Hello Friends and Family!
A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to spend a week in Thika, Kenya after our time in Samburu. I remember Sam thinking he was "swimming in a sea of estrogen" at the very beginning of our time here this summer, and that's just because he has been with six women all day, every day while here... If he thought that was a sea of estrogen then... what do you think he was thinking when we were in Thika we helped host none other than.. a Women's conference! A team of women from the Women's Ministry at South East Church in Kentucky flew to Kenya and put on a conference for women in Kenya who traveled very far to learn about how to remain strong in their faith. I think about 100 women were there that week, but luckily Sam had two MALE LIA representatives who helped keep his sanity that week. As Mi2s, we got to spend a lot of time behind the scenes and offer our help whenever needed, but it was a great week to see how God moves through women throughout the world. It was so much fun for us to be able to reconnect with people we previously met earlier in June. It felt great to say that we had already met some people and were able to talk as friends a few weeks later.. The South East team went through the book of Joshua to try to relate that to the womens' lives to stand strong and firm in their beliefs in God, and through that, God will tear down the walls in their lives and help them overcome any obstacles that life brings.
As Americans often think, we go into trips/meetings/conferences like these and think that with leading these powerful bible studies, we can change lives of others.. But I believe that through the moments of "girlfriending" (yes, this was on our schedule for the week. And no, Sam was not involved with it..) and through times of sharing and hearing testimonies of married/unmarried women in America and testimonies of married/unmarried women in Africa- lives were definitely changed... Not only did the Kenyans learn from the American women from their Bible study, but the American women walked away changed and transformed because of the stories that were shared by the Kenyan women.
This was one of my prayers throughout the whole week, and I can see where God was faithful in changing lives all around. We serve an awesome God who is the same in Kentucky, Colorado, and Kenya. He is mighty to save and uses our personal trials/struggles to help other people see that they, too can overcome similar trials in their lives. -This was obvious to see in our week in Thika and I am grateful to have been behind the scenes to see it all lay out.
Although none of us Mi2s are necessarily "fit" to host/run a women's conference (no matter where we are in the world), we had a great time getting to know more of the LIA staff members, the women of the different communities LIA is connected with, and of course the wonderful women from South East. It was very special for us to be able to talk with them, get to know them, laugh with them, and hear their life journey's (and one lady even set up a hair salon in her Guest house room and cut mine, molly rays, nicole's, and sawyer's rugged, african-worn hair!!)
Thika was good to us, God is good, God is faithful, and we owe all of our praises to Him, who provides.
Sorry these blogs are so out of order, but we hope you're enjoying the posts. We are all healthy and "rested" (it is our rest week here in Kenya...and our last week here as well). We love you all and are praying for you.
Mungu aku bariki,
Mwende/Naserian/Elise/Omi
("the loved one" (in Kamba)/ "One who brings peace" (in Maasai) We're so officially Kenyan now with our names.. its insane.)
