Kenya: August 2008

As with some of my other web pages, I simply do not have enough space for all the photos. Therefore, I have put a significant amount of material on the VirtualTourist web site. As that web site allows free hosting of any travel related materials, but does not allow any posting of "religious or political rhetoric of any sort" it is not possible for me to put the intimate details of this trip onto their web site (lest it be considered to be "religious rhetoric"). However, I can put the basics of the trip and some of my favorite photos there free of charge. Many of the links on this page lead to various photos and features that are hosted on that web site, in order to provide more photos and information than I simply have space for here on my personal web site. Other links are to various organizations, such as the church and the organization whose ministry we joined. Other links are to my own web pages. In any event, you will get more photos and information by following the various links, as is appropriate for any hyoertext document.

With the passage of some time, the trip eventually turned into a trip to Kenya with Hope Teams International.

This was the first missions trip where I had ever been involved with a "vacation Bible school" program of any sort. To further make things interesting, the primary group responsible for operating the program was a team from a church in Nairobi. The Americans were strictly there to help as necessary with the program, but much of the work was done by the Nairobi team.

The ultimate goal of missions must always be to raise up self-supporting churches. To do otherwise would be to keep the new believers as new believers, without allowing them to reach their purpose as God intended.

Chatch the real significance there: if missions actually prevents the churches it creates from becoming self-supporting, then missions and missionaries actually interfere with God's plan for the people served, rather than helping God's plan for these new churches and believers.

Therefore, the idea of this trip was not for us to take over the show and run the vacation Bible school for the Kenyans, but instead it was to serve Kenyan nationals by helping them do whatever they needed us to do - the effort was to have us come to serve them in whatever way they needed help - this is in keeping with such Biblical concepts as expressed in John 13:2-17.

I invite you to do a Google search using the words "AIDS orphans Oyugis Kenya" and variations thereof. You will find that Oyugis, Kenya has one of the highest rates of such orphans in the world, and possibly is the highest in the world. There are an awful lot of children in the community that have lost both parents. The culture here is Luo, which does not like to discuss death much. Today, however, death is so commonplace that Oyugis has become somewhat well known for its excellent coffin making skills - a transition that provides an illustration as to just how severe and widespread AIDS/HIV related deaths are in this region.

The significance of the "vacation Bible school" is therefore somewhat more different than it is for children here in the USA. In Oyugis, with a huge portion of adults simply gone, many of these children have to assume the roles that adults would normally take. The "vacation Bible school" not only allowed the message of Christ to be presented to these children, but also allowed these children to actually live lives of children again for a few days. For those who were young adults (the "kids" who came included ages all the way up to 20 and 21 or so) the "vacation Bible school" allowed them to experience a childhood that was perhaps all too brief, while at the same time interacting with adults in a way they had never been able to before.

Our typical day was spent like this:

• Arise from our night at the Hotel Vesture Villa (the best hotel in town, but still not up to what the typical American traveler would expect) at whatever hour allowed us to have breakfast. The reality of life in this community is that just to survive, people have to get up early. Most of the time, I was awake by 5 or so due to noise outside from the community going about its business - already in the darkness.

  

• Get breakfast in the hotel, pack up our stuff, and head for the hills.

• The site for our ministry was a grade school in the hills above town. School was on vacation during our time of ministry, and so the Kenyan ministry group had rented the school grounds for us to use as a location for ministry. On some days, this meant about 1 hour walking before we would arrive at the school where , while one day we did take bicycle taxis, and on a very rare occasion we drove, though the roads were not always passable and we did not always have a driver with us. The other problem is that, as seen in the photo at right, some of the places we needed to go were quite impossible to get to other than walking. The trails scattered through the rural areas, where people have no other way of transportation, aren't made for any other form of transportation.

  By mid-morning we had arrived at the school, which sits on a small hill in a beautiful setting. In the distance it is possible to see Lake Victoria and several much taller hills. Resources were somewhat limited in that the only running water is provided by collected rain water, and African pit toilets are the only means of sanitation at the school.

• A short meeting with the team from Nairobi to organize our activities for the day and to dedicate our day to the service of the Lord.

