Through the Looking Glass...

Again, another two months has passed. But, it was an incredible two months. May parents came for a week in the beginning of March; we went on Safari, took them to the slums, had them do medical checkups for the kids at the center, etc. It was such a wicked opportunity for my parents to experience the joys and struggles of life and work in Kenya.

We successfully kicked off the God-Parent program with our kids at the center. Basically they have a donor in the states who writes them letters, prays for them, and contributes 100 dollars a month for school fees, food, clothes for the 35 kids at the center. We also had a donor give money for bibles, so we handed out bibles to all the kids and workers at the center; it was a good good day.

I finally finished the little Kibera Secondary School documentary/video companion piece. I think it turned out pretty well in the end, it should be posted soon on FB. I’m def. a bit nervous because hundreds of people will be watching this and I want to make sure it’s good enough, that people are informed and feel moved to partner with us, for the construction of this school/community.

We had a youth conference the other day in Limuru. There was a couple months of work put into this, getting speakers, a venue, advertising. In the end we had about 60 youth come and listen to talks on HIV, the environment, and Micro-Finance. I think some kids were really impacted by this event, even though I was stressed all day, as it was supposed to start at 8AM but in typical African style it did not begin to 11 AM.

I got to help out at a Vaction Bible School that the southern baptists were putting on for a discipleship group, led by my mates, that brought 50 youth from the tea fields together. It was a stellar week of the word, arts and crafts, songs and games. I was in charge of the games, and it was awesome. It felt like I was back at Camp. It was hilarious to watch these kids try and figure out all these brain games and team building games. A wizard time…

Me and my mates hiked around a volcano a few weeks ago called. Mt, Logonot. It was this wicked crazy extinct volcano and it took us all day just to hike the rim of the thing, but it was so beautiful.

We had a food relief program that was implemented successfully last week. A gal asked me a few months ago what could be done to help in Kenya, I mentioned that there was a famine in the region, and that she could raise money for food relief. She ran with this, raised 3,000 dollars and the other day we headed south to a Masaai Village called Namanga. The UN had put this area on priority one, in that it was in dire need of food relief. We had a truck filled with 960 5 kilo bags of maize meal, which we distributed to each head of the family. Like the youth conference, the food was scheduled to show up at 10 but didn’t arrive till 4, T.I.A….It was organized through the local church in the area, so there was about 2 hours of worship, preaching and me and my mates awkwardly fumbling through Swahili and trying to explain to a 1,000 masaai what we were doing there. It was quite a scene. In the end, the food was given out, and these people were given relief, even though the amount will only last about a week. We estimated that about 5,000 people were reached with this food.

So, that’s a wee rundown of the past few months. I’m heading to the states in a few hours, for a team meeting, fundraiser and just some general merry making with my best mates. Sorry I’m so lazy on blogging, but T.I.A. mate…
joe

2 months in the life of GC

so a thousand apologies for not writing for about two months.  i figured that i actually owed it to people that helped me get here to write updates about life and such.  back in mid-january, once all the groups and visitors had left, i jetted out with my buddy/boss A.B. to Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania for 5 days. It was super chill, and way more beautiful than the beaches in thailand.  Got back to Kenya, and then everybody left, and it was just me in the house for about a week.  It was a good time to reflect, come up with my own schedule and sift through the bullcrap from Iris, which I found myself shoveling through a lot. That first week was full of meetings, learning to drive stick on the other side of the road, getting groceries, getting to know the names of the kids at the center, etc.  One night I got an emergency call saying that Patrick (the head of the Limuru Children's Center) and I needed to take a child to the hospital the next day.  he had been born without a penis, and there were all these complications, so we drove him and his mom to the hospital.  Turns out it wasn't as bad as we thought.  But sitting there, in the kids wing, with a little girl whose legs were broken because someone in a Matatu (public transport buses/the bane of my existence) had moved their seat back and crushed her legs, and then some kid with just tubes and blood just gushing out of his head...i told God, i have to believe in a God that is good, i have to, because the world is so rotten.  

The next day I went with Duncan and Cornell, two kenyans who run a program called Care for AIDS, to Jamii Bora, a micro-credit organization in Nairobi.  Care for AIDS helps medically and spiritually with AIDS patients in Limuru, who are cast out from their communities, shunned by their churches, and treated almost as lepers. A lot of stigma's like that going around.  Care for AIDS has the desire to seek out micro-credit loans for their clients, empowering them financially to start small businesses in their community, such as grocers, charcoal sellers, shop owners, tailors, donkey cart operators, etc.  The meeting was fruitful and the conclusion was that CFA clients would partner with Jamii Bora to help them receive loans and start small businesses.  We've spent time as an organization thinking about ways to assist the poor without undermining them, or treating them as inferior and helpless.  Never give anyone anything that they can get for themselves, and empower them to feel ownership, aka provdie them a loan so they can work for the money to buy their food, don't just give them free food or money, which creates dependency and entitlement.  Allow ownership, pride and self-worth to grow.  

I've hung out with Patrick and his family at their farm, milking the cows, running around the fields with his daughter, nieces and nephews, and taking many dinners at his house, cooked by his darling and sassy wife, Annastasia.  One day the kids at the LCC all came to our farm, and spent the day plucking weeds, pulling their own beans, playing games, and running away from the dogs, haha.

