Final Thoughts - Culture

Well, my twelfth trip is in the books.  I arrived with the medical team and stayed on an additional three weeks.  I managed to see all but three of our orphanages, several feeding stations, and visited a site of a future potential feeding site.  We announced the site for our fourteenth orphanage, at Kinyach in the Pokot region, worked with the secondary school under construction at Kapsabet and held meetings for our orphanage workers.  We established a couple of new income generating projects, and I drove over 1,500 km.  Quite a month.

On every trip I try to focus on one aspect of my job that I need improvement on.  This time, I did not plan what to focus on until I got here and discovered it for myself.  Early in the trip when communications problems between my directors and myself caused some conflict, I knew that I was experiencing a culture problem.  I decided to slow down and pay more attention to the culture of the people that I deal with so much, and try to learn something. 

Our culture is something that we do not think about very often, (unless we travel a lot), except when we Christians complain about the ‘decline’ of our culture.  I’ll define culture here as all the things you have learned about life that you don’t realize you know.  For example, you just know that we use a fork to eat with some things, a spoon for others, and our hands for other things.  You may think that someone who eats with their hands for most things is “barbaric” or “rude” but in reality they have just learned a different cultural way of eating than you.  Calling someone “uncivilized” based on their cultural education is snobbery, IMHO.

Culture affects communication in ways you wouldn’t expect.  For example when you say, “I will not give you any more money.”  You probably mean “no more money at all.”  To someone of another culture, it may be understood that you are saying, “no more money today”.  When you object to that understanding, they may think YOU are the barbaric one.  Culture is also your language and surprisingly also your accent.  How many times have you judged someone because of that?  I have made a conscious effort to change my accent while I am here to sound more "Kenyan", so much so that Americans comment on it, but Kenyans really seem to appreciate that I am trying to adapt.

So as the trip went on, I tried to dig deeper into the meanings of differences in culture that I saw.  I asked a lot of questions, and my new assistant in Kenya, Stephen Owino proved to be a valuable resource.  He is trying to teach my withered old brain some Swahili, and I did pick up some, BTW.  It’s going to be a long journey for me to undo some of the cultural baggage that I carry in order to understand these people better and improve our teamwork.

In the end, it’s just part of the amazing journey that God has set me on.  I could never have imagined that I would be here, doing this.  But it seems as though he has been preparing me for this work for all of my life.  I only pray that He keeps making me learn His lessons as I do my best to serve Him in Kenya and in the U.S.  Thanks for reading my ramblings on this long journey. Writing it certainly helps me process everything that I have seen.  I pray it helps you understand a little better what God is doing here. It is truly amazing!

Kericho Feeding Station

-->

Today we visited Kericho Feeding Station, my last official visit for this trip.  I always love coming here.  The people are so friendly and so many come out to see you.  Having mzungu around means that everybody comes to see and stays as long as you are there.  It’s kinda spooky sometimes, the kids follow you everywhere.  You can’t get a moment to pick your nose or anything. ;)  Seriously, the church here really loves these kids and this place.  You can see it in the small details of the buildings, paint, repairs done, and the like.  I love that.

We took some time to visit a plot of land they want us to help them buy.  It’s 1.6 acres of tea land, about 300 yards from the feeding station.  It won’t be useful for building a full orphanage some day, but it will generate some good, reliable income for the feeding station.  This is what we call a sustainability project; one that makes it possible for the location to help itself.  This land will generate about $220 a month, every month.  That will help them feed more kids, pay primary school levies and with medical expenses.

Remember, pictures are on the KWO Facebook page at www.facebook.com/kwoministries

We had a great time today at Kericho and we left just after the kids ate their lunch so they could return to school.  Most of them would not go back if they knew we were still there.  The drive from Kericho to Nakuru was uneventful, but very rough.  We met up with DeFore’s group and are staying tonight at the Kunste.  Tomorrow we start back to Nairobi, pausing at Kikitemo for a last look and then in for shopping.  Thursday night we depart for America.  I’ll post my final reflections on this trip at the airport, as is my custom.  Be blessed

Finishing Strong

One of the things I have learned on my trips here is that the last few days can be the hardest.  Fatigue, homesickness and stomach troubles have, in the past, made my last few days in Kenya difficult.  This time I was determined to finish strong.  I built in a rest day last Saturday, when I promised myself to do no driving or heavy thinking.  It helped a lot.  Planning the shorter drives on the last week has also been a good plan. 

 

Sunday I drove with Stephen and Thomas to our feeding station at Border.  I haven’t been here since 2009, so I was determined to visit them again this trip.  As expected, I was asked to preach.  Anyone who knows me is aware that I am not a preacher.  I did not study at any school for it and my bible knowledge has been mostly memories of my childhood growing up in the church of Christ, and my more recent attempts to catch up.  So I content myself to preach a sermon borrowed from a friend, in this case, Tod Brown’s lesson on Moses and the burning bush from February of this year.