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Way back when...Mi2 went to Kijabe and Samburu
Well My deepest apologies because I am blogging about the places we visited exactly a month ago. At the beginning of July the Mi2's ventured to a lovely place called Kijabe for 3 days. We were able to visit the Kijabe Mission Hospital, which was awesome. The chaplains took us on a tour of the hospital. It was huge and very well equipped, the Lord really seemed to have his hand over that Hospital. It was very interesting obviously, and very different for the United States--but still the care and attention given to patients was remarkable. We had the opportunity to visit some patients and talk, and pray with them which was a blessing. One thing that struck me as very cool and interesting was that many of the hospital's patients were Somolian, which is very different culture, language and way of life then typical Kenyans. I don't know a lot about Somolia so it was cool to interact with people of another culture. After we had lunch, all the Mi2's split into different areas to experience a little bit more of the hospital. A few went to mother/baby ward, others childrens, but for Katie Lane and myself we had the incredible opportunity to meet some nursing students (o yea, kijabe has a nursing school), which was soo COOL because Katie and I are both nursing students. So we were able to tour there school, although a lot smaller, we still had some of the same textbooks and same struggles with school. It was just nice to talk to someone from a different culture and know what school was like for them. And Kijabe compound is simply gorgeous, it overlooks the mountains and just beautiful. Kijabe town is also where the Rift Valley Academy is and that is where a lot of missionary kids attend, and it is on the American school system so a lot of kids educated there go to University in the U.S. which was cool to hear about too, and if anyone has a heart for teaching and wants to serve in Africa you should look them up. Um what else, on Saturday we went on yet another adventure we were not prepared for. First off we had a wonderful morning of reflection about the summer and me and Elise spotted these crazy looking monkeys. And almost toppled over a hill and a Kenyan man was working a little ways away and straight up laughed at us, it was pretty funny. That afternoon our fearless LIA leader informs us we will be going to find some tunnel up in the mountains and fresh water springs. I mean it was quite the experience of mount longonot, but we did a lot of climbing and sliding and falling and walking along railroad tracks for literally hours, and then seeing a train on the same railroad tracks. But along the way we were able to look out over the rift valley, such a beautiful amazing sight, like it just proclaims how creative God is. We finally made it to the Tunnel and Hot springs and it was epic. Pitch black and slightly scary because there were some large holes in it, but still awesome. At the end of the Tunnel there was graffiti tagged CHAI GIVES YOU CANCER- DRINK IT UP, which I thought was hilarious because I love tea (chai). Also worth mentioning is our guest house in Kijabe, it had this amazing roof that our team spent a lot of time looking at stars and hanging out on.
Onto Samburu, well as per usual we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. And me because I get car sick slept for the first few hours driving to Samburu and when I woke up we were in the middle of the African bush, very far from what we were familiar with. We saw lots of Zebras, a few Giraffes and some other wildlife on the drive and even went through these electric shocking things that stop elephants from damaging certain areas (we didn't see any elephants, sadly). So all we were told was we were staying at a Mission house, that mission house is called Segera. Segera is a mission started some years back and it was very interesting. Segera was very different than anything we had experienced so far because it wasn't LIA run, which kind of threw us for a loop some of the week. Also cool was that some other college kids serving in the clinic were there so it was awesome to get to know some other medical people and they really helped make us feel welcome at Segera. We all had very different encounters in that area, but I'll try and include as much as I remember. It was very American in a lot of ways and the food was delicious, reminded us of home. Some of us discovered new love called weetebix and peanut butter. We served in all different areas including the clinic (awesome), painting, the woodshop, toiling the land, house visit (explain those later), creating the beginning of an orchard. Molly Russell walked away that week with some sweet blisters. Russell and Me got to play some sweet soccer with Kenyans. I worked more on my kiswahili. Sam gave his first shot...to a dog, and did very well. Katie learned she has a lot of love for the clinic, we both got to see a baby be born. Elise enjoyed the opportunity to teach and a few of us learned how to wash clothes by hand which we have taken back to nairobi with us (also it is sooo difficult, Kenyans are so strong). Molly Ray spent some time stirring a big pot of food for school children and getting to know an amazing Kenyan lady. Nicole and Sam helped assist in killing a sheep. Most of the above all happened within the Mission's gates. We all got to go out into the community and seriously encountered some of the most beautiful people. Many of that area is still very deep rooted in tradition, so they wore a lot of traditional beading, shawls, and earrings. That area was also probably the one of the most impoverished areas we encountered, very different living conditions and not very many spoke English. It so hard to describe, but that area just doesn't have many physical resources out in the communities. Also we found that women in that area do mostly everything, including build there homes. Also health it that area was a major issue. So many people came to the clinic, so what a blessing that Segera is able to have a clinic. One many problem is the water from the river and damn which is very very unclean. The mission provides a system that cleans water so anyone from the communities can come there to get it for free. However the problem is for a lot of people the Mission is 10 plus miles away. We saw so many people of all ages carry between 15 to 30 pounds water everyday. The water is a big problem there. There is a lot more, but this blogg is getting quite long and I am getting a tad sleepy. Pray all who read this are blessed and encouraged. And thank you for reading, I apologize for the grammar errors which I can imagine are plentiful, English was never my thing.
