This week has been a lesson for many of us on the power of nature. Back home across much of the US, winter storms have been debilitating, sometimes even deadly. And it just goes to show that no matter how much we try to control our surroundings, every once in a while, nature deals a heavy blow.

Here in Kenya, we learned this lesson twice this week, and the first time was with sewage.

We think we have it all under control - we flush our toilets, and it's gone forever. But we don't expect the entire town's sewage line to clog due to storms and washed up debris, and for everything to return to us and back-flow onto our property. But that's exactly what happened.

I was living my life quite happily not ever knowing about the strange things that people flush down their toilets here - batteries, chip bags, large screws, pieces of metal, wires, dirty diapers, and even avocado seeds! Who does that? And how did they manage to flush an entire diaper down the toilet?

But first came the stench.

Then I heard Tim screaming at me from downstairs. And when I arrived at our kitchen door, I saw a sea of sewage creating a stinky moat around the house. It was spewing up out of the nearby drain pipe like a geyser. And it wasn't just water, but lots of garbage and clumps of literal feces. And worst of all, it wasn't stopping.

I didn't realize it at the time, but our house is built right over the sewage line for the whole town of Nanyuki. Perfect.

The landlord and plumbers were immediately called, and I'm happy to say that they came right away and fixed the blockage. It was nerve-wracking for a while because the house is not built on any higher ground than the rest of the property, so I was concerned that if the level of sewage raised an additional inch, it would flood the whole house. I watched that line of blackness creep closer and closer to the door, but the workers came, the volcano stopped its eruption, and the house was saved.

Next we had to figure out what to do with the lake of muck outside of our front door. I don't know what people do in the States when this happens. I'm assuming sub-pumps and other machinery are involved. But I'm not sure any of that exists out here.

Yet once again, the people of Africa proved to be as optimistic and as helpful as ever, never letting a neighbor suffer. Right away, the neighbors all came by to give a hand. One woman, Sara, grabbed a hose, gave me a smile, and said to me, "Don't worry, we will clean this all up. It will be gone soon." And I was in awe that a neighbor who had nothing to do with any of this, would literally step right into the muck and even smile as she faced the situation. She immediately put me at ease, and she was right - it took a few days, but it all got cleaned up.

Africa is obviously not the only place in the world with sewage problems. I've had similar things happen to me in Chicago, and I once lived in a new development in the desert of the United Arab Emirates that had some real sewage issues. Proper drainage was not adequately planned for (it doesn't rain much in Dubai), and so when the streets starting filling up with sewage, it just sat there for weeks. You had to drive your car through streets of fecal water that could be as much as a foot deep. The place was called International City, but people started calling it International Shitty.

So yes, it can happen anywhere. But it's very heartwarming to see so many neighbors come together to help us. Even the landlord with his nice slacks and leather shoes got into the grime to help clean. And for that we're incredibly thankful.

There's still a lingering smell, but Tim bought more incense for the house than the Pope in Rome has ever purchased. And everyday, the stench gets a little bit better.

In other end of times news, we also got swarmed with locusts this week. It was the power of nature once again.

I stepped outside and noticed these strange little shadows darting across the ground, like shadows of a flock of birds flying overhead. But these didn't stop.

I looked up and immediately realized that it was not birds making the shadows, but giant insects. And thousands of them, no, millions of them! Biblical proportions!

The swarm must have been miles long, bigger than our entire town. They weren't clustered together so tight that they blocked out the sun, but I could see how terrifying it would be if they had been. And even with them spaced out, the whole fifteen minutes or so of them buzzing overhead was creepy. You could hear their little paper wings flapping, and you just felt helpless. Every inch of the sky looked like a pointillism painting, or the static on your television - zillions of dots moving everywhere.

I hope your week has been less eventful than ours, and I hope everyone out there is staying warm, safe, and that your toilets all properly flush!

​See you next Sunday!

Since today is Valentine's day, I've decided to focus on my favorite emotion - love. And because we're here in Africa, I'd like to talk about some things that I love about this continent.

