Kenyan Journal

Mission Trip to Kenya

2006-09-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Kenya Mission Trip
Update

The Reverend Michael Russell of All Souls’ Episcopal Church is pleased to announce that the needed minimum for a Kenya trip has been reached! More people are welcome! In order to get the best airline price he needs commitments by Sunday September 17th. The Lent 2007 dates are March 7 – March 22, 2007. The trip would include at least 9 days spanning two weekends in Maseno working with the Hardison’s Orphan’s project, a day or two in the Nairobi area with the Mercy Care Center, and perhaps a one or two day safari into the wild animal preserves.
While in Maseno missioners would staff Orphan’s clinics each Saturday and attend that parish on Sunday. During the week a combination of home visits, visits at local development projects, support work at St. Philip’s Seminary, and consultations with local clergy and seminarians would fill out the agenda.
In Nairobi a day would be spent with Patrick Lumumba and the 350+ children at the Mercy Care Center in the Mathre section of Nairobi. A side trip to his farm school may also be possible.
Finally, a safari could be included as part of the return travel from Maseno to Nairobi. People can also arrange to schedule a layover in London on the return.
A minimum of 10 people is needed in order to secure a group price for airfare. At the moment costs are approximate, but with all travel, lodging, meals in Maseno, and safari the cost is $3,000. If airport taxes fluctuate this could change. Missioners will also need to arrange for their own immunizations. People who are interested should contact Fr. Russell at 619-223-6394 as soon as possible but by September 17 at the latest. An organizing meeting will beheld with the Hardisons after they arrive in the beginning of October.

Monkey shines

2005-11-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my afternoon visitors. They loved to keep me awake.

Monkeys on my roof

They were a great alarm clock.

2005-09-04T16:03:00.001-07:00

The walls are rising up!

2005-09-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

More student laborers building new dorm

2005-09-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

Mercy Care Center Student building new dormitory from proceeds of the mileage fundraiser from Mike and Dave's coastal ride

2005-08-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

Families at clinics and in their homes.

2005-08-08T18:41:00.000-07:00

Scenes from an orphan clinic

2005-08-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

These are several of the classes at the Mercy Care Center in the Mathares slum of Nairobi

2005-08-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

The orphans of one parish gathered for lunch

2005-08-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

panning to the right over the multitude

2005-08-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

and more to the right

2005-08-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

The children of Kenya greet you!

Back in the USA

2005-07-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

I have been out of Kenya now for a week and a half and back in the USA just short of a week. What I am most noticing is a profound sense of belonging nowhere. The long bicycle trip at the start of my sabbatical rewired some portion of my brain in such a way that sitting still feels wrong. Movement is natural, stillness is not. In Kenya the constant movement of people along the roads and at the Seminary was a reminder of their constant struggle just to survive. They graciously received my as a guest, but not without the constant reminder that because I had access to and control of resources, I would always be set apart there too. Moving in and out of their lives, offering support and prayer, but knowing I would move along in time kept the sense of motion alive.

But now I am back in San Diego and there is a chafeing sense built from being still after moving for so long. I suspect that the challenge for me will be in establishing yet another sense of movement that can tap into the energy of the sabbatical.

Time for a bike ride......

Mercy Care Center

2005-07-14T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today I met and began what I hope will be a long friendship with Patrick Lumumba who leads the Mercy Care Center. He met me at the Hilton and we walked and rode buses to the Mathre section of Nairobi where the Center is located. Imagine Tijuana's slums, but poorer and with no Americans spending money. And yet there are lively and huge local markets spread throughout the area.

I got to see the 350+ kids that we feed everyday and see all their classes. Patrick has really squeezed every dime we have sent to maximize the value for the children. When I can get the pictures here you will see.

We talked about how All Souls' might help expand the circle of support for Mercy Care as we have done for Maseno. I am birnging back a proposal to help finish putting water in at the school/farm out in the valley. The lack of water has stalled the development of that sight as a vocational school.

