(BOGO) Buy One Get One Free

     

We all love sales right?  Well, I know I do.  I remember falling into the traps of such places like Gymboree with there Gymbucks where if you buy more now, you'll save more later was the mantra.  I can still hear the cashier "Miss., your only $0.75 away from earning $75 in Gymbucks.  Are you sure you don't need these lovely socks here that are $5.00, but are the cheapest thing in the store that could actually be of use to you?" blink, blink, smile......

         I even became the queen of using Cartwheel during the last holiday season.  I mean come on, they had awesome deals at Target during the days that lead up to Christmas.  And yes, I have been known to get up in the wee hours on Black Friday to catch a deal.  I must say, I never made it to full coupon lady status, but hey, like I said, who doesn't like a sale right?

        I rarely see sale signs while shopping here in Nairobi.  So you can imagine how thrilled I was to see a Buy One Get One sign on an item that I've already been buying weekly.  I eagerly picked up four of the family sized packs of the kid's Weetabix Wheetos Cereal.  I practically skipped to the register relishing in my latest deal.  My husband awaited me there at the register wide eyed at the contents of our cart.  I just continued with a shrug and said, "What, they're BOGO?"  Knowing that this just might be too good to be true, I made sure I alerted the cashier that the cereal should be BOGO.  She nodded in agreement and said,  "It will be taken off at the end."  I noticed that each double box rung up about 200Ksh less than the normal price of 650Ksh and at the end, nothing more was taken off.    Wait a minute, did I miss something?  That's not BOGO.  BOGO would have made the price of each Family pack 325Ksh, not 450Ksh.  The store manager spent five minutes trying to convince me that it was indeed BOGO.  In the end, we agreed that the sale was more like buy two get one, and that it was a case of false advertisement.  I still left with the four packs of reduced price cereal, no longer skipping, but still happy to have gotten a sale.

        Lesson learned, in Nairobi BOGO may often times mean something very different than buying one, and then getting another for free.

The kid's new favorite cereal.  Now usually I'm not one for allowing sugary breakfast cereals, but I tasted this one and it's really not all that sweet.  It has just a hint of a chocolate taste (sigh...we Americans and our love affair with sugar).   They also have Weetabix Bran Flakes in a family pack as well and the kids enjoy those too.

Co- op field trip

Today some of the children of our co-op visited Amani Primary School in Riruta.  The school is a part of the Precious Blood Family of Schools.  Amani Primary School was started in 1987 with the goal of helping the poor children in Kawangware slum, a slum of Nairobi.  It started with a meal program and then expanded to offer Bible studies, English, Kiswahili and mathematics. Some of the children attending Amani Primary School are street children and orphans.  The school's vision is to see these young people develop into productive members of society. 

  

       The school's choir performed a few moving performances for us, then our kids performed a portion of the play they are preparing in their co-op drama class.  They topped it all off with a friendly game of football (soccer).  Fun was had by all!  It was a wonderful opportunity for our children to see how fortunate they are, but also to see the drive and determination in these children who are less fortunate materially, than they.

       To give us a better understanding of where these children are coming from, one of the nuns shared an experience she had with one of the students.  She recalled a student who would come to the school with BO (body odor).  She went on to say, the smell was such that she felt she had to talk with the child about proper hygiene.  The child explained to her that he knew how to wash himself, but in fact could not, because he did not have access to water.  That really made me think.

Amani Primary School Choir

One of the songs the Amani Choir sung was a song I remembered singing for Spelman College Glee Club many years ago.  I happily sung along.  The choir did an absolutely fantastic job!

Preparing for the performance

Performing a scene from their play

The children played soccer after the performances

After-game handshake

Update

  So, there has actually been a couple of weeks since I actually created a post. My first several posts are all dated within a day of one another, because that's when I published them. They were actually written over a 8-10 week span.
Now that I'm caught up, I should keep you all abreast of the debacle with the moving company here in Nairobi.
  In case I didn't mention, we started with a moving company that is well known and respected in the US, DC area. Our stateside move was not without issue, but service was more than adequate and we were happy to have gone with a moving company which saved us the headache of packing and loading a 40 foot container. 

