Baringo and Bogoria - Kenyan Lakes (Part 2)

Baringo and Bogoria - Kenyan Lakes (Part 2)

Naivasha and Nakuru - Kenyan Lakes (Part 1)

Here is my big brother's write up on our trips over the summer. Very well written!

Naivasha and Nakuru - Kenyan Lakes (Part 1)

Forest creatures

Recently Jon P has been fasting and praying about the spiritual side of Turning Point's work in Kibera. It has been quite challenging to watch, not in a watching takeshi's castle sort of way but in a feeling a bit inspired and uncomfortable sort of way. You can read more in depth about this at healingonthestreetsofkibera.blogspot.com yes, you thought my blog name was long.

To top it off our Pastor spoke about fasting this weekend and what its all about, I don't know that I have understood correctly the full dynamics of fasting but to me it seems fasting is about doing something costly to show God you really want Him, you really want what He wants and in the process you find out a little more what that might actually be.

Anyway this week all this seeking God has led to a group of Pastors from Kibera meeting to talk about praying for people around Mashimoni, praying for healing basically. I sat in on this meeting and just felt super humbled. They all talked of how we should go about preparing ourselves, one suggesting we fast and live in the woods for a full week like hungry squirrels. In Kenya people are very used to fasting, they do it a lot, its an important part of the church tradition I guess. In the end it was decided we had work that still needed to be done so the squirrel idea was dropped but it was very challenging to hear how much these guys sacrifice to seek God. We prayed for each other and it was amazing to be prayed for by this Pastor from Kibera, I don't know why, it just was.

During the meeting I remembered something very cheesy that Pastor Martin in India once said to us, that if you want to be a winner for Christ you need to surround yourself with winners. That's ridiculously cheesy and sounds like something a motivational speaker would say but it stuck with me. When you recognise that someone has a true passion for God, someone who is earnestly seeking Him and desperately wanting to see His will done. That's good people. You want to stick with them, learn from them.

I think that is what I saw in those that gathered today, I felt like a grade 1 drummer sitting in a room with Chad Smith, Mitch Mitchell and John Bonham, like I could learn a lot here.

Shoot the Rabbit

The latest news from E3 (that's our apartment) is we've got a baby rabbit, her name is shoot. She fits in the palm of your hand. When she cleans her face, you want to cry. We have made her a little hutch out on the balcony and when we work at home she snuggles up against Jo's laptop where is gets all warm on the side.

Jo Bayley is the new volunteer for Turning Point, she is focussing on fundraising and doing a splendid job! The original housemate Cara is still around but preparing to get married next April. Lee, the Kiwi who lived here for a few months also moved out to get married to Bruce. The Bruce Lee wedding is this Sunday in a friend's back garden in Karen.

Things are always changing in Nairobi it seems, one of our good friends who arrived around the same time as us is leaving soon having finished her contract here and not finding another job, we said she could be our house girl and wash our dishes but she wasn't up for it...she hasn't met shoot yet though. Here's a video of Shoot's first day exploring the apartment.

Experiment Farm

I was reading in a book the other day about Experiment Farm, in 1789 the governor of Australia granted six and a half acres of land to ex-convict James Ruse for an experiment to see how long it would take a man to be able to support himself. He was given the land along with two pigs and six hens and was fed and clothed by the public store. 15 months later he had successfully become self sufficient, no longer needing assistance with food or clothing and was granted a further 30 acres of land.

The farm was called Experiment Farm because no European had farmed the land before and they had no idea what they were doing, according to my book the successful farm was renamed Model Farm as others began to follow Ruse onto the land to farm.

The story reminded me a lot of the Turning Point farm which is basically a big experiment, we don't know what we are doing, we don't know anyone who has attempted a similar project to learn from, the mamas didn't know how to farm the land in that area. In two years it has come a long way but still we're wrestling with how to do it right.

We spent the morning today praying about what the next step at the farm may be, trying to align our plans with God's dream for these mums. If we stay obedient to the God who knows everything then maybe one day our experiment will become a model for more people to run out of their prisons of poverty and into wide open spaces. I think God's got it covered.

continuing

I should give an update on Aggrey. Things aren't as peachy as they seemed when I wrote my last blog. Candy is still with the aunt upcountry, we can't know how she is doing as the aunt won't communicate with Aggrey. He is pursuing a court case but lack of funds slow that down.

The latest thoughts he is having is that he probably isn't in a great position to look after Candy himself at this time so he is focusing on starting up a business that will be able to support them both further down the line. For now he is searching for an organisation that offers capital and ongoing support and advice to set up a small business. Turning Point is an option although it means starting smaller than he would like. He has some other options that he is looking into.

Things are still a real struggle for him, he finds it hard to concentrate and make good decisions about the business as his mind is always with Candy. We are continuing to pray for strength and wisdom for him and for change in his situation.

