Hello, my friends and loved ones!!!

Wow, where to start. My two weeks in Kenya was completely amazing. The people who were a part of the ministries that we visited were so welcoming. They took us in and allowed us to disrupt their days and their work.

The readjustment process has been just that a process. I’ve taken some time to get back into a groove here in DC, but the groove is a little different than it was before. I desire to be in community more. My new roommates knew that was a plan of mine before they moved in, so that’s been helpful. Oh yeah, while I was gone Sherri and Susan left and Jessica and Rachel moved in. It was strange walking into the house and finding different furniture and hearing different morning routines, but it’s been good. Rachel and I hang out quite a bit and that makes me smile. God does hear our prayers and answers us, I was really concerned about the changes at my house while I was in Kenya, but things are good.

I found it easier to be around groups of people that are not involved at Kairos. The first week I was back it was time for the monthly Texas Exes Thirsty Thursday. It was so much less stressful to be there because there was no pressure to talk about my trip in any meaningful way. Without pressure I found that the stories rolled more easily off the tongue, but I also love the way that my Kairos community cares about me and wants to know what I learned in Kenya. People that have been there have also been careful to give me space to just be while I figure out what things mean in my life.

The first day we went out in Nairobi we went to St. Luke’s Catholic Church where there is the Kipawa Card Center. It was started to provide economic development to women affected by HIV/AIDS. The women there take scrap shredded paper from a bank and recycle it to make wonderful handmade paper for greeting cards. The process is very labor intensive as I got a first-hand experience with most parts of the process. I had a wonderful conversation with a woman named Leah that day. Anyway, Leah and I were about the same age, but she has children, as many of the African women do. She is “saved” and was thrilled to find that I was too and that was why I was there in Nairobi. All of the women loved to ask us about our “personal” lives, if we have boyfriends and whatnot. If we aren’t attached they question us even further about why. That is because in the African culture women are defined by the size of their families. Women are even renamed for each child they have, such as Mama Joseph. Therefore most women have many different names that they go by.

The Tumaini Medical Clinic that we visited that morning was a busy place in the Kibera Slum. The facility is rudimentary with regards to equipment. They have one microscope that is solar powered, with a car battery for cloudy days. It took a while for our group to notice that the facility had no electricity whatsoever. It struck me most how for granted we take so many things here in America. The clinic is currently expanding to include a soup pantry; their hope is to provide healthy well-balanced meals to more of the children in the area. Malnutrition is a large problem in the slums. Pneumonia is the largest cause of death for the children, and there is not much that can be done to prevent that, since the best medicine is a well-balanced diet and wide open spaces in which to run around and play. Their living conditions are squalid, the room is maybe 9x9 in which the whole family lives, eats and sleeps.

There are 4 major slum areas in Nairobi; they cover 1 ½ % of the total area of the city. But the population in the slums comprises 60-70% of the city. Kibera, as I mentioned before, is the largest of the 4, it is approximately 2 square kilometers and had almost one million residents. It was hard to take in many of the dwellings while walking through there on a drizzly day as I had to take special precaution with each step making sure that was not walking in a river of sewage. The dwellings are so close together and are shabbily put together using whatever materials they can gather. The most common family unit is a single mother with multiple children (usually from different fathers). There is a phrase in the Lord’s prayer that has had the most impact on me, it is “give us this day our daily bread,” because of the way that these families must each day earn a living. Bank accounts and credit cards are not a part of their lives. Each day they must earn what they need to survive. They work each and everyday, they get no Sabbaths, no holidays, no time to be sick, and no fun vacations. They can’t take the day off because they feel like it; they would starve and possibly lose their home. And when they suffer with AIDS related illnesses, they die sooner, because they can not take the time to rest that would benefit their immune systems so much. Whether they are ill or have full health does not matter, that is why many illnesses go untreated with bed rest or medication, being able to afford going to the clinic is one thing, but taking time from the business is even harder. Visiting there we see that it is less and less about the medication, yes, the medicine can help, but there are lifestyle issues that have to be addressed. Medicine is a band-aid, a cover up, it’s an easy fix, what’s harder is giving them a hand up out of their poverty. The cost of living for those in the slums is ten times higher than those in the middle class in Kenya. And we complain of the high costs here in DC. They subsist on $1-2 US dollars a day.

American’s are so focused on helping those that are in developing nations. But what is needed most is a hand up not a handout. If we are really intent upon using our resources to help those in need we need to send people who are in business and can facilitate economic development. Not people with specific business plans and rigid ideas, but people with a broad sense of how to plan and implement a business that will succeed. The micro-enterprises that have the best chance are ones with leaders that find out what the local population is good at and what is needed and can tailor the plan for the culture.