  Packing a container is actually like playing a giant game of Tetris.  One must try to pack in as much cargo as possible while trying to arrange items in such a way so as to keep them from moving around during shipping. Imagine having that job....
Well, the DC based moving company promised door to door service.  They would come in, pack our his things, ship our things to Kenya, take care of clearing our things at customs in Mombasa, transport from Mombasa to Nairobi, then unpack our things in our new home.  As mentioned, the moving company is based in DC and it has no presence in Kenya, they had to partner with a moving company here in Nairobi.  They chose a company they felt were professional and who'd handled international moves.
  Well, professional they were not. The container arrived and cleared customs without major issues. Once the items arrived in Nairobi, we had two days to unpack. The team lead on Day 1 reeked of alcohol ( we reported this to the contact person we'd been working with). Then of course as mentioned, on day two of move in, items disappeared with the movers. We notified the company immediately of two items that my husband had seen at the home, but had disappeared. Later we noticed other items that were not accounted for.
  We were told to submit detail of the missing items so that this list could be submitted to the company's insurance by a particular deadline. We complied, submitting a list of the items we'd seen and that had disappeared as well as items unaccounted for.  My thought was that if the movers could steal one or two items, then they most likely stole more. All the missing items were new unused items.
  A week after submitting this list, we received an email, not a call, from the moving company's owner, stating they'd interviewed all the employees on site and no one remembers seeing the items listed and certainly no one had taken anything. He went on to add that of the thousands of moves the company has handled, nothing like this has ever occurred.
  Not to feed into stereotypes, but I'm a Jersey Girl, and can be quite, let me say, spirited at times. I had to call this owner and remind him that we'd seen two of the items prior to the movers leaving, as well as to request a resolution that day as we'd been patient enough and hadn't gotten any resolution. Upon calling, I was transferred to the manager.  I expressed my concerns with the email we'd received and ask for a resolution. The owner stated there would be no resolution, repeating what he'd written in the email. This is when Jersey Girl appeared. Of course I expressed my displeasure and again requested a resolution.  I was then hung up on by said manager of the moving company.   I was besides myself with disbelief! Which manager of a company hangs up on a customer? Which manager allows their employees to blatantly steal and offer no compensation to those they are servicing?
  I promptly sent an email to the US company copying this Kenyan company in the email. I expressed my displeasure and disappointment in the experience with this partner moving company. I threatened contacting the Better Business Bureau.  After about an hour, my husband received a call from the manager of the Kenyan company apologizing for his behavior.  To make a long story short, he agreed to only pay for the two items we'd originally noticed present in the house in Nairobi, then found that they were later missing. We received compensation via check a couple of days later. Of course I'm not fully satisfied as there are still items remaining that were new and are missing. I will resign to say that if there is another move, either someone will be assigned to the front door to keep watch, or no small boxes will be opened by the movers. This was a very unpleasant experience, but a valuable lesson was learned.

Two Months In

So, we passed the two month mark last week.  I must say, I feel we've accomplished quite a bit.  With my husband re-establishing himself as a Kenyan Citizen with the proper i.d.'s finding and moving into a home, starting homeschooling even without all our supplies, and finding an awesome co-op, I sometimes feel like I've been working a full time job!

School Room Set Up

  There were two rooms in the house that I decided to buckle down and really get in order.  The first room I mentioned previously was the kitchen.  The next was the schoolroom.  During our home search, the one must have was an area for homeschooling.  We knew we would be spending most of the day in this space and so we wanted it to be a bright and spacious area.  We were fortunate to have found many homes in Nairobi that accommodated this necessity.  Many of the villas have two living room areas and therefor one could always be used as a schoolroom.  Here is a look at ours 95% set up.

First night at our new house

  Last night was the first night in our new home.  I am so thankful to my mother-in-law who welcomed us into her home for over a month, but I am super excited to finally have a space of my own! I was also super exhausted! It has been a long few weeks, and we have a couple more long weeks ahead. I sometimes feel overwhelmed. I feel like we are not getting good full days of schoolwork in because I have to skip things because I can't find them or because something isn't set up yet. We definitely will have to skip some public holidays to make up for lost time.
Getting back to the house, we had a housekeeper we'd interviewed do a trail run. She did an amazing job cleaning the kitchen, which is now fully functional.
  We have a spider problem, but I think the more she cleans and gets rid of the web's, the less spiders we'll see.
  Finally, A neighbor from a few houses down noticed we had finally moved in, so she stopped to say hello, and even brought over two cups of tea. What a beautiful 'welcome to the neighborhood' gesture!  I'm really feeling blessed to be having this experience!

Amazon can deliver to Kenya!!!! At a price....

So my husband and I discovered last night that Amazon does indeed deliver to four countries in Africa!  Those countries being South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and you guessed it, Kenya. So, we ordered a replacement for one of the items that was taken by the movers. The shipping and import fees bumped the overall price of the item up to almost double, but, it is my understanding that the moving company has agreed to pay for the stolen items, so we went for it. Now, one of the other stolen items was personalized so that item may not be so easily replaced. Will keep you posted.