Kenya trip, part 1
It has been too long since we've updated the blog, and I have lots of family stuff (birthdays, dance recitals, lost tooth & finishing kindergarten) to post on, but I wanted to get something up about Kenya. This will probably take a couple of entries. I feel like there's still so much to think about and process and lessons to be learned.
I have been wanting to go to Kenya for several years and have been actively planning/thinking about it for the past three. Our friends from church Damon and Randa Davenport run a ministry called Build the Village. You can click on that link and check it out, but the website hasn't been updated very regularly and isn't really reflective of even a part of the exciting work that is going on in Kenya.
Build the Village is a holistic approach to ministry -- working to meet people's physical, educational, social, material and spiritual needs. In Choimim, Kenya, they have started a church, orphanage and school in the past three years. The well there is the first fresh, clean (non-creek) water in the area ever. The orphanage is the only in the county and meets a huge need because of Kenya's strict adoption laws (international adoption is not allowed). The school is "modern." It has flush toilets and painted walls and actual floors in the classrooms. I had never seen poverty like I saw in the public schools there. The difference was amazing. Muddy dirt floors, broken glass in the windows, everything looked abandonned and run-down.
I went with a group of 15, mostly teenagers. I hadn't signed up with the idea that I'd be leading high schoolers. I had signed up because I wanted to find out how I could use my skills in a way that would serve people who really needed it. I've worked in both education and publishing, so I'm eager to serve Build the Village in a communications role. So hopefully before too long, the website will be updated. And some brochures, and a newsletter, and...
Working with the high schoolers turned out to be a wonderful experience. It was amazing to watch young kids give so selflessly and tirelessly. What an encouragement!
We were in Choimim for 8 days. I hope to be there longer next time. I would also love to bring my whole family!
Each morning I woke up a little homesick. I would hear everyone's voices and just lay in bed for a few minutes before I got up. By the time breakfast was over my energy was always back. It was just those first minutes of knowing that I was away and the excitement of the new day and not knowing what to expect. This was the first I had ever been away from my kids, so it was a real challenge for me, but God really answered my prayers in that I was able to stay focused and they stayed healthy and had fun with daddy and grandma.
Breakfast was at 7:30 every morning and most mornings we had mandazi. Try making these at home. You will love them! We had four wonderful ladies who worked at the guest house and came early to cook and to heat up buckets of water for our "showers." There is a 40-foot well at Choimim that Build the Village dug, but it is not enough. They are having a drought right now and the well ran dry by our first morning. We only had rain once during the stay, so it wasn't enough for us to having running water. We had water from the creek for our baths and to pour by the bucketful into the toilets to make them flush. I'm glad I brought two tubs of wet wipes. :) The cost for a deeper well that would tap deeper into underground sources is $17,000. I hope we can help them raise the money. There is a real risk of cholera and other disease. Here's a picture of the creek that everyone with two legs or four uses for water (including drinking when the well is dry...thankfully we were able to purchase bottled water from the grocery -- about an hour away).
We had no electricity during the day. Just for about two hours every night which was long enough to charge batteries and get a few things done after the sun went down.
I planned to teach ballet at Noel Academy each day and do some dance and music activities at the local public schools. Each morning we would go to one or two schools and then back to Noel in the afternoon. Sometimes we would put on a play or do a Bible story with puppets or perform a ballet that I had choreographed. Then we would divide into groups to play sports, do music & dance, have stories or crafts with the kids. We were the first group of mizungus (white tourists) these kids had ever seen. Some of the preschoolers were afraid because they had never seen a "white" person. They wanted to touch our skin and hair. It was surprising and humbling. Surprising and humbling would actually describe most of my experience there. It's so humbling to feed an orphan or be thanked for a small deed when you wish you were doing so much more.
I hadn't expected some of the challenges of teaching dance that I encountered. First of all, there isn't a strong concept of personal space. Everyone wanted to be crowded against each other. Second, how do you introduce ballet to someone who's never seen it or even heard Tchaikovsky? Third, there isn't a lot of developed culture in this area of Kenya. There is culture, in terms of adding flourish to the practical (a decorated bowl instead of a plain one, or songs to sing while at church or working), but there isn't the kind of culture that can be cultivated and learned and developed when you have free time and the resources for lessons and instruments and teachers. Still, dance is a universal language, and the kids loved waving streamers around while we sang songs and learning a few positions and playing freeze dance. And all kids love to leap, so we had fun leaping over colored papers on the ground and pretending to be sheep and bunnies and kangaroos. The middle grade school age kids liked learning the bunny hop and how to do tours en l'air and hitchkicks. We taught the electric slide once or twice too. And we learned from them too. They always dance when they sing, so it was fun to put steps to songs that we would have done the boring way back home and then sing and dance with our new friends.
Most evenings I spent time at the orphanage. I was surprised the hold these babies had on me. I love babies, but I really consider myself more of a "kid person." I thought that working with the kids at the school would be the highlight for me. But holding an orphan and reading to them and doing anything at all (clipping their fingernails, changing their cloth diapers without the benefit of a flushing toilet, washing their laundry by hand) that would be helpful just filled me with such overwhelming joy and fulfillment.
This is Benta. She is an amazing little girl. Bright and friendly and eager to learn and play. She just loved being held and read to and would carry around a new doll and mother it so sweetly, strapping it in to the baby seats and feeding it pretend food. Benta is HIV positive. Her health has stabilized in the past few months, but she had a rough time in her first months at the orphanage. She had been rescued from child trafficking. Being with Benta gave me a sense of God's amazing goodness and mercy. People, likely even her own parents, meant nothing but depravity and harm to her. She was cursed from birth by the actions of her parents (infidelity and promiscuity are big problems with the spread of HIV in this area -- education hasn't cut back on that). But she has been rescued from that and her life is full of genuine love and care now. She is flourishing. I hope that a day doesn't go by that I don't think of her and be reminded of God's goodness and pray for her and Joann and James and all of the others who work day after day caring for these babies.
Well, that's a start for now. I have so much more to think about and write and many more pictures, of course.
