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.
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Monday, 29 June 2009
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.
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.
Monday, 15 June 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
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!
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!
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, 26 April 2009
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 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.
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