Too late

Too late, you can't pray God has already sorted it out! Well nearly, the church has agreed to fund Candy's school fees for a term, Aggrey has found a school and he hopes to enrol her next week.

The cheif is demanding a bit of money for the work he has done, a bribe basically. So please pray that these bits and pieces get sorted out without too much beef and Candy can get off to school soon. Pray for her too as all this moving around is probably quite unsettling and scary.

Anyway things seem to be going a good way.

Pray for

My friend Aggrey says he would really appreciate prayer at the moment, he is in a super difficult situation. Let me try to explain…

When Aggrey’s wife died a few years ago he was given joint custody over their daughter Candy along with his sister-in-law. Candy is now five and was very excited about travelling upcountry with her aunt who she has stayed with for last few years. Candy is a little legend she gives such big high 5s she has to take a run up, I have a photo of her on my phone all tangled and twisted up in our hammock, very cute.

Anyway, later it became apparent that the aunt had actually moved to the rural area without telling Aggrey, basically stealing Candy. Aggrey is totally ripped up about it, he travelled to try and get Candy back but they didn’t allow him to take her.

He has approached the courts to try to revoke the joint custody but in Kenya that’s going to be a long and costly process with potential corruption involved. Aggrey is exploring every possible solution as he is desperate to get her back; he even considered marrying the aunt in order to get closer to Candy (in Kenyan culture that’s not as crazy as it may sound in the UK)

The situation is developing daily and Aggrey is constantly trying to figure out what is the right thing to do, he is doing an admirable job of keeping his head and striving to respond in a godly way to everything. The aunt is adamant that she will not bring Candy back to Nairobi. I spoke to her on the phone earlier and she just said a flat no with no good reason.

Aggrey has contacted the chief in that area upcountry and he has become a mediator between Aggrey and the family upcountry who all seem to want to keep Candy there. In the latest round of negotiations the aunt agreed to sending Candy to a boarding school. Aggrey is very pleased with that possibility as he feels Candy is not being cared for properly by the aunt, when he saw her she was thin and unhappy.

God has been working in awesome ways in Aggrey’s life recently, opening doors out of the deep poverty he fell into, restoring his hope and he fully believes that God can work in this lady to change her mind or to open some way for him to send Candy to a boarding school. Please stand with us in prayer for Candy, the aunt, family and chief and for Aggrey.

Backstreet boys, meat flaps and the legend of banamel fire

For the last three weeks the Graceworks team from Christ Church, that’s my church at home, have been out working super hard running the summer camps and cracking me up. Before we headed up to the boarding school in Kiserian we spent a couple of days in Kibera playing with the kids at both projects.

The day in Kianda was especially cool as on the way we bumped into a kid called Umoyo. I met him a while ago walking through Kibera, we had a little chat and I tried to invite him to the project but my Swahili was not sufficient to do a good job of directing him. Since then I was praying that he would find the project as he is about 12 and seems to just walk around all day in his grubby clothes feeling hungry and he is a bit of a dude, greeting loads of people along the way with the most confusing handshakes.

So with the team we met him again on our way to the kianda project and he was well up for coming with us. Turns out he does actually know the project, Mary has seen him several times but he never wants to come in. He seems like a lone ranger, not wanting to be told what to do. He hung around outside for a bit watching through the church window as we joined the kids for songs and memory verses, then he came in and started leading the kids in some more songs! He stuck around for the whole morning and had an awesome time, he was so excited in all the circle games. Hopefully he will come back again after the holidays.

Then was the camps, I think the title nicely summarises the essence of this years camps, if you were there at least. Anyway, we took all the school kids from the mashimoni project to a boarding school upcountry for drama, games, bible teaching on Daniel, sports and swimming and everyone had an awesome time. It was the first time mama millie and Godwill had experienced camp but Godwill had an awesome impact on the kids and the UK team, his testimony and his heart are very cool. Mama millie came extremely close to winning in the second week with blue team but it was stolen from her at the last minute by Moses and the green team.


The UK team were amazing, they worked hard and were so good at getting alongside the kids, getting to know each one in their teams and caring for them. These are the kids who are at school all week so they don’t see the TP staff very often like the kids who come to the project each day so the school kids don’t get as much of the individual care and attention. That is part of what makes camps so significant to the kids. In the second week the UK team decided to split up the girls and guys and chat together about whats hard for them. I think the team understood the concern that the Kenyan staff have for the kids that they have such an awesome opportunity as part of Turning Point to go to school and get somewhere but it is so easy to make one wrong decision that wrecks all of that. The UK team shared about the stuff they struggle with which I think the kids really appreciated, it broke down some of the ideas they have that all white people are rich and have perfect and easy lives. The Kenyan staff thought it was awesome.

