Arrivals and Departures

I’m feeling a little guilty for not blogging yesterday, so this will be two days worth.  Sunday, we worshiped with the Mbuvi’s and Coulstons at the Kamulu Church of Christ, which is always a fun experience.  After lunch we set out for Nairobi one more time to check into our hotel for the evening, Grace House, and prepare for the medical team’s arrival.  Next to the Grace House is Yaya Center, a small upscale mall.  As we pulled into the parking lot I saw what I most feared, another “market day.”  At these nightmarish events, vendors selling all manner of African curios line up in stalls and beg you to, “please sir, just look here.”  I HATE these things, and of course, Susie and Maureen LOVE them. 

We have already purchased every possible kind of souvenir; soapstone, jewelry, textiles, etc.  We have so much that I really fear for getting it all home because of airline weight limits.  Susie is undeterred.  She blazes a path through the merchants, leaving them dazed and bewildered.  They are no match for her superior negotiating skills and endless patience.  I am dying.  Finally, Francis and I convince the women to come in for dinner, and on the way into the mall, Susie calls out, “Just one more!” We wait for 10 or 15 minutes and I have had enough, I’m going out to retrieve my bride.  We found them haggling a man over a hand carved mahogany end table.  Susie says, “Maureen really wants this one, she’s got him down to 4,000ksh.”  Finally when the deal is struck, Maureen turns to Susie and says, “There, I got it for you.  Pay the man.”  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Not only is it expensive, it weighs 30 pounds!  How will we ever get this home?  My pleas fall on deaf ears; I am outnumbered and outclassed.   Agggh.

After dinner, we dropped Susie and Maureen at the hotel and went to retrieve the medical team from the airport.  We waited outside the baggage claim until almost everyone had cleared out, and still there was no team.  Finally, I caught sight of them trailing a load of bags, all there save one, Leslie Doke’s.  After filling the missing bag report, we were ready to head out when a man came down the hall trailing the missing bag.  He had taken it all the way home and discovered it was the wrong bag and brought it straight back to the airport.  What luck!  So we loaded it all and sped away, for some much deserved rest.

This morning we parted with Francis, who took a mutatu back to Kamulu, and met up with Addington, our driver for the week.  We’ve used Addington before when we needed more than one vehicle, and we know him to be reliable.  Today, he drove us to Eldoret where we will be based for the next five days.  We will be providing basic medical and dental care to our orphanages and feeding stations at Kapsabet, Ngenymesut and the surrounding area.  The team consists of Ben and Leslie Doke, Brad and Deborah Sears, and Cherie Creech.  So here we sit at the beautiful Sirikwa Hotel, under the same roof with the US ambassador to Kenya, who arrived at the same time we did.  Pretty cool.  Tomorrow we get started with Kapsabet Orphanage.

Medical Team Arrives

Medical Team Arrives

The medical team arrived safely with all bags. We will post more after we get to Eldoret today. Be blessed!

Ngando

Each morning we are in Kamulu, Maureen makes us breakfast.  Today it was chai (of course), bread and butter (with jam) and fried eggs.  I love the way they do their eggs, they are fried dry so they can be eaten with the hands.  Thanks to Maureen for taking such good care of us.  After breakfast we visited a special entrepreneur’s fair that the kids at made in the streets were putting on.  It was a day of putting their new found job skills to the test.  It was a brief stop on our way back into Nairobi to visit the Ngando feeding station.

This feeding station is different than most in that we were not able to buy any land or have any donated here.  Land in Nairobi is very expensive so the church is on a rented plot.  There was a typical sheet metal structure, this one with a loud sound system, that served as the church and dining hall for the kids.  What was the same is the tremendous outpouring of gratitude and emotion from the church members.  Pastors from other churches were there also to show their appreciation, and there was a great meal.  We were served first, then as we finished they washed the dishes and served some more.  Have you ever been somewhere that people ate in shifts because of a shortage of dishes?

It was an eye opening experience in the difference between city and country life.  Their latrine was the worst I have ever seen, not even a deep hole under it and raw sewage seeped out all over.  Maureen and Risper declined to use it and I forced myself so that I could feel some measure of empathy.  I know I will never know fully how blessed I am but these humbling experiences work wonders for checking your greed.  After a quick stop at Simon Karanja’s, our WBS worker, house we sped back to Kamulu, just ahead of the rising tide of afternoon rush hour traffic.