 

I chose that lesson because of how it speaks to all people about our response to difficult starts in life.  Moses was basically an orphan from his first two families and spent 40 years of his life watching sheep in the desert.  Orphans and poor subsistence farmers seem to really relate to it.  It’s easy to weave in the story of the birth of the orphan’s ministry, using Thomas Alwala as my modern day Moses.  I’ve been pleased with the results so far.  The man who introduced me at Border, Lucas from Dirubi Church, said that when he heard it last week at Adingo Opanga he went home and told the whole lesson to his family.  Such are the great stories of the bible, timeless and relevant even thousands of years later.

 

Today we visited Muhoroni, our orphanage that is not too far from Kericho were we are sleeping.  This is a very poor area and the church is made up of mostly women.  They have very little to give and not much labor to spare to help around the place.  We decided that it was time for a fresh infusion of capital, so to speak, to get the place looking ship-shape.  A clean, well-maintained home is inspiration to its residents.  A broken down home, can depress even the brightest spirit.  You can write that down.

 

Otherwise it was a productive visit, though short.  As rain threatened, they all advised me to get out before it starts as the roads through the sugar cane fields become impassable almost immediately.  So it seems that the Lord has delivered another rest day, or at least half of one.  We made it back safe and sound to the Tea Hotel for one last night.  Tomorrow we will visit Kericho Feeding Station on our way to Nakuru where we will meet up with DeFore’s party again.

Meetings and Projects

After the Grace House, we drive back to Kisii for a night at the Dados.  Wednesday we met some of our directors there and we drove on to the Training Institute to prepare for the our meetings and the arrival of John DeFore’s group.  I wanted to make sure that Thomas was ready for us, and they were.  Everything looked really good.

 

Thursday we held meetings with our Orphanage and Feeding Station directors.  This group is really the heart and soul of this ministry.  We discussed boring but important stuff about standardizing procedures, both financial and administrative.  It’s important for us to build on our successes by making sure all of our orphans are receiving the right level of care and that lessons learned in one place are passed on to other places as well.  To further this I decided to hire a Kenyan named Steven Owino to be a traveling teacher/inspector for me.  He will be my eyes and ears in Kenya when I am not here.  Steven is a former WBS worker, trained at Nairobi Great Commission School, and he has a real heart for the church and the orphans they serve.  I’m really excited by what his addition will mean for us.

 

In the afternoon we turned our attention to education issues.  We are seeking ways to both control costs in secondary education and improve the quality of instruction that our kids receive.  I was really pleased with the great ideas that came out of this meeting.  Our board at home will have a lot to think about in the coming months.

 

The driving rain on the metal roof ended our meeting for us, since it’s impossible to talk in that situation.  So we spent some time in prayer and stillness, waiting for the rain to stop and listening to the Spirit talk to our hearts.

 

Yesterday I pent the day with Steven and Kennedy Chandi, driving back to Awendo to pick up the brick making machine that we had ordered.  This machine will allow us to make cement stabilized bricks with local soil at each of the sites where we will do construction.  They will also be able to make bricks to sell after construction is complete.  Today I hope to play with the machine some and teach someone else how to use it.

 

So that catches you up with my travels.  Tomorrow I’ll be at our feeding station at Border and the Muhoroni Orphanage and Kerich Feeding Station will be my last stops before heading back to Nairobi to depart on Thursday.  I’ll post again when I can.

 

 

 

The Grace House

Grace House Orphanage was formerly the Nyango Feeding Station.  It is in a very remote area, that is difficult to reach by road in the rainy season.  It is on the site of a church planted by Alfayo Bodi some years ago.  We began construction on the orphanage upgrade here several months ago.  The construction has been very slow because of the roads.  The last time I was here, they were almost finished with the dorms and working on the dining hall.  This time, they are almost through with construction.

 

The dorms are complete and the kids are in.  The dining hall and kitchen are done and the church is meeting there as well.  They have built a great clinic building that also includes a manager’s office and a visitor’s quarters.  Alfayo has laid the buildings out well, with neat paths between the buildings, well designed drainage paths and painted white stones to mark the walkways.  It is so beautiful!

 

But the best part of this place was the kids.  When we arrived it was mid morning and the place was empty except for the widows and guards, since the kids were all back in school.  Around lunch, they all returned home and gathered in the dining hall.  After they ate, they did a short singing service for us, which is something that usually happens.  They are great singers and it touched my heart extremely.  But what really stood out for me was the smiles!