We also talked about his plans for a small "polytechnic." He already has a number of the young women training as tailors and I am hoping we can work with them to import lovely Kenyan skirts and maybe even clergy shirts! But we also talked about helping to get woodworking equipment so that Mercy Care Center could not only train carpenters, but rent the equipment to local woodworkers to bring in more development money.

We had a great lunch and a very creative brainstorming time together. I want us to think about how we can take the solid foundation we provide at MCC and expand it into a development focus. Just providing the money fora daily meal has created new opportunities ofr these kids, including going to academic secondary schools. But there is more that we can do.

On to Nairobi

2005-07-13T02:51:00.000-07:00

It is Wednesday and I am in Nairobi.

It was hard to leave Maseno. I found that after about a week and a half and a few trips to Nakumatt I was feeling quite at home in Kenya. Why Nakumatt? The are the Kenyan Wal-Mart and have a fine selection of everything imaginable including enoug western food to offset my tummy's upset with the carb onslaught of the first week.
We have gotten a good bit done. The CBO development project will get underway with 34 families. We are launching a small enterprise that will employ several women entrepreneurs selling snacks and new foods to Maseno University and Hospital folks. I have gotten a raft of great input from the Mother's Union volunteers about what more they need at the orphan centers. Nine more parishes want to join the program!
I met with 40 or so clergy from the Diocese after spending a lovely evening with Bishop Oketch at his home. I gave my standard presentation on Richard Hooker and folks were very responsive. Lots of good discussion about Anglican Identity. They also had lots of questions about how clergy are deployed, how they interact with parishioners and the bishop. We decided that Kenyan Bishops have more power than US bishops, and US Rectors have great protections under our canons. All in all a good day.
All of the clergy, the Bishop and the people in the parishes I have served these last four Sundays send their greetings to All Souls and their appreciation for my visit. I explained that it was their extraordinary committment to these orphans and to lifting themselves from the poverty of the region that was truly inspiring and that we were glad to be partners with them in this work.
I will be arranging to get to the Mercy Care Center and I might even get a day at the Nairobi Musuem.

The last week

2005-07-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I was the preacher at St. Stepehens, Luanda. There are five congregations in this parish and they all gathered to hear me preach. Since it was July 3 I preached about freedom, especially about Jesus's freedom from the expectations of all the religious leaders of his day. As I had also preached about sin and freedom from it as part of God's gift in Jesus about 70 people came up for me to pray over as they offered their sins up to God. It was a very moving part of the service.

We fixed hamburgers and hotdogs for the seminary students and the gahtered Amercians, about a dozen. Most food here is boiled, very little is roasted or fried, so the students enjoyed the American food, as did we.

I taught a four day class on Richard Hooker in the mornings and in the afternoons worked on tying down details on the development projects and on starting a little enterprise selling snacks to the UNiversity students right next door. We will likely have to go to Nairobi to find gas run ranges and ovens and deep fryers, but since I will be there next week, it is on my list.

Tomorrow is a funeral for one of the Rural Deans who has been most supportive of the Mother's Union projects. It will be an all day affair. Sunday I preach again and Monday will go up to spend the evening with Bishop Oketch before addressing all the clergy on Tuesday. So they are keeping me busy up until the last moment here.

The village across the road from us has had five deaths in the three and a half weeks I have been here. Every Saturday has been a funeral day, as it it all over the region. It becomes part of life. In the US Saturdays are chores and sports. here it is for funerals.

The Mother's Union ladies send their greetings. They have cut out material for 200 mice. I don't know if I am to reveal what sort of mice they will be, but they will be COOL. I told them to make more.

Sooooooo till I get on from Nairobi next week, keep all of us in your prayers.

Development Projects

2005-06-28T17:25:00.000-07:00

Last friday I made Pizza for the crowd to have as a snack for movie night. The Pizza was well received by all the Americans and seemed to be liked by the students. Till we found out that they had NOT liked it, but out of politeness would not tell me. So Nancy and I did a little showdown in the development class about being candid when asked to help with marketing. We cannot create new products without candid feedback. So with some pushing we got their comments, all of which were helpful.

Despite politeness, the market is always brutally candid. So this evening we brought over some university students to try pizza and be a different focus. University students are the same everywhere. New things, innovation, etc. So we got more good feedback and they liked the pizza.

