Faith Healers

Earlier this week I made a trip out to Kisumu, in Western Kenya, to check on the progress of the first CARE for AIDS center in this area. Over the course of two days of meeting with staff and observing the center in action, I came to a new understanding of the unique challenges facing people living with HIV/AIDS in this area. One of the biggest and most heart-breaking problems is the way in which the "church" has contributed to the massive devastation caused by HIV.

Several decades ago, missionary movements from most major denominations came to Kenya in force and helped to establish hundreds of churches in even the most remote areas. Unfortunately, many missionaries picked a pastor, spent a short amount of time training him, financed the construction of a building, and then packed up to leave. Without a strong foundation or a full understanding of the gospel, many of these pastors slowly mixed the truth of the Bible with the cultural practices, beliefs, and superstitions that have characterized East African religion for centuries, resulting in all sorts of sects and "churches" with bizarre and un-Biblical practices.

Geofrey, the regional coordinator for CFA in Kisumu, told me the story of a client named Grace who had a terrible and unfortunate experience with this type of church. Grace found out last year that she was HIV-positive, and doctors prescribed a regimen of ARV drugs for her to take daily. These drugs are very effective in combating the effects of HIV on the immune system, but they must be taken on a strict schedule and can have difficult side effects. After taking ARV's for a few months, Grace heard of a "faith healer" at a local church who supposedly could cure HIV/AIDS. Not knowing any better, Grace attended a service at the church, where people made a great show of "praying" for her healing and "casting out" the sickness within her. After collecting the fee for the service, the leader of the church told Grace that in order to demonstrate true faith, she should burn all of her medication and believe that she was healed. She did this, but she definitely wasn't healed. A month or so later, Grace's condition started to deteriorate again rapidly, and she soon found herself in a much worse condition than she had been in at any point before. Because she stopped taking her medication against the doctor's orders, thus "defaulting" on her treatment plan, the medication would no longer be effective and the hospital refused to take her back.

It was at this point that Lazarus and Elizabeth, the CFA center workers, found Grace. They were able to go with her to the hospital and explain her situation, promising that they would maintain close supervision of her treatment if the doctor would give her another chance with an alternative drug. Thankfully, she is now back on an effective treatment regimen and is committed to sticking with it. Through meeting with Elizabeth, Grace has been educated on the reality of HIV/AIDS and now understands how the infection affects her body and how she can live positively with it. Her health has improved significantly in the past few months of proper treatment, and she is moving in the right direction towards self-sufficiency.

Few things make me more angry or heartbroken than the way in which desperate people are being taken advantage of and lied to, all in the name of Christianity. It is a sad reality that the people who are most affected by HIV/AIDS don't have the education or the understanding to recognize these schemes, but stories like these make me even more thankful for the work that CARE for AIDS is doing. Not only are we able to educate individuals on the RIGHT way to live with HIV/AIDS, we are getting the opportunity to work with church leaders and congregations, helping to produce churches that can welcome HIV-positive Kenyans with the REAL love of Christ and with advice that really does help. I am so thankful that God has blessed CFA with the opportunity to start working in Kisumu, where problems and misunderstanding like this are rampant, and I pray that He will bless us with the resources to increase our scope to every part of the country as time goes on!

A Wedding Guide

Humphrey Muriuki, the spiritual counselor at the Imani Baptist CFA center, got married on Saturday, and I was given the distinct privilege of being a groomsman in his wedding. Following is a step-by-step guide for what to expect, should you ever be given the same opportunity...

2 weeks prior to the big day: Go to a tailor in Limuru to get fitted for your suit and pick up your shirt and tie. Yep, we all got matching custom-made suits for the wedding! I was actually pleasantly surprised with how well the suit fit, especially for the total cost of about $40. As an added bonus, our ties were black and gold - Go Dores!

Saturday, 8 am - Meet at the wedding site for convoy-preparation. Assuming that you have a functioning car, you will probably be called on to assist with transportation for the festivities. The "better" the car is, the more important people you will get to transport (mine was the 2nd best - more on that soon). About 10 drivers met in the morning to have an assortment of bright green ribbons and bows attached to our cars, and then we all headed out in a convoy towards the home where the bride was staying.