With love and joy,
Sawyer
Onto Samburu, well as per usual we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. And me because I get car sick slept for the first few hours driving to Samburu and when I woke up we were in the middle of the African bush, very far from what we were familiar with. We saw lots of Zebras, a few Giraffes and some other wildlife on the drive and even went through these electric shocking things that stop elephants from damaging certain areas (we didn't see any elephants, sadly). So all we were told was we were staying at a Mission house, that mission house is called Segera. Segera is a mission started some years back and it was very interesting. Segera was very different than anything we had experienced so far because it wasn't LIA run, which kind of threw us for a loop some of the week. Also cool was that some other college kids serving in the clinic were there so it was awesome to get to know some other medical people and they really helped make us feel welcome at Segera. We all had very different encounters in that area, but I'll try and include as much as I remember. It was very American in a lot of ways and the food was delicious, reminded us of home. Some of us discovered new love called weetebix and peanut butter. We served in all different areas including the clinic (awesome), painting, the woodshop, toiling the land, house visit (explain those later), creating the beginning of an orchard. Molly Russell walked away that week with some sweet blisters. Russell and Me got to play some sweet soccer with Kenyans. I worked more on my kiswahili. Sam gave his first shot...to a dog, and did very well. Katie learned she has a lot of love for the clinic, we both got to see a baby be born. Elise enjoyed the opportunity to teach and a few of us learned how to wash clothes by hand which we have taken back to nairobi with us (also it is sooo difficult, Kenyans are so strong). Molly Ray spent some time stirring a big pot of food for school children and getting to know an amazing Kenyan lady. Nicole and Sam helped assist in killing a sheep. Most of the above all happened within the Mission's gates. We all got to go out into the community and seriously encountered some of the most beautiful people. Many of that area is still very deep rooted in tradition, so they wore a lot of traditional beading, shawls, and earrings. That area was also probably the one of the most impoverished areas we encountered, very different living conditions and not very many spoke English. It so hard to describe, but that area just doesn't have many physical resources out in the communities. Also we found that women in that area do mostly everything, including build there homes. Also health it that area was a major issue. So many people came to the clinic, so what a blessing that Segera is able to have a clinic. One many problem is the water from the river and damn which is very very unclean. The mission provides a system that cleans water so anyone from the communities can come there to get it for free. However the problem is for a lot of people the Mission is 10 plus miles away. We saw so many people of all ages carry between 15 to 30 pounds water everyday. The water is a big problem there. There is a lot more, but this blogg is getting quite long and I am getting a tad sleepy. Pray all who read this are blessed and encouraged. And thank you for reading, I apologize for the grammar errors which I can imagine are plentiful, English was never my thing.
With love and joy,
Sawyer
Monday, August 1, 2011
More Makueni
Although slightly out of order and delayed, I am going to piggyback on some thoughts on makueni. Since we are currently in rest week we will be playing blog catch up as we process our summer together before returning home. I picked makueni as my blog subject because it was probably one of my favorite parts of our summer. Everywhere we have gone has been amazing in their own way but I particularly loved makueni for the relationships. I got to know three women from makueni the week before in thika at the women’s conference. There was a lot of time spent hearing about their family and church lives, and it was amazing to show up to makueni with friends already made. I got the privilege to yell a greeting out the window of the van as we passed one of my friends on the road. It was at that moment that I felt truly Kenyan—to pass people I know driving through town. I also got the opportunity to preach at the church of a couple of the ladies I had met. There is nothing quite like worshipping alongside ladies whose faith you have come to admire in many ways. I preached at the church of Pastor Steven who a couple of us had come to know as host after staying the night at his house Saturday night. We got to spend time getting to know his family and experiencing how they live in the day to day as we journaled by lantern light and took bucket baths. I think it is safe to say that the majority of churches in the area had white people preaching in them that Sunday because we had nine different churches with foreign guests. We got the opportunity to work alongside a short-term team from Indiana all week in makueni and they were absolute all stars. I admire their fire and positive attitude all week long through our various activities. Despite additional the additional Americans on board with us for the week, I actually spent my time growing close and learning from some amazing Kenyans. Not only did I reunite with some friends from earlier in the summer, I got to spend some time getting to know and laughing with the LIA staffer in makueni. I admired her faith in action all week long and took advantage of pretty much every moment I had to get to know her and even her church friend that taught at the local school. After about a week and a half of great fellowship and encouragement, I found makueni very hard to leave—probably only second to leaving Kenya entirely—but it was a much-needed boost and positive week for everyone. It was beautiful to see the transformation in action possible only by the movement of the Lord in makueni.