We have also made a little marketing trip into the Maseno town Center. Imagine Tombstone AZ when it was still a frontier town. Or any of the little run down towns in CA. I will have pictures when I get back to Londona nd can put them up.

We found a little chips (french fries) place that also sells sausages, etc. We are stopping by there from time to time to test their cuisine. This market is one place where we may set up a pizza shop.

The other project is with a local community based organization (CBO). A very astute lady is working to help 34 households get one step above starvation-subsistence farming. They will grow crops that they can eat and which the Seminary can buy for its food program, as well as several nutritional supplements for the AIDS/HIV orphans. Total cost to launch this project is about $2,800. This is a highly supervised and supported program in the first year to make sure all the households suceed, and after the second year they should be totally self sustaining. This may be true after the first year. I am committed to funding this project since they have to catch the new growing season starts now. But all of you reading this can help make this happen too but sending some $$$ to the parish market CBO-Maseno.

This is the sort of project envisioned by Jeffrey Sachs in his powerful book The End of Poverty which has a well laid out plan for bringing the extremely poor (one sixth of the world's population) onto the development ladder. I heartily reccomend getting and reading this book before I return since y'all will be hearing a lot about it. This little project, however is a demo for us and for Bishop Oketch, who will look for more funding is this demo project takes off.

Make sure you scroll down and read the posts f\that I have finally managed to get online.....

St. Peter's Luanda

2005-06-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

My second Sunday was spent at St. Peter's in Luanda, a small market town near Maseno. I was preaching at two morning prayer services. The early service was in English and attracted the young people who are working to improve their English skills. It lasted about an hour and was a pretty typical service for MP.

Following that we had a small breakfast with the parish lay leaders. Hard boiled eggs, ugali, fruit and chai. Then back to Church for the three hour kiswahili service. That's right THREE HOURS. The actual worhsip part of the service was about an hour and a half including my sermon. But within the service they conducted a lot of community business. For example a recently bereaved family was back in church for the first time and so ten people came forward to each express thanks for the support they had received and get prayed over. Later in the service each small group from the villages or from different ministries brought their offerings forward and had them counted.

My sermon was well received and people invited me back!

After the service lunch was served. Chicken, a green vegetable and ugali. Then back to the seminary and rest.

Each evening we do a debriefing of the events of the day and things that have happened. At the moment there are about a dozen people from the US here engaged inmedical or seminary work. We end in prayer each evening.

Ugali is a dish, by the way, made from flour corn or millett that is stirred into hot water and constantly served to make a huge dumpling that is scooped into balls and served like bread. The carbs in it are so intense they are what laid me low these last few days. Plus everything here is highly sugared.

Coming Into Africa

2005-06-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

When you are 33,000 feet in the air you notice the grandeur of our planet, although not always in the ways you might expect it. On the flight to Nairobi, all of which was going quite well. I looked out the window and saw the Sahara desert. From 33,000 feet the Anza-Borrego and maybe even the Mojave are just sandboxes compared to the vastness of the Sahara.

At first the sands were reddish, broken so frequently by rock outcroppings that I thought I was over a delta with numerous rivers struggling to get to the Mediterranean. Those hundreds of miles were just the warm up for the vast sandiness of the Sahara itself. Probably a third of the time we were over Africa we were over the Sahara. There were occasional rock outcroppings, the rest were just the dunes and the wind ridges of sand for hundreds of miles.

Then I looked out and saw the Nile snaking through the Sahara. It looked like a drunk had dragged a stick through the sand; I was amazed that it could make it to Egypt at all. From 33,000 feet even the war torn Sudan looked lovely as we sailed between Khartoum and the Darfur Mountains.

I was covering ground that had taken humans millennia to fill and other humans’ years to cross and map on foot. Odd as it may sound, suddenly this part of my sabbatical became real and the rush of the adventure filled me.

Africa! I was getting ready to land in Africa. Tijuana was the only part of the third world I had been in and France the most alien, but now I was about to land in the cradle of both the geologic and human foundations of existence.

