Kenya, August 30

Going to a foreign country always changes my perspective on my life and the world in which I live. Kenya, although not the poorest of African nations, struggles with the same issues as its neighbors. They are the issues we hear of so much but cannot fully understand: poverty, corruption, AIDS and other diseases, and injustice.

Nairobi is home to the largest African slum, Kibera, where one million people live without clean water, toilets, electricity, or indoor plumbing. Rainwater and urine intermingle in streams cutting through dirt roads. Many don’t have enough to eat. Many are sick. The problems faced in Kibera are also faced in the rest of Kenya, Africa, and the world.

Sixty percent of Kenyan women will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. All Kenyans deal daily with corrupt police seeking bribes. The allegations that Kenya’s recent election violence was the result of a corrupt government’s plan for ethnic cleansing exemplifies this issue.

Losing hope is easy when staring in the face of such enormous problems. However, I didn’t leave Kenya with a sense of despair, but rather I felt encouraged by the work of those fighting for change.

Daryll and Verna’s work at Africa Nazarene University is educating and empowering young people to make a difference in their world. Daryll’s theology and education training is bringing new teachers and pastors into communities throughout Kenya, and Verna’s health classes are educating students about the realities of AIDS and other diseases. Her preventative education is enabling Kenyan men and women to make more responsible choices, therefore creating safer communities.

The work of Compassion International, through sponsorship money, built a school, church, and clinic for 250 village children who previously had no access to any of these services.

International Justice Mission is providing safe havens and free legal services to sexually assaulted women and children and people abused by a corrupt legal system. They are giving a voice to those who formerly had none.

Jaakko, a pastor in a Mombasa slum, has opened a growing church and school. He is praying to open a place for orphans. In addition to their own three daughters, he and his wife have opened their home to four orphans and needy children. Somehow nine people live in Jaakko’s home that could be no more than 250 square feet and lacks a bathroom and a kitchen.

Musili, another pastor the same age as me and Dave, has already overseen the building of a church, hospital, and school in his community.

People all over Kenya are fighting against the poverty and injustice, and I would encourage each of you to search for ways to make a difference in your community or one that touches your heart. God is at work everywhere, and He wants your participation.

Kenya, August 25

Last time I wrote we were on our way to Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, for the weekend. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and we left Mombasa on Sunday evening.

Mombasa has beautiful beaches lining the Indian Ocean, and we spent the first day there swimming. After dinner in the evening, Dave and I went to the patio where a live band was playing. The band was fun and entertaining.

The church we visited on Sunday morning was pastored by a man named Jaakko, a good friend of Daryll and Verna’s. The church, named Word of Life, doubled as a school and was located in the center of a slum. After Pastor Jaakko graduated ANU, he felt God calling him to build a church in Mombasa. The church/school was initially built with mud and grass, like many of the buildings in the poor areas of Kenya (which is an awful lot of them), but the building soon deteriorated.

The members and school children began praying for the money to build a new building, but no money came. Instead, El Nino came. The heavy rains basically destroyed the building, leaving the people to wonder why God wasn’t answering their prayers.

Shortly after El Nino, Dave felt compelled to send a donation to Daryll and Verna’s ministry, which they sent to Jaakko. Along with Dave’s donation and others, the church’s prayers were answered and they were able to begin building a new church building.

However, they eventually ran out of water to mix cement, and construction on the church had to stop. They began instead digging a hole for a latrine, and they were surprised to hit water after they started digging. Again God had answered their prayer.

Today the school has around 250 students, and it also sleeps several orphans at night. They are praying that the student body will continue to grow and more people will come to know God.

The church had about fifty people attending, and the first hour was spent in song. The crowd was small compared to many American churches, and the only instruments were a pair of bongo drums and a tambourine, yet the church worship was louder than many congregations in America even with our high-tech sound equipment.

Daryll preached the sermon, and then Daryll, Verna, and Pastor Jaakko performed a baby dedication. The entire service lasted about 2 ½ hours.

After church, we went to Pastor Jaakko’s house for lunch. His wife had just a baby two weeks earlier. This made the total family members (and orphaned children) living in the house nine. The lunch she served was rice and beans.

The dichotomy between the beautiful coastline resorts and the nearby slums was hard to see. I find it hard to comprehend how there can be people in this world with so little and so much coexisting so closely.

Today we had another opportunity to visit the Kenya office of the International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a non-profit organization that helps bring justice to the oppressed. The first story we had the opportunity to hear today was from one of the employees at IJM.