Blessings,
Molly Russell, aka Nafula
That’s right, I finally received my awaited Kenyan name. It is from the tribe of Luhya—my tribe apparently—and it means “born in the rainy season.” Was I a little disappointed when everyone else’s names meant things like “happy one”, “peaceful”, “beautiful”, etc? maybe a little, but here I guess it’s a good thing to be associated with rain so I will take it.
Blessings,
Molly Russell, aka Nafula
That’s right, I finally received my awaited Kenyan name. It is from the tribe of Luhya—my tribe apparently—and it means “born in the rainy season.” Was I a little disappointed when everyone else’s names meant things like “happy one”, “peaceful”, “beautiful”, etc? maybe a little, but here I guess it’s a good thing to be associated with rain so I will take it.
Vacation Week in Kajiado :)
Well we just got back from our vacation week in Kajiado (Maasai land). It was a GREAT week. We stayed at a house with Pastor Josiah and his wife Sarah. They were amazing hosts. By the end of the week we all felt like part of their family. We brought with us lots of rain. The moment we arrived at the pastor’s house, it started pouring. We ran inside and Sarah served us some of the best tea we have had this summer. We sat inside their house and listened to the rain on the roof. Katie Lane was in heaven…she loves thunderstorms. The whole week was very relaxing. We reflected on the summer and ate some of the most delicious food in this world. Sarah was an incredible cook. She cooked us pancakes, rice, beans, chapatti, tea, coco, and many more delicious things. My favorite was the chapatti. Those things are officially my new favorite food:) Sarah taught us how to make them…good thing…otherwise I might have had chapatti withdrawals when I got back to the states. During the day we spent time with God, went on walks, and did a little bit of work. On one of our walks we saw about 10 giraffes! They were just walking around in the wild. They are such cool animals! At night we sat around the campfire to eat dinner, drink coco, and look at the stars. The stars were amazing. We saw so many shooting starts! So cool! Elise and Russell counted and they saw 15 in one night! Wow:) Every time I look at the stars it reminds me that God is so big. The night sky is so beautiful and carefully designed, and God took even more care as he was designing us. Cool! This week is a week to close up lose ends and prepare to come back to the states. I know that I am sad to leave, but I am really looking forward to seeing my family and friends! I’ll see you guys in less than 2 weeks☺ Love you all!
Molly Ray and team
PS: I am not sure we mentioned this yet in the blog, but before we left for Makueni and Kajiado our team went to see HARRY POTTER! I’m slightly obsessed with Harry Potter, so I was SO excited to see the movie…in Africa. It was amazing! ☺
Molly Ray and team
PS: I am not sure we mentioned this yet in the blog, but before we left for Makueni and Kajiado our team went to see HARRY POTTER! I’m slightly obsessed with Harry Potter, so I was SO excited to see the movie…in Africa. It was amazing! ☺
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Makueni
Hello everyone
It's been about a week since our last blog, and we're over a week and a half behind in our writing, goodness! Sorry for the delay, we're now under three weeks left here and our days are flying by at a 100 miles per hour.
I'm going to skip writing about Thika because we were there for a women's conference, and for obvious reasons I had little role in the event. I'll let the girls tell you about it.
We're here in Makueni now and its great to be here. The two and a half weeks preceding our time here had schedules that drained us physically and spiritually. Makueni has breathed a lot of wind back into our sails, our first day here was monday and like we have for the rest of the summer, we spent it in prayer and fasting. This week was different though because we prayed with the local pastors fellowship, and after an entire week with ~80 women, lets just say it was great to be around other Y chromosomes worshiping God. Even for Kenya, these pastors are full of joy, and also so full of life...its contagious, which is exactly what we needed after those draining weeks.
