A Kenyan's Adventure in Norway: Green Energy

The past one month has been quite a lovely time as I finally got round to dealing with culture stress and making the most of my time here. They say I am now at the final stage of cultural adjustment where people accept the new environment, adopt new ways of thinking and do things so that they feel like they belong to the new culture. The result has been tremendous as I have had increased energies to do lots of the stuff I like doing for instance reading, meeting people, reflecting, playing and watching football and simply having fun as I learn.

The day I went skiing

One of the helpful habits of coping with stress has been quality time in nature. I have learnt the secret of going to the mountains that Norwegians are so good at. I had a writer’s block some two weeks ago and I decided to join some youths who were going for a weekend trip to the mountains. After a morning of interactions as we read the Bible and made short drama skits from them, we went out into the forest filled with snow. We were in sis different groups and had various competitions outside including trying to light a fire in the snow using any items we could find in the forest and throwing snow balls at a target. It was nice to throw two snow balls and both of them hit the target.

We made a small fire in the snow

We then camped near a frozen lake and made a camp fire. Needless to say I could not feel my toes and finger as they froze in the sub zero temperatures. I was closest to the fire as we smoked some sausages and ate them with the bread we had. On the way to the frozen lake, we walked across frozen rivers alongside. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking. It reminded me of an earlier time that we had gone skiing with two other friends here. To keep warm, we played several games on the frozen lake and then later made our way back to the cabin as the temperatures continued dropping.

The experience on the mountain taught me the great lesson of always taking a break from work and enjoying nature. My mentor in Norway calls it green medication. I came back with my writing block gone and it took me a record two days to work on my overdue assignment and ever since I have had a renewed energy to take up whatever challenges being in a new culture brings with it!