John Muiru

Yesterday I spent the morning in the CARE for AIDS center at Imani Baptist church, just down a dirt road from the house where I am living, and I would love to share with you the story of a man I met there.

John Muiru Kamiri is married, with six children, and he is HIV positive. He has battled through several opportunistic infections, and just last year he fell prey to an infection of the nervous system that rendered his legs entirely useless. Unable to walk, he couldn't farm the small plot of land that provided financial support for his family, and without any money, he couldn't purchase the medication that a doctor prescribed for him. John was a nominal member of a Catholic Church but hadn't been involved in any kind of an active faith for a long time. Despite this, he was told of a ministry in Imani Baptist Church, close to where he lived, that offered help to HIV/AIDS-infected people, and he got in touch with Rosemary and Humphrey, the two workers at the Imani CARE for AIDS center.
Rosemary tells me that when they first met John he couldn't walk, he was very socially withdrawn, and the personal hygeine in his home left much to be desired. She helped John meet with another doctor, and then used the resources of CFA to get him a supply of medication. In just a few weeks, John's legs regained feeling and he was able to walk to the CFA center each week, meeting with Rosemary and Humphrey and working through his situation.

Now, six months later, John greets me with a smile and an excited handshake. According to Rosemary, he was so happy to regain his ability to walk that he has been one of the most enthusiastic clients at the center, always arriving early for counseling and seminars. Through one of these seminars, he learned better farming techniques that, combined with his newfound gratitude for the ability to work, have allowed him to boost his crops, sell them in the market, and save enough money to first buy a goat, and then to move his family to a better home where they can raise livestock. As the CFA workers have visited his home over the past 6 months, they have noticed a marked improvement in the living conditions and hygeine, as well as a "cheerfullnes" that is clearly evident. Rosemary says that he has come from being "so down, giving up on life," to a place of hope and excitement for the future.

In talking to Humphrey, the Spiritual Counselor at Imani, I hear even more good news from John's life. Just two weeks ago, John dedicated his life to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He is now in the process of finding a church home for himself and his family where they can attend each week and become part of a community.

These are the stories that make me so excited to be here...praise God for John and the life that he can now lead!

Acts 3:6-10 "Then Peter said, 'Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.' Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him."

So how is the food?

A lot of people have been asking me questions about the food in Kenya, so I'll start to answer them by telling a story. I've come to find out that Duncan's eating strategy is generally to invite himself to a friend's house, or simply show up there, around dinner time. Usually, this results in an invitation to stay for dinner...perfect! I've been tagging along with this, but on Saturday we got an actual invitation to go to dinner at Cornel's house.

Cornel just returned to Kenya with Duncan from a 3-week trip to the United States, and every time I saw him in the states he went on and on about how he missed traditional Kenyan food. For the first 17 years of his life, he ate the exact same meal twice a day, with the exception of a celebratory dinner on Christmas day. I showed up to his home on Saturday expecting to be served ugali and fish, and that's exactly what happened! I'll start at the beginning, though, so you can get an idea of what dinner at a Kenyan home is like. Without fail, you enter a house to a TV tuned to a Kenyan station, usually one showing Kenyan music videos or some kind of news program, usually in Swahili. In most cases, the husband and kids will welcome you into the home and the wife will call out a "Karibu!" from the kitchen, where she is generally at work cooking with at least one other woman, a neighbor or relative. After between 30 minutes to an hour of socializing while the wife cooks, food is brought into the main room in plates and bowls of various sizes. The wife comes around with a pitcher of water, a basin, and a towel, so that everyone can wash their hands (otherwise known as eating utensils). At Cornel's house, the staple of meals is ugali, a thick, very dense substance made from something like corn meal mixed extensively with water. It is the consistency of really thick, moist cornbread, and is served in a giant mound on a plate. Each person cuts off a section of ugali, rolls it into a ball with their hand, and eats it along with anything else that is available. Cornel's wife Irene cooked fish for us as well, so she brought out a bowl with two whole fish in it, cut into chunks and immersed in a kind of soup or broth. There were also bowls of typical Kenyan "greens" (something like spinach), stew with bits of beef in it, and a mixture of peas and carrots. This is a typical assortment of food, except that some people will serve rice instead of ugali. If there is no rice involved, you are expected to fill your bowl with a combination of all these things and eat it with your hands, sopping up the stew with ugali. It ends up being quite messy but also very satisfying! After dinner you are always served "chai," Kenyan tea made with equal parts milk and water, boiled together with a minimal amount of loose tea. Kenyans put 2 or 3 spoonfulls of sugar in each cup, and they drink chai every morning and at any kind of business meeting, so I have quickly developed a taste for it!