I really enjoyed getting to hang out with more of the school kids as I hardly ever see them during term time, it was cool to know more Swahili and understand a bit more of what was going on! And it was a great time to enjoy being with the Kenyan staff, they are so cool, although I do have beef with Margaret because I lent her my hat on the first day and I still haven’t got it back, she thinks she looks like a rapper in it.

five little ngombe

It’s a bit of a strange time in Kenya at the moment, lots of people are travelling during school holidays, so the usuals aren’t all around but its summer project season so there are teams with matching t-shirts everywhere. Nairobi is ever changing with people coming and going, one of my housemates is moving out to babysit some cats which is fairly rubbish, cats don’t know how lucky they are. Bruce who I have been doing prayer walks with is getting ready to leave so I’ll be praying alone for the last couple of weeks before camps.

I’ve been surviving without Jo and Jon around, everything is continuing fine. I think! We are preparing for the team to come and run the holiday camp up in Kiserian, I’m very excited to see them all. After that the project closes down for the rest of the school break so I get a holiday! Flippin cannot wait.

So this Thursday will be the last session we do up at the farm for a while, I think it’s a good time for us to take a break as the last couple of weeks have not been so encouraging, certain characters are very against building a community at the farm. They are convinced they are staying at the farm for 2 years then TP will buy them each a piece of land for them to farm on their own which is completely untrue but they don’t want to bother trying to build a community as their two years at the farm is nearly over, they believe they will be leaving soon. It seems there isn’t much point trying to continue with community building until those issues are dealt with, which will have to be in September when the Parsons are back.

Other than all that I’ve had some exciting times over the last couple of weeks: taking a photojournalist round Kibera to interview some the TP kids, I’m now the proud owner of a Kenyan diving license, went to a friend’s graduation ceremony which lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes outside in the sun but had an immense performance by a maasai choir, and a cow nearly ran into the side of my car yesterday on my way to band practice. TIA.

So please pray for the preparation for the team coming and for the time while they are here, pray for all the kids getting excited for camp. Please keep praying for the mums that God will do something, I don’t know what! And please pray that God would guide me and keep growing me into someone He can use.

Love each other

Returned to the farm last thursday for our weekly visit, we did a prayer walk and supervised a new playground being put in so the kids now have swings, a see-saw and a very steep looking slide, I haven’t tried them yet. We took blankets up for the mamas which they were extremely pleased with, they were a gift from someone in the UK.

We have been continuing to talk about how to build community at the farm, I learnt last week that in Kibera if you have beef with your neighbour you just move house, you don’t deal with it, you run away and carry all your resentment and bad feeling with you. A lot of things make much more sense now I know this. We said last week that although that’s how it is in Kibera and that may be how they have always functioned that’s not how it works everywhere and they can choose to do things differently.

This week we pressed the pause button, and lakukarachad the sessions for a bit to evaluate, thought I had better check that the mamas were actually up for it and didn’t just see it as a waste of time. They were very up for continuing, I guess it’s a nice change from digging!

I asked if they had noticed any change since we started talking about this stuff, Grace said they have started to forget about the past and look to the future, Rose said they have started choosing to forgive each other, Wahu said they no longer let small issues become big problems but choose to forget them instead, and Zipporah said the other day she needed some sugar and asked another mama for help and the other mama shared with her, they never used to do that apparently.

So that is flippin encouraging! Slowly slowly they are starting to change.

Since they are getting on so well now I had to make them play snap as a way to cause a fight this week so we could talk about conflict resolution in a not too heated way. They loved it, next week they really want to play football so we shall, there will be no ref so they will have to resolve any conflicts amongst themselves, hopefully employing some of the stuff we talked about this week.

In other news… Jo and Jon have abandoned me and gone to the UK for the summer, please pray for them as they tour about telling people about Turning Point.

PLA to make PLS proud

The last couple of weeks I’ve been doing some community building sessions up at the farm using the ‘participatory learning approach’. This is a fancy dev term you can only use when you have a degree but it basically means having discussions to learn from each other rather than a teacher telling you all the answers. The mamas still struggle a lot at the farm, mostly because they don’t get on very well, they are unable to deal with issues that come up amongst themselves and always bring loads of complaints to Pastor or to Jon when they visit. So we are hoping that if they can figure out a way to work together maybe their problems won’t be so many and they might start enjoying themselves a bit more.

We started by talking about our basic needs, what do we need to have a good life that we enjoy, not just food, water, shelter and fuel but also friendships, knowledge, rest, play etc etc. From there the mamas decided that yes life might be a bit better if they built a community than if they just stay separate and conflicting. So last week we looked a bit more at community, what things build community and what things hurt community or friendships and they agreed to try and stop doing the bad things and start doing the good things more. It’s all pretty simple stuff but I think the mums need a chance to think about it, talk together about it and choose together to live out these things.

This week I hope we will talk a bit about decision making and how they can deal with situations that come up amongst themselves in a fair way that they have all agreed on, they might make up some rules for the community or something, I don’t know yet. It’s quite cool that it all comes from them, I don’t teach them anything, I just ask questions and present back to them what they have said and try to lead them towards their own answers and solutions. It’s been so fun so far, the mums have really enjoyed it and have been working together and listening to each other and playing together so I hope they are taking some of these things on. Wahu was hilarious the first week, she was feeding back what her group said about the need to play and celebrate and she was getting super animated about how she really wanted to play football! Kicking the air and shouting!