When he was a bank teller, his bank got robbed. He was working during the bank robbery, and he was arrested by the police and charged with the crime. Of course he was innocent, but this did not stop the police from torturing him day after day for five days. They would move him from police station to police station so his family could not find him. After five days the police realized he was not the robber, but they needed to cover their abuse and locked him in jail. He was in jail for nearly three years when IJM came to his rescue. With their team of lawyers and case workers, they were able to get enough evidence to get the man out of prison. Since then, he has been working with IJM to bring the justice he received to others.

After spending the morning with the IJM Kenya office, Dave and I had the opportunity to visit a victim of sexual abuse currently awaiting trial. IJM is fighting to get the victim’s perpetrators behind bars. If you want to learn more about IJM’s work, visit their website.

Kenya, August 22

It’s been another lovely day in Kenya. Uncle Daryll and Aunt Verna picked us up at our hotel this morning in time to take us to the Elephant Orphanage. The roads in Kenya are very bumpy, and the traffic is pretty crazy. It seems to take us forever to get anywhere. Fortunately, Uncle Daryll is a great chauffeur, and he has gotten us everywhere safely.

The Elephant Orphanage is a non-profit organization that takes in baby elephants who have lost their mothers and raises them until they are old enough to go out into the wild on their own (about ten years). The keepers act as a family for the elephants, and as such, the commitment to the elephant orphanage is rather long.

Elephants live to be about sixty. They have six sets of teeth, and when they lose their last set, they starve to death. This is considered a natural death for an elephant. When fully grown, they are twelve to fourteen feet tall and between five and seven tons. The oldest elephant currently in the orphanage is twenty-four months.

After leaving the elephant orphanage, Uncle Daryll and Aunt Verna took us to African Nazarene University, the place where they work. African Nazarene University is a Christian university in Nairobi. Uncle Daryll is a professor of theology and education, and Aunt Verna teaches health. The university seems to be a thriving learning community. While we were visiting, a conference called Africa Ablaze with seminars for young people was going on. We sat in briefly on a seminar for AIDS/HIV education, a very important topic in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our next stop was the Giraffe Center where we got the opportunity to feed giraffes. Dave especially enjoyed this visit. I found having a giraffe suck on my hand a little strange, but they are really pretty animals, and I really enjoyed seeing them up-close. Their tongues are coarse and long, and they didn’t appreciate being petted unless you were feeding them. If they didn’t want you close to them, they would try to head-butt you. I had a near miss with that, as did Dave and Aunt Verna.

Our last stop for the day was a cool restaurant called Rangers near the Safari Walk. We enjoyed good food and good conversation before heading back to the hotel for the night. We leave early tomorrow morning for Mombasa, a town along the coast.

Kenya, August 21

I’ve started blogging again since Dave and I are overseas in Kenya right now. We arrived in Kenya after a long (although on time) flight. We left Denver on Monday morning, had connections in Minneapolis and Amsterdam, and arrived in Kenya on Tuesday evening.

Our reason for coming to Kenya is primarily to visit Dave’s Aunt Verna and Uncle Daryll. Verna is Dave’s mom’s sister. They picked us up from the airport on Tuesday, and I can’t tell you how welcome their faces were along with the opportunity to not deal with a cab driver at the airport.

We started our trip to Kenya yesterday with a visit to the Safari Walk and Animal Orphanage in Nairobi. There were a lot of different animals for us to see, and we had a great opportunity to pet a cheetah, and Dave got to hold a baby lion! We saw a lot of other animals, including a baby giraffe, leopards, and monkeys.

After leaving the Safari Walk & Animal Orphanage, we went back to the compound where Uncle Daryll and Aunt Verna live for dinner. Aunt Verna fixed some delicious spaghetti and meatballs.

Today we got the great opportunity to travel outside Nairobi to visit a child we sponsor through Compassion International. Compassion is a Christian organization through which you can pledge a monthly donation to sponsor a child. Your sponsorship provides the child with school, worship, health care, and food. If you want more information on Compassion, you can check out their website.

The trip to visit our child was fantastic. We got the opportunity to see her school, church, playground, and home. We also got to meet her family, and since she lives in a small village, we were definitely the center of attention. Her family lives in a small group of huts; one is used for the living room and parents bedroom; the next is used for the kitchen; and the final hut is where the children sleep. Our child is one of seven children. The huts in which the people live do not have electricity or running water. They are made of mud and straw. It is so easy to forget how fortunate we are in the United States with how much we have.