As we drove through the rural landscape and town to get here to Makueni (very rural and dry) I half expected to see John Wayne walk out of one of the general stores and hope on his horse and ride off into the sunset. speaking of sunsets, they're very pretty out here. There isn't a plant out here that isn't covered in spines, thorns or stickers of some sort. Yesterday I got a thorn stuck in my finger somehow? The river here is completely dry except for a couple of small springs and the "dirt" is very sand like, most of the plants aren't very big except for the MASSIVE Baoba trees. They're huge, just massive.
Um...back to the people. Like I said it's quite rural, theres a big demon presence and a lot of witchcraft here. The people here stare at you if you're white. Molly Ray put it best when she said that when we're in Nairobi, we celebrities, and here we're aliens. Its kid of creepy to be honest, yesterday I felt like a caged animal with the number of kids that gathered around me from a distance and stood there and gawked at me. yesterday we held a conference on the importance of saving and the forming of Co-ops. Molly Ray taught on saving and gave some biblical context for the session and Commander Ponton taught about Co-ops. Then a kenyan taught about more stuff but he spoke in swahili so we don't have the slightest clue what he said.
Pray for us that we finish strong and for the eventual transition home
Sam and the Mi2's
It's been about a week since our last blog, and we're over a week and a half behind in our writing, goodness! Sorry for the delay, we're now under three weeks left here and our days are flying by at a 100 miles per hour.
I'm going to skip writing about Thika because we were there for a women's conference, and for obvious reasons I had little role in the event. I'll let the girls tell you about it.
We're here in Makueni now and its great to be here. The two and a half weeks preceding our time here had schedules that drained us physically and spiritually. Makueni has breathed a lot of wind back into our sails, our first day here was monday and like we have for the rest of the summer, we spent it in prayer and fasting. This week was different though because we prayed with the local pastors fellowship, and after an entire week with ~80 women, lets just say it was great to be around other Y chromosomes worshiping God. Even for Kenya, these pastors are full of joy, and also so full of life...its contagious, which is exactly what we needed after those draining weeks.
As we drove through the rural landscape and town to get here to Makueni (very rural and dry) I half expected to see John Wayne walk out of one of the general stores and hope on his horse and ride off into the sunset. speaking of sunsets, they're very pretty out here. There isn't a plant out here that isn't covered in spines, thorns or stickers of some sort. Yesterday I got a thorn stuck in my finger somehow? The river here is completely dry except for a couple of small springs and the "dirt" is very sand like, most of the plants aren't very big except for the MASSIVE Baoba trees. They're huge, just massive.
Um...back to the people. Like I said it's quite rural, theres a big demon presence and a lot of witchcraft here. The people here stare at you if you're white. Molly Ray put it best when she said that when we're in Nairobi, we celebrities, and here we're aliens. Its kid of creepy to be honest, yesterday I felt like a caged animal with the number of kids that gathered around me from a distance and stood there and gawked at me. yesterday we held a conference on the importance of saving and the forming of Co-ops. Molly Ray taught on saving and gave some biblical context for the session and Commander Ponton taught about Co-ops. Then a kenyan taught about more stuff but he spoke in swahili so we don't have the slightest clue what he said.
Pray for us that we finish strong and for the eventual transition home
Sam and the Mi2's
Thursday, July 14, 2011
part of our samburu experience
Woah. It’s been a while since we’ve blogged. We’re currently just outside of Thikatown (~1hr outside of Nairobi). We’re here to help with a women’s conference that is being hosted by a team from the women’s ministry at Southeast Christian Church. We arrived here Sunday night after being picked up from Samburu.
I apologize now for the scatteredness of this blog. The time we had in Samburu was busy and we all have many, many stories that have come out of it. I’m going to do my best to capture as much as I can in this post, but the girls will have to supplement it with their own stories.
Samburu…wow. What a week. I’ve yet to figure out if the place we were at was actually called Samburu, but we were in the area of the Samburu tribe, and the mission we stayed at was called the Segera mission. The closest city was Nanyuki, but the only way to get there was on 4-wheel drive through the rocky/dusty country roads.
