Dogwood Trip Part 2

To pick up where my last post left off, the Dogwood team spent two more days around Limuru working with Imani Baptist last week. On Thursday, we held a seminar at the church for all of the church members and clients - about 60 people overall. Members of the team first taught about personal finances and good business practices, especially focusing on the importance of saving and tithing. It was a great message for the people to hear - the concept of saving is extremely foreign to most Kenyans in this area who live meal-to-meal and have never thought about putting aside what little extra money that they might have. After the talk, people from the audience asked a lot of insightful and detailed questions, which was a great reassurance that they had listened and really learned something! After sharing lunch, other members of the team talked about spiritual growth and a variety of spiritual disciplines that are necessary to grow as Christians, and we all spent some time worshiping together. It was clear that the team from Dogwood had put a lot of time and effort into preparing these seminars, and I think it really paid off for all of the people who attended!

The next day we met with all of the clients at Imani to fellowship together with them for the morning. After singing some lively Kenyan songs and dancing together, we got to hear a bunch of the clients give their testimonies and share how the CARE for AIDS center has affected their lives over the past couple of years. Because Dogwood Church fully supports this CFA center, it was awesome for the team members to see where their financial support is going and hear directly from the clients how much they appreciate the center. The team brought a collection of clothes and supplies, so we distributed those to the clients while serving them Kenyan tea and bread. For lunch we all walked over to Cornel's house, where his wife Irene served us a fantastic Kenyan meal of rice, stew, beans, chapati, and potatoes. It was clear that she had worked hard on the meal, and the whole family was so excited to have a whole group of "wazungo" eating and laughing together with them.

This marked the end of the trip itinerary that I was somewhat responsible for, so I was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief and a big prayer of thanksgiving for an amazing week and - I hope - a truly meaningful experience for the mission team. Friday evening we all drove into Nairobi and visited the Maasai market - a big collection of pushy vendors selling carved animals, beaded jewelry, spears, African paintings, and all kinds of other souvenirs. It's always entertaining to watch people bargain and haggle to get the absolute best prices! For dinner we got to go to what is possibly my favorite restaurant in the world - Carnivore. Its an amazing restaurant...you sit in a covered outdoor terrace while waiters in crazy African outfits bring around giant swords holding pieces of chicken, pork, turkey, beef, lamb, and ostrich - truly a feast for anyone who likes meat!

All of the CFA vision trips go on a safari after their week in Limuru, and I decided to join this team for the trip out to the Maasai Mara, one of the most gorgeous and animal-filled places in the world! We left early Saturday morning in a van for the 4 hour drive southwest through the Great Rift Valley, arriving at the Fig Tree Camp around lunchtime. We relaxed for a little bit in our tents - point of clarification: "tent" here is not what you're thinking, its basically a really nice hotel room, with a balcony overlooking the savannah, a permanent bathroom, big beds, and hot water - and then went out on our first game drive. While driving through the park, the top of the van pops upward about 3 feet, so we could all stand inside the van and look out all the way around. Over the next two days, we got to go on four game drives through the savannah and even out to the infamous Mara River. We saw countless antelopes, gazelles, warthogs, zebras, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, and hippo. Some of the highlights of this trip were a 5-meter long crocodile, two black rhinos (which are extremely rare in the Mara), a group of 3 cheetahs, and a leopard perched in a tree. For me, though, the best parts of the Maasai Mara are the lions. I know its a somewhat small thing, but God really answered my prayers for this trip - after not seeing any big male lions on my safari in March, I had been praying for weeks that God would give us some awesome lion encounters, and over the weekend we saw a total of 7 full-grown male lions...amazing! They are truly magnificent creatures, and when you find yourself staring one in the eyes from less than ten feet away while it jumps to its feet, its hard not to have your breath taken away! Places like the Maasai Mara are such a testament for me to the awesomeness and power of the Creator - seeing such beautiful animals, vast golden grasslands, glorious sunrises, and generally breathtaking sights points my heart and my mind to the glory and beauty of God like few other things. Praising Him for the beauty of nature has always been a strong component of worship for me, and few places inspire that praise like the Mara! It's almost impossible to capture this kind of place in a picture, but I'll put some shots from the whole week on my facebook page if you would like to check it out.

Thank you all so much for your prayers over the past few weeks! It has been busy and hectic, but also extremely exciting and rewarding. Now that all of the Americans are on a flight home, it's time for things to settle down here, but we have been given a vision for the next few months with CARE for AIDS and there is a lot of work to be done to make that a reality!

Dogwood Church Mission Team

It seemed like the last vision trip had barely left the airport when I found myself picking up a new group of American visitors in Nairobi on Monday. This team is from Dogwood Church in Atlanta, which supports our first CARE for AIDS center at Imani Baptist Church in Karanjee, so the focus of their trip was on building the partnership between the churches and serving both the church and the CFA clients. In addition to Justin, the team consists of Dogwood's Missions Pastor John, a man named Brian, and a couple named Porfirio and Andy - seeing Kenyan's try to understand the name Porfirio is pretty entertaining!