Apart from eating dinner at other people's houses, I will sometimes have lunch at the house, which usually consists of a PB&J or some rice and stew that Jane, a lady who works at the house, might make. On other days, I will go into Limuru with Duncan or one of the other guys and get some combination of stew, vegetables, potatoes, chapati (like tortillas), and chai. Most times I will also get a samosa or two, as they are definitely my favorite Kenyan food so far. A lunch like this will usually cost the equivalent of between 1 and 2 dollars. For breakfast, Duncan and I usually cook some scrambled eggs and eat them with toast and, of course, chai.

Luckily, I've found more food variety than I was initially expecting. In Nairobi there are all kinds of restaurants. Last friday I drove in with some friends to eat at a place called Diamond Plaza, where about 25 Indian restaurants make up a kind of food court. The moment you walk in, you are mobbed by crowds of waiters pushing menus in your face and screaming, but the food is amazing and it's all part of the experience! There is also a large facility close by called Brackenhurst. It's the headquarters of the International Mission Board, a Baptist organization, and it has a small cafe that serves good coffee and oddly excellent Mexican food!

In short, the food has been nothing to complain about. I have plenty to eat, and I've yet to find anything I simply can't take...praise God for that!

A Celebration!

Over the past few days, I have grown increasingly familiar with ins and outs of exactly what CARE for AIDS is doing on the ground in Kenya. All of the models, visions, and processes that seem so simple from the comfort of America become so much more complex when you add in the reality of Africa and the individuality of every person involved, from the workers to the clients to the church members. During this learning process, though, I have heard many amazing stories, and I want to share with you about a celebration that CARE for AIDS held earlier this month.

Last summer, CARE for AIDS began working with Koinonia Baptist Church to begin operating a CFA center with their church for their community, Ruaka. Over the course of a few months, our CFA staff worked with the church pastors to find and train a Spiritual Counselor and a Community Health Worker to serve full time in the center, and a whole team of staff members and volunteers began reaching out to the community to find people who would benefit from from the CFA services. It's not an easy process, as one's HIV status is extremely private in this society. It is a paradox that this culture will embrace and shake hands with a man who is sick with the flu, which is easily communicable by touch, but will not even think about associating with a man who has HIV/AIDS. Over time, a group of clients were found who were willing to be honest with the church staff about their status and begin receiving the CARE for AIDS services.

After nine months of coming to the center each week, receiving CFA staff members for home visits, attending seminars, and being slowly transformed from a resignation to death into a life of hope, the 75 clients were deemed ready to "graduate" from the center a few weeks ago. All of the CFA staff joined with them on a Saturday for a send-off celebration, where each client was given some food, a Bible, and the gift of enrollment in the National Hospital Insurance Fund for three months, at which point they will begin paying for their own insurance coverage. The clients were able to stand up and share about their lives to everyone present, and they gave testimonies of how how CARE for AIDS helped them to understand their HIV status and talk about it with other people. They told of how they feel empowered to make money to support themselves and their familes and how they have been given a reason to go to church and become a part of the community there.