I would really appreciate your prayer for the mums in general and for these sessions as I don’t actually have a clue what I’m doing! It’s a bit hard to know what things will work and be understood and what things are a bit too off the wall to translate in Swahili, and it takes a lot of quick thinking to respond to what the mums are saying and keep the discussions going the right way when it takes me a while to understand what they are saying.

Prayer walks
Have started doing prayer walks around the farm every time we go up to visit and also around Kibera, walking from one project to the other and praying along the way. I’m so glad God has provided someone to come prayer walking with me in Kibera in the form of Mr Bruce Fraser, other TP staff are all busy during the day but I feel much safer standing around praying with another person than on my own, in fact a few people in Kibera think that Bruce is actually stone cold Steve Austen so that helps! Also a few other people from my church home group want to come along with us or are praying for us at their office desks while we walk! As Shoshu says ‘Mungu tu’ (just God) as in only God will sort it out. Only God can transform Kibera. Matthew 11:12. word.

The Shamba Report

Went to the farm today to see how things are going. Since we prayed at the farm a couple of weeks ago there has been so much rain every hole in the ground is full of water and the whole place is green again. All the mums are attributing the rain to God, Jackie said ‘we are so happy because God came’.

When I asked them what we should pray this time, the first thing they said was to thank God for the rain. Other than that they asked for…
1. more rain! For a bumper harvest
2. their health as many of the mamas and children have been sick recently
3. for the kids to do well in school
4. for peace and unity and grace at the farm
So if you are up for praying for the mums please get involved.

Because the land is so good, when it does rain potatoes and peas pop up everywhere. The mamas who have taken care in planting and cultivating their acres should get a great harvest but even the mamas who only planted part of their land will be able to harvest loads. A nice farming example of grace, we harvest what we didn’t even plant.

A lady who was renting the bit of land next to the TP farm has just moved house because she finally saved up enough money to buy her own piece of land. It is achievable, it took years and loads of hard work but it can be done and the mamas have the advantage of a rent-free house.

The verse that kept popping into my head as we squelched around the farm today was Philippians 4:19 ‘and my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus’. Sometimes I find it hard to fit these verses with the reality of poverty in Kenya, the mamas were asking me for blankets today because its cold and they can’t afford to buy them. But I guess that’s what faith is for, believing for things you hope for but don’t see yet.

Seen from the sky

Jambo sana. Walking through the slum from the Kianda project to the Mashimoni project you basically follow the railway line (except for the parts where it goes into a ravine as its like the Jericho road, very conducive to muggings). Anyway at other parts the railway is up on a mound and you can see over Kibera. The first time we walked it we noticed some paint on some of the roofs, looking closer we realized it was eyes and faces looking up out of the slum.

This required some investigation, after some googling around I discovered the artist goes by the name of JR and this ‘piece’ was part of a bigger project called women are heroes. He has taken pictures of women from Kibera and printed up their photos on huge tarpaulins to cover the roofs of the shacks. He also covered a train in photos so when the train passes at one point the eyes line up with the smiles on the side of the mound. This guy likes taking pictures of people who otherwise go unnoticed then he sneaky sneaky plasters their photographs massive somewhere it can’t be ignored. Inspired. You can see more photos on his website www.jr-art.net or www.28millimetres.com/women/. He’s done a lot of other interesting projects across Africa, India, South America and on the Gaza strip. Check it out!

Slum domination

Turning Point is taking over. The new Kianda project opened on Monday this week, 43 kids rocked up on the first day for tea and mandazi, teaching, stories, songs and games. It’s a really simple project for now, just a couple of hours in the mornings to start feeding the kids and getting to know them and their families. It will be a while until we understand what the needs are in the area and how to develop the project in a relevant way, so it may end up looking different to our project in Mashimoni.

Mary is the project mama on that side, its great to watch her with the kids she so loves them and she is not still for a moment she is always looking to who needs help, what needs doing, taking every opportunity to get alongside the kids and get to know them. Not to mention spending a lot of time cracking up. Mary is heading up a team of two other staff, Benson who helps with teaching and caring for the kids and Jane who cooks the tea and mandazi.

We went to visit the project again this morning, there were a few less kids than Monday but already the need for us to be there became evident in a kid called Daisy. She is maybe eight years old and had been beaten by the aunt she has lived with since her mum died. She was so upset, her arm was swollen and had also been burnt. So when we left this morning Mary was planning to go and find the aunt with Daisy once the program had finished and try to sort something out.