We had a nice dinner and the Coulston’s house, pizza of various types, and conversation about missionary work.  I never saw myself as a missionary, and I guess I’m not because I don’t live here, but I found myself actively engaged with the conversation and able to relate to most of it.  We’ve been here for two weeks now, with one more to go.  Thanks to everyone who has been keeping up with us through the blog, and for everyone who is covering our responsibilities back home.  We are getting homesick now, we find ourselves missing our kids and cats and friends terribly.  

Exciting times are coming as the medical team arrives Sunday.

Ngando

Not a real blog post

This is not an actual blog post, more of an update.  We were in Nairobi today, and we saw no orphanages or feeding stations.  We spent the morning at Made in the Streets, the street kids ministry that Francis founded.  I helped Moses, their computer teacher, with some geek stuff.  Susie worked her “real” job remotely.  In the afternoon we went to village market for lunch and some shopping.  Now we’re back at Kamulu.  Tomorrow we will go see a feeding station here in Nairobi with our WBS worker Simon Karanja.  More good pics and stories then.

God is good!

I had a pretty good idea that today was going to be a good day.  Yesterday, on our way to Nakuru, we met Thomas in Sondu and picked up some supplies for the Kikitemo IDP camp.  We lashed them on our LandCruiser and sped off to our hotel.  This morning, it was time to deliver.   

We had told John Karauke, our WBS worker who discovered these people, to meet us at the camp.  We did not tell him why, he assumed it was for some new visitors.  When we arrived, he was holding church out under the trees.  We joined him and listened to the singing.  These people are some of the most poor you will ever see or hear about.  They live in huts made of sticks and plastic bags, yet they were worshipping God with all they had.

The excitement built as John invited us to speak.  We talked of God’s love, and how he answers prayer.  Grace retold the story of her prayer to God for the orphan’s food and how God answered that through John.  She told us that when the orphans got their first meal from us, they all went out in the field in a circle and prayed for all the donors that were helping them. She said they stayed there for a long time just thanking God for sparing their lives.  I was starring into the eyes of those same children, with no shoes and dirty beyond belief and just wept. When it was my turn, I spoke of some small gifts we had brought.  Maureen spoke of God’s faithfulness.  In the distance they could see our vehicle, loaded with something covered with a tarp.  You could tell they were getting excited.  Finally, after some more worship, we broke to unload the vehicle.

As we began to pull tarps and blankets out of the inside of the truck the singing began again.  With each new parcel added to the pile in the ground in front of them, their fervor grew.  Then we climbed the vehicle and took off the tarp revealing a hundred more blankets in bales.  Now their few men joined us in bringing the massive bundles to the ground and the singing hit a fever pitch.  They were singing in Swahili, but Maureen told me the chant was, “You have brought us blankets, God is good!”

As we finished the unloading, some of the older kids came out in makeshift costumes performing a comedy of some kind.  The people were eating it up.  They were laughing and clapping like you couldn’t believe.  Finally, John said a few words about how just yesterday they were talking about the weather change and how there would be sickness from the rains and cold.  He said God has spoken to the visitors, telling them what to bring.  I think he was right, but God didn’t need to speak miraculously to me on our last visit to see that there was insufficient shelter and blankets, it was obvious.  Usually the needs of others are right in front of us, we just have to look.  

I have to tell you, that whole experience for me was one of the most amazing things that I have ever been a part of.  You know at times that you are doing God’s will, but most of the time I think we just wander around hoping we are doing okay.  At a time like this, there is a purity about the joy and satisfaction that you feel that is amazing.  It’s like looking into the face of God and knowing, I mean absolutely knowing, that he is pleased.  There is nothing to rival that.

After we left, as we were climbing the hill on the highway out of the Rift Valley, I glanced up to see the front of a Mutatu (the private busses here) coming toward us in the opposite lane.  The name of the bus was, “God is Good.”

Later, we went to Barclay’s to do the monthly banking and then to Nairobi Java House for lunch, but that really doesn’t compare with the morning.  I’m not sure that anything ever will.

Kikitemo and Java House

Ongoro

Today was our last day based at the Dados Hotel in Kisii.  We checked out with a bang. Susie’s shower ended in a rain of sparks as the electric shower head mounted water heater died a brilliant death.  There is nothing scarier than standing under a stream of water and seeing an electric arc come from the shower head, I assure you.  To her credit, she did not curse (I would have) but calmly asked me to ‘turn off the switch, please.’  The heater was fried, and so she finished in coldness.  What a woman.