We're also working on building a school in Kibera, an enormous slum in Nairobi, nearly a million people in a square mile, but it's more of a big snake, not a square.  Anyways, so we're working on building a secondary school there, and getting prices for the building materials, labor, administrative costs, etc.  We stopped by the school the other day, and they were having parent-teacher day, and they kinda plopped us in front of some 100 parents, and had us say hi and such.  It was actually kinda cool, definitely very Kenyan with the white folks on display, but we got a chance to share our heart and vision to partner with this school, and provide for the students here, in front of all their parents.  I think it was good for them to see the white man as not exploiting them, or taking anything from them, but that we were there because of a mandate of love, and we were spending our lives and time to empower and give their children access to a better life, through an education rooted in the knowledge of Christ (horrible run on sentence, sorry, too lazy to fix it).

The next day we had a birthday party at the LCC, played techno music and ate biscuits and chocolate.  We are also working on having a talent competition with other children's schools in the area and having a youth symposium in which we will talk about pressing issues, AIDS, the environment, micro-finance with the youth of limuru. (thanks and acknowledgments to War/Dance and CG for the previous ideas.)  Our little group is called the Mustard Seed Revolution, and I'm the only white fella for miles, brillant.  We're also looking to buy bibles for the kids at the center, buy some cows for a partner of ours who is opening a home for street boys, and just living life in this crazy country of Kenya.  So, there it is....

Oh, and all of this takes money, so if you've got some quid lying around that you want to put to good use, many good options, haha.

Much Peace... 

The Kenya Edition

So, world's worst blogger; sorry. I arrived in Kenya on the 23rd of December, and it has been a whirlwind since then. Global Connections had two teams from the U.S. come in and there were like 37 of us total, thats a lot of white people...haha. But, Christmas Eve was a lovely affair at Mzungu Manor, we had food and sang old christmas carols by candlelight, Christmas Day was a day of eating, with a huge dinner with people from the LCC (Limuru Children Centre) and other Kenyan/Mzungus in attendance; it was quite a merry attendance. The house here is phenomenal and Kenya is like Europe in terms of convenience and development compared to Mozambique. Hot Showers, no malaria, no worms in the food, a personal chef...good grief, its kinda the lush life, but if so many phenomenal things were not taking place in the community through Global Connections, i might have time to worry, but i don't.
Being here I see that GC partners with indigenious programs rather than just barging in and planting new programs just for the sense of self-importance or worth. We've gone to tons of programs, a feeding program for widows, the LCC (GC's like linchpin, school with 35 orphans or "boarders" as they are more affectionately called, they aren't orphans, they have a home, it's just with 30 other kids and some awesome house mom's) a sewing program, and AIDS program (which i'm hoping to work with in terms of microfinance projects, which i know squat about, better brush up on my easterly and sachs) a environmental program, a church in the Kibera slum. Just so much sexy stuff, and im so stoked that i don't have to leave. I think i'll be here, God willing, for years.
At the moment me and some folks just got back from a primary school in Kibera (which i really want to spend some time at, writing about it and such, it enthralled me the first time i was in kenya, and now it's sucking me back in, the place is ridiculous) but we sat down with the headmaster, went over a list of needs, prices, goals, vision, and the American team expressed an interest in funding some projects. like for instance, there is no food at the school, and kids who go to school for 8 hours a day with no food in their belly, what are they going to retain, especially if they are already coming to school hungry. plans for expanded classrooms. So, there is too much capital in the west and too much potential in the rest for the two not too collide. (catchphrase #1). So, its neat because we can look at a need find a donor, spend time praying into a situation God put's forth, here on the ground we can build a relationship with the nationals, hold them accountable, make sure the funds and resources that donors are allocating are being used properly; its interesting for sure, and exciting to be a part of. And part of you thinks, wait there need to be 274 more hoops to jump through, and maybe there are only 15, and you are at the precipice, and you are there, with your holy spirit gut instincts, and you can think will i act, or will i be idle. its like the tip of the spear here, there is so much transformation needed, and you feel like you can help facilitate it, its exhilirating. and this was just one afternoon.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just make the wheel go faster. (catchphrase #2) so discipleship and development, and raising up kids in Christ, with education, who can reach the highest spheres of influence in the country so that there are systems in place where basic infrastructure is in place, people aren't dying from dirty water, and there is a space and funds set aside so that every child has the opportunity for education that way we don't need to keep fundrasing and convince people in the west that 750 dollars is a worthwhile investment to keep a child in high school, because his parents have no capital to send him, and so he can one day get a job and not starve to death from lack of income. Change the policy, and you'll change a country. anyways, ramble ramble ramble. Life is good, another fella on the ground here, Will, is stellar, and were going to get into a lot of trouble together, i'm stoked. We've already got plans in theworks for a trip to Mombassa, to climb Mt. Kenya, raft the Nile in Uganda, and help out at an Iris compound in Sudan, with carpentry and such (looks like those birdhouse days in cub scouts could come in handy). So, life moves along, sometimes slowly, sometimes with frustration...
prayer requests: that i can figure out how to drive stick so that i won't crash our car in the mean streets of Nairobi...haha.
P.S. everybody should come to kenya, theres a team forming for this summer, or come whenever, there is a lot to see and a lot to do....