Nairobi Airport was as efficient as any other, although one of my bags went missing for a while, but was found finally for a late night ride to the Anglican Guest House. Think 1950’s Catholic seminary dorms. But nice serviceable rooms and very welcoming people. I lucked out with a really nice taxi driver Mr. Stephen Kinyanju of Jambo Taxis who took me right to the Guest House and picked me up early Saturday morning to get to my plane.

Out of the Clouds and on the Ground

The grandeur of the flights lasted about 10 minutes on the ground. As we drove away from the Kisumu Airport I was astonished at the traffic on the road. Not cars, but the people on foot, on bicycles, pulling carts or in Watatus (Honda Vans used as public transportation). It was 10 a.m. Saturday morning and there were hundreds of people out going somewhere, half or more in their Sunday best. It was not yet hot, but the women were in full-length dresses and the men in suits, walking along the side of the road.

Before I got to ask where they might all be going, a cyclist on the shoulder to our left took our breath away. Across the back rack on his bike was tied a very small child’s coffin. He was undoubtedly taking it home. It was a nicely done piece of woodwork, not just a pine box, but suddenly the Africa of the present moment became very real.

And all those well dressed people? Funerals. We see our share of funeral processions head out to Ft. Rosecrans, but imagine if Rosecrans Street had funeral processions moving north and south as routinely through the day as the bus does.

Nancy took me to the theological school and I got settled into the guesthouse. It is another serviceable set of rooms where I can relax and reflect. I unpacked a bit and then we headed off to two of the parishes that are sponsoring the clinics for AIDS orphans. Kwanda parish was set back behind several other schools. Every Saturday there is a program for the parish’s AIDS orphans, about 500 of them. They organize them into classes, have devotions and spiritual development time, play games and sing and then feed them.

The children (watoto) were electric. Welcoming, shy, laughing, looking at the new mzungu (white guy wandering around), and then rejoining the activity. You would not have guessed that these children were not only orphans, but also pariahs in their communities, unwanted non-persons.

On our return I got to nap for a while and then Bishop Oketch stopped by to welcome me and check whether or not I was comfortable. We had a chat about the Sunday service and then he headed off. The group got together at Nan and Gerry’s before supper. There is a nice group of folks here from around the US. Two Lutheran ladies from Wisconsin here for a week or so, an undergraduate from PLNU, two seminarians (one Episcopal and one UCC) from Episcopal Divinity School, a seminarian from Yale, a medical student from U of C and me.

First Sunday

The Bishop had been clear that we should be at the prescribed place at 9 am to have breakfast before the service. So we bundled into the Land Bruiser and took seven of us off to Church. The road down to the church was narrow, but the Bishop had someone at the turn to direct us into the house of the widow of the deceased bishop of Maseno. That is where we would be having breakfast.

A selection of Maseno clergy were there already as was the Bishop. Everyone was standing around chatting and I was wondering why we were not heading into breakfast (time moves on of course!). The Bishop told us we had to wait till the widow invited us in. Even the Bishop had to wait. In a bit the Bishop had us line up two by two and then a procession of women came from the house singing a song of welcome and bearing wreaths. The Bishop and Mrs. Oketch were wreathed then me and then Ann the Yalie, and then every one of the new guests as we were led into the living room. It was a lovely warm room that had been thoughtfully prepared to feed a lot of us. After a bit of chatting we were called over to wash out hands before the meal and then we had a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, bread, nuts, chipote bread and a few other tasty treats.

Monday was a quiet day after the rush of the weekend. Went to Kimusu in the evening to get money and pick up bags belonging to one of the seminarians. Sadly the bag did not arrive.
Tuesday