If you want to get a visual image of where we stayed, picture this: the lion king with a big barn like building and some smaller one-story buildings. It was rural and rustic. The area outside of the mission is very different from what we had experienced to this point. First off Segera is not a partner of LIA, so we didn’t have an LIA organized program/field oriented staff member to come alongside. We got to experience a more traditional mission during our time there. Segera operates a medical clinic that is the only medical facility for 400 square miles. Two nurses operate it, and they have help this summer from three American students (one medical student and two nursing students), and us while we were there.
It was an intense week for many of us, but it was a good week. We really felt like we were on a short term mission, which was really different for us. The climate was semi-arid, sort of desert like; all the soil was more dust than actual soil. It was as warm as Kisumu during the day and colder than Nairobi at night, (about 90 during the day and 40s-50s at night). The stars and moon were so clear at night, it was incredible; the cold made it unpleasant to lie out and watch them like we did in Kijabe (details to follow in another post, we went to kijabe before we came to samburu). Story time:
Like I said, the mission has a medical clinic and several of us spent a good amount of time in it. Our first day at the mission had a time for home visits (our specialty), so we split into two groups and went to two locations. My group (Rayray, Commander Ponton, Myself and Jayne (LIA Staff that came with us)) went to visit a widow who was living in a mud hut with a grass roof. The home was tilting quite badly, and was propped up by a log on one side. We took tea with the homeowner who shared her story with us. Unfortunately I remember few details of her life, but like many of the people in the area, struggled with tribal traditions. After taking tea, she showed us the inside of her home. It was a one-room building, and typical of homes the cooking fire was kept inside the home which had no chimney. We then took some time to visit her two neighbors. One of the neighbors turned out to be a pastor who had worked at the mission as a night guard for 7 years before resigning to become a full time pastor. We visited him (Tony) and his wife (Phyllis) and heard how, in addition to pastoring a church of 150, they had just begun their own real estate business. They both spoke fluent English, and Phyllis looked to be about 6 months pregnant (turns out she wasn’t). After the home visit, we got a tour of the mission from it’s director, Richard. He showed us the place and gave us all sorts of fun facts about where it’s come from and what his vision is for the future. When he was showing us the water cleaning system, I took a short gander at the source of the water (Filthy river is putting it lightly) and was informed by Richard that the tall grass I was standing in happens to be home to some spitting Cobras. I thought he was joking at first, then I realized that he never jokes and ran out of the grass faster than I ever have in my life. We took dinner in the dining hall, and during that time a mother getting ready to deliver came in. The nurse helped her get settled and we continued on with our night. Sawyer and Emily (one of the other nursing students previously mentioned) helped Samuel (the clinic nurse) with everything while we waited long into the night for the baby to come. At 12:03 am the baby came, and it came in a hurry, I barely made it in before it was out. It was a baby boy and surprise, the mom was Phyllis. Turns out she wasn’t six months pregnant, she was full term! Went to bed a few hours later.
The next day Katie Lane and I were in the Clinic. There are a lot of cases of water related illness, and lots of coughs. When you constantly have a fire going in a house with no chimney, you’re going to have a cough. Another common condition is thorn sticks. Everything that has leaves in this area also has thorns, big ones. On this day, a girl came in with a two inch thorn stuck under the skin in her head. I have no idea how it got there, but it was buried in there. With no anesthetic we had to remove this thorn or risk a life threatening infection from it. The girl was about 10 years old and tough as nails, but it took three of us to hold her still enough to get this thing out. I had to hold her head down in my lap so she couldn’t squirm there, her grandmother held her legs, and the missions mechanic had to hold her arms while Samuel did his thing with a scalpel and needle and Katie wiped up all the blood and pulled the thing out. Ouch. After we got the thorn out, the girl sat up and looked like nothing had even happened to her. The next day, we repeated with another girl who had one stuck in her foot, similar story.
There are so many water borne illnesses from the river and a nearby dam. Apparently a team of engineers from the US came out sometime in the past to examine the water from those places and determined that if they were in the US, a human being wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it. It’s ripe with E. Coli, Typhoid and all sorts of pesticides and other pollution. The mission offers clean water for free but not everyone takes advantage of it. Apparently, many people like the taste of the river water because it tastes sweet, and there’s also a traditional tribal history of drinking from the river.