Ongoro looked really good.  After an orphanage has been open for a few years, this one in 2008, they have a different feel.  The kids know each other very well, the widows know the kids, and you can tell you are coming into the home of a family.  It’s like the difference between teaching a class of students on the first day of school, as opposed to the last.  We toured the place and saw what was new.  The latrine had been replaced; the old one caved in during heavy rains, fortunately while no one was in it, and the posho mill has been relocated to the front gate.  We advised Tobias how moving the fence line a little would allow the public better access to the clinic and posho, hopefully increasing their use and revenue.

We met with the local orphan’s board.  Tobias has done well selecting the members of his board.  There is an area counselor (administrator), members of the land board, a widow, two students, and the director.  They were a sharp group, and they assured us that they are very much involved with the kid’s lives.  They seemed to care a great deal about what happens to them.  They were telling us how proud the community is of this facility and how many people have come to believe that God is real because of the actions of his church.  Isn’t that a great lesson for us? People will believe God is real because of your good works; that should be in the bible, somewhere…

God’s blessings really stand out here.  When you stand in the dark and light a candle, it’s amazingly bright.  When you stand in a lit room and light a candle, it’s harder to know.  That’s why God’s word tells us to light a candle in the darkness so that the whole world can know He is real.

After lunch we set out to meet Thomas at Sondu.  Thomas had purchased some blankets and tarps for us to distribute to the IDP camp orphans and widows we met last week.  We loaded nine bales of blankets and 20 tarps into and onto our crowded LandCruiser and thanked Thomas for his great work.  Tonight we are at the Kunste Hotel in Nakuru.  Tomorrow it’s only a short ride to the IDP camp on our way to Nairobi to do some banking.  The bank wire filled with God’s blessings from all of you great people in the US has arrived and needs to be distributed. 

Ongoro

Uriri and Glasscock

We kinda needed an easy day.  Unfortunately we didn’t get it.  This kind of work, seeing orphanages and loving on kids may not seem all that hard, but those who have been here will attest to how physically draining it is just riding in a vehicle over roads like this.  The road to Uriri wasn’t bad, but we did a 45 minute torture test to the Glasscock feeding station that belonged in a “Toyota Tundra” commercial!  The old van would never have made it, thank God for the new LandCruiser.

Uriri is a great place.  They have 90 orphans and 5 widows here, well 4 now.  Unfortunately one of their widows who had been sick passed away yesterday.  That cast a somber note over the whole day, but the kids were still happy and healthy.  There is something about a well run orphanage that you can just “tell”.  I’m not saying it was perfect, but the way questions are answered, the casual easy confidence of people who know each other well and have nothing to hide is obvious.

Uriri is in sugar cane country.  Some time ago we bought them a cane crusher to help make some money to offset the orphanage costs.  They have proven to be very successful and resourceful people.  Earlier this year, a generous donation allowed us to buy them a lorry (truck), and it has enabled them to double their profits.  There are great pics of this operation in the album below.  

Uriri and Glasscock

We met with their board, which had great things to tell us.  They didn’t just name off requests for money one after the other, they were full of praise and good ideas.  Afterwards we set out for the new Nanna Glasscock Feeding Station.  We took Kennedy Chandi, our WBS worker for this area, to guide us.  I knew we were in for an adventure when he said to Francis, “turn left here”, and there was no road, just a path between two cane fields!  We wound around so many times I didn’t know which way was up.  Eventually we came to a clearing and there was a feeding station, clear as day.

There were really great people there; the whole church turned up.  With the orphans and other community folks there were well over 100.  We prayed together, ate lunch (again), and took pictures.  They even gave me a really great hat.  I’m saving it for Gary Glasscock; it looks like him.  On the way back to Kisii we stopped and bought soapstone souvenirs at our usual place.  Susie really loaded up, I can’t imagine how we will get it all home.  Oh well, if I told you how little we spent on well over 50 lbs of these handmade pieces, you wouldn’t believe it.

Tomorrow we hit Ongoro, and depart for Nakuru for the night.  Thursday we are planning on dropping back by the IDP camp with some gifts.  That should be really fun!