Got breakfast and then went off to the Ekwanda parish to do home visits. We set out on foot to visit homes where AIDs orphans had been taken in by neighbors or families. In home after home I heard the same story again and again: parents had died of “that” and now their kids were with grandma who was usually a widow. Of the twenty or so homes we visited and prayed in there were perhaps three with intact families. Their problems are immense.
There is the isolation that is not really isolation. People live in one small plots of land connected by narrow paths. No roads. In essence they are trapped because it is too far to walk to any central place and were it possible to get to a town center there still would be no jobs. Even if they produced an excess of a crop on their land it is a long trek to any kind of market.
The land is somewhat poor. The soil appears red, and the greenery is abundant, but the local people say that it is hard to produce enough maize on the quarter acre lots to sustain a normal family much less one with added mouths to feed. I saw people harvesting their maize very early just to have food for dinner.
Older children are being forced onto the land as early as possible, taking them out of school because there just aren’t any adults to work it and the mammas are too old.
Isolation, disease, diminishing crop yields, absence of adults, lack of jobs, etc. combine here to create the severe poverty.
However, the people are as hard working in the face of adversity as any human could be. They have not given up and there is no “welfare” state to fall back on, you either work or die. There is little that is wasted, what they don’t eat themselves they feed to the cow or sheep or chickens they might have. The homes are pretty tidy given that they may have dirt or mud waddle floors. In the face of all that the people were hospitable and thanked me for coming.
As we walked back I invited the ladies to ask me questions. Florence a young woman became their spokes person, asking or translating questions and then translating answers. I had begun the day with three guides, but by the time we had gotten a little way upon the path it swelled to six and sometimes seven.
The wanted to know whether or not we had any areas like their villages. They were surprised to learn that the entire US is not paved over, giving us lots of rural areas. They wanted to know what we did with orphans, so I explained about foster care and adoption. They asked if we had poor like their poor and I had to answer that almost no one was a desperately destitute as their villagers were, that a variety of programs provided a pretty extensive support network. I explained how the government collected taxes to make these programs possible. But since there are almost no jobs, there is no income to tax to speak of and a property tax would just steal people’s land.
We talked for maybe an hour and a half about wages and what people had to live on. They could hardly believe that poor in the US would get the equivalent of 100,000 shillings a year, more than all but the wealthiest Kenyans.
Florence pointed to a man mixing cement for work on the vicarage and asked if we had people who worked like that. I said yes we had people who were bricklayers and construction workers and chose that for a living. She asked how they were viewed in the society and I told her that trades people of all sorts were valued. She pointed to the man again and said that he was way over-educated for the work he was doing but this was all there was. She told me that is they were to announce that jobs were available 1,000 people would be here in the morning to apply for that job.
I left the ladies and returned to the school, filled with the images of the day. I did not take pictures because it felt too invasive, although on the next trip out I will.
Tuesday evening I showed the film Levity with Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst. It is a film about reconciliation and forgiveness and whether or not we can manage to forgive ourselves. This is the week of Repentance in Kenya so the film seemed to fit.

Wednesday

Wednesday I led a class about the movie and we discussed the theological, pastoral and ritual dimensions of forgiveness. Student here are not particularly talkative, one has to pulllllll responses out of them.
I then spent several hours meeting individually with students who wished to speak with me about various issues. The conversations ranged from personal issues to strategies for leadership. The model of leadership here is very top down and the formal power structures are male dominated. Kenya allows women in ministry, but as our equivalent of Deacons, there are none yet presiding over the Communion service.
In explaining my own leadership style, discovering what the energies were in the parish and shepherding them the first response was, “how is that leadership.” So I had a long discussion about whether top down leadership is as much fun or as effective as my more sideways form of it. I am not sure people were convinced, but at least we got the issue on the table of how in the US (in most places at least) we look for leadership from all the baptized with the Rector more as the orchestra leader than the micro manager.
Later in the day I met with Bishop Oketch to sketch out where I will be preaching and celebrating the next few Sundays.
By the evening I was coming down with a cold. As usual my sinuses are collecting all the new pollens and with the help of all the wood smoke my “wildfire” rasp has returned. After our evening debriefing I went to bed.