• A general time of worship music with all ages. During this time one or two of us from the American team would give a brief testimony of how God had been or was at that time working in our lives. One or two of the Nairobi team would also do the same thing (though in reality the Nairobi team and the American team were all part of the same team - it's just that some of us were a bit more used to working in Swahili than others!). Both music and speaking tended to be in English, Luo, and Swahili. This language tangle is just a matter of how things are done in Kenya: the official government language is English, while the traditional inter-tribe communication language is Swahili, and the various tribal languages remain in very common use within various geographic areas. This also shows the importance of having the group from Nairobi be there: if this were just a bunch of Americans out trying to minister in Africa, there is no way anything useful would be accomplished as going about life in three different languages, and freely using them all in a single sentence, just isn't the way we do things. It is a fact of life in Kenya.

• We then all went outside to play games as a large group. The white guy in the yellow and green Brazilian hat is me (the hat was the best thing I could find for keeping the sun off.)

• Classes were then broken up by three age / language groups: "Baby Class" were those youngest of children who had limited Swahili or English skills, and required the most attention by those who could speak Luo. The middle group of children were approximately in the 8 to 12 or so age group, and could be involved in somewhat more complicated lessons. "High School Class" were the older students and those skilled in English, and included people all the way up to 20 years old or slightly older. The older the children, the more complicated the lesson and more class participation was possible. The younger childen did a craft activity that helped illustrate the lesson.

• Snack time was a time to socialize and have fun with the children in a less structured format.

• Another period of outdoor games, usually with the older children doing a competitive singing and dance game that most of us Americans didn't quite grasp, let alone have the skills to participate in. This game can only really be appreciated by seeing a video of it, but unfortunately I don't have any available to me at this time.

• Lunch was a fairly important part of the ministry, as many of the people here have to work very hard just to get enough food to feed themselves. No matter how much food was cooked, there was never anything left over.

• Lunch, during lunch, and after lunch provided additional informal social times with the children.

• By early to mid afternoon we were ready to walk back down the hill. Generally we also visited a few of the homes where the children came from. The good part of these visits is we got to see some pieces of traditional African life up close (such as these woven food storage bins), but emotionally these visits were very difficult. The heads of many of these households are older children themselves, and worry about their own future as they can not attend school and do the work necessary to feed themselves as well as their younger siblings. When we visited a house, we would ask if there were prayer requests and would pray with those living there. In virtually all cases education loomed as a huge concern for everyone we visited.

• Sometimes afternoon activities also included helping to paint the interior of buildings that will be used in the future ministry in Oyugis.

Friday was our last day in Oyugis, and after bidding farewell to all our new friends, we slept a short night. When the sun was just starting to come up, we loaded up the van, and headed east. The photo shows the van being extracted from the lobby of the hotel, which at night also serves as all both parking spaces for the hotel.

Our first stop was in Bomet, where we paid a brief visit to the reasonably famous (in Christian missionary circles) Tenwek Hospital.

We then continued to the Masai Mara Game reserve. There, we spent a day and a half re-adjusting to the affluent lifestyle we previously enjoyed (don't laugh - culture shock going from a poverty culture back to the rich culture we all grew up in can be a very severe problem if not handled correctly - and if you are reading this you have access to a computer, which makes you quite a quite bit more wealthy than the families we visited in rural Kenya who don't even have access to safe drinking water - so I include you the reader in that "we" who are more wealthy as well).

Assorted Other Stuff from the Trip:

During this time, as well as one night of our return trip out of the country, we spent the night at the FPFK Guest Lodge.

On our way from Nairobi to Oyugis, we had to drive through the Great Rift Valley, and naturally we stopped briefly for a few photos there.

One of the nice things about being part of a team is that someone may get photos of what someone else didn't get. Photos from our time in Oyugis consist of some of my photos, plus some of Cindy's photos, plus some of David W's photos.

Photos from our time in the Masai Mara Game Reserve include (but are not limited to) some of my photos plus some of Cindy's photos plus some of David W's photos plus some of Kastor's photos.