Perhaps even more exciting than what these people said, though, is what they have done. I got to sit down with Pastor Bernard, the head pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church, and hear his thoughts on the CFA program partnering with his church. He told me how incredibly exciting it was for the church to have about 25 of the CFA clients regularly attending their service...people who were not involved in any church before. He told me that on the Sunday after the send-off, 8 of our clients stood in front of the church and publicly revealed their HIV status. This is incredibly significant, as the Kenyan stigma toward AIDS is overwhelming, and this was their way of challenging the church further to accept HIV positive people as brothers and sisters in Christ, a step they would never have considered a year ago. Pastor Bernard told me that he sees, "health improvement, social and spiritual growth" in all of the CFA clients. He also told me how exciting it was that the now-graduated clients are becoming agents of change in the community themselves. Not only have they taken steps like publicly expressing their status, but they are the ones who have reached out to other needy people in the community and brought them to register for the next round of clients.

This is just an example of why I am here and why I believe in this ministry. Pastor Bernard told me that "CARE for AIDS has definitely helped us move forward in our vision as a church," the vision of transforming a community in the name of the Lord. I am continually thankful for the chance to be a part of this and to hopefully see this kind of impact expand to communities all over Kenya!

Nakuru

On Monday I got the opportunity to travel to Nakuru, where Duncan's family lives. Duncan, Christine (a girl from New Zealand working in Nairobi), Caleb (a friend from Virginia Tech who interned for CARE for AIDS this summer), his friend Jake, and I set off about noon in Duncan's car heading North. We drove along the edge of the Great Rift Valley, looking out at a 300 foot drop into a perfectly flat plain that stretches throughout East Africa. Soon we passed through a flat, savannah-like landscape, where we encountered herds of zebras along the sides of the road. We stopped for some delicious, fresh samosas (little fried triangles filled with ground beef and onions) and apples at a roadside stand. A few minutes later we started seeing huge baboons sitting on the side of the road -- we pulled over and they walked right up to the window of the car, taking apple cores and milk cartons right out of our hands!

After about 2 hours we turned off of the main road onto a dirt trail, which we followed for another 45 minutes. We had entered another mountainous region, and I was amazed at the way our little sedan picked its way down incredibly steep, rutted trails that I would think twice about taking a truck down! The landscape was incredible -- steep, green hillsides covered in trees and planted fields, and a flat valley floor below us crisscrossed with different crops planted in neat rows. We pulled up to Duncan's home and were greeted enthusiastically by his mother and father, several uncles and cousins, and any neighbors who learned he was coming. They brought us into the family's wooden home, with its dirt floors, where they circled around us and sang a Swahili song of thanksgiving for our coming. Then they each prayed to thank God for bringing all of us there safely, and told us that we were welcome anytime! Duncan's father is the only one for miles around that speaks English, and he really enjoyed telling us all about their lives and Duncan's childhood. Duncan's mother brought out a meal she had prepared for us -- an entire cooked chicken in a pot, potatoes and beans, tortilla-like chapati, and the ubiquitous chai tea. After eating, Duncan's dad took us proudly around their property, showing us the wood and mud kitchen, the acre of corn and coffee plants, the foundations of the stone house Duncan is helping to build, the neatly labeled outhouses, and the tiny, one-room wooden church that he preaches in every sunday for the community. The whole time, children from around the area ran and played with a soccer ball made from plastic bags, and we listened to the sound of goats and chickens in their pens.


Seeing this part of Kenya was such an eye-opening experience. Like most rural areas in third-world or developing countries, it is striking how happy people are with so little. All of these people's lives depend on the rains and their crops, but their only comment on the current drought is that the Lord will provide a way. The happiness on their faces as they talk about the tiny homes they have built, or the decorations they have made for their church, makes so much of the frustration and unhappiness I see in more "developed" places seem silly. There is so much beauty in the simple, uncomplicated existence that these people have, shaded in flowering trees and looking out on a view that some people would pay millions for.