Jesus was evidently in the room as we prayed with Daisy for her protection, that His perfect love would push out her fear, that He would heal her arm. I kept thinking of how throughout the bible God calls us to speak up for those who don’t have a voice, to stand up for the powerless and that’s exactly what Mary is able to do for Daisy. God is all about redeeming situations, setting them right, putting families back together as He intended them to be so please be praying for this family. God is in the slums.

Also you may have heard that the long rains have taken their time about starting and the mamas at the farm were really struggling. We went up to the farm last week and did a prayer walk around the land, I know loads of people (probably the whole of Kenya) have been praying for rain so Pastor got soaked when he went to check up on the farm yesterday!

Margaret puked on Jon's car!

The project has been closed since the holiday clubs so I’ve not had anything interesting to report for a while unless you are interested in figuring out how Microsoft Access works. Dull. But yesterday we took Benedictor, Relina and Syombua back to Daraja Academy secondary school up near Mount Kenya. It’s AMAZING! God is so flippin good, this school is ace.

The campus was built by some Americans who originally brought poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks, much like Ryan in the OC, to Kenya to sort their lives out. They made a film about it called ‘The Boys of Baraka’ which looks really interesting. Anyway, this means that the campus was built to a standard that American kids could deal with which means it is super nice.

The school we take the kids to for summer camps is a big step up from Kibera for the kids but to the UK team it feels like slumming it. It’s fairly basic, clean enough but not exactly comfortable. Daraja is beautiful, there’s a fireplace in the dining room that wouldn’t look out of place in a safari lodge, there is a lounge connected to the dorms with comfy sofas, there’s a library filled with new and interesting books.

The environment is stunning, it’s in the bush close to Mount Kenya and elephants, zebra and giraffe all roam about. I also noticed several squirrels, haven’t seen a good squirrel in a while. We walked down to the river which is filled with water from the snow on Mount Kenya, we played about a bit and Relina learnt how to skim stones. In Kibera the ‘rivers’ are just streams of sewage, you wouldn’t want to skim stones on that for fear of what the splashback could contain, plus you would have to bounce the stones around the rubbish floating in the sludge. Finally the girls are living in the environment they deserve, being told that they are amazing, getting a great education, there’s all sorts of empowerment going on. Maybe these girls might actually make it out of the slum.

God is so amazing, the couple who set up the school are not Christians, I don’t know if they have ever prayed about their school, but I wonder how many prayers are being and will be answered through them, their work and all their staff. I’m thanking God so much for them. God works in all things for the good of those who love Him.

The Daraja Academy

Daraja Academy -Welcome to Daraja from Mark Lukach on Vimeo.

Karibu tena

I arrived back in Kenya at the beginning of April and my first few days involved cutting out frogs and other things for craft activities for the easter holiday clubs. I didn’t quite factor in the fact that usually there is a team of nine of us preparing for holiday camps in the summer and that’s why it only takes an afternoon to prepare everything. It seems to take a lot longer when it is only one person, I didn’t think of that when I turned down Jo’s help. Luckily I enlisted some help from some unsuspecting friends who thought they were just coming over to watch movies.

So last week was a full on week of easter clubs, usually we spread it over two weeks and just do it in the mornings but for some reason we did it all in one week doing full days which was absolutely knackering. It was a shame for the older kids who came in the afternoons because we were all flagging by that time so they didn’t have quite as much fun as the little ones who came in the morning.

What was cool though was the helpers I had to run the club. Jo and Jon weren’t around so firstly a volunteer called Jackie, a Kenyan who comes to our church came to help which was brilliant. She has a lot of experience of working with kids in the refugee camps on the Somali border, Pastor Shadrack was sick all week so she offered to help Pastor David with some of the teaching which she did excellently. She is much more interactive with the kids than our two Pastor’s style. The kids engage a bit more that way so hopefully David got some tips from her, he was certainly very impressed.

Equally exciting was having Hussein help with the leading, Hussein has been one of the TP kids for ages and has now started secondary school so is getting a bit old to come to clubs. I put him in charge of drama as he has such a flair for it himself, he did a great job and took all sorts of initiative stepping up and asking to sort out other bits and bobs. It was really cool to see him step up, he had a bit of a hard time in the afternoons with the older kids complaining because they are mostly his friends and were convinced he was rigging the points, which he was not, he is a man of integrity and he stood his ground really well.

The project is closed now for Easter holidays until the start of May so I’m doing joyful office things when there is power and when there is not, I nap.

Black Gold

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DePOBjunXU

I'm back in the UK at the moment and trying not to get the reverse culture shock rage against greed feeling, I'm mostly succeeding but watching movies like this doesn't help! If you like coffee or people I really recommend this film about the coffee trade (use the link above to watch the trailer on youtube), I warn you it may make you want to hit some people but this guy Tadesse Meskela is a legend, I want to be him. There is an awesome scene in the film where a load of farmers in one of the co-operatives decide to spend the profits from their fairtrade coffee on building a school for their area, they don't quite have enough to pay for it so they decide they will put extra money in from their own pockets and they all cheer... Ah if only these guys ran the WTO... I've added a cheeky gadget to my blog too, it calculates how much of the money we spend on coffee goes to the farmers. Its really easy to buy fairtrade coffee and bananas and chocolate these days so just do it.

