To everything there is a season – except in Kenya

Here in Kenya, the weather is mostly the same all year ‘round – sunny and warm to bordering on hot. I like warm and hot weather and am happy to give up winter all together. So weather-wise, I’m happy here, where it’s essentially summer (by my North American definition) almost all year long. Because we’re so close to the equator here, the country does not have distinct seasons of winter, spring, summer and fall, but it does have rainy seasons.

It wasn’t until we arrived here from our former home in the Northern Hemisphere – and after several months of living here at that – that we began to notice how much of an impact the weather seasons as well as the various holidays that divide up the year into distinct periods have on ordering our lives and moods.

Lately, people have been saying things that have sounded utterly ridiculous in my mind, which has blissfully gotten wrapped up in the constant warm weather and has forgotten the rhythms of the North American/Northern Hemisphere seasons.

We received a package this week from my mother with a Halloween outfit for Lexi in it. We’ll certainly have her wear it on or around that day, but we might be the only ones here who appreciate it or even know its significance. Last year Lexi had another Halloween outfit, and we were having her wear it well after the date, and Jane, our housekeeper/nanny, never thought it was odd or remarked that the outfit was for a certain occasion. I have seen absolutely no signs of anybody celebrating or even recognizing Halloween here at all. I must say that with things like this, especially from a retail/consumer point of view, this is refreshing – it’s wonderful to visit stores and not have them pushing such a consumer holiday like this so much and so early (or at all). However, there are parts of this time of year that I miss. Sarah’s mother has been talking in her e-mails about picking apples and making cider and apple sauce. That is one thing I love about fall – the fruits that one gets and making things like apple pie. But an advantage of living here is that rhubarb is available year-round, and we’ve enjoyed many pies over the past few months.

Last week, an American woman we know invited us (albeit a bit early) to Thanksgiving dinner at her house. This is the woman who, with her family, always hosts big parties for Americans (and a few others) on the big American holidays. We attended one on the Fourth of July at their house. I know Thanksgiving comes in November, a month that is approaching, but my mind wasn’t signaled to start thinking about that by a change in the weather, which is normally the case. So I was almost dumbfounded by her invitation. The atmosphere and people's daily rhythms here just don't feel like we're headed toward that major holiday of the year.

At church, they've been talking about the "harvest season" and how it's time to consider stewardship and giving. This seems utterly odd to me because this always seemed to go hand-in-hand with back-to-school things in the U.S., and Kenya is on a different school schedule than the U.S. (and for us to have felt connected to a harvest season even while living in cities in the Northern Hemisphere is strange when you really think about it). Sarah confirmed with a coworker that it is, indeed, harvest season in Kenya, where the majority of the population is still involved in farming in some way (this coworker, a city-dweller, was even going to return to his family's plot somewhere upcountry to help with the harvest). But in the U.S., the fall harvest time was always such a big deal because it was the one harvest time of the year, but here, they can get two or maybe three growing seasons in every year, I think, so why September or October would be the harvest season, the time to discuss what we collect, earn and give, I don't know. But at our church, I think they also marched to the beat of the U.S. church season for these types of things because they were probably so missionary-oriented years ago (both Lutheran churches in Kenya were started by missionaries).

We've been here only a little less than a year, but we feel so out of touch with these season changes and the holiday cycles – Memorial Day signaling the beginning of summer, Labor Day marking its end, etc. I like variety and do miss some of the cycles that one gets to go through during the year in the U.S. But being removed from these cycles, I see how strange it is how they order our lives so much and have so much control over us and our moods and actions.