Tribal traditions are prevalent in the way of life in the area, which really isn’t good for the women. Common traditions are female circumcision and full FGM. Girls as young as 7 (usually 12) are married off for their dowries. Women are also the source of income as the men just sit around all day. I can count the number of men I saw outside the mission on one hand, all sitting on the side of the road doing nothing. In this area, wealth is measured in livestock (cattle, sheep and goats). It’s really the only industry out there (90% unemployment, really puts our 10% in perspective), though there needs to be a paradigm shift for that to change.
Another cultural difficulty we saw involved a 10-year-old boy. He had a badly injured right knee, which prevented him from walking. It was swollen and it looked like his patella was not in the right place, but we couldn’t be sure of anything. What is sure, is that the treatment of his injury at the hospital in Nanyuki cost about 600 Kenya Shillings. His father said he didn’t have the money to pay for it and expected the mission to pay for the treatment of the child’s injury. Here’s the problem with said proposal: he had more sheep and goats than we could count…well over 100, probably closer to 300. Selling one adult sheep would have garnered about 2,500 Kenya Shillings. Two cultural issues, 1. Livestock are more valuable than children in this area. 2. Even though he had plenty, he still thought he was poor.
Much more to come
Sam and the Mi2s
I apologize now for the scatteredness of this blog. The time we had in Samburu was busy and we all have many, many stories that have come out of it. I’m going to do my best to capture as much as I can in this post, but the girls will have to supplement it with their own stories.
Samburu…wow. What a week. I’ve yet to figure out if the place we were at was actually called Samburu, but we were in the area of the Samburu tribe, and the mission we stayed at was called the Segera mission. The closest city was Nanyuki, but the only way to get there was on 4-wheel drive through the rocky/dusty country roads.
If you want to get a visual image of where we stayed, picture this: the lion king with a big barn like building and some smaller one-story buildings. It was rural and rustic. The area outside of the mission is very different from what we had experienced to this point. First off Segera is not a partner of LIA, so we didn’t have an LIA organized program/field oriented staff member to come alongside. We got to experience a more traditional mission during our time there. Segera operates a medical clinic that is the only medical facility for 400 square miles. Two nurses operate it, and they have help this summer from three American students (one medical student and two nursing students), and us while we were there.
It was an intense week for many of us, but it was a good week. We really felt like we were on a short term mission, which was really different for us. The climate was semi-arid, sort of desert like; all the soil was more dust than actual soil. It was as warm as Kisumu during the day and colder than Nairobi at night, (about 90 during the day and 40s-50s at night). The stars and moon were so clear at night, it was incredible; the cold made it unpleasant to lie out and watch them like we did in Kijabe (details to follow in another post, we went to kijabe before we came to samburu). Story time:
Like I said, the mission has a medical clinic and several of us spent a good amount of time in it. Our first day at the mission had a time for home visits (our specialty), so we split into two groups and went to two locations. My group (Rayray, Commander Ponton, Myself and Jayne (LIA Staff that came with us)) went to visit a widow who was living in a mud hut with a grass roof. The home was tilting quite badly, and was propped up by a log on one side. We took tea with the homeowner who shared her story with us. Unfortunately I remember few details of her life, but like many of the people in the area, struggled with tribal traditions. After taking tea, she showed us the inside of her home. It was a one-room building, and typical of homes the cooking fire was kept inside the home which had no chimney. We then took some time to visit her two neighbors. One of the neighbors turned out to be a pastor who had worked at the mission as a night guard for 7 years before resigning to become a full time pastor. We visited him (Tony) and his wife (Phyllis) and heard how, in addition to pastoring a church of 150, they had just begun their own real estate business. They both spoke fluent English, and Phyllis looked to be about 6 months pregnant (turns out she wasn’t). After the home visit, we got a tour of the mission from it’s director, Richard. He showed us the place and gave us all sorts of fun facts about where it’s come from and what his vision is for the future. When he was showing us the water cleaning system, I took a short gander at the source of the water (Filthy river is putting it lightly) and was informed by Richard that the tall grass I was standing in happens to be home to some spitting Cobras. I thought he was joking at first, then I realized that he never jokes and ran out of the grass faster than I ever have in my life. We took dinner in the dining hall, and during that time a mother getting ready to deliver came in. The nurse helped her get settled and we continued on with our night. Sawyer and Emily (one of the other nursing students previously mentioned) helped Samuel (the clinic nurse) with everything while we waited long into the night for the baby to come. At 12:03 am the baby came, and it came in a hurry, I barely made it in before it was out. It was a baby boy and surprise, the mom was Phyllis. Turns out she wasn’t six months pregnant, she was full term! Went to bed a few hours later.