The good, the bad and the ugali

Unfortunatly last week was not all fun and games for a couple of reasons. A while ago I asked you to pray for Agnes who was sick. She seemed to get better but on sunday she was taken back to hospital and on monday night she died from a heart condition she has had since she was born. She was maybe three.

They live just outside the project so I pass by everyday, I saw her mum veronica on tuesday looking very sad so she told me what was wrong. She has a lot on her plate at the moment as her oldest daughter Petronila has just had a baby of her own, she is 14. Veronica's mum has come to stay with her for a few days to help out.

I had no idea what to do, talking to others in Kibera about it they said 'It's the way it is', not making light of the situation but used to the reality of 'high infant mortality rates'. Veronica cried a bit and we prayed together, her other daughter Angry Peanut was as cheerful as ever not really understanding whats going on, she was able to cheer up her mum trying to style my hair with a stick she found. God is in the slums with a grieving mother and her daughter who became a mum way too early.

Another hard day was Thursday when we went to the farm, the good was planning when to plant things ready for the next group of mums to move up to the farm hopefully later this year and deciding who gets to keep which cows. One of the baby cows is called the mzungu cow because it has a pink nose while all the others have black noses.

The bad was we have decided to send two of the mums back to Kibera, we have given them so many chances to start working but I guess farming just isn’t for them. It is a very hard decision to send people back to Kibera, especially their kids who love it at the farm and it’s not their fault their mums don’t want to work. However, we will continue to help them, their kids will rejoin the project in Kibera, we will help them find somewhere to live and settle back in Kibera and they will be able to join the microfinance scheme which didn’t exist before they moved up to the farm. I hope they will see this as grace continuing towards them just in a different way but they probably won’t! I've been told that one of them was fairly happy with the decision so thats good.

Once we had sorted out all these things one of the mums came to us very upset about how the other mamas were treating her. It seems there are all sorts of allegations, accusations and lies flying around. People are very messy. They really haven’t figured how to live together as a community. I don’t know how much Turning Point can do to help them with that, a lot of it is up to them. Thankfully God doesn’t mind mess, Jesus put up with all sorts of messy relationships, He hung out with Judas for three years even though He knew he would stuff up royally. His disciples seemed to argue quite a bit but in the end they became this awesome (but still pretty messy) community that rocked the world. So please pray for the mums, God can do something.

Back in the game Bwana!

Well getting mugged seemed to get all sorts of comments. Not all helpful! This week has been fairly exciting too but for better reasons although I have been picking up all sorts of card-game related injuries. This week we have mostly been playing snap. We couldn't be bothered with nice rules like whoever puts their hand down first keeps the cards, no no, when someone called snap an all out war began and you had to fight for as many cards as you could get. If you didn't get any cards, no worries, you just wait till the next war and fight your way back in the game... We broke a chair. Don't tell anyone.

Mostly I've been playing with Relina and Benedictor who start secondary school next week so they will be moving to Nanyuki. I'm going to miss them so much, they are so jokes. All this week when I arrive Benedictor just turns to me with a serious face 'Emlee? cards?'

I predict a riot

On Sunday I went with a friend to watch some Kenyan football. Nairobi City stars took on the AFC Leopards at the World Hope stadium. I can’t share with you the final score because the game never actually ended (although NCS were 1-0 up). The fence that surrounds the pitch was broken down by some over excited fans who stormed the pitch and the whole thing descended into a riot. Plastic chairs were flying through the air and the police got their sticks out.

Up until that point the crowd had been fairly rowdy but well natured although there were all sorts of drugs going on and a lot of changaa being handed round so a large proportion of the crowd were off their faces. A fair few people had tried to nick my phone from my pocket in the crowd but it was easy enough to stick my hand in my pocket to protect it and shove an elbow in the belly of whoever it was. But when it all kicked off no one cared what they were doing so maybe six guys surrounded me and went for my pockets, they were all grabbing away until they realised they had taken everything then they left me alone. So I survived my first mugging! It took a while for the gates to be opened for us all to get out and we had to make a fairly speedy exit but we escaped onto a no.46 matatu and all was well.

It was a little scary but I learnt some helpful lessons and being mugged is nowhere near as scary as it sounds so we were praising God that we could walk away laughing about the excitement and nothing too nasty happened. Parents, I don’t mean to freak you out but I’m enjoying having an exciting story to tell!

two blogs in one day

I'm really bosching them out... We have been doing art club for three weeks now, its going OK but not amazing. Timing has been a bit confusing as government schools have been closed due to teachers strike so this week there was only 2 girls there. The teacher who is meant to be helping me is great but she often needs to rush off so is often anxious to get away rather than totally helping out, this week I had to do it on my own as she couldn't stay. Sometimes I’ll have an idea which I think is brilliant and it will totally bomb because the girls don’t get it! So it’s proving to be fairly difficult but always pretty fun. Would really appreciate your prayers as we figure out what we’re doing and how to make it work because working across cultures is flippin hard.

