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.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
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?'
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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!
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!
Saturday, 7 February 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 6 February 2009
Sunday, 1 February 2009
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.
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.
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