Thursday

Most of today I wandered about with cotton in my head. I was wanted at a nursery school dedication here on the property, but not given the right time. I was off somewhere else when it was happening, but my absence was noted. I spent most of the day feeling the real onset of a cold and took it easy, but my stomach was also in a little rebellion against all the carbs I was eating. One meal here includes more carbs that I am used to eating in a month and they are making me sleepy and tummy grumbly. So I skipped the lunch of beans and rice and slept most of the afternoon.
Late in the day Fr. Zak came by to greet me. He is the lecturer in Church History and teaches African Traditional religions as part of that. He got his D.Min. at the University of the South and has toured with Deacon Anne, to whom he sends his greetings.
I helped greet the new crew of arriving med students from Harvard (one is a SD native) and basically sniffled my way through the evening and then went to bed.

Friday

I woke up feeling ok, and hoped that the decongestant and the sleep had settled my stomach. But I skipped the official breakfast and slept in, just to give it more time. Then I got a call from Kathleen telling me that the car had been towed by a ball park shark and they would not release it to her unless there was a notarized statement from me, the registered owner. I just had to laugh inside, even though I was steaming. Since it was 8 am my time and 10 pm hers I told her to call the local politician and then our attorney who could help facilitate a statement over the phone.
I was feeling even a little better and got talked into going to the Internet Café on bicycle! Sadly, the link was down at the café so we came back. But I was exhausted and realized I had made a mistake in using so much energy. Then I made the mistake of trying some of the beans at lunch. Again I thought they might be ok. Following lunch I met with a graduate and a library worker to discuss various things. But I was starting to feel punky, so grabbed some sleep before I had to put the sauce together for pizza. See I had already committed to provide pizza as a snack for the movie night.
Dinner was one of the boiled meat entrees of which I ate some, but stayed away from the carbs and cabbages. A crew including one student had helped make dough, so between dinner and the beginning of the film we made pizza. It went over very well, everyone said they loved it. I prompted them to tell me the truth, but they all insisted it was good.
By the time I got home I was sweating and I think feverish. I got myself to bed, but knew I was in for a night of those bowel horrors I sometimes get.

Saturday

I stayed in bed till almost 1 o’clock to get up enough strength to go to a Mother’s Union Meeting. I had a little peanut butter earlier in order to take medicine and at lunch had a little plain rice.
We met with 28 Mothers at Ekwanda, many of whom make the crafts for our Christmas Arts sale. These 28 ladies not only work during the week, take care of their homes, take in orphans, but then they spend all day Saturdays doing programs to educate and support the orphans. 430 had been there today.

Getting Ready for takeoff

2005-06-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a Starbucks in SW London after doing some shopping to get ready for my trip to Kenya. I have all my flight details ready to go, have a reservation at the Anglican Guest House in Nairobi, am learning some basic swahili and reading two good books on Africa.

Last week I read a really great bridge book between the two parts of my sabbatical titled "Discovery Road" about two Brit guys who road across the three southern continents on their bicycles (Australia, Africa and South America) and a lady Brit who did the Australian leg with them. They were riding to raise money for development projects in Kenya near Lake Turkana, home of the sites where some of the earliest human remains were found. It is a great little read and I passed it along to Dave Brown when we did a pub crawl together here in London.

The main thing about the African leg of the journey was the tremendous friendliness of nearly all the people. There were some cranky border guards to be sure, but for the most part the local people were welcoming and astonished at what the stupid mzungu where doing. Nevertheless they greeted them with good humor and assisted them along the way. There must be magic in bicycle tours.

I decided today I need a few more "nice" clothes to be turly presentable there. So I am off to some discount stores to see what I can find. One more pair of slacks and maybe two shirts should do.

I will write more as I go along, Brit Air has hotspots in its terminals and I'll be in them a good bit on Friday!

Sabbatical Journey Part Two: Kenya

2005-05-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have followed the Speed of Bike blog, now you can follow part two of the sabbatical here. I am meeting with Gerry and Nancy Hardison this morning to talk about my time in Kenya. I am also putting together the resources to for the teaching and speaking I will be doing.

Getting ready so far has entailed:

Getting shots (about $600 not covered by insurance so far)
Getting med (another $200 not covered by insurance so far)
Getting my visa
Getting tickets
Thinking about mosquito repellent and water treatment

All before considering the task at hand of going to a new part of the world for me. This will be an entirely different sort of journey than the ride along the pacific coast, but I suspect that the internal conversation between the two experiences will be quite interesting.