Return of Pevs

I should give an update on Aggrey, thanks for praying for him God is really turning things round for him. He has managed to get a bit of support to start making soap and from there he has started a small printing business. I think he had a printing business in the past so he has links with printers and things. With this new income he is planning ahead to start renting his own place in Kibera to escape his nightmare aunt and hopefully then his daughter Candy can come live with him.

He has said to me a couple of times now that God has worked through our home group to encourage him and pick him up. The body of Christ is functioning as it should. He is so much more positive these days and he seems stronger and more active every time I see him which is amazing.

This week Aggrey and I went to take pictures of all the kids at a school in Kibera so he could make student ID for them. This school has given Aggrey a contract to print a few different things for them so he wanted to do a good job for them and the other photographers he had used did a rubbish job. So I became school photographer for an afternoon.

To get to the school we drove all the way through Kibera, which was a really bad idea – the car got so wrecked! But I had to follow Aggrey’s instructions as I didn’t know where we were going. In future we should drive around the slum to get there. Anyway, I didn’t recognise the school when I was there but as we were leaving we drove out of Kibera using the same road we used back in 2003 when we came with Soapbox. I was explaining this to Aggrey and said we had worked with a guy called Pastor Evans to which Aggrey said ‘yeah that’s Pastor Evans school we were just at!’. It looks totally different to when we were there, don’t know if they were the same buildings we built but I went back through the photos of all the kids to see if I recognised any of them. There was only one I recognised…Her name is Pamela, I remember because we used to call her Pamela face-like-a-skull although its not so skull like these days! If she was 11 when we were there then she would be secondary school age so this may well be her.

No sign of Pev's and his A-team shades though, that would have been special.

Jordan hair salon

She still loves you jordan!

Agnes making a thing

Motorcycle Diaries

This last week I travelled upcountry with a friend from church, Deb, who has a small house in an area near to Matunda which is a market/town thing on the road between Eldoret and Kitale in Western Kenya. There is probably a way to put google earth on a blog but I don’t know how so you’ll have to use a good old fashioned map to see where it is.

We took a coach to Eldoret and stayed a night there before taking matatu (little Nissan vans with too many people crammed in) to Matunda. From Matunda we took motorbike boda bodas to the hut. It’s all fairly basic with no electricity or taps or toilets but the hut is really nice and cosy. We stayed there for maybe three days and visited various families. Deb’s ‘job’ in Kenya is just to befriend people, get alongside them and encourage them so we went and visited several of her friends.

Agnes and Charles are the poorest of the rural poor, they don’t own land but go round their neighbours asking for work weeding or planting or harvesting depending on the season. They have a few kids Pope, Adu, Dwayne and Zach. They had us round for dinner twice and cooked awesome if very chewy meat stew and perhaps the tastiest sweet potatoes in western Kenya. It seems if ugali is made from flour fresh from the posho mill instead of from a packet it tastes way nicer. So we hung out with them and they told us loads of stories. Charles and Agnes are a bit of a comedy duo bouncing off each other and interrupting each other telling the stories. Charles in particular has massive faith and ascribes every blessing, even the simplest things, to God. My favourite story was the one about Dwayne being born in the grass outside their door because Agnes got grumpy with the midwife refusing to come so she was going to walk to her house!!

We visited various other families in different situations, I won’t write about them all but I learnt loads from the trip, I think experiencing a bit of rural life has helped me to understand Kenyan culture a little more. Everyone in Nairobi has a ‘home place’ usually in a rural part of Kenya somewhere even if they were born in Nairobi and have always lived there the ties to rural areas are still super strong – in fact that’s what my dissertation was about. There are big differences in lifestyle and even mindset between the two places but they are still linked and affected by each other so if you only know urban Kenya you don’t really know Kenya.

On the compound where Deb’s hut is there is also a secondary school but it’s the start of term so they are a bit short on staff and students so one day Nathan a guy who is involved in the school came and asked if I could do some teaching for them. I ended up teaching for two hours having not prepared anything or really having a clue what they were expecting me to do. They just left me there with a class till the end of school! So we just played loads of games as I couldn’t think of anything to teach them, except how to take their pulse because a couple of them wanted to be doctors so I thought that might come in handy one day.

From Matunda we travelled up to Kitale for the last night, from there you can see Mount Elgon which is on the border with Uganda. We met more people there and huddled in a grubby hoteli (café) drinking chai to take shelter from the rain. Then we took the looooong coach ride back to Nairobi, we knocked a guy off his bike when we passed him on the road and the coach driver didn’t even notice - a fine example of Kenyan driving.

art club

Thanks for praying for Agnes, saw her yesterday and she seemed fine, she giggled when I poked her in the belly so I think that means she’s fine!