All too often, Africa gets a lot of negative press. You hear about wars and corruption and poverty, but you rarely ever hear about the incredible things that Africa has to offer, and what make this continent magnificent.

​The following are my top 5 things that I love about Africa.

Our Sunday Scoop

A lot of people wonder what our typical day looks like here in Kenya. In some ways, it's probably not so different from yours in that due to the pandemic, we're unable to travel much. So we mostly just stay at home watching Netflix. But even though we're not on the road, it's always an exotic adventure to be in Africa, and some of the stranger things of living in Kenya include a nightly barrage of nightmarish screecher-creatures, and the occasional UFO sighting.

​Don't worry, I'll explain.

Before coming to Africa, I realized I had no idea what a typical African dish was. Everyone knows Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, and Indian food, but what in the world was African food? And why was it that we didn't have an African restaurant on every other block in America like we do with so many other types of cuisine?

Well, I was about to find out that we really should have an African restaurant on every other block, because African cuisine is delicious.

Unless a city has some particular draw for us, Tim and I try to avoid big metropolitan areas as much as we can. And since Nairobi is Kenya's capital city, and is known to be a congested industrial center famous for its slums and insane traffic, we were dead set on never going there.

But we also had some questions about visa extensions that needed to be answered, and no one in the Kenyan immigration offices were picking up their phones or responding to emails. We've learned that this is typical for Africa, and the best way to get things done is to show up in person.

Also, Nairobi has the only KTM dealership between South Africa and Egypt, and our bike's back brakes were getting soft. Some fresh brake fluid would surely make our motorcycle very happy.

So last Sunday, we headed off to Nairobi for a three day trip.

When the pandemic first hit back in March, we were in Uganda, and I was definitely freaking out. My first instinct was to go home to the US where the health care infrastructure is leaps and bounds what they have here, where the government can financially sustain a prolonged lockdown, and where most people can social distance.

Uganda, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. Extended families often live cramped together in single-room dwellings, the vast majority of people can't work from home, and the health care system... well let me just put it this way - the entire country of Uganda had three ventilators. They've since received donations of many more, but the expectation was that once Covid-19 hit sub-Saharan Africa, this region was going to be a humanitarian catastrophe.

​But strangely enough, that didn't happen.

Our Sunday Scoop

Welcome to our Sunday Scoop - a five minute escape where I will take you to an exotic land far away, a place where the last Northern White Rhinos roam.

​When we first moved to Nanyuki, Kenya a couple of months ago, we had no idea that only 20 minutes away from our house was a nature reserve with the last two Northern White Rhinos. But once we learned about Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and discovered that the park had half-off tickets due to the pandemic, we decided to rent a car for a day and head down the road to have one of the most memorable experiences of our lives.

Ever since the pandemic started, we've had to settle down as opposed to travel full-time, which means I've unfortunately been neglecting our blog. Tim and I have been stuck in Uganda and Kenya for nine months now, waiting for the world to go back to normal. And even though it might still be a while before "normal" is back for good, I realized that you don't have to be on the road every day to have interesting adventures. Living in Africa during these crazy times is an adventure in and of itself.

So I've decided to do a Sunday Scoop about our lives which will just be a short weekly update about how things are here, from the bizarre to the ordinary. And since we're all pretty much stuck at home, I'm hoping it can bring you to a far away land on the other side of the globe, even if it's just for a moment.

I don't like to admit it to myself, but it has become harder for me to sleep. I find myself staring at the ceiling at night, worrying about what will become of the US, how things will progress here in Uganda with the Corona Virus, and how the world will overcome such an all-encompassing and heartbreaking disaster as this pandemic. Will things ever be like they once were?

But right before Tim and I arrived here in Uganda (where the border closed around us due to the pandemic), we had the opportunity to travel through a small country that could really teach the world something about getting back on your feet after tragedy strikes: Rwanda.

Sometimes life can seem difficult, unfair, with uncomfortable situations that seem to have no end in sight. But hopefully some of our own experiences can help shed some light on positive outcomes. That silver lining may seem thin at times, but if you just keep pushing forward, things will turnaround for the better.

The following is an excerpt from the book 2Up and Overloaded.