One part of this experience that was new for me was the relational connection that I now have with these people. I have seen this kind of existence in Central America and Asia, but never when I really knew more about the individuals than what I could see. This time, I have become friends with Duncan and learned many things about his life and his background. I knew about his experience at seminary, the life he now leads with CARE for AIDS, where he drives a car every day, uses a computer, and travels to America. I didn't know the story of his childhood -- how we would run 10 miles every morning to school for years, how his family had no money to spend on anything but food and school. I heard stories of when Duncan would wake up at 4am, ride a bike uphill for 3 hours to purchase fresh vegetables, carry them downhill for 25 miles to sell them at a profit in the valley, and then bike back uphill to return to his house at 9pm. Doing this work for 4 years gave him the money he needed to travel to Nairobi and start attending seminary. Even there, he had no money to pay for more than the first semester, but he trusted God's provision, and his incredible personality and love brought him in touch with missionaries who paid for his schooling and set him on the path of ministry that he continues today. It seems like every day I am finding out more and more sacrifices and stories of faith that Duncan, along with all of the other Kenyans I have been around, have experienced to bring them to the life they thank God for today. I wish all of their stories could be told in full, and I am so thankful for the opportunity to see them firsthand!

A handpainted message over the front door of a house outside Nakuru. The walls are wood and mud covered with cow dung, the floor is dirt, the rains are not good, and the people are thankful...praise God!

Setting the stage...

Some of the emotions have died down since my last post, so I wanted to try and describe a little bit of the lifestyle that I have found myself enjoying. First, and probably most importantly, are the people. Two people that I will probably mention a lot are Duncan and Cornel. Duncan Kimani is 29 years old and grew up in Nakuru, Kenya, just a few hours to the north. His story is absolutely unbelievable, but in just a few words, God has taken him from a rural family, through school and seminary, and through a series of ministry positions to become one of the Directors for CARE for AIDS. Duncan lives in the CARE for AIDS house where I am now living, and he has a girlfriend who is currently in Ethiopia. Cornel Onyango is from Kisumu, Kenya, is 32 years old, and has been great friends with Duncan since they met in 2001. Cornel is our other Director here in Kenya, he is married to a beautiful woman named Irene, and they have two young sons. Cornel's story is remarkably similar to Duncan's, and it is really cool to see how God brought together two people who shared the same passion for ministry and the same idea for reaching out to people living with HIV.

Two other men make up the CFA team in Kenya. First is Steve, who handles our finances and much of the resource distribution. The other is Kevin, who heads up the empowerment side of our work. The five of us oversee everything happening in all of the CFA centers, each of which is staffed by an additional two employees. Almost every day we all end up in the office to start the day and then go out to whatever we are working on.

The next important thing to understand is where I am. Currently, I am living in a house that CFA rents in the town of Limuru. The house is large by Kenyan standards, with two bunk rooms that can sleep about 6 people each when short-term teams are here. We have running water and a wall with a security guard, as well as an ever-changing assortment of animals (turkeys, chickens, rabbits, dogs) in the yard. There is hot water in the showers, except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when we have no electricy due to government rationing. Most of our cooking is done on a propane-fueled stove in the kitchen, and we have a large water filter for drinking water. There is a wonderful woman named Jane who comes to the house every day to clean, do laundry, and keep everything in order. Upstairs in the house is the CARE for AIDS office. It is here that I can use the internet on my computer (albeit at EDGE network speeds). Technically, this is a corner office, and its got two windows, so I'm really living the dream right now as I type on my computer, looking out on tea fields, down the paved road with its matatus and motorbikes, down the dirt road with a small herd of sheep and children playing, and across a green valley spotted with acacia trees.

Our house is located on Limuru road about 30 kilometers from Nairobi. It is a really interesting climate -- we are at 1 degree latitude (so almost exactly on the equator), but Limuru sits at at altitude of almost 7500 feet, so it gets pretty cold at certain times in the year. August is about the coldest, and it has been in the 40's at night. The house doesn't have heat or a/c, so we really have to bundle up at night. The highs and lows really only vary by about 10 degrees throughout the year, so the hottest it will get will be about 80 degrees (and in the 50's or 60's at night). We are about 1 km from the main strip in Limuru, a crowded mile or so of donkey carts, matatus, and about every other form of transportation you can think of. Most of the people there walk, so the streets are crowded with pedestrians and vendors selling their crops for the day. It is rare to see another white person ("mzungo") once you get outside of Nairobi in this area. I could go on and on about the way of life in small-town Kenya, but that will wait for another post.