9:30 am - Arrive at the temporary residence of the bride and her "delegation." The bride will have been preparing and getting dressed somewhere with 20 or 30 friends and family members, and it's the responsibility of the groom's "delegation" to earn the right to take her away (after previously paying a dowry of several cows and goats, of course). Our convoy brought along about 20 women who are part of Humphrey's family, and they converged on the gate of the house, singing and dancing for about 15 minutes before the bride's delegation decided the show was good enough to open the door. Then they sang and danced some more, until finally the bride came out and got into the best car. As the owner of the 2nd best car, I was given the privilege of driving flower girls and bridesmaids - in the end I pulled out with 3 bridesmaids (about 16 years old) and 10 flower girls (about 4-6 years old), all with big satin dresses, veils, gloves, and flowers. Remember, my car seats 7, so this was a record...

11:00 am - Return to the wedding venue - with a flourish of horns, dancing, and yelling - and start the ceremony. After a short delay due to a failed electrical connection, the groomsman, bridesmaids, flower girls (and little boys in suits), the bride's family, and the bride herself all lined up to march into the ceremony. The wedding was held in a big field with several tents, so we marched around the grass in step and ended up making a kind of "spirit tunnel" for the bride to pass through. Then we looked on as Humphrey and Frieda took their vows, exchanged rings, and talked with the pastor.

12:30 pm - Pictures at the wedding venue, with every conceivable combination of guests that have the slightest relation to the happy couple. Also, instead of marching back out of the ceremony, make sure you dance out in step with the rest of the wedding party. If you aren't too used to Kenyan dance-marching (like some people around here), just follow Duncan and try not to look like too much of an American. Remember that of the 300 people in attendance, you are the sole representative of the good old USA...

1:00 pm - Load up the cars again and go to a "scenic" spot for official pictures. After rounding up all 13 of my female passengers, we headed a short way down the road to Brackenhurst for a whole new round of pictures. This included lots of pictures with all of the groomsmen and the wedding party, and it also included very awkward, posed solo shots of me with each one of the bridesmaids, who lined up for pictures with the only mzungu around...I was quite the spectacle to a bunch of teenage girls!

2:00 pm - Return to the wedding venue for lunch and "presentations." We got back to the field, where all of the guests had already finished eating lunch. This put them in a great mood, so we spent the first 20 minutes or so all dancing around in a circle - think "Cotton-eyed Joe" to Kikuyu music. Then all of the wedding party took our seats of honor under the tent and were served a heaping bowl of rice, beans, stew, and chapati. While we ate, guests starting making presentations in honor of Humphrey and Frieda - some sang songs, gave speeches, or performed choreographed dances, while others carried up gifts like couches and giant cabinets (still not sure why they carried couches all the way out into the field, and I guess the couple doesn't have much say in their interior decorating).

5:00ish pm - Call it a day. I snuck out early at about 4:30, but the speeches and presentations were still going strong!

In the end, it was a long, tiring day, but I was really glad that I got to do it. Seeing all of the traditions that Kenyans include in their weddings, especially the weight that they place on families, was really interesting. It was also fun to share in the joy and celebration with so many of my Kenyan friends - almost all of the CFA staff from the Limuru region were present, and they really got a kick out of seeing me dressed up with all of the groomsman! This will definitely go down as one of those things that few foreigners will ever get to experience, and for that I am definitely thankful. Please join me in praying for Humphrey and Frieda as they start their married life - praise God for bringing them together and pray for many years of happiness and joy!

Microfinance at Work

"Microfinance" is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. Believers present it as the magic bullet to end worldwide poverty, and skeptics swear it is simply a diabolical scheme to take the little money that poor people have. Most people, regardless of which camp they sit in, don't fully understand it - how does it work for an individual, how can it be effective on a large scale, what actually counts as microfinance, and (my biggest question) should the word have a dash in the middle or not? Having come face to face with microfinance in Kenya over the past year, I'd like to share a short story of how it's working (yes, it's working!) with a group of CARE for AIDS clients...