So art club…art is making something outside yourself to show what is inside yourself, it’s a way to figure things out, think about things, question things, challenge things or tell a story. It takes creativity and courage and therefore anyone can do it. It can mean nothing or it can show all sorts of deep things that are hard to communicate, both types are good. Next Friday I’m hoping to start an art club with the older girls at Turning Point. Don’t know if anyone will come or will get what I’m on about. Im hoping it will be a fun time to make a mess with paint and glue and colours but I hope more than that we will be able to use the stuff we are doing to communicate beyond the ever present language barrier.

Whenever I have done art with the kids before they just want to copy what I have done exactly and some have been too scared even to try that in case they get it wrong. Whenever I chat with kids its hard to get beyond the usual conversation because I don’t know enough swahili and they don’t know enough English. Its still good to chat as its usually pretty funny but I don’t feel Im understanding them any better or really able to say anything of worth to them.

I would really appreciate your prayers that the art club will overcome some of this stuff, that it will encourage the kids to not be scared to share what they think or feel about things or to ask questions and not be scared to try things and make a mess. I’m praying God will help me to show them what art is meant to be about rather than teaching them to draw nicely or colour inside the lines. If it works as I plan, I’m hoping it will help me to understand the kids and the slum a bit better and that it might be a way for them to ask questions and explore stuff a bit more deeply. I’m super excited but also super scared that it will just be lame and not work at all so would really appreciate your prayers. God is good and if these ideas are from Him He will be faithful to make it happen.

High School Musical

…is rubbish don’t watch it. Anyway it’s the start of the school year and time to move some kids up from primary to secondary school. Eight kids finished primary this year, only two got the marks for TP to send them to secondary. That is Hussein who lives up at the farm - UK team should know him for his immense drama skills. The second is Benedictor who I’ve been hanging out with since before Christmas when the KCPE exams were over.

Jo and Jon have some friends called Jason and Jenny who are starting their own secondary school up near Mount Kenya this year. They want the school to be for kids like ours at Turning Point who would otherwise struggle to get a secondary education so they have come down to the project a couple of times over the last couple of weeks to meet some of the girls who could maybe go to their school.

Today I heard that Beni, Lelina and Siombua (who currently lives up at the farm) have been accepted to their school (it’s a girls school) even though they didn’t all get the required marks. This is awesome news, they will all go off to boarding school together, escape the risks of the slum and be a part of an exciting new school. I think they will have so much fun as Lelina and Benedictor are joined at the hip anyway its cool they will be together and the school is starting with around 20 or 30 kids so they will all know each other, I think they will be a great little community as they start the school together and figure out how to do things and such. Benedictor by the way is a legend. She told me that she wants to be a doctor so that she can set an example to other kids in Kibera, to make them think ‘If she can do it so can I’. She also does a great impression of this rapper called Jua Kali, she taught all the little 4 year olds one of his songs the other day while swinging them on the see-saw. Good times. I’ll miss her when she goes.

Please pray for these three as they get excited about high school and for Jason and Jenny in the final preparations for starting the school.

Also please could you pray for Agnes, she is the sister of the infamous Angry peanut and daughter of veronica who is part of the loan scheme. Bumped into Veronica yesterday and she said Agnes was in the hospital the day before, possibly has malaria.

Tony Hart is a hero

Happy new year everyone!

This week was back to work which was ace. January is the start of a new school year in Kenya so the project has all changed round with all the kids moving up. All of prep class and most of transition class has started primary school, transition class have moved up to prep so there are spaces in wadogo and wakubwa for new kids so Pastor and Eunice have been bombarded by mamas wanting to enrol their kids at TP. Transition class is close to empty for now as this is basically for street kids who tend to emerge from somewhere gradually through the year.

We had a long management meeting this week to chat about the year ahead which was mostly boring but also quite exciting at the same time. I came out having all sorts of new jobs to do. The thing I’m most excited about is starting an after school art club for the standard 6-8 girls. I’ll be starting it next week with Margaret, one of the teachers. No idea what we’ll do but it should be fun and a good way to get to know the school kids better and encourage them a bit. We want to restart the football team for the boys too so we are praying for a new coach to come along, preferably someone who can disciple the boys a bit too.

So prayer would be greatly appreciated for Margeret and I as we start the art club this coming week and for a football coach to come along somehow.

An update on Aggrey. Firstly his name is spelt Aggrey not Agri. I won’t lie to you, I was wrong. He has started making and selling soap for washing floors etc. He came to church all excited last Sunday that he had a great week getting out of the house and all his stock was sold, he seemed to have loads more energy and be really upbeat which was really ace to see. His customers have said they prefer green soap to blue so he’s going to make the next batch green. He said he will bring a sample for me this Sunday so I’m looking forward to cleaning my floor.