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.