Margaret and Joseph, the CFA workers in the Banana Hill center, learned a few months ago about an organization known as DOREP. DOREP is a non-profit, partially government-funded organization that originally sought to help empower people living in the arid Northeast province of Kenya - hence the name, which stands for "Desert Oasis Resident Empowerment Program." It is different from many "pure" microfinance organizations in that it is not a bank, it is not fully self-sustaining on income from loans, and it relies on government assistance for funding [caveat: because of this, and other technical mistakes I might make, some of my more economically-minded friends might need to offer some corrections on this post...I'm definitely not an economist].

A DOREP representative held a seminar for the 70-some clients at the center several months ago, explaining to them the program and inviting them to register in a group. To be eligible for the microfinance services, DOREP requires a group of at least 15 committed individuals to register together, and 35 of our clients decided to give it a try. With the help and advice of the center workers, each client filled out a registration form and brought a registration fee of about $2.00, which officially enrolled them in the program and formed the foundation for an individual savings account in each clients name. From that point, the entire group of 35 was required to meet with a DOREP representative, named Kimani, twice a month. At each one of these meetings, the group members bring a small amount of cash to add to their personal savings account.

BUT, the DOREP representative doesn't take this money with him when he leaves. Instead, the total amount that is brought to the meeting is made available to group members in the form of "soft loans." For example, in the early meetings, the group might bring a total of about $100 to put in their individual savings accounts. That cash is divided into portions of about $5-10, and these portions are given to group members with a proposal for how they can use the money to boost their income during a one-month period - this could be by buying a sack of potatoes to sell at the market, which are cheaper in bulk, for example. The recipients of the soft loans are required to pay back the amount of the loan, plus 10%, one month after receiving it. The other members of the group help to hold the recipient responsible, because if the recipient doesn't repay the loan, there is less money available for other soft loans in the future. So far our group has had ZERO soft loan defaults, and in the last group meeting (about 3 months into the process), the group of 35 members brought a total of about $300 to save in their respective accounts, allowing 18 of the members to receive "soft loans" of up to $20.

The other benefit of saving with DOREP is eventual access to "hard loans" for greater amounts. Once a member has personally saved about $25, they are eligible to receive a loan for 3 times the amount they have saved. This loan is different from the "soft loans" because the money does not come out of the pooled savings of the group, and it is given for a longer term. The recipients of the hard loans have about a year to pay back the loan at a 1% interest rate. A unique opportunity offered by DOREP, though, is for members to take loans in non-cash forms. For example, a member who is eligible for a loan of $100 might choose to take a dairy goat instead of cash and repay the loans with profits from selling milk. If a member chooses to take this kind of agricultural project loan, DOREP trainers will teach them the best ways to manage their project (goats, chickens, rabbits, cows, greenhouses, fish-ponds, etc.) free of charge, and they will also provide a partial or full market for the products that result (milk, eggs, fish, vegetables).

Some of the members in the CFA group at Banana have now saved enough for hard loans. Several of them are planning to take the loans in cash - they have a small business and need capital to help it grow, increase their inventories, or make investments to increase productivity. Others are planning to pursue project loans, primarily for rabbit- and poultry-keeping. It's extremely exciting to see the passion and commitment that our clients have demonstrated towards a program like this. They have been incredibly consistent and faithful in saving and repaying loans, and they all speak highly of the program - even to the point of sharing with clients from other centers about its benefits. As an added benefit for CARE for AIDS, the bi-monthly meetings provide a great chance for ongoing fellowship and community-building among people who have missed out on this type of encouragement for so long.

So, despite all of the general confusion and conflicting opinions, I've been very impressed with microfinance and have enjoyed seeing the real impact that it is having on our clients. I don't know if it really is the tool for banishing poverty globally, but I can speak to it's success in my small, but very needy, corner of Kenya!