Like this woman Jane, she started a micro-enterprise that has taken a very holistic approach to the women she serves. Beacon of Hope, as she has called it, truly is a beacon for the women it serves. Jane realized that in order for the women to be able to work they would need to have some more basic needs met. Like food and childcare. Jane takes in women from one of the most dangerous slums on the outskirts of Nairobi. Quray is in Ongata Rongai, a suburb of Nairobi. Her husband was fearful of her going there at first, but she knows that it was God who called her to serve there. He has provided a more than suitable building in which Jane continues to take over more and more space to serve a broader range of people. The women there have learned to weave rugs and have had seminars on how to be a good parent, on proper nutrition, on financial matters. She listens and pays attention to their struggles and then brings in an expert to share with the women and teach them.

Max Collison is an Australian doctor, who has begun the Tumaini Medical Clinics; he spoke to us one evening about the one skill that is needed most in Kenya. Business skills, economic development, someone with a business plan, not a rigid one, but something flexible that will provide a framework to empower the Kenyans. Max provided great encouragement to me in that during the time he explained the answers to the quiz that we took, he helped me to paint a broader picture in my mind of what kind of involvement is needed in Kenya.

Our time at Akiba School was short, but the kids were so wonderful. It’s so encouraging to see how much they value being in school and gaining an education. The day that our group went was the day of the Harvest Festival, a school-wide assembly in which they get their previous term grades. It’s a big deal there, they get badges to wear for the entire next term to denote if they are position one or two in their class, and if they are the best in a subject area for their grade level. Along with the badge they also receive a token gift of a pencil or ruler or other such school supply. It’s truly an honor to them. I hung out with the high school kids before the assembly started and we just chatted about our favorite subjects and what we found hard. I also had a great conversation about the level of poverty there and how it compared to America. They were all very inquisitive and respectful. It was really a wonderful time. My favorite moment there was sitting in the yard at the beginning when all the Form One boys (high school freshman) were together, I walked up and started to chat with them, one of the boys brought me out a chair to sit on. So I was sitting there facing them and we were laughing and they were teaching me ‘Chang,’ their slang mixture of English and Kiswahili. They noticed my camera and wanted to have a group photo taken, so I asked where I would sit and one of the boys on the end put his hand on his knee to indicate that I should sit upon his lap, I got a good laugh out of that and said “no, no, no” thinking how inappropriate that would be. It was just really funny for me to see that adolescent boys are the same no matter where in the world they are. The boys ended up making space for me on the bench in the middle of the group as you can see from the picture.

After the morning at Akiba, which means “treasure,” about a dozen of the kids walked us over to the Light and Power Center in a neighboring slum. Light and Power is a community group that provides a place for street children to get a preparatory education before they are enrolled at a primary school. It also has some job training available. There are a few boys that live there either because they have no home or their home situations are too horrible for them to be in. Charles is one of about eight that lives there, and he is also sponsored by a family associated with The Falls Church to attend the Akiba School. Charles is 13 going on 25, he was such a joy to hang out with and really helped us with our Kiswahili our first day in the city.

The other component of my time in Kenya was to be a part of a consultation entitled “Being Salt and Light in the Public Arena.” It was a one and one half day consultation or conference to introduce the concepts of being a Christian in politics. Because in Kenya the government is so corrupt that Christians see it as too worldly and being involved would in turn corrupt them. Churches discourage active participation in campaigns and do not take positions on current or longstanding issues. Even when those issues have direct impact on their lives as Christians. I know that Christ said we are to be in the world without being of the world, so that means that we need to participate in our governments to keep them accountable.

All of the ministries were amazing; the people that started them all have a passion to help the people change their lives. In the Lord’s Prayer, which we usually say without thinking about the words, there is a line about giving us today our daily bread. That line is how people in the slums live. They have no bank accounts, the have no credit cards or lines of credit. They work each day to earn their food and shelter. It has really changed how I view the challenges that I come in contact with here in the states. I have found that I have a lower tolerance for people when they complain about superfluous items.

I want to say thank you for all that you have done to support me in this time of ministry and readjustment. The thing that has struck me most is that I am so blessed to have such a wonderful community. Not to mention the wonderful team that I was so lucky to be around in Kenya.

In His Love,

“Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the

fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

–Isaiah 1:17

P.S. I forgot to share with you a moment that I had with Erin, my team leader, when the group was walking into Quaray from Beacon of Hope Centre. Ruth and Jen are two young women from Beacon of Hope that live in Quaray, so they were our guides. As the group walked, Erin and I were chatting with Ruth and Jen. There were two really popular questions that we were always asked: “how many years do you have?” and “are you married or dating?” Well, Erin and I have 10 years on these women, but I felt as though it was the other way around. The hardships that they have endured and the events that have transpired in their lives have caused them to mature much more quickly than myself or those in my peer group here in the states. They are both mothers, they are at Beacon of Hope to provide for themselves and their families. It just still amazes me how blessed I am to have been born here in the states. I know that I have lost close family members, but even growing up here in a single-parent household is so much easier. And as typical, they are filled with joy and hope. We see their situation as desperate and lacking, but to them it’s typical and normal. I went to Kenya to build relationships, not any physical structures, but to further the kingdom of God here on earth and to connect my heart and mind to see and hope to understand a culture that is far from my own in many respects, but very alike in other.