 

As an orphanage ages, the kids get used to what God has done for them, and sometimes even a little eager for more blessings.  These kids still have a fresh recollection of how bad their lives were before they lived in the orphanage.  They were so grateful, eagerly shaking my hand and thanking me for visiting them.  I had almost thought that I had lost the capacity to be touched so deeply by a group of orphans, but these kids restored me.

 

Afterwards, as the kids were getting ready to go back to school, the beautiful buildings really began to shine.  The kids provided the soul of the place and it’s appearance was even more beautiful then.  There was a lesson here for me.  We are all made by God to be beautiful, since we are made in his image.  But when His spirit is living in us and we are willing to let it show, our beauty has more dimensions than we can even see.   It must be the way God sees us, thanks to the redeeming blood of Christ, pure and beautiful, full of life and spirit, just has He intended.  The picture of Grace House that I shall always remember is of the kids, using the buildings, giving their collective home a real soul.  Be blessed.

Adingo Opanga, Glasscock, Uriri

Adingo has been a feeding station for several years, but in all my trips to Kenya, I have never been here.  It’s a bit remote, tucked in the same hills that Dirubi and Lee McGraw are in, and not too far from Ongoro.  It’s full name is Adingo Opanga.  Tobias accompanied us, and we met Thomas along the way.  It’s a small church, but one with a big heart.  They have quietly been serving orphans here since 2008.  They greeted us with tea and mandazi, and then we had worship.

 

It was a fairly typical Kenyan service, singing in choruses and congregational style, preaching for the contribution, preaching for theLord’s supper, and the just plain preaching.  I did the last part.  I think I did better this time, certainly it was longer, which the Kenyan’s like, and I was getting some good vibes from the church members.  Afterward, Thomas invited church members to speak and respond to the sermon.  I thought that was a really good idea, one that we could adopt if we weren’t so concerned with ending our services in time for the football games.

 

One of the visitors was Tobias’ primary school teacher.  Seems that Tobias lived in this area as a kid.  He was a neat guy that spoke excellent English.  He coached a competitive walking team for the school that Tobias was on.  Another visitor was the area Chief.  The chief is an appointed political office for the Kenyan government.  The chief’s job is to implement the governments policies in the local area as best he can.  He was a nice guy, and he spoke about how the church is doing the real work of helping the people, even more than the government.  It was refreshing to hear that take on things.

 

After church it was time for lunch, (yes, church lasted 3 hours).  Again the local dignitaries joined us, and the asked me all kinds of questions about America, Obama, and how I liked Kenya.  For a guy like me who finds great joy in taking apart my home theatre system and putting it back together, it seems weird to enjoy local Kenyan small-talk, but I did.  God moves in mysterious ways.

 

After we left Adingo Opanga, we drove in to Kisii for a night at the Dados, a western style hotel.  Electricity and hot showers are the chief attraction, but the very fast internet was a welcome treat as well. 

 

This morning, we loaded up to visit the Nana GlasscockFeeding Station, which is under construction to convert it into a full orphanage.  The drive in was very difficult, since there is no proper road.  We traveled on the edge of sugar cane and maize farms, down cow paths and over rocker washouts.  I was glad to have such a good vehicle to make the journey.  Every time we use it on terrain like this I say a little prayer for John Cherry and the others who contributed to buy it for us.

 

Glasscock is coming along well.  They have almost completed the dorms, and by the end of this month the children will be in.  Then they will build the new dining hall, clinic and office.  You can see from the pictures on Facebook that they are doing a first-class job with it.  We renewed our friendship with Elly, the former WBS student that donated the land for this site and who will act as the manager.  He’s a quiet, unassuming man who loves these kids like his very own.  When the kids came back from school for lunch, they sang for us and we met with the church leaders.  I praised them for allowing God to use them to serve the kids in this way and encouraged them to continue to support the orphanage as time goes by.  We met in their old, mud church building that we will be tearing down once the dininghall is complete.  I will never see that building again, but it has been home to some amazing acts of love and sacrifice, so I will miss it.

 

After our visit, we drove on to Uriri Orphanage, one of our oldest and largest.  Kennedy is doing a great job here.  While we were touring the place, Kennedy introduced my to a 10 year old boy named Tyson.  He is an orphan, but not one that lives in the home.  His mom died of some kind of brain disorder, and his Dad died last year, probably of AIDS.  Tyson is blind since birth and his shosho, (grandmother) had brought him to us to plead for someone to be able to pay his school fees at the boarding school for the blind that he attended until hisfather died.  Now there is no one to pay the fees.  If you are interested in sponsoring him, the cost is about $4,000 per year.

 

We are staying here at Uriri tonight, and tomorrow we are off to see the Grace House orphanage that has been under construction and is now complete.  Should be a great time.