The next day Katie Lane and I were in the Clinic. There are a lot of cases of water related illness, and lots of coughs. When you constantly have a fire going in a house with no chimney, you’re going to have a cough. Another common condition is thorn sticks. Everything that has leaves in this area also has thorns, big ones. On this day, a girl came in with a two inch thorn stuck under the skin in her head. I have no idea how it got there, but it was buried in there. With no anesthetic we had to remove this thorn or risk a life threatening infection from it. The girl was about 10 years old and tough as nails, but it took three of us to hold her still enough to get this thing out. I had to hold her head down in my lap so she couldn’t squirm there, her grandmother held her legs, and the missions mechanic had to hold her arms while Samuel did his thing with a scalpel and needle and Katie wiped up all the blood and pulled the thing out. Ouch. After we got the thorn out, the girl sat up and looked like nothing had even happened to her. The next day, we repeated with another girl who had one stuck in her foot, similar story.
There are so many water borne illnesses from the river and a nearby dam. Apparently a team of engineers from the US came out sometime in the past to examine the water from those places and determined that if they were in the US, a human being wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it. It’s ripe with E. Coli, Typhoid and all sorts of pesticides and other pollution. The mission offers clean water for free but not everyone takes advantage of it. Apparently, many people like the taste of the river water because it tastes sweet, and there’s also a traditional tribal history of drinking from the river.
Tribal traditions are prevalent in the way of life in the area, which really isn’t good for the women. Common traditions are female circumcision and full FGM. Girls as young as 7 (usually 12) are married off for their dowries. Women are also the source of income as the men just sit around all day. I can count the number of men I saw outside the mission on one hand, all sitting on the side of the road doing nothing. In this area, wealth is measured in livestock (cattle, sheep and goats). It’s really the only industry out there (90% unemployment, really puts our 10% in perspective), though there needs to be a paradigm shift for that to change.
Another cultural difficulty we saw involved a 10-year-old boy. He had a badly injured right knee, which prevented him from walking. It was swollen and it looked like his patella was not in the right place, but we couldn’t be sure of anything. What is sure, is that the treatment of his injury at the hospital in Nanyuki cost about 600 Kenya Shillings. His father said he didn’t have the money to pay for it and expected the mission to pay for the treatment of the child’s injury. Here’s the problem with said proposal: he had more sheep and goats than we could count…well over 100, probably closer to 300. Selling one adult sheep would have garnered about 2,500 Kenya Shillings. Two cultural issues, 1. Livestock are more valuable than children in this area. 2. Even though he had plenty, he still thought he was poor.
Much more to come
Sam and the Mi2s
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
we're alive
hello faithful followers
we're in the sticks of africa right now. It's a small miracle that I've found this internet signal. We're alive and well, don't expect a blog post until sunday at the earliest. pray for safe travels as we drive around. we're currently at the segera mission serving the samburu people. it's crazy cool. sawyer and I saw a baby born last night, and katie lane is helping the delivery of another as I write this. lots of stories to tell soon. love you all. don't forget about us.
Sam and the Mi2s
we're in the sticks of africa right now. It's a small miracle that I've found this internet signal. We're alive and well, don't expect a blog post until sunday at the earliest. pray for safe travels as we drive around. we're currently at the segera mission serving the samburu people. it's crazy cool. sawyer and I saw a baby born last night, and katie lane is helping the delivery of another as I write this. lots of stories to tell soon. love you all. don't forget about us.
Sam and the Mi2s
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