon were community events – fueled by love and support and hours of hard work by all of you.  {I may even need to do a separate DIY wedding post to honor all the hard work – even if it is 1 ½ later.}

I want to take a moment to thank ALL of you who have played such integral roles in our lives over the last two years. There are many many many more that are not listed here simply because there is not enough room.  But that doesn’t mean your love and gifts have gone unnoticed. This post is to every one of you too.

So, to ALL of you who continue to deepen our lives – a colossal thank you.  

• Mom & Dad Miller – thank you for letting us take over the Sanctuary for approximately 12 months longer than any of us anticipated, for letting us invite 200 over for our wedding celebration and for the countless meals together.  Being home with you was an unbelievably refreshing and enriching season in our lives.
• Daddy Dorsey & Bobbye – our time in Houston is always full of love, laughter and mmm mmm good food – and is always way too short.
• Mom Dorsey – thank you for loving us, visiting us and baking, frosting and hand-painting all 200 of those delicious cupcakes for our wedding.  Your love has always been embedded in the little details that make all the difference in the world.
• Keisha – You played an integral part in the “KEZA on QVC” story. Thank you for letting me stay, giving up your bed and cheering for me as I nervously prepared for our QVC shows.
• Justin , Celia & June – the 6 months in L.A. with you was incredible. Thank you for welcoming us into your home, employing us, introducing us to detoxing and vegan Thanksgivings and for encouraging us to follow our dreams.
• The Richey Family – Thank you for letting us use The Farm for our private wedding ceremony and for R&R throughout the year. It is such a special place and we are blessed beyond measure by your generosity.
• Ker & Al – we can’t imagine New York (or our lives) without you. Your friendship means the world to me. And we can’t wait to have you here.
• Brooke – I have completely taken over your entire living room annually since 2006. San Diego is still home for me because you’re there. Thank you friend for housing me/us, feeding us wholesome food and copious amounts of amazing chocolate, throwing us parties and meeting us in every city we visited during 2009.
• Phil, Wencke, Shak & Jess who introduced us – This Mombasa dream of ours could not have been possible without you. You let strangers move in, for what was only supposed to be a couple of days/weeks – but turned into four months. Your grace and generosity have touched us in a profoundly deep way.  Thank you, Asante sana, Cheers & Ich bin Ihnen sehr dankbar.
• And to everyone else who has ever housed, fed, encouraged and/or believed in us – thank you. Our life is what it is because of you.

We love visitors and would love to host all of you now. Come see us soon. As they would say here, Karibu sana – You are most welcome.

Love,

Jared & Ilea

Discovery-ness: Home Sweet Home (for real this time)

Yep – we finally moved! After a month of hearing the words, “Please give us only one more week” and very typical walk-through through our unfinished apartment last Thursday, we told the manager, “We’re moving in this weekend no matter what, we have to – otherwise we’ll be on the streets.” Not entirely true, but our mildly threatening plea to GET THE PLACE FINISHED ALREADY worked. Sunday morning we crossed the threshold.

Immediately a burden was lifted as we unpacked suitcases that have been packed for two years . Yes, two years of living on the go a bit unsure of where we would end up. And to balance the two years of drifting (which were delightful, adventurous and full of love) we signed a two year lease. While we enjoyed the drifting, we are ready to stay put for a while, nest, buy some furniture, hang pictures on walls and invite people over to our house as often as we please for any reason whatsoever.

A few things we’re discovering:

• Monkeys are bold – especially males – and will invite themselves into your house to eat your food. Today 2 of them snuck in (the front door!), I heard a crash in the kitchen and came running in to find them running out the door munching on a chocolate bar.
• How sacred quiet is.
• That you can wake up in awe of an ocean view every.single.morning.
• What it’s like to live without furniture – In case you ever find yourself in this position: taking doors off their hinges and using them for things like tables and headboards works incredibly well, a massage table makes a decent couch and you can actually live and eat quite well without a refrigerator or stove. It’s kind of like camping but with warm water, glass dishes, a mattress and walls – OK, so not like camping at all, but you get my point.
• Leaving dishes in the sink at night is a no no because the ants are HUGE. No tiny black annoying little things here, just extra-large menacing red ants with big pinchers.
• Baby geckos and other lizards everywhere
• My favorite combination of sounds in the morning: the quietness of being outside of the city + the ocean waving + the trees breezing + the birds singing = perma-smile even before my morning coffee
•  The utter bliss of living alone for the first time in our relationship.