The team's first day here was spent at Imani painting the outside of the church and finishing parts of the interior. The congregation has grown so much in the past year that the church extended its building by about 15 feet, leaving it painted multiple colors and without walls on the inside. According to Pastor Linus, it would have taken the church up to three years to save up the money to complete the renovations, so they were all extremely grateful that the team from Dogwood would furnish building supplies and a lot of cheerful manual labor. We started in the morning by cleaning the outside of the church - we did this the Kenyan way, which is essentially beating the corrugated metal sheeting with a rag to throw off the dirt. Then we mixed paint with turpentine and part of the team started turning the outside of the church into a bright forest green. We rounded up a couple of homemade wooden ladders, and Justin and I climbed up the rickety contraptions to get the upper part of the walls. At the same time, a few members of the church climbed up onto the roof and started painting it red - we joked that this was now the official church of Christmas! It was a long, sunny day outside painting, but by the end of the afternoon the whole outside of the church had a whole new look. We were all dirty, sweaty, and looking quite Christmas-y ourselves with green and red paint all over the place, but it was great to see how excited the church members and pastors were when they saw the new, finished look of their church!

On Wednesday we spent the morning at the CFA center seeing how our Community Health Workers and Spiritual Counselors do their jobs, and then we split into two groups and walked all around the area visiting some of our client's homes. I went with John and Brian, along with Rosemary (the physical counselor at Imani) and Cornel. Its a whole different world when you get off of the beaten path and weave through the alleyways of the Misri and Farmas slums, only a short walk from our house. We climbed down steep hills to visit families in their wood and tin shacks, where we heard about the amazing things that God has done in their lives, as well as the challenges that they face every day. It's truly an eye-opening experience, and it always makes you stop and think, even if you've seen it time and time again.

We finished our home visits at the house of a client named Ruth - as we got to the house she was just finishing getting the three little girls who live there (all about 2-4 years old) cleaned up and the house in order. We brought with us a couple of bags of food that we'd purchased at a small shop along the way (owned by one of our former clients, Esther), and soon we were all put to work preparing dinner. I chopped up a bunch of cabbages, tomatoes, and cilantro, while the other guys prepared carrots, rice, potatoes, and onions. Over the next two hours we got to help Ruth and Rosemary cook a typical Kenyan dinner on small, charcoal and kerosene fueled stoves, inside the single room that is home for Ruth and her children. We heard Ruth's story, and we watched as the girls slowly became convinced that the crazy white people wouldn't hurt them - in a few minutes they went from quietly sitting on the bed to running all over the place singing songs and giggling uncontrollably! It's so amazing to me how special it is for a Kenyan, especially one stricken by poverty and ostracized by the community because of HIV, to have a group of people all the way from America come to visit their home and share a meal with them. It's really a dream that most of our clients would never consider, but I have a hard time deciding if it makes more of an impression on them or on us. Our lives are so infinitely different, but sharing the love of Jesus Christ and the simple act of cooking and eating creates a beautiful bond that inspires joy and hope in both parties!

A few African experiences

Today I want to tell you about a few of the things that remind me I'm in Africa on a daily basis. The first of these is driving, which is an entirely different experience than any transportation in the US. One thing that's vital to understand here is the network of matatus that covers all of Kenya - a matatu is a 14-passenger van with a yellow stripe down the side, but any semblance of standardization ends there. Matatus come painted in all different color schemes, with huge decals of political figures, celebrities, or religious slogans on the sides and windows and crazy sound/video systems inside playing obnoxiously loud music videos. If you want to get most places in the country, you can walk out to the road, wait for the correct matatu (evidenced by a wooden plaque in the windshield with a number) and hold out your hand. The van will slam to a stop, and the matatu handler will jump out and push you into the van...they are legally allowed to hold 14 people, but its not uncommon to find 20 or 25 inside. At some point you will tell them where you want to get off, and he'll ask for the fare - generally about a dollar for an hour ride.

If you're blessed with the luxury of your own transportation, actually driving on Kenyan roads is a whole different story. I have been learning to drive out around Limuru, so the first challenge comes with the open, winding "country" roads. Think about a typical neighborhood road in the States, then take off all the curbs, lines, signs, and lights. Add in dirt ditches on each side of the asphalt, giant potholes, lots of pedestrians walking on the road, bicyclists, donkey carts, matatus that stop without warning, and slow-moving trucks. Finally, put the car in the highest gear possible and floor it - don't even think about driving less than 50 or 60 miles an hour (there ARE no speed limits in Kenya). If you get on a longer straightaway and can get up to 100mph, great!

An entirely different challenge is driving in the towns and cities. Here, the pace drops significantly, but any idea of traffic lanes or crosswalks vanishes completely. Matatus cut across traffic constantly, and passing on the shoulder or the wrong side of the road is vital if you are going to make it through in a reasonable amount of time. Standard advice from Duncan includes, "If you hit a person, just keep going," "pass both of those trucks before the matatu gets over the speed bump," "watch out for that chicken/cow/goat," and (yelled out the window) "hey boy! you want to die?" All in all, it takes a lot of concentration, a little bit of skill, a ton of assertiveness, and a good deal of insanity...love it!

Another interesting African experience is getting a hair cut. Yesterday I went to the barber shop in Limuru, where I'm fairly certain they have never cut a non-African's hair. For one thing, scissors aren't used at all - all of the cutting is done with electric clippers - so really the only question is how long you want your buzz cut to be. After doing a really good job of cutting with clippers, Moses shampooed my hair while I was still sitting in the chair, and then washed it out with with warm, wet towels...interesting. He asked me how it all looked, and then charged me about 75 cents - it would have been 10 cents extra for a shave! I was definitely the entertainment for the whole shop, and we had a pretty good crowd of curious onlookers.