Exciting things like the food I'm eating and the way I've been getting around will also have to wait, because today is a Tuesday and my laptop battery is amost dead...tomorrow morning starting at 9am I'll be able to charge it and take a hot shower!

I hope all of this helps you to understand the life I am living. It is unbelievably different than the way we all live in America, but I am so thankful for each and every part of it!

A whole new ball game...

After a long day (or 2) of flying, I'm happy to report that I found my way safely to Limuru, Kenya on Friday night! Being met at a foreign airport by a group of friendly faces was an incredible feeling, and driving out through Nairobi to Limuru finally made this journey feel like a reality -- this was becoming home, and I almost couldn't contain my exhaustion/excitement!

My first day in Africa, on Saturday, was a startling reintroduction to how shockingly different and utterly joyful this place can be. Shockingly different, in that one of the first things we saw in Limuru was a car get stuck on the railroad tracks and then get t-boned by an oncoming train…the kind of things that you see in movies but would never think happens in the real world. Luckily, the driver was ok and fled the scene. Also remarkably different is the flexibility that this life requires. In an effort to relax on our first day back, Duncan and I decided to drive with some friends out to Hell’s Gate National Park and do some rock climbing. First this required running all kinds of random errands, followed by a two hour drive, then on arriving at Hell’s Gate we discovered that the prices of entry have changed. Not wanting to pay the fee, we all decided to drive to nearby Lake Naivashu, haggle for a cheap boat ride, and go visit some hippos and pelicans down the shoreline. On the way back we spent an hour in a traffic jam, and then another hour at a mechanic’s shop when the car started smoking, but “hakuna matata,” it was an amazing day in the end!

I know that flexibility, and the patience that it requires, is something that I am definitely going to need God’s help to adapt to. My natural desire is to have some sort of plan or schedule, but it simply doesn’t work in this culture. I’m finding that releasing these kinds of needs will probably make this time much more enjoyable, but I know it won’t be as easy as that sounds, and I would love prayer for the right kind of outlook on each day and what it holds.

The other realization that yesterday held was how utterly joyful this place can be. This joy can be found in so many places – the genuine smiles on the faces of people when they meet you or see you after a long time, the happiness in the children’s eyes as they run and play around you--the mysterious “mizungo,” or even an orange fanta with real cane sugar in it. Part of this kind of joy is simplicity…a simplicity of purpose and love that we miss so often in the craziness of American life. Really taking the time to enjoy and relish a blessing from God, in any of these forms, is so satisfying. There were two moments yesterday that really captured this for me. First, I found myself standing on our porch around 7am, sipping a cup of chai (milk tea) and looking out at the dense fog covering the landscape. It was cool, probably around 50 degrees, and it seemed like the feeling of the cold air and the blanket of fog were hiding the promise of the beautiful day that was to come. This echoed the feeling of my own heart…knowing that so much was in store but unable to see it at the moment, a knowledge that gave a wonderful peace and a beautiful, quiet excitement. The other moment was not so quiet and still, but rather overwhelmingly loud, as I found myself in the backseat of a car with two Kenyans, two other Americans, and a friend from New Zealand, driving through the Great Rift Valley, every window down in the driving rain, singing “The Circle of Life” as loud as we possibly could! These are the times that create an almost uncontainable happiness in me, a gratitude and praise for the beauty of our Lord’s plan that I can’t express but I absolutely love.

As time goes on I know the novelty of life here will fade, but I pray that the joy and beauty never does. I am still waiting to see what all this time will hold, but I am even more confident now that God has amazing things in store, and I can’t wait to experience each one of them!