Happy Friday,
Jared & Ilea

consulting, KEZA & a much needed mini-vacation

August has been a crazy month for us – First and foremost, we still have not moved into our new place {Arg!}. However, repairs are almost there, painters are painting and Jared and I are approving – thus, scheduled move in date {this is the 3rd, but who’s counting?} is this Saturday August 27th – Hooray!

We finished up a big consulting job, by “we” I actually mean Jared, he did all the hard work, I just chimed in with my opinion from time to time. He did an amazing job and the client is ecstatic.  Angaza has another project scheduled to start in the next couple months that will take us back and forth to Rwanda to work with Church Leadership and youth. We’ll share more details as we get closer to the start date. We’re working on a couple of leads that came in this weekend – hoping for some more amazing work to take part in – and loving that people want to include us and our expertise on their journey’s.  At this stage in our consulting business, each inquiry is equal parts humbling and invigorating as we discover more of our potential and get to be involved in some incredible stories.

KEZA is also in full swing right now. Our interns Brittany Chiles {Bus. Development Intern} and Hannah Woodard {RISD Design Intern} have been with us for 2 months now. We’ve loved having them every step of the way, their energy and creativity are refreshing and have catapulted us into design mode. We recently partnered with Bombolulu Workshop, who will be producing the majority of our 2011/2012 collection. Stay tuned for the launch of our new website {this week} and the release of a new KEZA collection {October}.

Needless to say, we are enduring the blessed busy-ness bug. All good things. And all very tiring. So last weekend Jared and I decided to escape to a quiet beach about 40 minutes south of Mombasa called Tiwi Beach. We stayed in a crappy hotel, but it was nestled in between green bush with monkey filled trees and pristine white sandy beaches. We didn’t mind the hotel room because we spent  most of the time dozing in the sun on the beach or walking for hours checking out the reef during the low tide. {pictures below}

It. was. perfect.

We continue to discover things we love as well as things that frustrate and infuriate us.  The beauty we behold daily doesn’t dim the suffering we also see.  We know that we live a life that is pretty “out there”  and we’re always looking/searching/seeking for more of that “out-there-ness”. We continue to live in awe of God and are constantly trying to attune our ears and hearts to our destinies.

What we know now is that we are blessed to be here, and so we are relishing in it – enjoying the journey, embracing the discovery and staying tuned into each moment as best as we can.

Love,

jared & ilea

Pictures from our Tiwi Beach mini-vaca.

{Livin’ la vida loca}

{beach bliss}

{monkey business}

{exploring the sea shelf }

Every morning the tide went out around 10am, the shelf was full of bright green seaweed, various sea creatures, shells to collect and broken coral. We spent hours walking around in awe of the beauty, collecting shells and gasping at the strange creatures.

{mystery sea creature}

After dinner one night we happened upon a giant hermit crab. We see crabs all the time, but this one takes the cake for the biggest one yet. 

We had an incredibly relaxing weekend. We were consistently overwhelmed with the beauty that surrounds us, and had to remind ourselves a few times that we actually live here. We are humbled and thrilled that we get to live this life.

Discovery-ness

Call it inspired, obsessed, enthralled, fanatic, infatuation, in love with or passionate about – whatever it is, we may be experiencing one or all simultaneously in any given moment.

We are juggling so many things right now, it’s a bit ridiculous, equally thrilling – and at times exhausting. However, as you all know, we are loving this strange dichotomous life we get to live – emotional rollercoaster rides included.

Along with our aforementioned new home and visitor list, I’ve compiled a {not so} short list of other things we can’t stop exploring-doing-thinking-about as of late. Loving this season of discovery.

Ilea-ness:

• the book, Women’s Bodies Women’s Wisdom by Dr. Christiane Northrup. If you are woman you MUST read this book. If you are a man who loves a woman you MUST read this book. And if you are raising a woman, you MUST read this book.
• creating blogs – I love to create them, but haven’t mastered the art of actually blogging just yet. One day soon I suspect my obsession with creating them will transform into blogging – I hope.
• adding -ness to words
• blog ideas – I catch myself saying “Oh I should blog about that” or “You should blog about that” at least 5 times a day. And of course, along with those “I shoulds” I hear the voice of my father-in-love Dan & husband saying something along the lines of “well an idea isn’t any good unless you do something about it”. yeah yeah, I know, I’ll get there.
• collecting photos of the insides of matatus & and the outsides of buildings – for a future blog entry of course
• pre-empting ant invasion anywhere in the house. So far, I’m losing this battle.
• the number of ways one can cook beans and cabbage
• interior design blogs – I’m completely and totally addicted, distracted and obsessed right now. I simply cannot get enough. this will be our first home together and we are so excited to make it ours. I think I have clicked “save image as” approximately 2000 times since we decided we wanted the little flat by the beach. My most recent decor inspiration infatuation: Morocco.
• camels. I LOVE their eyelashes. And I LOVE that a couple weeks ago we were exploring a neighborhood looking for intern housing and we stumbled across a herd of them walking down a residential street – it’d be a much cooler story if I could tell you they were “wild camels” but I’m pretty sure they were being herded by the guy walking behind them. I wonder where they were off too. {see photo below}
• baby lizards – the tinier the better. We currently have two living in our living room.
• the women behind the veils {burka’s} – I am guilty of  shamelessly staring at muslim women as they float by me covered from head to toe with nothing showing but their eyes. I wonder “who are they? where are they going? do they choose to cover up or do they have to? what does their laughter sound like?”
• my sweet new friend Nabila – she is one of these mysterious women behind the veil. her laugh is so contagious she could infect an entire town. her smile peers into you her eyes. her worldview is huge, despite the tiny town she grew up in. she speaks at least 4 languages, is a pharmacist and a researcher. she’s opened my eyes to a whole new world and I’m enthralled by her
• color – specifically all shades of blue and purple
• pinterest.com

I know this is getting long – but before I finish, let me share a few of Jared’s recent obsessions too:

• tamarind Juice –he’s just learned how to make it, and does so in 5 liter jugs so he’s sure not to run out. Everyone who walks through the door must try his new creations
• dates & date juice – I must admit, that while I don’t share his obsession,  the date juice is pretty amazing
• sugar cane juice – basically juice discovery has become a new hobby – anything that can be made into juice and sold on the side of the road commands at least one try {maybe two} by Jared
• eating for under a dollar – even if it takes an hour and half and costs more than $1 in transportation to find a place to eat , Jared still believes this is a worth goal for any meal
• old town, mombasa – everything about it
• bodysurfing
• insanity workouts – he’s almost done with the brutal 60 day program {well done babe!}. This may be less of an “obsession” and more of a result of Jared’s amazing ability to finish whatever he starts
• porridge for breakfast – still working on finding the best that is available here – not all porridge is equal and many taste just like dirt – jared’s remedy for dirt flavored porridge: honey and banana’s

love,
ilea

Nutella Money

It’s those little things in life that sometimes do wonders to give us perspective. All of our housemates where in the kitchen the other night talking about the fact that we just got a nice (and much needed) tax return.

I jokingly said, “Yeah, I actually almost splurged and bought some Nutella! But I didn’t.”

Nutella is an Italian chocolaty spread made from hazelnuts. It’s admittedly odd that we hold it in such high regard. It costs $5.75 at the grocery (Nakumatt).

It was interesting to analyze the reality that four financially independent, early 30s, world travelers were all in agreement that:

A)     Nutella was a suitable splurge to celebrate a financial victory.
B)     Spending $5.75 to celebrate is a bit excessive.

That led me to realizing some other similar realities. In Mombasa, in our group of friends, we expect that a meal should not exceed 200 Shillings ($2.30). If it does, it’s “too expensive”. For the most part, we shoot for about $1.00 per meal each.

It’s interesting how your perspective changes when the money you make has true purpose. We don’t view money merely as a way to buy things for ourselves. It’s a tool used to obtain food, clean water, freedom of oppression and cures for diseases. Contributing to those solutions is what brings us joy.

If money exists to bring us joy, you have to ask yourself, “what brings me joy?” Is it buying stuff for myself, or ensuring that the 18 Glue Kids on my street have food in their bellies tonight?

When you’re living in that setting, the answer is pretty clear. It’s when you’ve completely removed yourself from that level of humanity that things become cloudy. And eventually it becomes easier to justify selfish desires over serving others.

Most money conversations that are had in developed nations such as the United States revolve around house mortgages, new cars, designer clothes, cosmetic surgery, makeup and other personal things.

We need money to survive. And life is more than just surviving. But the things I care about most have nothing to do with money. My happiness comes from relationships and serving others. I’m not a martyr. I’m not suffering. And I’m not saying you’re a bad person when you buy a pair of nice jeans.

I believe money can bring us joy when we use it wisely. I believe it is to be used to buy things that that bring us closer to humanity, as well as put clothes on our own backs.

Money only has the power that we give it.

If I have the choice to spend $20 on a meal for myself, or $20 on a meal that will feed 5 kids, and myself, I’ll pick the latter. Why? Because it brings me joy.

Much like Nutella, money is better when shared.

the space where the earth dreams

“…we humans are the space where the earth dreams through us. Our heart’s desire is the desire of the earth – it is what She is asking you to do.” – Brian Swimme